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Click.The lock gives. The door swings open. I smell seawater and mildew, and something surprisingly floral, but the room is a well of darkness. I can’t see anything at all.
Without warning, a figure explodes through the doorway. It’s too dark for me to see much, but I catch a glimpse of long, wild blond hair, wide dark eyes, and a filthy face. It’s a woman—or a girl, I can’t tell. She screams in rage.
Then she slams right into me with enough force to nearly knock me off my feet.
I cry out in surprise, then throw up a hand when she swings a fist at my face. Pain explodes behind my eyes, then in my forearm. I fall back involuntarily. Too much is happening all at once. It doesn’t help that she’s pummeling me like she wants to break every bone in my body. I’m lucky that she hits like a child, all weak strikes with bony knuckles.
“Stop!” I cry. She might be weak, but she’squick, and I can’t seem to catch her wrists or hold her off. I’m thinking of the number of times Corrick said I should take some lessons from the weapons master, and the equal number of times I told him it could wait. “Stop—stop it!”
Finally, my thoughts catch up, and I swing a punch at her midsection. She’s practically weightless, and I feel ribs when my fist connects. She grunts in pain, then slips to the side.
I all but throw myself to my feet in the shadowed hallway.
Again, she’s quick. She leaps off the floor and tackles my back. Her fingernails dig into my arms, and I struggle to take a step forward.
“Corrick!” I shout, just as I feel her break the skin. “Guards! Help!”
The girl on my back hisses into my ear. “I’m going to kill you all.”
Well, now I know why he kept that door locked.
I throw an elbow back and hear her grunt. It hardly dislodges her. I stagger forward, bearing her weight.
A light flares to life in front of me, and I gasp. A lantern.
I gasp in relief.
But it’s not Corrick. It’s not the guards.
It’s Marchon, with Gwyn at his back. The flickering candlelight turns their faces into nightmarish caricatures.
Especially when Marchon plucks the girl off me, twisting her arms behind her back until she squeals in pain. Gwyn points a crossbow at me.
I’m frozen in place. I don’t know what’s happening.
I raise my hands. “Please,” I gasp. My arms are stinging from where the girl clawed at me. “Please. I don’t know—”
“How did she get out?” Gwyn demands.
Before I can even answer, Marchon swings the lantern. The padlock is visible on the ground.
Both their eyes shift back to me.
“She picked the lock,” Marchon says. “Sablo!” he shouts.
The young woman—because itisa young woman, I can see now, rail thin in clothes that all but hang from her frame—tries to kick at Marchon, squirming in his grasp. “I’m going to killallof you,” she snaps. “Oren will set fire to this ship and then you’ll—” She breaks off with a gasp when Marchon tightens his grip.
Oren.Oren Crane? I swallow and look at Gwyn. “What’s going on?” I say. “Who is she?”
Her expression is full of sorrow and also resignation. She sighs, then gestures with the crossbow. “Walk, Tessa. Rian’s going to have to decide what to do. Bring her along, Marchon.”
The young woman grunts and struggles. “I’m going to slit Rian’s throat with a—”
“Enough.” Marchon clamps a hand over her mouth—then lets go with a yelp. “She bit me!”
The woman does one better. She punches him right in the throat.
Marchon chokes and drops her. She sprints away.
