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“Well, fuck,” Eozena said, annoyed.
Evemer glanced over, and his blood went cold. The starlight was just enough illumination to show an arrow lodged in her leg, the wicked point punching all the way through. “Commander!”
“One more thing I did notmotherfuckingneed,” she snarled, dragging herself to one of the boat’s thwarts where she sat heavily, her leg stiff and straight in front of her. Without a wince, she reached down and snapped the arrow’s head and fletchings as close to the wound as she could without even a grunt of pain, leaving a length of shaft piercing through her thigh to hold the wound closed. She flung the pieces overboard and only a moment later said, “Oh, fuck me, should have kept those. Might have identified them.”
“Gods and fishes, Eozena, don’t do any more of that or I’m going to throw up,” Tadek said, strangled.
“Oh, calm down,” she snapped. “I’ve had worse.”
“Worse than an arrow straight through the thigh?” Pinar asked, breathless with exertion. She hauled harder on the oars.
“Thrice-damnedchildren,the lot of you,” Eozena snarled. “Shut up and row. Don’t know why I thought taking any of you was a good idea. Pinar! Are you hurt?” she demanded.
“Just scrapes and bruises, Commander, ma’am,” Pinar said. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“At least there’s that,” she spat. “I’ll only have one Mahisti baying for my blood when we get back. Gods!”
“Kadou’s not really the baying sort, though,” Tadek said. He sounded pained.
Evemer forced himself up, a steadying hand on the gunwale. “Let me,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“Tadek, move your sorry ass and let Evemerfucking row,” Eozena said. “At least he hasn’t gottenpuncturedtwice in two days likesome people,by which I mean you, so let him fucking row, and—”
“I’m letting him, I’m letting him!” Tadek said, shuffling off of the rower’s thwart and moving to sit in the prow. Evemer took his place and matched the rhythm of his oar to Pinar’s.
“—I don’t know how you even made it to core-guard with a weak stomach anyway. Threatening to vomit! I can’t believe you. What the fuck is wrong with you, boy?”
“Lots of things,” Tadek said. “And weak stomachs are one thing, butwatching your commander snap an arrow off when it’s going all the way through her legis a dramatically different one, I would argue—”
“Are you giving mebackchat?”
“Yes. And? What are you going to do about it?”
Eozena was agog with rage for a moment. “I can have you whipped for insolence! I can have you demoted!”
“Demoted from His Highness’s sworn armsman?” Tadek said, sounding smug now. “You can’t. Not actually in your chain of command, am I? You can’t touch me. Now speaking ofshut up and row,that sounds like a good idea, why don’t you join us?”
“Tadek,” Evemer said. “She can’t touch you, but I can.”
“Oh? And what are you going to do,honeybee? Punch me?”
“Yes.”
“I swear to both gods, I will drown the two of you and throw myself on His Highness’s mercy!” Eozena hissed. “He’ll look me in the eye and do you know what he’ll do?Do you?He’ll cry. And I’ll feel like a fucking monster, and Her Majesty will be furious with me, but at least I’ll have one piece of comfort, and do you know what that is? I’ll know that it’sall your fault,because the two of you wouldn’tcut that shit out.”
There was total silence for almost a whole minute.
“And another thing,” Eozena continued. “Why thefuckwas Siranos there? Wasn’t he just at the house?”
“He said he’d be right back and then . . .” Pinar said breathlessly. “I know I wasn’t paying much attention to him. Can’t imagine anyone else even spared a second thought.”
Evemer took a mental inventory of everyone else who had been in the house. The other kahyalar had gone back out to their watch posts when the meeting had finished, Her Majesty had headed upstairs to rest and feed Eyne, who had been fussing, and Kadou had hovered around the table as Eozena outlined her plan . . . “How much did he hear?” Evemer said. “How much does he know?”
“Fuck,” Eozena said again, more fervently. “He knows where your mother’s house is, for one thing.”
Kadou had been pacing for a thousand years, it seemed, and then his worst nightmares walked in through the door and all but collapsed in front of the hearth.
