The Reader (19 page)

Just doing his duty.
Haldon Lac's smile wilted.

“I'll make sure my superiors know it was you who helped us,” Fox continued.

“I'd appreciate that, ma'am.” He tipped his hat toward her
and sauntered off, leaving Petty Officer Lac standing dumbfounded on the dock. Laughing and talking, the other sailors followed. Lac recognized the crew of the
Current of Faith
now: Horse, the enormous carpenter with the bandanna tied around his forehead; Meeks, the dreadlocked, story-loving second mate . . .

Hobs looked up and grinned. “There you are, sir. I thought you'd missed all the action.”

Haldon Lac shook his head.

“Put some pressure on that wound,” Fox said.

Obediently, he pressed his hand to his shoulder and looked at the blood on the dock, the corpses. This was not a moment of greatness at all, he realized. They had gone in without orders, and they didn't even have Hatchet to show for it. Someone else had swooped in and taken all the glory, which Fox was going to give him—rightfully so, if Lac was being honest with himself. No, this was a chapter in someone else's story, probably not even a very important one, and he hadn't lifted a finger to take part in it.

Well, he'd lifted an arm. And look how that had turned out.

“Hatchet got away,” he said.

Fox shrugged. “We have prisoners. We'll get him next time.” Was she smiling at him? Her leg was wounded, and blood was smeared across her forehead, but yes, she was smiling at him. That wild coyote smile.

Haldon Lac smiled back.

W
hen Sefia awoke, it was so dark she wasn't sure if she had opened her eyes at all. She heard footsteps, hoarse voices, the creak of ropes. The warm, close air pressed in around her like a blanket. She coughed and stirred, croaking, “Archer?”

Something cool was pressed into her hands, and her fingers flitted over his as he raised the canteen to her mouth. Water trickled past her lips and down her throat. She sat up and spoke again: “Where are we? Did they get us?”

His hand squeezed hers. They were safe.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

As he sat back, he took something from his pocket and began turning it in his fingers. She reached out, and in the darkness found the worry stone resting in his hand.

Outside, waves murmured in the slow breath of the tide. They were near the water, maybe on one of the piers. Their
hiding place was small, with hard wooden sides, barely big enough to fit the two of them.

“A crate!” Her fingers brushed the folds of his clothing.

His hand found hers and he held up two crossed fingers in the dark. They were sticky—with blood?—but she knew what they meant.

She was with him. They were together. So he was okay.

She sat back again, but Archer's hand remained over hers. In the darkness, the pressure of his fingers seemed like the only real thing in the world, and if she let go, all the pieces of her would scatter, spinning wildly into the black. They'd touched before, but it had never felt like this.

She didn't pull away.

“What's out there?”

Archer's shoulder lifted and fell. She took another sip of water. “I'm sorry,” she said, her voice low and cracked. “I should have been more careful. I should have noticed . . . I just couldn't control my vision . . .” She trailed off. “Hatchet said you were supposed to lead an army.”

He didn't answer, but she knew he was still rubbing the worry stone. Serakeen had already claimed vast stretches of ocean. Now he wanted land too. Liccaro, with its corrupt regents and impoverished people, would be easy pickings.

Was that why he needed boys? For his army? But the way Hatchet talked about Archer on the dock made it seem like he thought he was special. Not cannon fodder, but a leader. A captain. A conductor of violence. Archer had already killed fifteen boys, but still Serakeen wanted more. Legions more.

“Never.” She gripped his fingers tighter. “You'll never have to kill for them again.”

He leaned down and touched the top of her head with his cheek.

After a moment, Sefia reached out, feeling the familiar shape of her pack and the book inside. “We didn't even find out where they were going.”

Archer tapped the back of her hand excitedly.

“Did they say something?”

He nodded, and she began guessing. Corabel. Kelebrandt. “Roku!” She laughed. The littlest of the kingdoms was a steaming volcanic island that smelled of sulfur and ash. Although it was once an Oxscinian territory and still exported blackrock and gunpowder to its former sovereign, it was too small and isolated in the deep south to be of much consequence. “I know. No one goes to Roku.”

Still, it didn't take her long to land on the right answer. “Jahara,” she whispered. “They were going to Jahara.”

It seemed like Archer was about to respond when they heard footsteps echoing outside: quick, nimble beats like those of a bird. Inside the crate, they froze. Pressed against Archer's shoulder, Sefia could feel her own pulse drumming in her neck. The footsteps grew louder, then halted. Someone was close, separated only by a few wooden boards.

There was a scratching noise, like burrowing, like fire on dry wood. It rumbled and crackled around them, filling the crate with noise.

Then, a rough voice: “You there!”

The noise ceased, and they heard someone scurrying away.

“Hey, wasn't that the girl who—?”

“Nah, too old. She was just a slip of a thing.”

The voices drew nearer, and someone slapped the side of the crate. Sefia shuddered.

“After that brushup on Black Boar, everyone's behind schedule. Cap wanted us back at sea an hour ago.”

“Even an hour ago wouldn't have been soon enough for the captain.”

They laughed.

Archer's hand tightened over hers.

The crate shook. Something large and heavy was being slapped against it. Ropes. The crate was being tied up like a present. She braced herself against the walls. She'd been on ships before. She knew what was coming next.

She felt as if the ground had dropped away beneath her. Her stomach lurched. They were aloft, swinging through the air, listing this way and that. She tumbled into Archer as the packs struck her back. They fell over each other, all elbows and heads and knees and flailing straps.

Then they were dropped. Sefia bit her lip to keep from gasping at the impact.

They were surrounded by hollering and rumbling and things moving into place. Sefia and Archer lay motionless at the bottom of the crate, curled up where they had fallen. His arm along hers. Her shallow breaths in his tousled hair. In all the commotion, he had not let go of her hand.

There was a great
thud
: a hatch being closed on top of them, and then they were alone. The voices were distant above.

They had been loaded onto a ship.

Sefia shivered. They were stowaways now, and stowaways were expendable. She'd heard the stories. If the ship was on a short journey, between the kingdoms or down the coast, they might be enslaved and sold at the next port. If the ship was on one of those long sea voyages, they'd be killed immediately, their bodies left in the open ocean without ceremony.

The crate, which had only moments before seemed safe and warm, now closed in about them like a prison.

Archer was shaking. His breath came too fast. Under her hand, she could feel him dragging his thumb over the worry stone again and again. She curled around him and pressed her cheek to his hair, muffling his trembling with the pressure of her body on his. “It's okay.” Her words were barely audible as they whispered past his ear. “It's okay.”

How much food did they have?

“It's okay.”

How much water?

“It's okay.”

How long could they last in the bowels of the ship?

“It's okay.”

T
anin leaned against the bulwark of the ship as if she belonged there, propped up on her elbows with her hands crossed loosely at the wrists. It wasn't her ship, of course, and she
didn't
belong there, but from the deck of the old cutter she had a clear, unobstructed view of the dock and, fifty yards away, the crate that contained the boy and the girl.

Beside her, the Assassin was trimming her fingernails with the tip of her knife, flinging little white slivers into the frothy green water below. Under their boots, the decks were slippery with the blood of the watchman, who now lay dead at the bottom of the main hatchway.

“I still think we're wasting time,” the Assassin said.

Tanin didn't take her eyes from the crate. “And that would matter, if I cared what you thought.”

The Assassin said nothing, but her frustration radiated from her in waves.

Tanin sighed. “I'm sorry. I know you're impatient. So am I. But if we act before we have all the relevant information, we may lose the Book, and that's not a risk I'm willing to take.”

“How is watching them sit in a box relevant?” The Assassin sheathed her knife.

“If they're as important as I think they are, everything is relevant.”

Tanin's eyes narrowed at a flicker of movement on the dock. A slender figure darted from behind a set of crates, her long black hair tied back. She moved with the quick steps of a thief, or a blackbird hunting insects, so sure and elegant that Tanin's breath caught in her throat.

No. It can't be
her
.

Tanin was too far away to see her face clearly, but as she watched, the woman paused beside the crate. A knife flashed in her hands. She glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then she began to carve.

Tanin straightened suddenly. She would have recognized that posture anywhere.

The woman was writing.

Vaulting over the rail, Tanin ran down the gangplank to the dock. Through the crowded pier, she saw two men approach the crate. The small dark-haired woman looked up once—too far away for Tanin to make out her features—and ducked into the crowd.

Tanin's gaze skimmed over beggar children and sailors, servants and merchants, messengers running this way and that in their black caps.

The Assassin joined her on the pier. “Is that—”

The woman sprinted out from behind a cluster of passengers and raced away. Tanin ran after her.

She could see the Assassin out of the corner of her eye, running beside her as they dodged through the throng, narrowly avoiding pull-carts and men rolling kegs across the wooden planks. Ahead of them, the woman leapt over piles of nets and slid, legs kicking, over the tops of wooden chests, squeezing between plump businesswomen and groups of confused travelers.

As she ran, Tanin kept hoping—
hoping
—the woman would turn, even if only for a second. Just long enough for Tanin to get a good look at her. To see that it was really her. Even if it was impossible.

But the woman didn't look back once.

They chased her to the end of the pier, and without breaking her stride the woman bounded up a set of crates and took a flying leap over the water, arms outspread like wings.

The Assassin raised her knife. It flashed in the sun.

“No!” Tanin shoved her aside as the blade left her hand.

I
t
slashed
thro
ugh
th
e
wom
an's
arm
ju
st
bef
ore
she
d
i
sappeared.
The blade dropped into the water, but there was no other splash. It was as if the woman had winked out of existence entirely.

Tanin halted.

Teleportation.
That tier of magic was so far advanced that even Master Illuminators rarely attempted it. But the woman couldn't have been . . .

The Assassin skidded to a stop and slammed her gloved fist into one of the crates. It burst apart, its boards breaking like kindling. A few nearby dockworkers started toward her, but she
glared at them with such malice that they raised their hands and backed away, shaking their heads.

“Why did you stop me?” she demanded.

Tanin stared at the space where the woman had been moments before. “I didn't want you to kill her,” she said faintly.

The Assassin kicked at the bits of splintered wood on the dock. “I wouldn't have killed her. Stopped her from teleporting, yes. Gotten you the answers you wanted, yes.”

“I couldn't take that chance.”

“Was that even
her
?”

Tanin turned away as tears distorted her vision. “I don't know,” she whispered. Her words cracked as her voice, always so under control, split and fractured like ice.

The Assassin snorted. “Why do you care so much?”

Another few tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, and she wiped them away hastily, straightening her clothes. “Because she was family.”

“We don't have families. We swore to it.” The Assassin spat sideways. “Sometimes it's like you don't even want the Book back.”

All traces of Tanin's disappointment vanished in an instant. She snapped her hand over the Assassin's wrist and gave it a vicious twist.

Crying out, the Assassin dropped to one knee, her hand caught fast in Tanin's viselike grip.

“I like you, Assassin,” she said sweetly. Her regular voice had returned, as supple and sharp as a fencing foil. “Under ordinary circumstances, I even like your obstinate braying and your mulish devotion to the cause.” With every word, she put
more and more pressure on the Assassin's wrist, until the joint began to buckle and tears welled in the younger woman's eyes. “But these are extraordinary times, and if you can't stop yourself from sounding like a shortsighted nag every time you open your mouth, I will ship you back to the Main Branch to let the Administrators break you like the wild ass you are.”

She gave the Assassin's wrist one last wrench and released her.

The Assassin gasped, cradling her injured hand to her chest.

Tanin smiled down at her. “Now, let me spell this out for you: That woman—whoever she was—
transformed
that crate. She's
protecting
them. If someone that powerful is watching over these children, they must be important. You'd be a fool to try to capture them now.”

Despite the pain in her wrist, the Assassin's eyes flashed at the challenge.

Straightening, Tanin threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin. The sea breeze caught her silver-black hair, whipping it away from her face. “At any rate, we know where they're going. We'll follow the ship.” She paused. “They'll be safe enough, if they're careful.”

At her feet, the Assassin looked like she could spit venom, but she said nothing.

“Come.” Tanin took her arm and helped her to her feet, brushing splinters of wood from her black sleeve. “I owe you a new knife.”