Ruc looked over, met my eyes. “Sacrifice,” he replied quietly. He nodded toward the Asp. “Come on.”
The woman finished the last of her honeyed ice, tossed the leaf into the canal, watched it bob away, a diminutive little ship, then strolled the length of the dock to the same boat the priest had boarded earlier. The bathhouse docks were a hive of activity: slim swallowtail boats, opulent pleasure barges, snub-nosed wearies shouldering through the press of hulls to deliver passengers or pick them up. There was nothing remarkable about the vessel with the black canopy. I wouldn’t even have noticed it, if Ruc hadn’t pointed it out. The Asp stepped lightly from the dock onto the rocking hull without even a glance back, just one of the thousands of people who would pass over the same decking each day. She murmured something to the oarsman, then ducked under the canopy and disappeared.
I glanced over at Ruc. “Should we kill them?”
He shook his head. “If I wanted the priest, I could have taken him months ago. I want Lady Quen.”
“I suppose it would be too simple to assume she’s waiting quietly in that boat.”
“The good lady is anything but simple. It’s the Asp’s job to make contact, to bring the priest to Quen, and to make sure she’s not followed.”
“So we need to be sneaky.”
“I hope you’ve stayed fit,” Ruc said, running his eyes over me once more.
“How fit do I need to be to lie in the bottom of a boat while we trail them?”
“We’re not going in a boat. They’d spot us.”
“Please tell me we’re not swimming.”
“We’re not swimming.”
I studied him. “We’re swimming.”
He nodded. “Of course we’re swimming.”
“Sweet Intarra’s light.”
“I thought Kettral were good swimmers.”
“We are,” I replied. “But I prefer water that isn’t an open sewer.”
“Lucky for you, we’re at the clean end of town.”
“How lucky.”
The Asp’s oarsman had shoved off from the docks, was poling his way through the press of vessels, bellowing abuse at the owners of the other boats.
“Let’s get messy,” Ruc said, striding into the crowd.
I took a deep breath, checked my knives, and followed him.
Dombang is a city unlike any other I’ve seen. Most of the streets aren’t streets at all, but canals, winding waterways that thread between blocks built up out of the mud on thick, tarry stilts. Causeways and wide promenades front some of those canals, running for miles alongside the slow-moving current. We started out along one of those, keeping to the densest part of the crowd, following the black-canopied boat at a safe distance. If we’d been able to do that all night, the job would have been easy. Unfortunately, the Asp knew her work well enough not to make things easy.
After the quarter mile, the boat turned from the main channel into a narrow canal branching off to the north, leaving us on the wrong side. As the boat slipped out of sight, I glanced over to find Ruc stripping his vest, shucking his boots, then his pants. Passersby slowed to look him up and down with obvious amusement. A few, seeing me watching, made lewd suggestions that Ruc ignored.
“Swim in your shirt if you want,” he said, “but if you fall behind, I’m not waiting.”
As I watched, he vaulted the railing. His splash bloomed like a flower in the dark water. With a muttered curse, I tugged my shirt over my head, dropped my own pants and sandals, and followed him into the water. The last waves of the boat’s low wake were already fading.
“Far dock,” Ruc said, pointing to a private landing directly across the channel, then fell into a strong, steady stroke. After all the lying and verbal sparring in the bathhouse, it felt good to swim, to throw my body into a simple, physical task requiring no finesse or second-guessing. It had been a long time since I’d swum hard for more than a few dozen paces—the largest pools in the Ancaz are little bigger than bathtubs—but the motions of my childhood came back to me in moments, carrying me forward though my arms and shoulders burned.
I reached the dock a few paces behind Ruc, who had already hauled himself out of the water.
He reached down to pull me out, and my wet body slid over his as he straightened. When I looked up, his face was inches from mine. For a moment he didn’t let go of my wrist.
“Weren’t we chasing some evil-doers?” I asked, pursing my lips.
I could feel his chest shake with his chuckle. “Just giving you a breather.”
“Oh, I’m just getting warmed up.”
The side canal into which the boat had disappeared stretched away into the darkness. It was obvious why we’d climbed clear—two swimmers splashing their way up the narrow waterway would be even more noticeable than a boat. Unfortunately, there was no other way to follow. This was a residential canal—no walkways or promenades, just a handful of docks, some illuminated by lanterns, protruding at regular intervals into the current.
“How long do you want to wait?” I asked.
Ruc shook his head. “I don’t.”
Before I could respond, he crossed the narrow dock to the door, tested it, found it locked, then kicked it in with his bare foot.
I raised my eyebrows.
“They go around the blocks,” he said. “We go through them.”
“And if the owners of the houses object?”
“We go through them, too.”
That first block couldn’t have stretched more than two hundred paces from one end to the other. In that space we broke down fourteen doors and two windows, climbed two brick walls—one to get into a gorgeous flowering courtyard, one to get out—threatened one angry man with a knife, knocked out another with the bottle from which he’d been drinking, burst through a white-curtained bedchamber—the massive wrought-iron bed at the center of which held at least four naked bodies—knocked out a screamer with a candlestick, told the others to shut up, rammed through a wooden gate into yet another garden, then found ourselves peering over a low wall onto the moon-lapped water beyond, where the narrow canal we had been flanking drained into a small basin. The Asp’s boat was halfway across, angling toward the gap beneath a low, delicate bridge.
I glanced over at Ruc. He was soaked with sweat, and his chest heaved with the effort, but his eyes, when he met mine, were bright.
“That was easier than I expected,” he said.
I was doubled over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. “I thought you were the one in charge of keeping the city’s peace.”
“I’m also in charge of protecting the innocent. Sometimes the two don’t mix.”
When I’d gulped enough air into my lungs to stand up straight, the bow of the boat was just slipping beneath the bridge.
“You know,” I managed finally, “Kettral usually go a little heavier on the planning.”
“I have a plan.”
“Want to share it?”
“Keep going.”