The wind stirred the branches again, making them rattle against our mast. Tarquin’s eyes met mine in the circle of lantern light, then darted away to peer intently into the night that crowded around us. Somehow I knew the noise had unsettled him too.
“Let’s talk inside,” I said in an undertone, gesturing with the lantern. I realized how unwise it was to be standing in the light. Victorianos had gone down the river, but they might come back. Even now they could be anchored outside the dike, listening to the rise and fall of our voices. Anyone raised on the river knows how sound carries across the water at night.
He nodded. We were suddenly in complete sympathy.
Which he spoiled as soon as we entered the cabin.
“Ugh, what’s that foul smell?” He covered his nose with the embroidered sleeve of his robe, shrinking back against the steps.
Billowing smoke filled the cabin. “The fish!” Grabbing a towel, I waded through the smoke.
In our clamor to escape the Black Dogs, I’d forgotten the fried fish. It was ruined now, blackened and stuck to the bottom of the pan. As I unlatched the portholes, swinging them outward on their hinges, my stomach wailed in protest.
“This is a large boat.” Tarquin’s muffled voice was scornful. “Why is the cabin so cramped?”
“This is a working wherry. Most of the space is for cargo.” I scraped sticky black crud off the frying pan and set it to soak in a bucket of water.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t offer to help. He watched me, breathing into the collar of his robe, which had been punctured by bits of straw. It must have itched, because he absently rubbed it back and forth. Under the robe I could see a triangle of bare chest. He slouched over, shoulders hunched, trying to keep his head from hitting the swinging lantern.
“There’s a clean shirt in there, if you’d like.” I nodded at the locker. “My pa’s not as tall as you, but I guess it might fit all right.”
I halfway expected him to make a rude comment, but he only wrinkled his nose at the neatly folded clothes. They were the plain woven shirts of a wherryman.
I studied the stranger as he rummaged in the locker, wondering what message he carried, that the Black Dogs wanted him dead so badly. And why was he in a packing crate, of all things? It was a cursed peculiar way to travel—I couldn’t imagine the bruises he must have.
“Why don’t you make your frogman clean that up?” He fastened the last button, waving a hand dismissively at the frying pan. “We have things to discuss.”
“She’s not my frogman.”
“Are you sure?” Pa’s shirt hung loosely on his thinner frame, but the cuffs stopped inches above his wrists. “I’d always been told that in the riverlands they keep frog people for servants.”
“Fee’s been working this boat since I was nine years old,” I said. “Not as a servant—as part of our crew. I can’t make her do anything. She does as she wishes. I thought you said you were a courier. Haven’t you ever been out of Akhaia before?” But they had frogmen in Akhaia too, along the waterways. Hadn’t he been anywhere?
He flushed red but said nothing.
This talk of frogmen made me worry about Fee. I bit my lip, trying to remember how long it had been since she dove into the water. Surely not more than a few minutes.
“Did you know you’re bleeding?” Tarquin said in a bored voice.
“Of course I know.” I examined the hole in my sweater, where a dark bloodstain blotted the wool. In truth I had forgotten. I grabbed the bottom hem and started to pull it gingerly over my head.
“Turn round,” I ordered him.
“Excuse me?”
“I need to take my shirt off. Turn around.” The shirt I wore underneath was so threadbare, it was almost see-through. There was no way I was letting him get a peek. Of anything. And I didn’t want him smirking about how poor we were. We were working people. There was no shame in that, but I felt a rush of embarrassment anyway.
He faced the wall. “While you’re seeing to that,” he said, fiddling with the jewel in his ear, “I shall require you to tell me everything leading up to the moment you opened the crate.”
I sighed. “Can’t you talk like a normal person?”
No one I knew spoke like that, all convoluted and formal. Not even my cousins on my mother’s side, and they were city girls who lived in a fine town house.
Again he tugged at his ear.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I asked. “Touching your earring.”
He brushed it with a fingertip. “It marks me as a member of a great Akhaian house,” he said. “A house which you no doubt will not have heard of.”
I snorted. “Probably not.”
Opening Pa’s medicine chest, I removed a tin of salve and a roll of bandage. As I cleaned the bloody graze on my shoulder, I related the tale of what had happened that night, beginning with us coming around the bend into Hespera’s Watch and ending with the Black Dogs.
I tugged my sweater back on, grimacing as it snagged on the bandage.
“All right, I’m done.” I took down Pa’s brandy bottle and set two glasses on the table. My insides still felt shaky from our near escape. “You want a drink?”
Tarquin, who had been surprisingly quiet during my story, shrugged. I took that as a yes. He accepted the glass, pulling it across the table. I noticed dark smudges under his eyes, which struck me as strange. Surely an enchanted sleep would mean plenty of … well, sleep.
I swallowed the brandy down, its rich flavor burning my throat. Immediately I felt emboldened. No one gets drunk after one sip of liquor, so it was likely bravado or my own imagination. I didn’t care.
“Now it’s your turn.” I slouched sideways in the booth, kicking my feet up on the bench. “Why were you in that box? Why are the Black Dogs after you?”
“I shall tell you my story,” he said, “for although you are both rude and unladylike, it seems I’m stuck with you on this floating piece of junk. I suppose I’ll need your help.”
“Stuff it,” I said. We glared at each other in mutual dislike from opposite sides of the table.
“Very well.” He drew his finger down the glass but did not drink. “Let’s talk plainly. What do you know of Akhaia?”
“I know the capital is Trikkaia,” I said. “I know there’s a shop in the market there that sells the best fish stew in the northern riverlands.” The truth was I’d never explored beyond the docks and the market district.
“That’s almost nothing.” He twisted his hand in his hair, rumpling it up. My ignorance seemed to dismay him. “What do you know about the Akhaian succession?”
“Um.” I had only the vaguest idea what a succession was. Something to do with royalty. And heirs?
“It’s all so clear.” He sprang up to pace the cabin. “The pirates that attacked you must have been hired by the Theucinians.”
I failed to see what was clear about any of this. “What’s a Theucinian?”
“You don’t know?” Tarquin halted, whirling to stare at me. “I thought …” For a moment he appeared stricken, which made him look younger and more uncertain. “You said this wherry was chosen by the Margravina’s man. I assumed he told you.”
“Told me what?”
“The news I’m taking to Valonikos.” An odd look flickered across his face. “The Emparch of Akhaia has been murdered.”
CHAPTER