Katabata. It sounded vaguely familiar, like I’d seen it on a chart somewhere. I filed the name away.
“Good thing I be captain,” the first man said. “You don’t tell an Emparch to rot.”
With that, Captain Diric Melanos crossed in front of the window, and I saw the face of our enemy at last. In profile, at least, he did look a bit dashing. He wore a brocade waistcoat and a tricorn hat, and a scar marred his cheek under his right eye. A proper pirate ought to have a pointed beard or an earring, but he had neither. Lord Peregrine had called him a brash young man. Young to him, I guess. He looked about thirty.
“Even if I could do,” the captain said, “there’s still the matter of that one. I daren’t go against him.”
“Ayah, he gives me the willies, and no mistake.”
“Hush.”
The light shifted and changed again. The men’s voices moved farther away, where I couldn’t make them out. There was a creak and a soft thump. A door closing.
Someone else had entered the cabin.
The voices drifted back toward us. “—Meet up with Philemon. See if he’s had any better luck.”
I’d never heard of Philemon, but if they were on their way to meet up with him, he wasn’t on Victorianos. Did the Black Dogs have a second ship out looking for Markos? For our sake I hoped not.
“At least we managed to burn the one anyway,” Captain Melanos said. “I reckon we should make for Casteria next.”
“No.” The third voice was high and oily. “We need the boy.”
I heard a sharp gasp beside me. Light shone through the cracks in the dock, striping Markos’s frozen face.
“Cleandros,” he whispered.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I grabbed his arm underwater. “The shadowman?”
Markos jerked away, lips trembling with emotion or cold.
The Emparch’s shadowman was a traitor. And he wasn’t just some hazy threat, miles away in Akhaia. He was here. He knew Markos’s face. My breath caught. We were in darker trouble than I’d ever imagined.
“Ayah, well, we been up and down this stretch twice,” Captain Melanos was saying. “That wherry’s disappeared.”
“I told you. They’ve passed us.” That was the oily voice Markos had named as the shadowman Cleandros.
“How, I ask you, when we’ve twice the speed? Reckon they’re holed up somewhere. They’ll know every bedamned dike and pond along these waters.” I heard the clunk of a glass hitting the table. “Wherrymen know these things.”
“We’ve wasted enough time. Tomorrow we go through the bridge,” Cleandros said. “We’ll look for them up the River Kars.”
“We ought to burn these wherries, is what. Drag their wives out. Show ’em the cannons. Someone knows something.”
“You were a fool at Hespera’s Watch,” the shadowman said. “Lighting that fire only angered every man on the river from here to Iantiporos. It was nothing but inefficient, needless waste. A gamble, and now you see what it got you. No one will tell us anything.”
“I know that boy was there. Can’t you fish for him with your magic again?”
“For the tenth time,” the shadowman snapped, “it won’t work. Wherever he is, he’s no longer in the box, so I can’t feel him. The magic itself is the only thing I can trace. Please cease your tiresome questions. We got the Emparchess. We’ll find him.”
Markos stiffened with a jolt, water swirling around him.
“What was that splash?” The shadowman’s voice carried across the water. He must have been standing at the window.
“Frogs. Fish.” Captain Melanos sounded unconcerned.
A beam of brighter light fell on the water between the cutter and the dock. Someone had lifted a lantern. I shrank back into the shadows, holding my breath. Fear made me grip the slippery post.
We needed to get out of there. This wasn’t one of Pa’s stories about the bold Oresteias of long ago. This danger was real. If they caught Markos, they would murder him. Not liking someone was one thing. It didn’t mean I wanted him killed.
At least we managed to burn the one.
A horrible thought ricocheted through me. They didn’t mean alive, did they? I saw a beautiful lady wrapped in a silk dress, twisting and turning against the flames, banging on the inside of the box with frantic fists—
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the image from my mind. I hoped the Emparchess had been asleep when she died, like the unfortunate Singers.
Shaking Markos, I whispered, “Come on.”
We swam back to the other end of the dock without speaking a word.
“My mother.” He hauled himself into the dinghy. Water trickled down his legs, pooling in the bottom of the boat. His lips were pressed together so hard the color had gone out of them. “By the lion god … I knew my father and brother were dead,” he said through chattering teeth. “But I thought—she can’t inherit the throne,” he choked. “She wasn’t even a threat to them.”
With shaking fingers I pulled on my clothes. I was glad of my thick-knit fisherman’s sweater, for wool warms even when it’s wet.
Markos sat with his clothes in a heap in his lap. Panicked, I seized both shoulders and shook him. “Markos. Pull yourself together.”
The rain came down harder, falling through the beam of the lantern at the end of the dock. I shoved Pa’s oilskin jacket at Markos. He managed to get his arms through the sleeves, moving like someone half-dead. I tugged the hood up, covering his face.
We were stupid to ever have come here.
I ran out the oars. On Victorianos, no one gave any sign that they had heard us. I stretched back and pulled as hard as I could. The dinghy leaped, almost lifting out of the water, as we shot away from the dock.
Once we reached the murky dark of the opposing riverbank, I didn’t stop. I rowed so hard it sent up a swirling wake behind our stern. My heart pounded and my blood sang hot. The rain fell in torrents, trickling down the collar of my jacket and into my sleeves. The knit cap kept my ears warm, but my fingers were clammy and half-numb.
It had been foolish to get in the water, when we had no way of getting dry. It wasn’t so bad for me, but Markos did not have the exercise to warm him. His lips looked blue as he shivered on the thwart across from me, but the rest of his face was in shadow.
He said nothing, not even when we reached Cormorant’s hiding place. Lurching to his feet, he attempted to feed the rope through its rusted ring on the stern. He missed. The dinghy bumped the hull of the wherry.
Fee appeared in the cockpit, eyes wide. She took the rope from Markos and tied it off so quickly her hands barely seemed to move. As he climbed over the stern, she touched his arm, concern shading her face. He shrugged her off. I watched him descend into the cabin, his hair plastered to the back of his neck.
“We saw Victorianos,” I explained. The darkness nestled inside me seemed too big for words. I lowered my voice. “We heard them talking. It’s bad. The Black Dogs killed his mother, and the Emparch’s shadowman is in thick with those Theucinians.”