“Markos is a good man,” I said, daring to feel a trickle of hope. They were listening. “And my pa is a good man. I ain’t asking for you to do any more than he would do for you. And oh yes, he would! Didn’t he bail you out of the lockup that time, Hathor?” I spotted another man in the crowd. “And weren’t he the one who helped you scrape and paint Daisy? And of course I need not mention that Oresteias and Krantors been running together since the days of the blockades. We looks after our own. I’m going to save my pa, on Vix,” I announced, “and anyone who wishes may sail with me.”
“Ayah!” Daisy’s captain shouted. “We may not be fighters, armed to the teeth with muskets and cannons, but we be free wherrymen. Let’s let those Dogs know we won’t be burned out!”
“Speak for yourselves.” I raised my voice over the clamor. “Vix has enough guns for the lot of you, and we don’t mind sharing ’em.”
With the cheer that followed, I knew I’d won.
“Captain Krantor,” I called, rummaging in my pocket. I pulled out the key to the cargo hold and tossed it over the crew’s heads. “Open up the hold, if you please.”
The old man caught it, throwing me a teasing salute. “Ayah, Oresteia.”
As the wherrymen distributed and loaded the muskets, Captain Brixton beckoned me over. “Who is that?” She nodded at Nereus.
“His name is Nereus.” I wasn’t sure what to say. “We … met him in Casteria.”
“Hmm.” She watched him over the top of her pocket flask. “That one has the look about him, to be sure. Someone’s finger on him.”
“You mean the god?” I asked. She’d just confirmed my suspicions.
“Sure, and doesn’t a fish know when a shark comes to eat him?”
Sometimes I hated the gods. Certainly everyone associated with them talked in circles in a way I found most irritating. “So he’s a shark?”
“Is that what I said?” She grinned. “Pay me no mind.”
Nereus joined us, leaning on the table. He inclined his head toward Thisbe Brixton. “Cousin,” he said respectfully.
“Are you related?” I asked.
They exchanged amused glances, while I thought some more murderous thoughts about the gods.
“There’s something about this island,” Nereus mused, examining the chart spread on Vix’s table. “Almost, it seems familiar to me. I remember … that fort. Only it weren’t so run-down then.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I leaned forward on my elbows. “Do you remember what you were doing? When you came to the island?”
“I …” Eyebrows furrowed, he traced the kidney-shaped island on the chart. “I were running rum. Yes. Long ago, time out of mind. But back then, they called it—”
“What?” Thisbe asked sharply.
“Never mind that,” he said, eyes sparkling. “Jogged my memory, you have. Listen. In my day, there was a secret harbor on the east side of the island.” He pressed his finger on a symbol. “Here.”
I looked at it skeptically. “That’s the marking for rocks.”
“Looks like it, don’t it? That’s the brilliant thing about it. There’s a spot, a deep spot, where a captain might slip between those rocks and anchor in a safe hidden cove.” He grinned. “If he or she knew the place.”
“Do you?” Kenté asked. “Know the place?”
He winked. “What do you say? Want to rescue an Emparch?”
As Nereus steered Vix toward his hidden harbor, I readied myself for battle. Beside me, Thisbe Brixton rammed shot down the flower-engraved gun I’d so admired, while I loaded my own dueling pistols.
“How did you come to be here anyway?” I asked her.
“Our tale is short enough.” She set the pistol on the table, uncorking her flask. “We hunted up the Kars for those Black Dogs, only to hear we missed ’em by three days. So we makes to turn around and go back south. The god in the river were with us, sure enough, for just as we rounded into Siscema, we come upon a Bollard ship. The captain said she’d seen your pa. And surprised we were too, for the last we seen of him were in the lockup in Hespera’s Watch.”
She took a swallow. “So I ask where Nick is. ‘Gone down the coast chasing after them Black Dogs,’ says she. ‘Black Dogs!’ says I. ‘For ain’t that who we been following this whole time?’ Half a day out from Iantiporos, one of our frogmen spotted your sails. And so here we are.”
“Is it true, what you said?” I asked. “About folk being down on you for owning your own wherry? My great-grandma captained our wherry.”
“I expect she sailed with her husband as first mate, or her son. I got no men on my crew, see.” She grinned at her shipmate. “Ayah, and what use have I for men?”
My cheeks burned. I hadn’t known that, though it made sense.
“You aren’t to take any notice of Dinos. He’s a stupid man if all he can see is … Well.” She tapped the table. “You got your pa’s eyes and his reddish hair. And what’s more, you got the look of your grandma Oresteia around your face. You won’t be remembering her, but I knew her when I were a girl. She were a Callinikos of Gallos before she married, and you don’t get more riverlands than that.”
“Oh, I wasn’t upset about what he said,” I lied. “I just didn’t like the way his face looked.” After we finished laughing, I added, “But thank you.”
Folding a gold scarf into a headband, I tied it around my hair. Daria hugged her knees, alternately watching me and staring at the frogmen as if they might bite. Over my waistcoat and shirt I strapped a leather chestplate and gauntlets, tightening the buckle to the smallest hole.
Kenté sat quietly, rolling her lockets between her fingertips.
I set a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”
“Just worried,” she said. “What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t.”
Thisbe Brixton’s mate stopped sharpening her cutlass and looked up at me. “The gods do be in the habit of testing folk who say things like that.”
The god at the bottom of the river was supposed to be the god of my ancestors. He was supposed to speak to us in the language of small things. Well, I was tired of waiting around for him to notice me. I’d been waiting my whole life.
Maybe I was done with gods. Maybe from here on out, I was helping myself.
I slammed my dagger into its sheath. “Let them do their worst.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Thisbe Brixton wriggled forward on her elbows. “I count three men.”
I peered through the thick underbrush, the dampness of the earth seeping into my knees. Captain Brixton gave me a nod, and we slithered back to the wherrymen, who crouched in the forest.
“Reckon there’s no better time than now.” Nereus leaned against a tree trunk, arms crossed. “They’ll be taking a breather after that fight. If we be lucky, they’re getting into the drink. They won’t expect us.”
I drew a deep breath. “Right. We’ll take the back door, but no one go any farther.” Looking at my cousin, I said, “Kenté is our scout.”
The wherryman called Dinos gave me a sour glance. “Ayah? And what makes you think that bit of skirt will be any use?” I knew he thought I was a piece of skirt too. He just didn’t want to say it to my face because I was very well armed.
Kenté turned. “The fact that I can become invisible at will?”
“That ‘bit of skirt’ is a shadowman.” I matched his rude tone. “Who do you think defeated the Black Dogs at Casteria and captured their cutter?”
Kenté swallowed a laugh at that outright falsehood.