“You know it’s late when the dogs go to bed before you,” Catua commented.
“Indeed,” came Rexim’s voice. “Where in hells is your eldest brother?”
I’d been stupid to linger at all, let alone for this long.
Without waiting to hear what any of them said next, I hurried after the hound, keeping to the shadows.
—
Outside, the air held the tang of the ocean. Lights still burned in the castle windows behind me, but ahead and around, all was cast in deep shadow. Aside from the far-off glow of Port Rhorstin, the flats and the mainland beyond were solid black.
I picked my way back through the kitchen gardens, through the silent gatehouse with its scant night watchmen, and was about to turn north, circle around to the Orha’s tower, when I heard it:
A strange noise in the darkness ahead of me.
It came from the dirt path that wound up from the pinewood, from the shingle beach, where the low tide murmured against the rocks. Something, or someone,was heading up the track.
I soon made out the clopping of a horse’s hooves, and the strange sound I’d heard resolved into a song, albeit a slurred and slightly out-of-tune one. A moment later, its singer materialized: a broad-shouldered man sitting unsteadily in his saddle. He was dressed in an embroidered emerald-green doublet with gold stitching, a frilled silk shirt collar poking out. He had a thatch of dark hair; handsome, regal features. As I watched, he listed heavily to his left, then jerked suddenly upright as he spotted me standing there.
“Great gods,” he exclaimed, squinting at me through the shadows. He’d paled, his fingers gripping the reins. “Just a girl. I thought you were…” He paused, collecting himself. “I thought you were a wraith. A fetch, or something.”
With a nervous chuckle, he stilled his horse, then dismounted heavily, staggering a little. “Oops.” He steadied himself against the beast. “Perhaps a bit too much of the Myrnian red…”
I said nothing. So this was Emment Shearwater. I now knew who Tigo and Rhianne had been talking about.“Turnstone agreed to half the gold now and half in two weeks, on market day.”
He peered at me with silver eyes bleary with drink and hung on tightly to his steed’s reins to stay upright. “You’renota wraith, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m your family’s new Floodmouth.”
At that word—“Floodmouth”—the planes of his face hardened, and he swallowed queasily as he looked me up and down. For a second, his eyes seemed to dart out to the mudflats, which were wreathed in black. Distantly the sea blustered.
“About time,” he muttered, starting forward, his horse dutifully matching his weaving path. “Maybe my shirts won’t take three days to come back to me now.”
As he passed me, he waved a hand dismissively in the air. “Welcome and all that, I suppose. You know.”
He hiccupped—and then disappeared into the darkness.
8
I snappedawake before dawn to a thumping on my floorboards.
“Here. Bind her hands. Get that blindfold on.”
“And gag ’er. ’Case she tries somethin’ stupid.”
For a moment or two, in my groggy, disoriented state, I assumed I was back in my room at Arbenhaw and that someone was banging insistently on my door. All was dim, the glass in the window deep navy. It took me a second to realize the thumps were boot steps.
Then hands were hauling me roughly from my bed, looping a gag around my face, muffling my cries. I remembered where I was—the island, the tower—and smelled the musty, outdoorsy scent of the intruders. Not Caerig and Rhama. Not anyone I recognized from their voices.
I bucked and struggled, grunting with the effort, but there were three of them, and they were strong. Soldiers, maybe.
“That’s it,” said one, a woman’s deep voice.
As I lashed out with an elbow, tried to stop them binding my ankles, a man laughed right next to my ear. “She’s a whippet, this one, i’n’t she?”
I cringed away as I was tugged to standing and propelled from the room, toes bumping over the floorboards. They began to drag me down the steep tower steps.
In the blackness of my vision, my crimson ball of emotions sparked. There had been no point in gagging me: With my adrenaline spiking, my heart rate speeding, no water would heed me, even if there had been any close by.
