A breeze stirred my hair.
Reynald rose and grabbed the first corpse by its shoulders wrapped in canvas. “The wind is up.”
I picked up the legs, and we heaved the body overboard. It hit the water with a heavy splash. Ten corpses followed, sinking below the surface.
“Won’t the bodies float back up when they start to decompose?” I asked. The last thing we needed was for Derog’s dead crew to wash ashore with the tide.
“Hold that thought.”
He pulled a small barrel from a spot at the front of the boat, unsheathed a knife, and pried the snug lid open. A stench hit me, reeking of rotting fish and something else, something sickening and gross.
I gagged.
Reynald emptied the barrel into the water and tossed it into the ocean. He moved through the boat, fast like he was on solid ground, and pulled a line. The sail unfurled, and our vessel slid across the sea. We turned left, drawing a wide U around the spot where we had dropped the bodies.
Something moved beneath the luminescent ocean as we sped by.
I looked over my shoulder.
A huge triangular fin pierced the surface, trailing a long yellow spike. Another. A third . . . A massive body broke the surface, half as big as our boat. I caught a glimpse of broad armored jaws, and then it dove under. The ocean behind us churned as if boiling.
“What bodies?” Reynald asked and gave me a wide smile.
PLANTER9
It was well after midnight. I sat in my office again and watched the three moons in the night sky in the open window. I had unlocked the shutters and slid the glass aside. Reynald warned me that it was a safety issue, but we were on the third floor. Coming back to the house after that boat ride felt almost stifling. My brain kept tripping and thinking I smelled blood. The brisk night air was so refreshing.
Tomorrow I would clean this house until the last traces of the slavers disappeared. That was my mother’s trick. When we moved during my childhood, as my father got transferred from one duty station to the next, my mother would always clean the new apartment or house before we moved in. She claimed that once you cleaned a place, you made it your own.
I missed my family so much.
The house was quiet, the room filled with soft comfortable light from a couple of lanterns. Clover had stayed up until we came back, brewed “restful” tea, and served it to me without being asked, as if I were some sort of princess.
I picked up the cup and drank from it.
The moons looked back at me from a foreign sky.
I had never thought of myself as a violent person, and yet I had beaten a man to death with a club. I’d killed someone with my own hands and then helped to feed the evidence to a monster fish. And I hadn’t done any of those things normal people were supposed to do after they resorted to violence. I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t gotten sick. I didn’t feel a lot of guilt.
And I didn’t regret it. I would do it again. Because tonight five children slept safely in their beds without fear of being abused. This house would never again be used to steal kids from their parents and then sell them to the highest bidder. Maybe I just thought I was a nonviolent person because in my old life nobody had ever backed me into a corner with a knife to my throat.
This was a different world, and it played by different rules. I didn’t have the safety net of social services and law and order to back me up. There was no 911 to dial. Funny how you take things for granted until they are gone.
If I went through with my plan to stop Hreban, I would likely die again, no matter how determined Reynald was to keep me alive. Worse, I would have to kill again. And I would have to somehow keep Reynald, Clover, and Kaiden safe.
It scared me so much, I shivered. If I was one of those isekai heroines I’d read about, by now I would be well on my way to building an empire by inventing popcorn or nail polish, or purging the blight with my holy powers, or taking control of a village of goblins and earning their undying loyalty. Instead, I was here, trying to cobble together a half-assed plan. I felt stupid and scared. I was in so over my head, it wasn’t even funny. Keeping it together through today was my limit.
I would have to be very careful not to get too arrogant. When I woke up in the Garden, I thought I could just nudge a few things but keep the flow of the events mostly the same. That was hubris. I was too far in now and the changes I brought were irreversible. Just because I knew one version of Kair Toren’s future didn’t mean I could accurately predict what any one of the people involved would do in the next moment. We would need informants, which meant we would need money . . .
Solentine slipped through the window and landed soundlessly on the floor. He was dressed in gray and black from head to toe. A soft doublet hugged his body, leaving the sleeves of a black shirt bare. Black gloves, black boots, black sash, black belt with an assortment of knives, and a gray hood.
“Hello there, Ezio,” I said. “Imagine meeting you here. Killed any Templars lately?”
“I understood none of that.” He leaned against the windowsill.
Of course not. References to twenty-first-century video games were solely for my own amusement.
He tilted his head and studied the room. This whole thing with him framed in the window in that sinister getup with the moons above him was unbelievably cool. If I didn’t know he was a horrible bastard who could murder me in less than a second, I would have fainted in my chair from the sheer badassery of it.
