Ula and Urtzi exchanged a glance, as the old man tried to make himself smaller, clearly terrified of his new discordance with Urtzi.
“Fine,” was Urtzi’s answer, and it was a good one—didn’t give anything away about what they did not know. Nor did it give this man any more information about if they were new followers or old followers or anything at all other than they didn’t know him in their positions on the ship.
Ula grabbed Urtzi’s hand again and pulled him toward the hole. It was indeed a very long, very steep stone staircase. It smelled of damp and decay. The only light came from the entrance, and what had to be the exit on the ledge.
As they descended the smooth and slick stones, the old man yelledinto the hole, “I’ll close the entrance when I can no longer see you. You should be to the exit then.”
Ula was surprised at the offering of instruction, but perhaps his official position and livelihood were more important than getting revenge upon them by having either break their necks on the stairs.
They moved as swiftly as they dared, hoping to silently come upon the last line of pirates. Ula’s plan was to hide in one of the rowboats the ship used for excursions to shore, as they hung stacked and so low that—at least from the vantage of the cliff above—it might be a simple climb into one. It could be their shelter and their escape, should they need it, rolled into one. If they weren’t spotted on their way into one, of course. If they were, they may have to march aboard with the others, and hide from Geneva as soon as possible.
Indeed, the man was good for his word, and shut the top hatch well after the light from the ledge emerged. They marked it by pausing at the rough click and clang of the key to the wooden door above.
Ula and Urtzi watched the space ahead carefully for the others, slowing now, hoping not to draw attention. But then, as they nearly made it to the light, there was another echoing clang, clink, churn.
“What was that?” Urtzi breathed, halting ahead of Ula, hand immediately to his dagger sheath.
Ula’s chest squeezed like a vise. “Another door—a closed one.”
They ran down the rest of the steps as fast as they could, coming to a pebbled landing and, indeed, another closed, locked door, small and narrow and almost perfectly aligned with the ship rail beyond. It was actually more like a gate—an iron grill of metal bars, strung together like in a dungeon. Hinges ran up and down the left side, thick and tight, the locking mechanism on the right side two hands thick.
“Stars and dragon’s piss,” Urtzi breathed, big bear-paw hands achieving absolutely nothing in jiggling the lock.
“Put your shoulder into it?” Ula whispered, pointing carefully to the parts that were more rusted than the rest. There had to be a weak point.
Urtzi pivoted and immediately went for the lock edge. The gate rattled and Ula kept a very nervous watch on the ship with each clanging impact. After five tries one of the pirates turned, and Ula yanked Urtzi against the wall, their hearts pounding in time as they waited for a shout or bell or some other sign that they’d been spotted.
Nothing came. And the door still held as sturdy as before, an iron trap.
Ula drew her sword as silently as she could, the steel whispering against the scabbard. “Back away, I’m just going to hack at it.”
Steel met steel in a hail of sparks. The salt spray had rusted the whole thing, but it was still a hand’s breadth thick. The hacking sound wasn’t too bad, but the sparks and the movement were eye-catching. It all added up to enough commotion that with each resounding whack, Ula had to waste several seconds staring at the ship while pressed against the tunnel wall.
From their lower vantage, all they could see was that most if not all of the crew were congregated around Geneva, who stood atop several crates. Ula was certain she’d seen the woman hold up a caracara, which meant they’d arrived to news. The Warlord’s watchers hadn’t completely faded into Torrence’s sands, apparently.
Ula raised her sword once again, teeth gritted and frustration mounting. But then Urtzi pawed at her shoulder, lips near her ear. “Wait!” he shouted in his new whisper-voice. “Would this work?”
She glanced to where he stood behind, far too close to the upswing of her sword. In his giant hand was a tiny cobalt vial.
“Where’d you get that?”
“You took it off Dunixi when you stole theGatzal’s harbor slip from his pocket.”
Ula was flabbergasted. “Yes, I did, but I haven’t seen it since then. I thought I’d lost it in the fight. Where did you…?”
“It was in the laundry.” Urtzi shrugged. “I thought you might want it back, and so I kept it.” He waggled the saddlebag in his hand.
“And you’ve had it this whole time?”
“It was small. I forgot.”
She spun around and sheathed her sword, fingers hovering near the dark glass. “Do we know which one it is? I never looked.”
“It had a label.”
Urtzi handed the vial to her and started digging through the bag in earnest, squinting hard and pressing his face close to the bag’s opening, trying to see as he groped around.
Ula’s eyes skipped to the ship—and to the tide, which was rising, the snaking pebbles of the ledge nearly consumed. “No time to findit. I’m going to dump it on the hinge. It’ll either eat away at the metal or we’ll poison the whole waterway with hemlock.”
