Riga grinned. They were going to back off, right now.
“There are few enough that I can count to six,” Father said with a grin. Riga twitched. Would he insist on seeing them all?
“I will inspect your cargo and your manifest then, as a courtesy.”
Riga grimaced as Father said, “If you wish.” Everyone knew something was up at this point. They were all just pretending it wasn’t.
He started at the bow, peering through the nets and checking the crates for stamps and seals. All were as they should be, and of course he knew that. He moved slowly back to a pile of barrels staked down, containing figs, tea, and spices. Past the mast and the bundles of sail lashed to the spar.
Father said, “I don’t wish to rush you, but we have five ships and tide to keep. We’ve always dealt in good faith.”
“I’ll just work my way back and be done, then,” the official said, with a false frown.
“Be quick about it. I feel sorry for the Amar, but I have my own dramas, and I don’t share mine with the help.”
Was Father trying to cause the man to search in detail? That comment flustered him, and he checked a barrel’s number very carefully.
“You might want to check under that tarp. It’s a prime place to stash an escaped servant girl. I don’t find my own daughter enough trouble, so I try to pick one up in every port.”
Clutching his tally board, the man strode forward again in a careful, dignified fashion, swung over into his boat, and indicated to the rowers to leave.
He turned back, looked at Father and said, “Thank you for your help.”
“You are most welcome. I hope the Amar finds this girl and that she hasn’t fallen among those who would shame her or him. I cherish his hospitality and trade.”
“I will tell him,” the official said, beckoning the guard to join him as he sat down on a thwart. “Good travels to you, and a blessing.”
“A blessing on you, and the Amar, and your king,” Father said.
As they rowed away, he turned and ordered, “Pick up the speed. We’re not earning money to row like a holiday ship.” He seemed quite relaxed and good natured.
Riga wanted to run back and check under the tarp. She knew Jesrin was alive, though, and silence was a good thing. It might be night before she could come out. It might even be five days and port before she admitted the girl’s presence. She had silly notions of sneaking her ashore with a few coins somewhere she could find good work, though she knew the girl, like any injured creature, would need support for a bit.
She stood her post, and helped tighten the sail as they gained room to maneuver, and the five ships spread into a longer line for travel.
They cleared the headland and entered open ocean, the deeper swells swaying
Father came past, checking the rigging. “How’s the servant girl?” he asked quite casually.
Riga knew better than to lie. “Alive and quiet,” she said at once.
“This is the same servant girl we discussed, I assume.”
“Yes, she is. Jesrin. Badly bruised in body and spirit.”
“Damn it, Daughter, this is worse than an injured goose. You can’t save every helpless creature in the world! Especially at a risk of war.”
“Of course not,” she said.
Then she smiled at him, a challenging smile that would yield a flogging in Mirr, and perhaps start a duel in Kossaki lands. It was the smile of a merchant and warrior among her peers.
“But I can save this one.”
Defending the Heart
Kate Paulk pretends to be a mild mannered software quality analyst by day and allows her true evil author nature through for the short time between finishing with the day job and falling over. She lives in semirural Pennsylvania with her husband, two bossy cats, and her imagination. The last is the hardest to live with. Her latest short story sale, “Night Shifted,” is in DAW’s anthology,
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“What are you doing to That Damn Kitten?” Jem asked from under the tree, his voice laced with laughter.
Ree lay stretched out on a tree branch almost too small to support his weight. With his toe claws dug in, he stretched his hand as far as he could toward a kitten maybe ten weeks old who, in the way of his kind, kept just out of reach and fluffed its white and gray fur into a big dandelion puff while emitting ceaseless, plangent meows.
Because Ree was a hobgoblin, changed in the magic storms into something with cat claws, cat eyes, and the brown fur and tail of a rat, he heard the kitten’s cries in a range humans couldn’t hear. Besides, the kitten’s mother, That Other Damn Cat, had been adding her own increased-range pleas to Ree to save her baby.
Damn kitten. Ree stretched his hand to the cowering furball, who, of course, retreated farther out of the way. There was only so far Ree could stretch and he’d be cursed if he was going any further on the frail end of the branch. He tried to make the peculiar chirping sound That Other Damn Cat used to call her kittens.
Beneath the tree, Jem laughed. He’d grown a lot over the last year—was now the height of a man and had blond fuzz on his upper lip. His voice was changing, too, to adult man ranges. Just thinking about it made Ree’s heart turn in him.
He’d been just a hobgoblin, like other hobgoblins. Sometimes he’d been more animal than human. He thought if he’d not found Jem, if Jem hadn’t been so convinced Ree was human, in time Ree might have forgotten he was human, himself. He might have become one of the wild hobgoblins—a beast and nothing more.
But he’d saved Jem’s life, and Jem . . . Ree liked to think it was love, or some form of it, and that they would be together their whole lives. But they’d met really young. Though neither was that sure of his age—not exactly— they’d been thirteen or fourteen. That had been two summers ago, and now Jem was changing.
Ree knew, from when he’d been a human among humans, that when young men changed, a lot of things changed about them. Not just their appearance and their voices, but their manner, their ways, and sometimes their hearts too. As for Ree . . . who knew what happened to hobgoblins? He didn’t think he would change much.
Looking away from Jem, he turned back to concentrate on the kitten in a storm of flustered mother- catlike meowing. Or at least he hoped it was mother- cat like.
Jem’s laughter wasn’t helping. Oh, Ree imagined he looked very funny, but all the same, if one of the green apples festooning the tree had been within range, he’d have flung it at Jem’s head.
Even so, the kitten didn’t seem put off by the laughter. It looked at Ree with big, rounded eyes, as Ree continued what he hoped were his reassurances of fish and milk for the kitten back at home. For a while it looked as though it would back up yet further, then suddenly it seemed to make up its mind and charged forward, needle- like claws extended. It ran lightning-fast along the branch and leaped atop Ree, bracing itself with claws in the space between Ree’s neck and his shoulders.
Ree’s involuntary shriek only caused the claws to dig in further, and Jem said, now sounding concerned, “Come on down. That branch is too thin for you.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ree said, shuffling back uncertainly. What did Jem think, exactly? That he wanted to set up a treehouse up here?
Just at that moment there was a crack like thunder, and the branch moved beneath him. On the ground, Jem jumped out of the way and yelled, “Ree, be careful.”
But it was too late for Ree to do anything short of growing wings, and that he’d missed when the changes had come.
The branch didn’t break, it just peeled off the tree, Ree and all. His world tilted down, and then he was holding onto the branch and there were other branches flying past him as he fell. He tried to grab onto the passing branches with hands and feet, all the while trying to secure the kitten with yet another hand.
Even as That Damn Kitten dug its claws hard into the securing hand, it occurred to Ree that it might have
