The oars bit into the inky sea and drove forward inch by inch. The boat rolled as the waves and wind whipped and battered it back toward the beach.
We’re moving. Just stroke. Gotta be a machine. Gotta work like an engine. Stroke. Again. Again.
Syfax ground his teeth as he hauled on the oars. His rough palms were already burning where tiny splinters sliced open his skin and his back was already aching from the unfamiliar motion.
Harder. Harder.
The beach was still only a dozen yards away when the first rifle shot echoed across the water. A babble of Espani shouts soon followed, and a smattering of rifle shots followed that. Syfax peered up at the beach and saw the dark figures running down toward the water.
Four, eight, twelve.
Damn it.
“Halt, thief!”
The next shot was a proper volley, six rifles crackling in unison. Two bullets struck the water just to their right, sending up tiny jets of brine. A third bullet struck the stern of the dinghy.
Nicola lay flat in the bottom of the boat, twisted and contorted at the major’s feet. “Can we escape?”
Syfax took one last quick glance at the black waves shoving him back to shore where a line of men were leveling their weapons at him. “Nope.” He let go the oars and raised his hands over his head. “Stand down!”
No more shots were fired and in a very few moments the tide deposited the dinghy back on the beach. Syfax stood up, hands raised, and let the sneering boys in uniform pull him out onto the sand at gunpoint. He looked back at Nicola. “Don’t say anything.”
“Don’t be stupid, I’m well versed in Espani law. I can have us out of this little predicament in an hour.”
“I said shut up.” Syfax looked into the face of the oldest soldier there on the beach. The grim man peered back with an all-too-familiar sleepy-eyed look. There were no nervous eyes, no shaking hands, no shuffling feet here tonight. “Just shut up.”
Chapter 21. Shifrah
She stood in the shadows across the street and watched the soldiers lead the Mazigh major and his homely friend into the constable’s little jail. When the uniforms were all gone, Shifrah stepped out from the alley and walked slowly past the jail. It was a small building but built of massive gray stones, and she knew the country’s construction habits well enough to guess that the cell would be caged with heavy wrought iron bars bolted deep into the stones.
So much for you, big man. Shifrah paused. But where is your sickly little friend?
She continued past the jail and down the lane, through a dark little graveyard behind a dark little church, and onto another street that looked to have a few more lights than the others. But she found only three guttering torches outside a tavern. She ducked inside, found only a few old fishermen nodding in their cups, and resumed her walk down toward the water.
Maybe the kid ran away when the major got arrested.
But as she strolled along the top of the pebbled beach, she saw no men still at work on their boats, and the boats themselves were little more than rotting relics passed down from fathers and grandfathers who probably knew as little of shipwrighting as she did. There were a thousand places to hide in the dark, but no real shelter, nowhere worth staying for more than a few minutes.
She stood in the cold wind, smelling the salt and tasting the faint oils of the dead fish. Seeing and hearing nothing, she turned to walk back up into town when she heard the unsteady shuffling of boots on the steep slope of the beach. And there in the darkness was the sickly boy, only he wasn’t so sickly now. He walked tall with an angry stride, as though stomping either toward or away from some argument. She couldn’t quite see his face, but she recognized the line of his small nose and the unhappy lines around his mouth.
“Good evening,” she called.
He stopped and looked up at her, squinting in the dark. The starlight fell on his angry face. “You again. What do you want?”
“I came to find you, of course. Well, your friend the major, anyway,” she said. “Have you seen him lately?”
He glanced up the beach. “Not in a few hours. I was just going to find him now.”
“I think I can help you with that.” She turned and started walking back the way she had come. “I saw him and that horse-faced Italian woman less than hour ago.”
“Where?”
“Being led into a jail.”
He shook his head and started walking again parallel to her along the water’s edge. “Don’t be stupid. It would take a dozen soldiers to take down the major.”
“Only half a dozen from what I saw.”
He stopped short. “You’re serious?”
“Always.”
“Show me.”
It only took a few minutes to lead the young man back past the tavern, through the graveyard, and around to the back of the jail. He strode as all angry young men do, hunching forward, fists clenched, brow furrowed. “Do you have a name?” he asked.
“Shifrah. And you?”
“Kenan.” He studied the heavy stones of the jail walls, grimed with filthy ice and pitted by countless years of salt winds. “You’re sure they’re in there?”
“I saw them go in. I assume they’ve not gone out for supper.”
“Right.” Kenan’s gaze wandered up the wall to the roof and the stars beyond. “Well, then I guess it’s up to me to get them out of there.”
Shifrah smirked. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”
“The old-fashioned way. Wait here.” He strode off into the night with his arms crossed over his chest and his frown as deep as ever.
She waited in the shadows, huddled under her furs, staring at the stone wall and wondering if it was time to disappear again, to wander off into the darkness and find some young sailor willing to share his bunk until they reached some distant, warmer shore. Numidia, perhaps. Or even Aegyptus. It might be time to visit my broker again and check my accounts.
Kenan’s loud footsteps preceded him up the alleyway from the graveyard, as did the flickering light of the torch in his hand. She recognized the iron basket holding the coals as one of the torches from the tavern near the beach.
“If you’re planning to burn the jail down, you may be disappointed. I don’t know if stone walls burn in Marrakesh, but here in Espana I can almost assure you they won’t.” She smiled.
He only cast her a tired look stained with contempt as he passed by. He walked right up to the jail and held the torch high over his head against the first ironwood rafter of the roof. Patiently he stood there, waiting for the frozen wood to burn.
“This is stupid. There are other ways to get him out of there,” she said. “Lies. Bribes. Distractions.”
“I don’t recall asking for your help. You can leave now.”
“Oh no, I want to watch you burn down a stone jail covered in ice.”
Just then a soft crackle sounded overhead and she saw the tongues of fire licking greedily at the rafter. Kenan took two steps to his left and began heating the next one. And so one by one he slowly proceeded along the back of the jail setting dark orange flames wriggling and writhing around the rafters.
It took nearly half an hour, but eventually the roof was well and truly burning. Kenan nodded. “All right, let’s go.” He strode toward the corner of the jail and Shifrah followed him, right into the arms of a startled old man peering up at the roof.
“Fire?” The old man squinted.
