I eye Grefan with contempt. “I assure you I am well aware of what I am capable of, however little you may know of the subject.”
I stride off toward the hatch, and if I stumble slightly as I go, well, there’s not a thing I can do about that but grit my teeth and keep going, cursing the captain each step of the way. Matsin and his quad fall into step with me as I near the hatch, the men walking tall, with squared shoulders, as if they were my honor guard. A glance shows me Garrin watching with an amused curl of his lip, Diara beside him, and Grefan hurrying after me.
“Are you quite sure about the ladder, kelari? Perhaps take a look at that first.”
If I can make it down a rope of braided linens, I can certainly make it down whatever the boat offers—in this case, a wooden ladder bolted to the opening. Matsin casts me a glance that conveys a grim approval and precedes me down. I sit on the edge of the hatch, put my toes on the rungs, and start down. My wounded arm hurts with each step I lower myself down, but I’m careful to keep my expression easy. I’m not about to grant Captain Grefan the smallest iota of satisfaction.
The hold runs the length of the ship and is filled with crates stacked nearly to the ceiling, strapped down to keep from shifting. It’s dark and faintly damp, the sound of water loud against its sides. There’s clearly no space in this hold for a hidden room, the walls curving with the hull of the ship.
“Where did they search?” I ask Matsin.
“They walked along, tapping on crates and calling.”
I purse my lips. “What do you think? We’ve one last chance to search this hold. If you were keeping a young woman hostage, where would you put her?”
“In a crate,” he admits. “But short of opening each of these, if she’s unconscious or even just bound and gagged, we won’t know she’s here.”
“Then we open them,” I say shortly.
Matsin nods. “I’ll speak with Diara. But Garrin will have to approve your request.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll go back up and speak to him.”
He nods and scales the ladder, disappearing into the bright sunlight above in a matter of moments. His quad waits below with me. I nod to them and slowly walk the aisle, listening. There isn’t even the scuffle of a rat to be heard.
“Kirrana!” I call. “Kirrana?”
I pause, listening, but there’s no answer. Diara starts down the hold ladder as I call again, “Kirrana, can you hear me?”
“Don’t think she’s here,” Diara says conversationally. “You really want every last crate opened?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll take a while. And we’ll have to close them up again when we’re done.”
“That’s fine,” I say. I’m pretty sure she’s asking for a bribe for herself and her men, but I don’t have much to offer in my pocket, and this is her duty anyhow.
Diara sighs and sends one of her men back up to collect the necessary tools. I move back to the ladder, and there is Garrin looking down into the hold, a frown settled low over his brow, Matsin speaking quietly beside him.
“Kelari,” Garrin calls down to me. “I understand you are checking all the crates?”
“Yes, verin. If Kirrana cannot answer, we won’t know if she’s hidden within or not.”
He nods. “I’ll remain above, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.”
I head to the back of the hold, scanning the crates as Diara’s man returns with a set of bars to use as levers. Matsin descends, and he and his men each take a bar. The other soldiers move to the prow to begin their search.
“Here,” I say, pointing. There’re rows of crates against the stern that haven’t yet had additional crates piled on top of them. “Let’s start with these. We can shift crates over as we go to reach the ones underneath.”
It doesn’t seem likely that they’d hide a person beneath other crates, but I’m not going to risk missing Kirrana on a faulty assumption either.
Matsin pauses beside me to look. “Unusual, don’t you think, that these crates against the wall are only one deep, and the rest are stacked high?”
That is strange.
“We’ll see. Keep an eye out, kelari.”
“For what?”
“For what Diara and her men are doing while we’re working here.”
I nod and move back to lean against the flat boards of the stern to watch, crates stacked to either side of me. Between my wounded arm and my clumsiness as the galley occasionally bobs, I’ll do the most good staying out of the way. Across the hold, Diara and her men work systematically through the far crates, opening the tops, peering in, then fitting them back down and hammering them shut. But if Matsin doesn’t actually trust them, then they could just as easily look in on Kirrana and cover her back up again.
I glance toward Matsin, then back at Diara.
“Stay,” Matsin says, looking sideways at me.
Is he always so perceptive?
“If what you’re thinking is accurate, there’s no point looking on that side anyway.”
Because Diara would attempt to start us on a part of the ship where there was nothing to be found? Or is Matsin just trying to keep me safe and out of the way? I bite my lip and stay where I am.
The men work through the first set of crates to the left, then start on the next row, shifting over the topmost crates as they’re opened and resealed. I watch them with a growing sense of helplessness. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe every bit of evidence we gathered was so circumstantial, so indirect, that I’m on the wrong ship now, and Kirrana is somewhere else entirely. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I stare across
