ripped away. Not even much remained for salvage. Still, he landed on her broken hull, took a fresh grip on his spear, and freed the glowstone from his bag.
“Is this it??” Yugi asked as he came to stand behind Shang-Li.
Shang-Li held up the coral so the light played over the prow where the ship’s name was proudly displayed. The paint had faded over the long years, but it was still legible: Grayling.
“Yes.”
“All this for books?” Yugi asked. “Truly? That’s the only treasure you want?”
Cautiously, Shang-Li shined the glowstone down into the hold. Things moved below, but they were fish and other scavengers, nothing large enough to offer him much threat.
“It is,” Shang-Li replied. “You’ve seen my father, and you know that he serves the Standing Tree Monastery. They don’t search for treasure.”
“I’ve heard that they don’t turn it aside when they find it neither,” another sailor said.
Shang-Li didn’t argue the point. The monastery was self-sufficient but they did a lot with what they were given. When the monastery did well, the villages around them prospered as well.
“No gold aboard this ship?” the sailor asked.
“She was an explorer.” Shang-Li stepped over the side and swam down into the hold. The lighted coral barely held back the darkness. “The only gold she might have been carrying will be in the captain’s strongbox and perhaps in the pockets of her crew.”
“Could be worth a look.” Two of the sailors split off and swam toward the ship’s waist where crewmen slept.
“If an air pocket remains aboard this ship, I want to know about it,” Shang-Li said. “And don’t open anything that could be watertight. We can’t lose those books.”
He swam through the darkness, usually only able to see a few feet in front of him. The darkness seemed to magnify the darkness, make it appear to be larger and deeper than it actually was. He went through the cabins one by one. All of them were open and flooded. He had to swim down to enter the ones on the starboard side and up to enter the ones on the port side because Grayling lay on her side.
Sand had filtered in as well and provided a layer of lighter coloring in the shadows. Eels slithered across the sand and bared the wood in places. A squid squirted away into hiding.
Bayel Droust’s cabin was easy to recognize once Shang-Li got there. A fine powder of sand had drifted over the writer’s tools and ink bottles, but they looked otherwise unharmed.
Shang-Li put the glowstone on the edge of the overturned desk behind, gathered those things, and put them into his bag. He couldn’t imagine Droust leaving the items behind out of choice.
He found an oilskin bag that felt like it contained a sheaf of paper Droust would have used to send letters. But under a tangle of loose clothing, another oilskin pouch held a stack of what looked like books or journals.
Shang-Li felt the shape again with his hands to reassure himself of his immediate conjecture. He smiled in the shadows and couldn’t wait to get back to Lysinda’s water barrel to confirm his suspicions. As he shoved the bag into his own, he noticed a shadow on the wall in front of him.
Someone had followed him into the room and now stood in front of the glowstone. The light played over a naked blade.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shang-Li shook his arms and his fighting sticks dropped into his waiting hands as he turned. A Shou man wearing the tattoos of the Nine Golden Swords lunged into the cabin and thrust his spear at Shang-Li’s chest.
Shang-Li turned sideways, and the spear slid by less than an inch away and thudded into the wall behind him. Taking a step forward, Shang-Li whipped the stick across the man’s face, then snap-kicked the warrior in the groin.
His opponent dropped to his knees, gagging and spewing a cloud of bile into the water around him. Shang-Li went forward and hammered the man at the base of the skull. The Nine Golden Swords man slumped slowly through the water as he lost consciousness.
Outside in the main hallway, the passageway was taller than it was wide with the ship on her side, and there was precious little room to maneuver. He chastised himself for allowing the salvage crew to get separated. He’d known the area wasn’t safe, but it had seemed safe enough.
Three more Nine Golden Swords warriors blocked the way he’d come. Their weapons reflected the orange light from the coral he’d left in Bayel Droust’s cabin. Without a word, they started forward, filling the passageway.
Shang-Li backed toward the other end of the ship. Stairs led up to the top deck. A shadow crossed his field of vision and he dodged back just as the attacker waiting outside the cargo hold thrust his sword into the hold.
Shang-Li slid his weapon into the man’s sleeve and jerked his arm above his head. He blocked the sword with the other fighting stick. Setting himself against the underside of the deck, Shang-Li pulled with all his strength.
The Nine Golden Swords warrior came through the hold and slammed into the opposite wall.
Shang-Li ripped free his fighting sticks and propelled himself through the cargo hold as the three other men charged his position. Darkness above filled his peripheral vision and he turned swiftly as he swam.
Thava stood on the ship and held her battle-axe across her thighs. “We have guests,” the paladin announced.
“How many?” Shang-Li put his fighting sticks away and drew his sword.
“I’ve spotted at least a dozen.” Thava smiled grimly. “But you can subtract two of those.”
“I counted five inside. One of them is down but not finished.”
“It appears the Nine Golden Swords were more fortunate than we were after the storm.”
“Or the Blue Lady spared them,” Shang-Li responded, then he concentrated on staying alive as the surviving warriors boiled from the hold.
Despite their bristling blades and zealous nature, the Nine Golden Swords warriors weren’t used to fighting underwater. Shang-Li took advantage of his swimming ability and shoved himself into a long dive over their heads.
The unexpected move caught the men by surprise and they ducked back, but not before Shang-Li slashed through one man’s sword shoulder to disable him. By then Thava had leaped from the ship’s side and crashed into the other three. They fell, bowled over by her armored size and weight.
Thava kicked one of them in the head to render him unconscious, then clove another man from crown to the nape of his neck. The remaining man ran for his life but he didn’t get far before the paladin brought him down with a throwing axe. The flat of the blade crashed into the back of his head and he crumpled.
“What do we do with the ones that still live?” Thava asked.
“If I had my way,” Iados said as he stepped from the brush that hugged the canyon wall, “we’d slit their throats and have done with them. Let the Blue Lady’s little beasties fill themselves up on them for a while and buy us some time.”
Thava shot him a look.
“Except that I know that isn’t your way,” Iados went on.
“And it never will be,” Thava vowed.
Iados sighed. “I must admit, I sometimes long for the simpler days before I became your traveling companion.”
“You’re fortunate that I saved you from yourself.” The paladin recovered her throwing axe.
“So what then does wise Bahamut say? Do we take these men as prisoners?” Iados gestured to the fallen Nine Golden Swords warriors.
“No.” Shang-Li took a fresh grip on his sword. “Now that we know these men are out here, we’ll try to steer clear of them.”
“That could be difficult.”
“I won’t have their murders on my hands. It’s one thing to kill a man in battle, but I won’t slit his throat when he’s helpless.”
