“Serves him right,” Cerise murmured. “Bob is a scum-bag of the first order. Last year he beat Louise Dalton bloody because she wouldn’t spread her legs for him.”
Urow nodded, shaking his black hair. “That’s what I said. I bet Louise is laughing now.”
A long narrow island loomed ahead, on the left. In the bright light of the moon, the cypresses and slash pines crowding the shore stood out, etched against the river.
“What are you?” William asked.
Urow glanced at Cerise. “He doesn’t mince words, does he?”
She laughed. “What are you talking about? Subtle is his middle name.”
“I’m half-Mar, half-thoas,” Urow said.
“What’s a thoas?”
“The moon people,” Cerise said.
“The swamp elders,” Urow said. “The mud crawlers.”
“They are an odd race.” Cerise slumped against the short rope rail. “Some think they may have been human at some point, but they look different now. We don’t know if they came from the Weird or from the Broken. They live deep in the swamp and don’t like people much. Something about the full moon mesmerizes them. That’s about the only way to see one—deep in the swamp, staring at the full moon with glowing eyes.”
“My mother was raped by a thoas,” Urow said. “Although the rest of the family seems to think otherwise.”
Cerise cleared her throat. “We don’t dispute the thoas part. We’re just a bit unsure about the rape.”
Urow leaned to him and wagged his eyebrows. William fought an urge to jump back.
“My mother was a woman of loose morals.” Urow winked.
“You make her sound like a whore.” Cerise grimaced. “Aunt Alina just liked to have fun. Besides, she was just about the only one of the family your wife could stand.”
“Don’t say it,” Cerise warned.
“You’re married?” William asked.
She sighed. “Now you’ve done it. He’ll never be quiet about it now. The whole trip will be, ‘Oh, look at my pretty wife. Oh, look at my pretty babies.’ ”
Urow dipped his head and pulled a plastic wallet off his neck. “Just because you don’t have a pretty wife …”
“I don’t want one.” She sighed. “Wives are too much trouble.”
William barked a short laugh.
Urow passed the wallet to William. “The redhead is my wife. On the right that’s my three boys and a baby.”
“Three boys and a daughter,” Cerise told him.
“Right now it’s a baby. When it starts talking to me and comes when I call, then it’s a daughter.”
William opened the wallet, carefully holding it by the edges. A picture of a pretty redheaded woman looked at him from the left. Three adolescent boys crowded into the picture on the right. All had black hair and a grayish tint to their skin. The oldest looked like a younger copy of Urow, down to an oversized hand and claws. The smallest, the one holding a baby, could almost pass for a human.
William closed the wallet. Even this man got to have a family. But no matter how he tried, he just made a mess of things. He slapped a lid on the familiar frustration before it took over and made him do something he might regret.
They were looking at him. This was one of those human situations when he was expected to say something. “Your wife is very pretty.”
He tensed, in case Urow lunged at him.
The gray man grinned and took the wallet from William’s hand. “She is, isn’t she? I have the prettiest wife in the whole of the Mire.”
“Maybe you should stop rubbing it in,” Cerise said softly.
She must’ve seen something in his face. William pushed his regrets deeper, away from the surface.
“Do you have any family, Lord Bill?” she asked softly.
“No.” He didn’t even know what his mother had looked like.
Urow’s eyebrows crept up. “All right, all right.” He slid the wallet around his neck.
A bolt thrust through Urow’s shoulder. It was attached to a line.
William grabbed for Urow, but the line snapped taut and jerked the gray man off the boat.
UROW plunged into cold water. Webs snapped open between his toes, and he kicked, but the line dragged him to the surface. He skimmed the face of the river in a shower of spray. Water burned his stomach. He flipped on his side and back on his stomach again, digging deep into the waves, and thrust his hands into the current. His fingers found the line and gripped it. He searched for something to brace his legs against but met only water.
A dark form rushed at him through the waves and smashed into his gut. The last of the air burst from his mouth in a violent, silent scream. Pain bathed his left side. He clutched at the obstruction, gripping it with his limbs. Rotting bark, slick with algae, crumbled under his fingers. A log, Urow realized, and dug his claws into the soft water-soaked wood.
They shot him. The sonovabitches shot him with a harpoon and pulled him off his own boat. He’d rip out their guts and make them eat it.
The line pulled. The bolt tore at his flesh, hard, harder, ripping a growl from him. Urow clung to the tree and felt the heavy sodden mass move, compelled by the draw of the line. Pain burned him, reaching down across his chest to his ribs and his neck.
Something whistled through the air and punched the tree in twin thuds. The line snapped free, and the log rolled back under his weight. Urow submerged and surfaced. Two short black bolts punctured the wet bark of the log. Someone had shot the line, severing it.
Urow grabbed the bolt lodged in his shoulder and wrenched it free with a snarl. A piece of his bloody flesh still quivered on the barbs of the bolt’s hooked head, and he rammed it into the sodden wood. Bleeding but free, he pulled himself onto the log and crouched on it.
A small river barge crowded with people headed for his boat, drawn by three rolpies. Cerise had her sword out, and the blueblood was reloading a crossbow. So that was where the bolts had come from. He’d have to thank the guy later. Right now he had work to do.
To the far left, a second boat struggled, its towing pulley spinning wildly, the way it did when the line had snapped. Four people manned it, as its driver tried to guide their rolpie into a tight turn.
An ugly snarl rippled from Urow’s mouth, and he dived into the river, heading for the smaller cutter and its crew. They had no idea how fast the son of a thoas could swim.
WILLIAM reloaded. Thirty yards away a large boat sped toward them. He counted the shadowy figures on the deck. Ten. They weren’t kidding.
Magic pricked his skin with a hot needle. “The Hand.”
Cerise didn’t answer. He glanced at her face and saw rage. She kicked aside a coil of docking line and stood in the center of the deck, leaning lightly forward, her sword pointing downward. A white glow rolled over her eyes.
So she could flash.
Twenty yards. Six men, three women. One undetermined in a long cloak.
They should’ve been shot at by now.
“No bows,” William said. “They want you alive.”
“Bad for them,” Cerise whispered. “Good for me.”
William raised his bow, sighted, and fired. A woman screamed and one of the figures stumbled back. The rest ducked, trying to take cover, all except the guy in the cloak, as expected. William reloaded and fired again at the man in the cloak. The bolt sprouted from his target’s neck.
