wanted to flail his arms, to try and hurl himself through the air by will, but he tucked into a ball instead, hoping it’d carry him farther. He peeped down, trying to judge his path and whether he’d jumped far enough-and trying to see Yara as well. He’d reach the water, but would it be deep enough? Had it been deep enough for her?
Maldynado landed with alarming momentum; the impact from striking the water sent a jaw-rattling jolt through him. As he plunged downward, the cold shocked his body, and he couldn’t move, but he was too worried about smashing into the bottom to pay attention to the fact. He must have plummeted twenty feet before slowing. Darkness smothered the depths, and he couldn’t see anything in the black water. Praise his dead ancestors, he didn’t strike anything. Grateful for the river’s depth, he tried to swim for the surface. Glacial numbness clutched his chest, and he couldn’t feel his arms or legs. A current tugged at him, and he envisioned himself being swept downstream, trapped beneath the surface by some undertow.
Spurred by panic, Maldynado got his legs working and kicked as if all his ancestors were lined up, watching and mocking his lack of manliness. His elbow banged against a rock. Startled, he let out his air. Water filled his mouth. He kicked harder, hoping he was going in the right direction.
Maldynado broke the surface and almost smashed face-first into an algae-slick boulder. His first instinct was to push away from it, but the current was tugging at him, and he didn’t want to end up miles downstream. He wrapped his arms around the boulder like an enthusiastic lover. He’d lost his rifle at some point during the fall, but he hardly cared. Shivers wracked his body, and he wanted nothing more than to scramble out and find a towel-or, in lieu of that, beat up some guard for his clothes-but concern over Basilard and Yara stayed him. He searched about, trying to find them in the gloom. The lights from the castle didn’t brighten the rocky bank, but he could see it above the treetops and used it to guess his position. He’d gone from the back side of the island to the southern tip. He couldn’t see the docks, but maybe if he craned his head about-yes, there was the steamboat.
A figure in the water between it and Maldynado waved. Basilard.
Maldynado hesitated before swimming out to him. Where was Yara? What if she needed help? What if she lay smashed on a boulder somewhere? Or what if she’d been swept into the current and had never been able to find the surface?
Basilard splashed the water and pointed at the steamboat. It was on its way to the center of the river, and it’d be cruising downstream, full steam ahead before long. Maldynado wanted to call out to Basilard, to ask if he’d seen Yara, but guards patrolled the boat’s deck and the docks would hear. Basilard couldn’t respond anyway.
He turned his back on Maldynado and swam toward the boat.
“Emperor’s hairy backside,” Maldynado growled.
Left with few options, he swam after Basilard. They paddled with the current while angling toward the Glacial Empress. At first, Maldynado worried only about being seen. But, as he failed to gain ground quickly, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to catch up. Hoping the darkness would hide his approach, and the splashes of the paddlewheel would camouflage his own splashes, Maldynado buried his face and stroked at top speed.
His body forgot the cold, and he caught up with Basilard a few meters from the steamboat. It had reached the channel. Water frothed and churned as the giant paddlewheel, as broad as the entire back end of the boat, increased the speed of its revolutions.
Legs weary, Maldynado used his last burst of energy to swim along the hull to a dark blob. The anchor. Though it was pulled up, its chain out of sight in a hole, the dangling T-shaped hook offered a handhold. Panting, Maldynado gripped it so he could rest. The deck was lower to the water than on an ocean-going vessel, and it wouldn’t take much effort to clamber over the railing, but it might be smart to wait and let security believe they’d escaped the island without unwanted passengers. The guards would be on high alert if Mari’s people had sprinted down the hill, shouting of prisoners on the loose.
“Psst,” came a whisper from the deck.
Maldynado’s heart lurched. He’d been so worried about catching up with the steamboat that he hadn’t checked above. For all he knew, three guards were sighting down the barrels of their rifles at him.
“Pssst!”
Maldynado tipped his head backward and made out a single dark figure, though he couldn’t identify features. Lights burned on the boat, but mostly on the second and third decks where passenger and crew cabins awaited. The lower deck of the sternwheeler housed the engine and boiler rooms.
“Yara?” Maldynado guessed after a moment of analyzing those pssts. They hadn’t sounded very masculine. It was hard for him to believe that she had reached the boat-and climbed onto the deck-before him.
“No, it’s the emperor’s dead grandmother. Get up here, you twit. Don’t they teach warrior-caste brats how to swim decently?”
By then, Basilard had maneuvered around the hull to grab onto the anchor alongside Maldynado. With his mangled throat, he couldn’t laugh out loud, but Maldynado had a suspicion the quakes that ran through his body were a result of chortles rather than trembles from the cold.
Maldynado climbed up to the metal railing encircling the deck and, after checking to make sure nobody besides Yara waited nearby, hopped over. He almost landed on an inert body.
“He objected to me coming aboard,” Yara explained.
“He’s not dead, is he?” Maldynado asked.
“Of course not. But I wasn’t sure what to do with him. If we throw him overboard, people might miss him.”
“Nah. In the chaos of everyone boarding early and dinghies being blown up in harbor, I’m sure it’ll be seen as natural for a few guards to get lost.” Maldynado grabbed the man by the back of the shirt, eliciting a sleepy groan- he’d wake up soon enough-and rolled him over the railing. “Like so. Lost.”
Basilard had climbed over and joined them. He watched the man splash into the water, then signed something.
“What was that?” Maldynado turned his back to the water, and tried to line Basilard’s hands up with a lantern burning near some stairs farther down the deck.
Basilard exaggerated his signs. Are we going to hide? Or take over the boat?
“Taking over the boat sounds… ambitious,” Maldynado said. Now that he’d stopped swimming and climbing, he noticed the cold wind sweeping down the river, battering at his sodden clothing. All he wanted was to warm up somewhere.
“Take it over?” Yara whispered. “There must be two dozen guards, not to mention the passengers and crew.”
“Let’s just find a place to hide.” Maldynado gave her a placating pat on the shoulder. “And get warm. Maybe we can convince the blokes in the boiler room to let us cozy up to their furnaces.”
“They probably have orders to throw intruders into the furnaces,” Yara said.
“If that’s the case, they can become just as lost as that first fellow.”
“If we keep throwing people overboard, the crew’s going to figure out that there are intruders.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
The words sounded confident. Maldynado hoped they proved true. It’d likely take a lot of days traveling down the river to reach Mari’s destination, wherever that was. If Sespian and the others hadn’t found a way on board, it might not matter anyway. Only the emperor knew what he hoped to learn from the Forge meeting.
Maldynado gazed back at the lights of Rabbit Island, which were receding as the steamboat picked up speed. He hoped he hadn’t, in choosing the steamboat over searching the harbor for his comrades, made yet another poor decision.
Chapter 9
Amaranthe’s stomach growled. How stupid of it to worry about food when there was so much else to worry about. Once again, she lay pinned to the operating table by the claw’s black metal spikes. Somehow, when they were piercing her thighs, wrists, and shoulders, they never struck bone or an artery-she chose not to think that someone had designed them with such precision for just this purpose-but they hurt like sword wounds to the gut every time they went in.
Soft crunches sounded a few feet away. Pike had taken a break from his work to munch on an apple and
