Then the Valorians would take their stolen ship and sail away.
As he rowed the launch toward Wensan’s ship, which was Herrani-made and studded with Valorian cannon, Arin remembered the exhaustion of that work, but also how it had corded his muscles until the ache in his arms became stone. He was grateful to the Valorians for having made him strong. If he was strong enough, he might live through this night. If he lived, he could reclaim the shreds of who he had been, and explain himself to Kestrel in a way she would understand.
She sat silent next to him in the launch. The other Herrani at the oars watched as she lifted her bound hands to tug at the black cloth covering her hair. It was an awkward business. It was also necessary, since a new twist in the plan called for Kestrel to be seen and recognized.
The Herrani watched her struggle. They watched Arin drop an oar in its lock to offer a hand. She flinched hard enough that her shifted weight shook the boat. It was only a slight tremor along wood, but they all felt it.
Shame ate into his gut.
Kestrel pulled the cloth from her head. Even though clouds swelled in the sky, swallowing the moon and deepening the dark around them, Kestrel’s hair and pale skin seemed to glow. It looked like she was lit from within.
It wasn’t something Arin could bear to see. He returned to the oars and rowed.
Arin knew, far better than any of the ten Herrani in the launch, that Kestrel could be devious. That he shouldn’t trust her plan any more than he should have fallen for her ploys at Bite and Sting, or followed her blindly into the trap she had set and sprung for him the morning of the duel.
Her plan to seize the ship was sound. Their best option. Still, he kept examining it like he might a horse’s hoof, tapping the surface for a flaw, a dangerous split.
He couldn’t see it. He thought that there must be one, then realized that the flaw he sensed lay inside him. Tonight had cracked Arin open. It had brought the battle inside him to a boiling war.
Of course he was certain that something was wrong.
Impossible. It was impossible to love a Valorian and also love his people.
Arin was the flaw.
Kestrel watched the other four launches slip along the inky water. Two drew alongside Wensan’s ship and paused by the hull ladder, hidden by the dark and the angle of the hull as it sloped inward from the broad main deck to the ship’s narrow section at the waterline. To see those launches, sailors on the main deck would have to hang over the sides.
The sailors raised no cry of alarm.
Two more launches approached the next largest ship, a two-master with one row of cannons, a clear second player to Wensan’s three-masted ship with double gun decks.
The Herrani glanced at Arin. He nodded, and they began to row with no interest in stealth, only speed. Oars rattled in their locks, dunked and splashed and swept in the water. When the launch reached Wensan’s ship, sailors were already ringing the rail, looking far below at them. Their faces were blurs in the dark.
Kestrel stood. “Riot in the city!” she called to sailors, stating what they could no doubt see for themselves beyond the harbor and the city walls. “Bring us aboard!”
“You’re none of ours,” a voice floated down from the main deck.
“I’m a friend of Captain Wensan’s: Kestrel, General Trajan’s daughter. The captain sent me along with your crew for my protection.”
“Where’s the captain?”
“I don’t know. We were separated in the city.”
“Who’s there with you?”
“Terex,” called Arin, careful to roll the r. One by one, the Herrani in the launch shouted names given by the harbormaster of the ship’s missing sailors. They said them quickly, some swallowing syllables, but each gave a passable version of the pronunciations Kestrel had drilled into them when they had first left shore.
The sailor spoke again: “What’s the code of the call?”
“I am,” Kestrel said with all the confidence she didn’t feel. “My name: Kestrel.”
A pause. A few sharp seconds during which Kestrel hoped she was right, hoped she was wrong, and hated herself for what she was doing.
A clank. A metallic unwinding.
Hooked pulleys were being lowered from the main deck. There was an eager clatter as Herrani attached them to the launch.
Arin, however, did not move. He stared at Kestrel. Perhaps he hadn’t been convinced that she had known the password. Or perhaps he couldn’t believe she would betray her own kind.
Kestrel looked at him as if looking through a window. What he thought didn’t matter. Not anymore.
The roped pulleys creaked. The launch was lifted dripping out of the water. It jerked and swayed as sailors on board hauled on the ropes. Then it began to climb.