CHAPTER TWELVE

EACH DAWN, THE SHIP WAS BATHED in a dreamy orange glow as the rising sun slanted through her ochre sails. Dominic was always up to see it. The captain had given up his tiny cabin for the two women, but the men slept cheek by jowl with the crew, tucked into rope hammocks. Only Derkh seemed to find them comfortable—it was the swell and roll of the ship in high water that gave him trouble.

Even in a feather bed, though, Dominic would have been restless. Their flurry of preparation and packing—Dominic’s part had been to outfit the company with weaponry and wealth (“as much as possible, in gold,” Yolenka had urged), while the others had been busy acquiring remedies and herbs, smithing tools, everything needed to sustain their disguises—had been full of purpose and promise. Once on board, though, time stood still. Dominic knew they were following his children as fast as possible, but it was not like land travel, where you could count the passing leagues in horse sweat and new vistas. Every day the scenery was the same: gray ocean without end. There was no sense of progress.

There was, at least, plenty to do. Yolenka had combed Blanchette market for the most gaudy silky fabrics she could find, and she gave lessons in Tarzine while she sewed what would evidently become her costume. Their progress varied—Dominic and Derkh managed to pick up a few words and phrases, while Féolan seemed to inhale words from the very air. Within a few days he was trying his skills out with the Tarzine crew. Dominic’s years on the coast had given him a working knowledge of sailing, and he prowled the ship, observing the differences that made the Tarzine craft superior in power and stability to anything in the Basin lands. When the weather was fine and the deck relatively free, Dominic sparred with Derkh or Féolan. They all felt rusty and were glad of the chance to sharpen their fighting edge.

Mostly, he tried to plan. Even a rudimentary plan, cobbled together from their vast lack of information, seemed better than none. His mind chewed on it through the day and into the long wakeful nights. It had to, to fend off the terrible thoughts that lay always in wait for him—thoughts of his children, their fear and loneliness and misery.

Yolenka answered all his questions patiently, but when Dominic asked her to draw him a map she shook her head and stood abruptly.

“Is not my skill. Wait here.”

It did not take her long. “Captain will see you after evening meal. Has maps of coastline, harbors, better knowledge of Turga than me. I translate.”

His debt to this exotic woman, a complete stranger, loomed suddenly immense. Dominic reached up and grasped her hand as she turned to go.

“Yolenka, I don’t know how we could have done this without you. I—”

She cut him off with a smile so brittle it hurt to see it.

“Slavers take my sister when I am ten years old, just beginning as dancer. I never see again. We take back your children. Then you thank me.”

“TURGA’S STRONGHOLD CANNOT be entered by sea,” translated Yolenka, as the captain pointed to a tightly enclosed bay at the south end of the country’s western coast. “Is guarded at mouth, impossible.” She held up a finger to forestall Dominic’s dismay.

“But children are going here—to Baskir.” The captain ran his finger north up the rugged coast, illustrated with high cliffs along much of its length. “Is stupid for Turga to go first to his own land, then to slave auction by road. No—he sail straight to Baskir. Is big harbor, big market. Many ships coming and going. We land there, is easy.”

IS EASY . IF ONLY it were true, thought Gabrielle. For one moment, as they clustered around the captain’s map, their quest had seemed a simple matter of sailing to the right place.

Well, she was happy to leave the strategizing to Dominic and the others. Gabrielle’s business was with the children. Her mind never left them, as if her constant thought could keep them safe. She saw the pain and worry behind Dominic’s nervous energy. They were her feelings too.

“Can you send your thoughts out after them, Féolan?” she asked. Elves, she knew, could touch a friend’s spirit with love or strength.

Féolan looked up from his lythra. He had been rehearsing with Yolenka—an impatient taskmaster—and was trying to fix in his head and fingers the strange melodies and rhythms she had sung for him. From the sheltered corner he and Gabrielle had found on the deck the sound floated out and hovered, stirring and mournful, between the dark water and the night’s first stars.

He shook his head sadly. “They are too far, love, and our connection too faint. I cannot find them.”

So he had tried. How she loved him for that. Pulling her shawl closer about her, she leaned against his warm back. The evening was cooling off quickly, but neither was in a hurry to exchange the open sky for the cramped lower deck, redolent as it was of unwashed bodies and the fish oil used to preserve the planking.

“Play on, then, my troubadour.” And she returned to the prayer that played over and over in her heart: Let them be safe. Let them find comfort. Let them have hope.