Rob Scott - The Larion Senators

The cobblestone street widened into a public marina with squat warehouses on either end. This was more an elaborate dry-dock and smokehouse than a storage facility, but they had guessed right. Wooden longboats and bulky trawlers were moored in the cove, their masts canted over like trees in a gale. Along the shore, dozens more were resting belly-up, waiting for shipwrights to patch them up in the spring so they’d be good for another season’s work.

‘There it is,’ Hannah said, ‘that one, over there, with the hole in it.’ By hole, she meant the seaward access door, where those needing repairs or winter dry-docking could sail in and, using a clever system of pulleys and belts, have their longboats lifted from the water, later to join the others lined up and frozen outside.

Here.’ Hoyt handed her a hunting knife he had stolen in the last Moon.

‘Terrific, another knife.’

‘Just take it,’ he said. ‘And don’t think about it, just slash anyone – anything – that gets too close.’

‘Fine,’ she murmured to herself, ‘super, “just slash”, lovely. Can’t wait.’ She followed him across the marina. ‘Hey, how are we going to do this?’

‘If it’s just Erynn and whatshisname-’

‘Karel.’

‘If it’s Erynn and Karel,’ Hoyt said, ‘we’re going to scare the dogpiss out of them, take Milla, and threaten to turn them in for abduction.’

‘And if there’re Seron?’

‘Then we’re going to die.’

‘Oh. Good.’ Hannah considered the hunting knife. Just slash. ‘Why don’t we go and find Alen?’

‘No time,’ Hoyt said, and stumbled again. Hannah propped him up, holding him around the waist. ‘If they take her out of here, we’ll never get back inside Welstar Palace, certainly not into that slave chamber,’ he pointed out grimly.

Inside the warehouse, Hannah nearly vomited at the unholy stench, a grim concoction of rotting fish guts, seagull guano and charred hickory. The facility obviously doubled as a smokehouse as well as a shipwright’s dry-dock before the onset of winter. Bracing herself, she ushered Hoyt down a short hallway and into the main chamber where a wooden dock, about twenty feet across, lined three sides of a vast open workspace. The fourth side, while still protected beneath the cathedral-style roof, was open to the sea, and a twelve-foot drop separated the dock from the water below. The sea was comparatively still inside the dry-dock station, and it had actually frozen in places. The pylons were coated in a thin sheet of ice which reflected the late-day sun and brightened the inside of the warehouse. Across the open rectangle of sea water they could see Erynn and Karel standing next to a brazier. A heap at their feet could only be Milla, wrapped in a blanket from the inn. With one side open perpetually to the sea, and the chilly northern waters lapping about underfoot all day, Hannah could not imagine a colder place than this to work. For a brief moment she envied the smokers; at least they could huddle around their aromatic fires.

‘Erynn!’ Hannah shouted, her voice bouncing about the cavernous room. ‘Erynn, what are you thinking? Do you know how much trouble you’re in? How worried your parents are?’

‘Leave us alone!’ Erynn shouted, shocked that they had been discovered.

Hannah ignored her and started around the pier. ‘Milla? Are you okay, sweetie?’

‘It’s cold in here,’ Milla replied, ‘but I’m all right.’

‘We’re coming to get you, Pepperweed,’ Hoyt said.

‘Stay there,’ Karel warned, drawing his sword, but still looking like a child playing soldier in his father’s clothes.

‘And Karel, you stupid shit,’ Hannah was too angry to stop, ‘what’s wrong with you? Are you so lovestruck, you ignorant little bastard, that you’ve lost your mind? What are you planning to do, hand her over to the army? Sell her to a seaman? I’ll tell you this, Karel, you’re in over your head. Officers don’t take clandestine meetings in abandoned smokehouses. So do you know who’s coming here? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’

Still snarling and brandishing the blade, Karel puffed up his chest to respond, but Erynn cut him off. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? You and Hoyt and Alen? You’re not her parents, you’re terrorists. I know it was you; I heard Hoyt saying he was going to bury them. He said it that night in the front room. I told you, I don’t try to overhear things, but sometimes I do. And, anyway, I know it was you who attacked that wagon train. You killed those soldiers, and you burned all that wheat. There are people in Treven who needed that wheat, Hannah! My grandfather is there, and he needs that wheat. He’s sick; you knew that. How could you be a terrorist?’

Hannah continued to make her way around the rectangular dock. ‘Erynn, you have it all so wrong – that wasn’t wheat, and it wasn’t headed for Treven.’

‘Liar!’ Karel shouted. ‘Don’t listen to her, Erynn.’

‘You’re wrong, Karel,’ Hoyt said, staggering beside Hannah. ‘It wasn’t wheat, but enchanted tree bark on its way to Welstar Palace, where it will be used in a monstrous spell. There are unimaginable horrors going on at the palace, and if you’ve got any bit of brain left in that empty head of yours, you’ll try to avoid being stationed there, ever. Tell me you haven’t heard rumours.’

Karel looked down at Milla. ‘They’re liars, Erynn. They’ll say anything to get her back.’

‘So what exactly are you planning to do?’ Hannah asked, trying to sound concerned, friendly. ‘You’ve kidnapped a little girl. How can you imagine this will end well for you?’

‘They’re just going to keep her until you tell the truth,’ Erynn said. ‘You have to turn yourselves in and tell them where the others are hiding.’

‘"They’re going to keep her"?’ Hannah echoed. ‘Who’s they, Erynn?’ Hannah and Hoyt were nearly all the way across the interior pier, rounding the final corner.

Erynn started to cry.

‘Who are you waiting for? Who’s meeting you here?’ Hannah realised she and Hoyt been so desperate to rescue Milla that they had come through the building without checking their flank. She looked now, quickly, for other routes to the outside.

‘We thought you would go quietly if you knew they had Milla,’ Erynn tried to explain, ‘otherwise you might have been hurt.’

‘You’re nothing but a pawn in their evil game, Erynn, and you too, Karel.’ Hoyt sounded disgusted. ‘They know Milla at Welstar Palace. They’ve been searching for her for the past Moon – surely you’ve seen them in their black and gold leathers? They’re Malagon’s personal police force. You think you’re heroes; you’re not. You’ve done nothing but endanger an innocent child, and you’d better pray to the gods of the Northern Forest Alen doesn’t find you.’

Exactly on cue, three men emerged from the smokehouse. Their black and gold uniforms outshone even Karel’s polished army leathers. Hannah had seen soldiers like these before, with their distinctive ceremonial capes; she flashed back to those chilling moments astride the flying buttress, hearing Churn call for her and then watching him slip away. ‘Oh shit, Erynn, what did you do?’ she said softly, despairingly.

‘Are these the ones?’ the tallest of the soldiers, a sergeant, by the markings on his sleeve, demanded of Karel.

Don’t do it, you prick, Hannah thought, please don’t turn us in.

‘Yes, Sergeant; that’s them,’ the boy said, shaking. And there’s another. He’s here somewhere, here in the district, anyway. His name is Alen Jasper and he’s from Middle Fork.’

‘Disarm her, and take them into custody,’ the sergeant ordered. ‘If they resist, kill the sick one; keep the woman. She can explain herself to the captain.’