Blood on the Boards

KAYA-BEK

Temurbek does not linger. He turns back from the chart table, reaches past me to unlock the door he just sealed, and steps into the passageway, pulling the heavy oak door shut between us.

The deadbolt clicks outside.

The lock is not the only thing keeping me here. The river keeps me. Forty feet of boiling whitewater roars beneath the stern timbers, loud enough to rattle the copper nails in the floorboards. If I kick through the barred stern window, the current will snap my spine against the rudder before I take two strokes.

A locked cage. A warm hearth.

I do not sit on the captain's cot.

The brass ring on my wrist drags two feet of cold iron across the cedar boards. The links clatter against the table leg. I gather the loose metal into my left palm, wrapping the slack tight until the iron bites my knuckles. A loose chain is a leash. A wrapped chain is a weapon.

I have maybe an hour before Temurbek returns from the steering deck.

The cabin holds two chairs, an iron brazier, and a wide drafting desk fastened to the bulkhead with forged brackets. A stack of river charts lies weighted beneath a stone inkpot. Beside them rests a brass sextant, an ivory rule, and three quill cases.

No weapons in plain sight. Temurbek is ruthless, not careless.

I start with the desk drawers.

The top drawer slides open without a scrape. Grease on the tracks. Inside lie bundles of waxed twine, dried wafers of red sealing wax, and two spare flint strikers. Useless.

The second drawer is deeper. Ledgers bound in pigskin. Provisions for eighty men: salted mutton, barley sacks, tallow candles. I shove them aside. My fingertips brush the rear panel.

A seam.

A false bottom built into the oak casing.

My pulse skips. A sharp, violent kick behind my ribs.

I slide two fingers into the narrow gap beneath the false timber and pry upward. The thin slat gives with a muted pop.

Tucked into the hollow sits an iron utility knife. Seven inches of unpolished blade, honed down to a thin, lethal edge. The grip is wrapped in tarred cord, dark and tacky against my skin. A skinning knife for gutting river trout.

Or cutting throats in the dark.

I slide the flat of the steel beneath the waistband of my linen trousers, pressing the cold metal against my hip. The crude handle hides beneath the hem of my tunic.

One small advantage.

A man who thinks you are unarmed watches your hands. He never watches your waist.

Outside, the ship's bell tolls fourth watch. Four brass strikes through the roar of the rapids.

Then the timber groans.

Not the bulkhead. The transom window behind the cot.

I freeze. The iron coils stay clamped in my fist.

The window has three vertical iron bars, each as thick as a thumb. Too narrow for a grown man's shoulders. But the wooden shutter outside is hung on exterior bronze pintles, built to swing shut during heavy squalls.

A sliver of steel slides through the center gap.

It is not an oar. It is a thin crowfoot pry bar.

The hooked tip catches the inner timber sill. With a slow, calculated heave, wood splinters. The iron bar on the right gives way at the lower joint, its mounting screws chewed through by river rot and deliberate force.

A figure squeezes through the gap, head first, slithering over the sill like an eel.

He lands on the floorboards with barely a thud.

The man is lean, bare-chested, his skin smeared with charcoal and pig grease to kill reflection. A convict oarsman from the forward benches. I recognize the jagged blue tattoo across his collarbone: three wavy lines. The mark of the river cult.

Sarnai-tay's people.

He holds a curved gutting blade between his teeth. He takes it into his right hand, his eyes locking onto me across the dim red glow of the brazier.

He does not speak. He did not come to negotiate.

"Temurbek's private quarters," I say softly. The words are pure acid. "The security is remarkable."

The oarsman lunges.

He stays low, thrusting the curved steel toward my belly to spill my guts before I can scream.

He expects a temple dancer. A decorative captive starved on bilge water.

I do not back away.

I pivot on my right heel, swinging my left arm in a vicious, sweeping arc.

The heavy iron links whip through the dark.

The iron collides with his right wrist with a sickening crack. Bone snaps. His thrust veers wide, the point slicing through the loose linen of my sleeve and grazing the skin over my ribs.

Pain bites, hot and shallow.

The impact knocks the gutting knife from his shattered grip. It clatters across the cedar floor.

The man snarls, diving forward with his bare weight. His shoulder slams into my chest, driving me back against the heavy chart desk. Inkwells tumble. The breath explodes out of my lungs in a ragged gasp.

His left hand claws for my windpipe. His fingers are slick with rancid grease, digging into the flesh beneath my jaw.

Pressure builds behind my eyes.

I reach down with my right hand. My fingers wrap around the tarred cord of the skinning knife.

I pull the steel from my waist and drive the blade upward.

The point catches the meat of his left shoulder. He jerks violently, a wet grunt tearing from his throat. Hot blood spills over my knuckles, thick and metallic.

He does not let go. His thumb crushes my trachea, starving my brain of air.

Dark spots dance across my vision.

The cabin door shatters inward.

The heavy oak drop-bar does not merely lift. The frame splits under the impact of an iron-shod boot. The brass latch shears off in a spray of splintered wood.

Temurbek.

He takes one step into the room. He does not ask a question. He does not shout for guards.

He moves with the horrifying speed of a predator whose territory has been breached.

His left hand catches the oarsman by the greasy hair, ripping him off me with enough force to tear scalp. His right hand draws the short broadsword from the scabbard at his hip.

A single, downward arc.

The iron blade punches through the oarsman's throat, severing the windpipe and lodging deep into the deck timbers beneath him.

A choking gurgle. A frantic spasm of heels against wood.

Then silence.

The oarsman's blood pools between the cedar planks, steaming in the warmth of the brazier.

Temurbek plants his boot on the dead man's chest and wrenches his sword free. A dark spray spatters his cheek and the leather coat across his chest.

I slide down against the front of the desk, my hand still gripping the bloody skinning knife. My throat burns like raw lye. I cough, dragging air into my bruised chest.

Temurbek looks at the body.

He knows the face. I see the recognition lock in his dark eyes.

This was not a nameless raider from the riverbanks. This was Barlas, his own forward-bench rower. A man sworn under his seal to steer the barge to the falls.

He steps over the corpse.

Two strides bring him directly in front of me. He towers above, smelling of cold river fog, pine ash, and fresh blood.

He looks down at the knife in my right hand. He looks at the bloody point, then at the gash in my sleeve.

"You cut him," he says.

His voice is low, flat, stripped of all human cadence.

"He had poor manners," I manage to whisper through my ruined throat.

Temurbek drops to one knee.

His bloody fingers reach out and close around my wrist, pressing his thumb against the frantic pulse beneath my skin. He does not take the knife from my fingers. He simply holds my arm, pinning me in place while his gaze sweeps every inch of my body.

"No one touches you," he murmurs.

It is not an oath of duty. It is a vow of possession.

He killed his own crewman. He murdered one of his eighty men in cold blood, inside his own cabin, without a trial or a witness.

The crew will want to know where Barlas went. They will search the decks when the rowing shifts change.

Temurbek looks back at the dead man on his floor, then down at my face.

He has broken his covenant.

And the river has not even reached the halfway mark.