Page 149 of Heir

“You don’t know that!”

He took her fingers between his, mostly because she was shaking sohard that it was makinghimshake. And he needed steady hands tonight.

“But I know you. You’re an incredible engineer. You were that student in the corps who annoyed everyone because you were so much smarter. Don’t deny it,” he said when she began protesting. “We both know it’s true. You’ve thought this through, discussed it—”Bleeding hells, had she discussed it. He was seeing levers and pulleys and formulas in his dreams, she’d talked about it so much.

“Stick to the plan,” he said. “I’ll see you after. It will be perfect.”

He squeezed her hands, and her shaking calmed, just a touch.

Ten minutes later, he was crouched amid a stack of abandoned pigeon crates on a high building overlooking the docks, his bow nocked and ready. From here, he could see everything: The long harbor and its boat slips and cranes. The unobtrusive barge at the far end of the dock, so decrepit that it looked on the verge of sinking. And the approaching Ankanese dhow, its green sails furled tight against the storm.

The sound of boots echoed through the empty streets—soldiers arriving with a wagon, tasked with escorting the shipment. Sufiyan ducked lower on the rooftop—there were more than three hundred troops down there. If they spotted him, he was done for.

Sailors poled a sturdy-looking barge out to the dhow, which rocked ponderously in the stormy seas. After an interminable amount of time, they loaded a large pallet on and rowed back.

The harbormistress herself oversaw the operation, guiding the barge into a dock, fitting a net around the pallet, and connecting it to a hook. The hook was attached to a crane via pulleys and a single rope.

A rope that was frayed. Too frayed to hold up such a heavy pallet, some might say.

The harbormistress bellowed for the crane operator to lift the pallet. It rose and swung over the barge, then over the water.

Sufiyan put his finger to the air. Tasted the windspeed, the direction.Below, a fight spilled out of a nearby tavern; a group of rowdy pirates shouted obscenities and threw punches. The harbormistress, the soldiers, even the crane operator turned to look.

Which was when Sufiyan let his arrow fly. It sliced silently through the rope, and the pallet dropped into the ocean with an enormous splash. Cries of dismay rang out, accusations of a shoddy job by the harbormistress, the crane operator, the rope maker.

Sufiyan only heard the beginning of the chaos before he leaped to a nearby roof, and then down to the harbor streets. He pulled his cloak close, hurrying through the rain until he was a full two miles from the harbor and safely ensconced at a bustling tavern called the Pennybrush. As the dinner rush began, he booked a room with three bunks, ordered up dinner, and waited for Tas and Arelia.

After an hour, he felt his chest tighten in worry. After two, he paced, cursing to himself. By midnight, he struggled to draw breath. Tas should have been here shortly after Sufiyan. Arelia not long after that. He checked the window again and again. Nothing.

They’d been caught. Imprisoned. Killed. And he’d been lounging in this inn while the people he cared about suffered.

Just like Ruh. The thought made his body tremble, his vision blur. Ruh, his only little brother, who had amused and annoyed and enriched him in equal measure. Ruh, who had trusted him and tricked him, shoving a pillow under his blanket. Sufiyan hadn’t even bothered to look carefully at his brother’s bed the night he was murdered. He saw the lump, felt relief that the boy was asleep, and went back to playing cards with Tas.

Now he’d left Tas and Arelia behind. Quil and Sirsha had been gone for weeks. He’d never made up with his friend—and if he was dead—

As Sufiyan passed by the window, his blood turned to ice. Four cloaked figures approached the inn’s front door. He couldn’t see their faces, but through the rain he caught the glint of their armor, the shine of weapons. Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

Sufiyan drew his scim because he might be utterly useless at protecting his friends, but his parents would be broken if they lost their other son, too. The door slammed open and—

“Suf?” A familiar voice. Sufiyan stared for a long, confused moment before the figure lowered his hood.

Quil.

Sufiyan blinked, because if this was a hallucination, it was damned cruel. But his oldest friend was hugging him now, and Arelia was too. Tas closed the door and hissed at them all to keep quiet.

“The soldiers locked down the whole port,” he said. “I thought they’d gotten you—”

“We only just escaped,” Arelia said. “Had to hide out for hours. Then we noticed someone following us—”

“Me,” Sirsha said wryly, though her voice was exhausted. “Tracking them—this one almost stuck a knife in me.” She nodded to Tas.

Arelia kept talking, giddily relieved that their plan had worked. Her underwater pulleys seamlessly shifted the pallet of metal a dozen yards to a nearby dock, where Tas’s pirates had loaded it onto their ship once the harbormistress left.

After a brief search, the harbormistress had dredged up the lost pallet—or something that looked a great deal like it. It was heaved out of the water and transported to the Vault of Seers.

“They’ll figure it out soon,” Tas said. “But the metal is long gone. We will be too. Burku’s harbor is already locked down, but I have a shabka waiting at one of the coastal villages. It’s a few days’ ride north of here. We leave in the morning.”

Sufiyan tried to take it all in, but he was struggling to understand that everything was all right. That his friends—his family—were safe.

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