The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(60)
“Is that what this is, then?” Darius asked. “You’re off to sell a pack of girls?”
“Never mind the girls,” Charon said. “Can we go aboard? Time is of the essence . . .”
“You’ll have to wait while we finish unloading what cargo we shipped in with.” Darius waved toward the sparsely populated southern end of the wharf. “You can wait out of the way until that’s done.”
Charon visibly reined in his impatience and said, “Be quick about it, then. Before the tide or my mind changes.”
XVI
I COULDN’T KEEP the anxious fluttering in my chest from moving up into my throat as we waited and waited and the tide rose higher and higher. Soon it would begin to turn, racing with the afternoon sun back out to sea, and we needed to go with it. The last time I’d been on a dock, waiting for the moment to board and cast off, I’d been ambushed.
And Meriel had died.
I paced and fidgeted and finally hunkered down in the lee of Cleopatra’s wagon and pulled a whetstone from the pouch at my belt. I figured, to pass the time, I’d sharpen one of the already perfectly sharp weapons I bore.
“I hate boats,” Elka sighed, sliding down to crouch beside me.
I snorted and was about to point out just how much fun we’d had during Cleopatra’s naumachia, but it suddenly became clear that the dock where we waited was far less deserted than any of us had thought. This time when Tanis struck, relentless as a toothache, there was no warning from the Morrigan.
No whisper in my ear . . .
But I heard the arrow’s hiss and ducked as the black-fletched shaft sank with a thud into the side board of the wagon, just beside my head. Elka and I exchanged a surprised glance as another one clattered off the iron wheel hub and grazed my thigh. Cai’s horse screamed a warning whinny and reared violently, throwing him from the saddle to land hard on the uneven cobbles. Quint shouted his name and leaped from his own saddle to help. Everyone in the other carts ducked for cover, and Elka and I scrambled up into Cleopatra’s wagon, diving flat behind the high wooden sides.
At first, I wasn’t sure where the arrow fire was coming from—the missiles seemed to have more than one trajectory—but Ajani knew.
“There!” she said, pointing. “She’s on the roof and running. She can target us from different vantages. So long as she has arrows, she can keep us pinned down. And if I know her mind, she has a lot of arrows.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered.
I doubted very much that Tanis was alone. If I were her, I thought, I wouldn’t risk attacking us single-handedly. Rather, I guessed she’d doubled back after murdering Hestia and losing Acheron, and gathered the remaining members of her Dis fellows. They could be waiting for us anywhere. In any doorway, any alley . . .
“Ajani, can you—”
She shook her head, her brow creased in frustration. “My quiver’s near empty,” she said. “And she has all the cover. We’re fish in a fountain waiting to be speared here. Someone’s got to draw her off.”
I scanned the faces of the Amazon girls who still clustered around Cleopatra in the wagon bed, keeping her hidden behind the relative safety of her stacks of traveling trunks. Three of them, including Selene, were tall. Too tall for what I had in mind—Tanis had seen the queen enough times at the Ludus Achillea to be familiar with Cleopatra’s build. Two were less than my height, but broad-shouldered. And then there was Kallista. Wiry, lean-muscled, and fleet-footed, about the right height . . .
“Majesty,” I said, crawling over to where Cleopatra crouched, “can you take off your cloak without too much difficulty?”
She was the only one of our little traveling band who wore a cloak dyed a shade of rich azure blue. The rest of us wore dun colors or undyed wool. She blinked at me with her wide, dark eyes and then nodded.
“Kallista?” I said, turning to her.
She nodded, already guessing what I had in mind, and reached up to the plain bronze brooch that held her own cloak around her neck, unfastening it with nimble fingers. Then she took the queen’s cloak and shrugged it up around her shoulders, fastening the brooch and tugging it closed in front, pulling the deep cowl up over her head to hide her face and hair.
“Ready?” I asked when she was done.
She looked at me, eyes shining with a kind of frantic excitement. “Ready.”
“Don’t take any chances,” I said. And then amended that to: “Don’t take any unnecessary chances. I’ll be right behind you—‘chasing’ you—and I’ll have your back if you get into any real trouble. We just need to buy enough time for Charon’s captain to finish stowing his cargo and for everyone to get aboard. All right?”
She nodded again, grinning, and reached up to grip the sides of the wagon.
“Good,” I said, squeezing her shoulder hard and then letting go. “The Morrigan guide your feet. Now go!”
Nimble as a fawn, Kallista leaped, vaulting over the side of the cart and landing in a neat crouch on the cobbles. Then I did what Acheron had done back on the road—the thing that had drawn so much unwanted attention down upon the queen in the first place.
I raised my voice and shouted, “My queen! No!”
Kallista played her part to perfection, shouting back at me in Greek, her voice tinged with what sounded like unbridled panic. Greek was a language Kallista had learned from her father—Quint’s older brother—on Corsica, and it was one that Cleopatra was not only fluent in but spoke frequently.