“Fletcher, I want everyone in those boats and ready to go,” Riot said.

  Fetcher gave a smart salute, seeming to grow an inch taller as he straightened his crooked spine. "Yes, sir,” he said, directing Leybound into six mismatched rowboats.

  The flimsy, rotted vessels were the best they could scrounge up from the poor fishermen who occupied the lowly shacks that clung grimly to the cliffs.

  “They call you ‘sir’. I’m sure you noticed, but you haven’t corrected them. You’re no officer, are you stone eye?” Odred said with a sad shake of his head. “No, not officer material at all. Poor shoes, poor sword, poor, poor, poor.”

  Riot tried to shut down his sense of smell. The small arcanist had changed the cassock for a grubby robe that was full of stains and smelled worse than the wooden jetty seeped in decades of fish guts.

  “Just get in a bloody boat and make sure it’s not mine,” Riot snapped.

  The men grimly clutched the sides of the boats in the relatively still waters of the bay, but out at sea a screaming wind whipped the white caps off the waves. He hated the ocean, you couldn’t march on it, and you couldn’t fight on it.

  “Itchy, is it? I’ve seen some flay their skin off after a time,” Odred said, peering at the angry red skin on Riot's arm. “I can relieve the pressure you know, you just say the word.”

  Riot cursed silently and stopped scratching his arm, rounding on the little man. “You do anything else to me, and I’ll tie you to the back of the boat and haul you behind.”

  But Odred just smiled his gapped-toothed grin and stepped closer, peering up at something above Riot’s head and giving a low whistle. “A big one, angry too. The arcane feel the loss more than the others, they know something’s missing eh? Always searching, never finding.”

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  “Crease!” Riot shouted.

  The skinny man jogged up, keeping his distance from Odred, his nose wrinkling. “Sir?”

  Riot avoided looking at the little arcanist.

  “It’s just ‘sarge’, Crease. Bring me a coil of rope to tie this bastard up.”

  “Yessir.”

  Beside him, Odred had fallen silent, the smile replaced by a look of fear. At least he was getting the message.

  “Get in the boat, or get ready to swim,” Riot said.

  But Odred didn’t respond to him at all, the little man's gaze locked on the shadows of the overhanging cliffs. “Mistress,” Odred said, his voice tight and desperate.

  Riot followed his gaze and saw a patch of darkness on the cliff shift slightly and Natalia Quinn emerged seemingly from thin air, striding along the jetty. Odred gave a desperate yelp and threw himself onto the filthy planks, jabbering incoherently.

  “I don’t think he’s been anywhere near water for decades, the shock might kill him,” Quinn said, giving Odred a withering glare. “Get up, Odred, you horrible little man.”

  “Moran said you’d be back,” Riot said.

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “He told me not to let you anywhere near the tower.”

  “I just need you to take me to the city.”

  “Of course, mistress, of course, take this boat here. Get out, you fools! Get out, make room.” Odred hurried over to the first boat and shouted at the men, shooing them out and onto other boats.

  Riot spoke. “I have a job to do. You know that because you told me to work with Moran. If you want to come, you’ll have to tell us what you’re going to do.”

  “I will not. But I promise you that if I succeed, then we both win. You’ll be a hero. They’ll be heroes.”

  A hero's welcome, status, and respect for the leybound in the army. She knew what he wanted, and what he would do to get it.

  “Moran said you wanted to get to the tower.” Riot held up a hand to forestall her reply. “I don’t care what you want with it, but I go up first. When I’m out you can burn the whole thing to the ground for all I care.”

  Quinn smiled. “Then we have a deal.”