Prince Thief by David Tallerman

the net, signalling his men to help us. I steadied myself with a vast effort and put my back into the work. Still, it all seemed to be taking so long – and through every moment, I couldn’t escape that sense of Saltlick sinking like a leaden weight into the depths.
    “Get it overboard!” I bawled.
    But my guidance was no longer necessary. Navare was directing, with short gestures and brief, snapped commands. In a moment the net was shaken loose and dashed over the boat’s side, with Navare, ten guardsmen and myself straining to weigh down our edge.
    For all that, the shock when Saltlick caught hold threatened to wrench my arms out of their sockets. I’d been so certain he was at the bottom of the sea that I’d hardly thought to prepare myself. Even if I had, I could never have anticipated how damned heavy he was. With a dozen of us straining in a knot of arms and legs against the boat’s side, it still seemed certain we’d be dragged overboard – as if we were fishermen who’d snared some prodigious monster from the deeps. It was impossible to imagine we could hang on; already, the craft was tipping alarmingly.
    Then huge fingers closed over the boat’s side, and some of the tension went out of the net. The fingers sprouted an arm, a couple of guardsmen grasped onto that, and Saltlick loomed into view. I let go of the net; I couldn’t have held on a moment longer anyway. Spray splashing around him, Saltlick hauled himself over, crashed to the deck.
    I heard rather than saw the snap of the last rope holding us in place, the thud of the anchor being hefted onto the deck. It was all I could do to crawl out of the way, to let the oarsmen take their places.
    I lay back, exhausted, as we pushed our way out towards the cave mouth and open water.
    It didn’t take the palace soldiers long to recover the second boat.
    It started as a speck barely visible in the cave mouth, unthreatening as a fly drowned in a drinking cup. Yet it meant only one thing: for reasons I couldn’t begin to guess at, Ludovoco had no intention of giving up the chase.
    It was sheer chance that our numbers about equalled those of our pursuers. As the hours wore on, it became apparent that their nautical knowledge was no better or worse than ours either. They couldn’t catch us; even if they could have, there wasn’t much they could have done. But nor could we lose them. There were times when we would find some current and draw away, when fog or darkness would obscure them for a while. Those breaks never lasted long, however, and never gave me much hope that we’d seen the last of our persistent new friends.
    The fact that all they could do was keep pace with us begged a question that troubled me more with each passing hour: what did they hope to achieve? The likeliest explanation was that the palace guardsmen were readying for a fight when we arrived at our destination – and perhaps they’d already guessed where that might be. If Ludovoco had realised we were seeking an alliance with Kalyxis and the far-northern tribes, it was too great a threat for him to ignore.
    Then again, maybe they had no plan at all, and were only trailing us as spies. Either way, the frustration lay in not knowing – and more than that, in their inescapable presence. Just because our adversaries posed no great threat while we were on open water, that didn’t mean we could risk their getting too near, let alone ignore them.
    I did my best, however, and tried to lose myself as well as I could in the routine of the days. There was something hypnotic in watching the water slide by, the ever-present mountains drifting past. On their farther, Castovalian side, those mountains rose in gentle, wooded hills that softened their stark outlines; here, they presented their backs to us, a rugged wall of stone that jutted and receded like the fortifications of some gargantuan city. Every so often there would be a beach of grit and pebbles, its edges smudged by the driving surf,