That night I debated with myself whether or not to try to slip away. Once I thought the Attolian asleep, I left the cabin and made my way to the stern to look at the rowboat bobbing along at the length of its rope. I would have to pull it close, climb over the rail, and then lower myself into it without anyone seeing me. If I fell, I’d drown. I’d like to think that I stayed on the Anet’s Dream because it was prudent, not because I was afraid. I told myself I was still too close to Ianna-Ir. I planned to wait for our first stop at a real town where I could slip from the boat directly to a dock and hide more easily among the buildings than out where there was nothing but rushes.

The next day was as quiet as the first. We sat, mostly in silence, watching the riverbank slowly slide by.

“You said you were reciting from the first tablet,” said the Attolian.

“There are more than a hundred in the temple of Anet alone,” I said. “No one knows how many there are altogether. Scholars argue about it. Some of the tablets are retellings of other tablets, only differing in style. Sometimes parts of the story change. In some versions Ennikar takes the honey from Cassa’s hives because he does not know that they aren’t wild hives . . .”

Handsome Ennikar helped himself

knew not cultivated from uncultivated

blessed from unblessed

Furious Cassa drove him off

sent her warriors against him stinging

until he fled honey smeared

“In other versions, he is about to help himself when he meets Cassa and she gives him the honey. Later he shares it with Immakuk when they meet on the road.”

I was nattering. I bit my tongue, and it was quiet again.

In the dark at the end of the next day, we arrived at the bridge just below Sherguz. The caravan sites on either side of the river loomed—black backdrops to the burning lights of the town, like truncated versions of the ziggurats in Ianna-Ir—but these were not temples, unless they were for the worship of trade. The sloping walls protected the warehouses and meeting grounds of the merchant caravans that moved along the emperor’s roads.

I was alarmed when the crew moored us, as usual, mid-river. When I asked why, the captain said we would move into the dock in the morning to avoid a fee from the town for the overnight docking. I went to look again at the rowboat floating on the black water and decided it was still wisest to wait until the next day and see what happened. If I could not get to shore, I would take the little boat the next night.

I wrapped myself in my smelly blanket and fell asleep only to wake to shouting. The Attolian stood over me, buckling his armor. There was a crashing roar and the shouting became screaming. I could smell smoke as the deck underneath me shivered.

“Up!” shouted the Attolian. “The ship is on fire!”

Before I could move, the ceiling overhead exploded and I threw myself under the sleeping bench. With my back pressed against the wall of the ship, I looked out from under the bench at a smoking spear that had buried itself in the deck where I had been lying.

I was still staring at it when the Attolian grabbed me by the ankle and ruthlessly dragged me out. He hauled me out onto the deck, where men were running past. The captain and his sons had given up saving the ship and were snatching at possessions before they leapt over the side. The rigging above us was all on fire, the sail a rippling sheet of flames flaring over our heads. The ropes holding a spar had burned through, and that was what had dropped to pierce the flimsy roof of the cabin, almost impaling me.

The Attolian pulled me to the side of the ship. Unlike the sailors, I couldn’t go into the river. “I can’t, I can’t—” I shouted as we got closer to the railing, but I didn’t have any choice. The Attolian jumped up onto the railing and pulled me up as well, in spite of my desperate struggle to get free. I felt my shift tear and I almost slipped away, but the Attolian adjusted his grip, cursing, and threw me into the water. I was screaming as it closed over me and directly inhaled an entire lungful.

Sprawled underneath the surface, I didn’t know at first which way was up. I clawed my way toward the moonlight, coughing out water and gasping for air before I sank again. I felt the pressure wave as the Attolian landed with a huge splash nearby. I was still flailing when his hand caught me under the arm and lifted me up. Clutching at him, I gasped, “I can’t swim! I can’t swim!”—first in Mede and then in Attolian. I would be more proud of my ability to translate during such a crisis if the Attolian hadn’t calmly suggested I stand up.

The water came only to my chin, not even to his shoulder. When I’d stretched for a footing and found it, I glared at him from the corner of my eye.

“Good thing it isn’t deeper,” he observed.

If he had previously displayed any sense of humor, I would have suspected him of laughing at me, but what he said was no more than the truth. In his armor he would have sunk like a stone, swimmer or not.

“I’m sorry about the captain’s ship,” he said, watching the burning boat, and if he didn’t sound very sorry, it was the only sign of how much he’d hated being cooped up in the tiny cabin.

Each time I bobbed up to make it a little easier to catch a breath, the current of the river gently moved me downstream. The Attolian, impervious to the current because of his greater weight, finally took me by the arm and towed me toward the shore.

We made an uncomfortable progress to the riverbank. My feet trailed behind me, and my head went down into the water. In order to breathe, I hung around his neck until we reached a spot where we could scramble out of the water. I had an easier time than the Attolian, who made several attempts on the muddy slope before he gave up and stood in the waist-deep water to unbuckle his armor and sword and pass them up to me on the bank.

Once he’d pulled himself up, we both turned again to watch the Anet’s Dream. Having burned through its anchor lines, it had begun to float downstream. All around it, smaller boats were swarming, their boatmen striving to keep the burning wreck from drifting down onto any other ship. Already another boat was on fire and its crew was abandoning it, too. Some of them could be seen, black figures against the flames, as they climbed down into smaller boats. Some were jumping directly into the water. As we watched, another boat’s rigging was suddenly engulfed.

“Well,” said the Attolian, “that is all of my king’s money gone.”

My pride was still stinging, and I asked him, “You didn’t get your purse?” He’d certainly made haste to get his armor out of our bags.

“It fell off in the river,” he said.

I sighed to myself. What sort of idiot can’t keep his purse tied to his belt? I declined to consider the obvious answer—one with a man clinging to him like a monkey in the water.

“Our clothes, too,” he said morosely.

He’d had a bundle of clothes suitable for me to change into once we were away from prying eyes—anyone who would have noticed a slave walking aboard the ship and a free man walking off. If the clothes weren’t burned, they were on their way to the bottom of the river with the Attolian’s purse.

I reached for my own purse and found it just where it should be—stupidly revealing its existence to the Attolian.

“Do you have enough for a night at an inn?” he asked.

Concealing my reluctance, I untied the purse and gave it to him. “There’s not much there,” I said.