The boat smelled of tar, bell metal and oranges.
There were eight oranges in a shallow basket under the stern bench. Selka saw them as she stumbled aboard. Someone had bought fruit for a pleasant journey, perhaps as a gift. For no reason she could bear to examine, that made her want to cry.
“Sit down,” Sorell said.
“Anet—”
“Sit. Or push.”
Selka took a pole. The freed prisoners crowded into the boat; Iven shifted them forward so the stern would not sink. Darr came last. His brother reached for him and caught his bloody sleeve.
Ruun lowered itself into the bow. The boat settled frighteningly. They hauled the temple stone aboard on its canvas, and Selka heard Sorell draw breath through her teeth.
“No more of those.”
“There are no more,” Selka said.
“Glad to hear it. Push.”
They got clear before the launch could reach them. Arrows struck the water behind. Iven pulled the small sail up, then lowered it again when Sorell hissed at him. Too much to catch in the wind, too easy a thing to see.
The forewoman guided them toward an old estuary channel beyond the docks. Selka could see the open downstream river and wanted it. Freedom lay there, the coast, somewhere she could take her daughter away from this.
Ruun turned its face upstream.
“The anchor,” Selka said.
Darr looked at her. “Still home?”
“The original. This was only another branch.”
He closed his eyes. Kerr's hand remained on his arm.
“I'm going back,” Selka said. She looked toward her daughter. “You aren't.”
Anet was securing a rope. “You haven't told me anything yet.”
“I know enough.”
“Then you're doing well out of the arrangement.”
Sorell took them into the channel. Reeds closed around the hull; the pursuing launch could not follow without dropping its men onto the banks. Darr looked back at the town. On the military road a group of riders moved fast, dust and wet mud rising behind them.
“Voss,” he said. “He'll be there before us.”
“Yes.”
Kerr spat into the river. “Good to know what we're catching up with.”
They poled until Reedgate disappeared behind reeds. Only then did Selka put the pole down. Her hands had cramped around it.
“How did you get here?” she asked Anet.
Her daughter sat on the orange basket's lid. “By boat.”
Selka stared at her.
“We left the morning after you. The criers said the god was going. My reserve was dimmer every time I used it. We had the commission anyway.” She lifted the remaining bell, still wrapped in cloth. “It seemed sensible to deliver these and find out what they were calling peace.”
“We've been here since yesterday,” Sorell added. “Sold two. The third buyer decided celebration meant he shouldn't have to pay.”
Anet grinned at her, briefly. Selka found herself excluded from a little shared story. She had asked for Anet to have a life, then expected to be present for all of it.
“The bellows?”
Iven tapped the box beneath his feet.
“Food?”
“Three days,” Sorell said. “For four people. Not this many.”
Darr took out the escort's last ration bag. Kerr looked at it as if it were a splendid new invention.
“We can put those who want the coast ashore at the next safe reach,” Selka said. “There are trading boats.”
Darr shook his head. “Kerr's leg may still be living on stolen motion. If the god dies in those irons, it goes dark wherever he is. I'm not bringing him home to another engine.”
He looked upstream. “My mother will still be under the north ward. Without the barrier, without heat. She may not get through winter.”
“I can't tell you she will,” Selka said. “Nor Anet. I could have said those words on the platform and kept the pipe warm.”
“For now.”
“For now. I wanted to. I still want to.” She looked at Ruun's irons. “But I won't put it into another hearth to buy the same answer again. I'll go back to the anchor. I won't ask you to call that safe.”
Darr rubbed blood from his sleeve. “We get people out of the wards before we break it. Find fuel. Find hands. It may not be enough.”
“It may not.”
“Then I go too. And I tell her myself what I've done.”
His brother settled on the bench. “You could ask me.”
Darr looked at him, chastened.
“I was going to say the same,” Kerr said. “But ask.”
Selka watched the captain nod. Then she looked at Anet, who was looking back.
The boat slid deeper into the reeds. Ruun sat in the bow with its wet hands on the stone, listening.