A murmur passed through the crew.

Weapons were drawn.

Lila swore beneath her breath, her eyes straying for an instant to the palace arcing over the river behind them, as a weak thought flickered through her—she should have stayed, could have stayed, would have been safe—but Lila tamped it out and clutched her knives.

She was Delilah Bard, and she would live or die on her own damn—

A fist connected with her stomach, shattering the train of thought. A second collided with her jaw. Lila went down hard in the street, one knife skittering from her grip as her vision was shattered by starbursts. She fought to her hands and knees, clutching the second blade, but a boot came down hard on her wrist. Another met her ribs. Something caught her in the side of the head, and the world slipped out of focus for several long moments, shuddering back into shape only as strong hands dragged her to her feet. A sword came to rest under her chin, and she braced herself, but her world didn’t end with a bite of the blade.

Instead, a leather strap, not unlike the one she’d cut to free the purse, was wrapped around her wrists and cinched tight, and she was forced down the docks.

The men’s voices filled her head like static, one word bouncing back and forth more than the rest.

Casero. She didn’t know what it meant.

She tasted blood, but she couldn’t tell if it was coming from her nose or her mouth or her throat. It wouldn’t matter, if they were planning to dump her body in the Isle (unless that was sacrilegious, which made Lila wonder what people here did with their dead), but after several moments of heated discussion, she was marched up the plank onto the ship she’d spent all afternoon watching. She heard a thud and looked back to see a man set the bearded corpse on the plank. Interesting, she thought, dully. The men didn’t carry it aboard.

All the while, Lila held her tongue, and her silence only seemed to rattle the crew. They shouted at each other, and at her. More men appeared. More calls for casero. Lila wished she’d had more than a handful of days to study Arnesian. Did casero mean trial? Death? Murder?

And then a man strode across the deck, wearing a black sash and an elegant hat, a gleaming sword and a dangerous smile, and the shouting stopped, and Lila understood.

Casero meant captain.

* * *

The captain of the Night Spire was striking. And strikingly young. His skin was sea tanned but smooth; his hair, a rich brown threaded with brass, was pinned back with an elegant clasp. His eyes, a blue so dark they were almost black, went from the body on the plank, to the crowd of gathered men, to Lila. A sapphire glittered in his left brow.

“Kers la?” he asked.

The five who’d dragged Lila on board broke into noise. She didn’t even try to follow along and pick out words as they railed on around her. Instead she kept her eyes on the captain, and though he was obviously listening to their claims, he kept his eyes on her. When they’d burned themselves out, the captain began to interrogate her—or at least ramble at her. He didn’t seem particularly angry, simply put out. He pinched the bridge of his nose and spoke very fast, obviously unaware of the fact she didn’t know more than a few words of Arnesian. Lila waited for him to realize, and eventually he must have recognized the emptiness in her stare for lack of comprehension, because he trailed off.

“Shast,” he muttered under his breath, and then started up again, slowly, trying out several other languages, each either more guttural or more fluid than Arnesian, hoping to catch the light of understanding in her eyes, but Lila could only shake her head. She knew a few words of French, but that probably wouldn’t help her in this world. There was no France here.

“Anesh,” said the captain at last, an Arnesian word that as far as Lila could tell was a general sound of assent. “Ta …” He pointed at her. “… vasar …” He drew a line across his throat. “… mas …” He pointed at himself. “… eran gast.” With that, he pointed at the body of the man she’d gutted.

Gast. She knew that word already. Thief.

“Ta vasar mas eran gast.”

You killed my best thief.

Lila smiled despite herself, adding the new words to her meager arsenal.

“Vasar es,” said one of the men, pointing at Lila. Kill her. Or perhaps, Kill him, since Lila was pretty sure they hadn’t figured out yet that she was a girl. And she had no intention of informing them. She might have been a long way from home, but some things didn’t change, and she’d rather be a man, even if that meant a dead one. And the crew seemed to be gunning for that end, as a murmur of approval went through the group, punctuated by vasar.

The captain ran a hand over his hair, obviously considering it. He raised a brow at Lila as if to say, Well? What would you have me do?

Lila had an idea. It was a very stupid idea. But a stupid idea was better than no idea, at least in theory. So she dragged the words into shape and delivered them with her sharpest smile. “Nas,” she said, slowly. “An to eran gast.”

No. I am your best thief.

She held the captain’s gaze when she said it, her chin high and proud. The others grumbled and growled, but to her they didn’t matter, didn’t exist. The world narrowed to Lila and the captain of the ship.

His smile was almost imperceptible. The barest quirk of his lips.

Others were less amused by her show. Two of them advanced on her, and in the time it took Lila to retreat a matching step, she had another knife in hand. Which was a feat, considering the leather strap that bound her wrists. The captain whistled, and she couldn’t tell if it was an order for his men, or a sound of approval. It didn’t matter. A fist slammed into her back and she staggered forward into the captain, who caught her wrists and pressed a groove between her bones. Pain shot up her arm, and the knife clattered to the deck. She glared up into the captain’s face. It was only inches from her own, and when his eyes bore into hers, she felt them searching.