Page 34 of A Tribute of Fire

He considered my question before answering, “I suppose you can remove the man from Daemonia, but not Daemonia from the man.”

A sailor standing near a rowboat at the farthest dock whistled. It was an indication that our time was up.

“Thank you,” I said to Demaratus. “For everything. If I live, it will only be because of you and all that you’ve taught me.”

“If you live, it will be because of you.” He cleared his throat again, and I wondered if he was wrestling with the same kind of emotions that I was. “Hold to the code and you will be fine.”

“I’m not Daemonian,” I reminded him.

“In all but birth, you are.”

It was the most complimentary thing he’d ever said.

“Well.” He gave me a slight, uncomfortable nod and then began to walk away. I watched him for a moment. Then I turned, intending to retrieve Quynh and be on our way.

“Stupid girl.”

Demaratus had never said those words to me in that tone before. He was usually angry and shouted them at me. Now they were soft, sweet. There was so much emotion in his voice—regret, concern, and something that felt like love.

But when I turned to face him, his expression had gone blank, his voice closer to his regular monotone.

“Try not to die.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I swapped out my dagger for Demaratus’s xiphos and placed the dagger into my pack. Andronicus saw me approaching and gave Quynh one last hug, then one last lingering kiss.

She was crying as we made our way to the rowboat. The witness stood there and verified with a nod that we were the right maidens. A sailor offered me his hand to help me into the boat, but I ignored him and climbed in alone. I very nearly capsized us both but found my footing and stabilized myself.

Despite living near the ocean, I hadn’t ever spent much time on boats. The Ilionians had made it a crime for us to build any ship bigger than a fishing vessel, to ensure that we could never go to war against them again. My brother had sneaked past the blockade on a foreign trader’s ship.

I helped Quynh into the rowboat and we sat down together on a bench near the front. The witness and the sailor who had whistled us over climbed in after me, and the men began to row.

My face was turned toward the shore. I stared at the palace, the only home I had ever known, pushing down the emotions that were fighting to surface.

Then I turned my eyes toward Mount Knemis, the highest point in the Opuntian range. Those mountains were the western border of Locris, impassable, hemming us in.

Mount Knemis would be the first thing that I saw when I returned to my country and I wanted that image burned into my mind.

It didn’t take long for us to reach the Ilionian ship. I turned and saw that it was no ordinary vessel. It was a trireme—a warship.

I shook my head in disbelief. They had sent a warship to retrieve us.

Was that to intimidate all of Locris, or had it been meant just to scare Quynh and me?

The trireme was approximately a hundred feet long, twenty feet across at the widest part. The ends of the ship came to sharp points, where they were covered in bronze shielding, and there were massive eyes painted on each end. Giant masts shot up straight to the sky, but no sails were up.

There were three banks for rowers. The top bank was on the deck, the other two on the levels beneath. The three levels were where the ship got its name. Oars stuck out of holes in the side, their tips covered in leather.

Haemon had been fascinated by ships, especially triremes. He had told me on more than one occasion that they were deceptively light and strong, capable of easily navigating very deep or extremely shallow waters. That they could take a lot of damage and holes but stay afloat.

I wondered if a ship like this one had been responsible for his death.

And I hated that I would never know.

I saw the ship’s name painted on the southern end.

Nikos.

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