Page 109 of Close Quarter
They had single malt scotch, the best on the bar list, poured by Vasil. The waiter looked grim.
"People are starting to notice odd things," he said, his voice low.
Silas took a sip, and the drink seemed to evaporate on the back of his throat. Peat and smoke. "It'll be over tonight, one way or another."
Vasil paled and looked at Rhys.
"Everything will go back to normal," Rhys said.
Vasil nodded and headed down the bar. Silas strode to a table by the window, Rhys close behind. The fiery ball of the sun hung low and red in the sky, its reflection in the water churned by the passing of their ship.
"What will happen to him if we fail?" Rhys too drank. Then he peered into his glass. "I always thought scotch took the skin off your throat."
"Cheap scotch does."
Rhys glanced at the receipt in his hand and looked up. "Provincial, my ass."
Silas shrugged. "Wait until you meet other fae before you make that judgment."
"Other fae." Rhys examined his glass again.
"What will happen if we fail?"
"If" they failed.If.
He wanted to carve that word out of the English language. Slice the concept out of every tongue he knew.
"If we fail, and if the passengers and crew are lucky, Anaxandros will be too busy with us to bother with anyone on the ship."
A shudder ran through Rhys, and he took another longer pull of scotch. "I thought we'd die."
There were worse, far worse things than dying. Hanging in the dark, throat raw from screaming, smelling blood and piss and excrement for endless days of pain. That voice, that deep, haunting voice, laughing.
Needles pricked the insides of Silas's bones.
He set down his glass and looked out at the sunset.
"If we fail, we won't die. Not for a very long time."
Rhys swirled his glass, his color draining away. "I guess we better not fail."
"No." Silas finished his drink. "We best not."
But hope had stretched so thin, he felt it fray and split as the sun sank into the ocean.
****
Rhys's muscles itched. Every time anyone walked down the path through the garden, he tensed, thinking it was Anaxandros. But the number of people in the garden had dwindled to nothing.
The last person to walk down that path had been Vasil. The waiter had nodded to Silas and then hurried into the main part of the ship.
Vasil hadn't seen Rhys at all, which was good. Sort of.
He should have been the one sitting as bait.
But Silas had insisted, and so Silas sat. Well, he paced now. An hour after Vasil left, Silas had risen from the wooden bench and started walking up and down the path they'd chosen as their battleground.
Rhys lurked behind a stand of rhododendron, his back against a lemon tree, sword leaning next to him. At first he'd clutched it like a talisman, but after his arm cramped he had set it down.
