I hold my hand out for the knife, but she grips it tighter in her bloody right hand, her eyes skittering away from me.
“Need it,” she mutters. “Not. Safe.”
A fish scaler won’t save her if she’s found. But if it brings her comfort, who am I to deny that?
“Don't use it on yourself again. I can get rid of your marks myself.”
She nods.
“You can’t make any noise. I'm going to get bandages, but if someone sees me it might take a while.”
She nods again. I wish I could ask the ship’s surgeon if a skinned forearm is even survivable, but I’m just going to pray to allsix gods this isn’t the end of everything I’ve been working toward. If I’m caught saving her, I’m very dead. It won’t matter that the War-Father raised me himself.
The crates are heavy. I shove one over with a grunt, my feet grinding into the floor. I push until it’s between the others, forming a wall around the Enchanted.
The space she’s in now is only two feet deep and four feet wide. And when I stack another crate on top of this one, there will be barely any light. Little better than being buried alive. But she doesn’t protest. She just stares as I wedge it more carefully into place, making sure there are no gaps somebody could see her through.
“Teraze,” she whispers.
“What?”
“My name. I. Remembered.” Her voice sounds thin. Probably from pain.
“Just stay quiet.” I lift another crate up to hide her.
The ship’s wood creaks again.
“Thank. You,” she whispers, so soft I barely hear. My heart clenches tight. I blink rapidly.
“Caitevin?” someone calls behind me. It sounds like Harfor, my chosen squire, and a friend for even longer. I drop the crate down with a thud, hiding the Enchanted from view as my heart slams so fast it might burst.
“Yes?” I call back, turning around. The wood creaks again: that’s the stairs. I walk toward them, and a moment later Harfor reaches the base.
“What are you doing down here?” my squire asks, one eyebrow raised, confused but not accusing. Harfor’s black hair hangs in long braids, ribboned with pops of red and gold from the fights she’s won. She’s nearly thirty, and as good a hand with a sword as I am, but when the Exalted God-Emperor still hadn’t knighted her by twenty-six, the same age I am now, she gave up and resigned herself to a life of squiring.
If she were a man, she’d have been knighted by twenty.
“I’m thinking of setting up a space,” I babble, then kick myself inwardly. I should have just said I was stretching my legs. I nervously grip the necklace the War-Father gave me years ago. The metal pendant disc, with its protective enchantment, is cool in my hand.
“A space?” Harfor asks.
“Some cushions. A reading light.”
The look Harfor gives me strongly implies that I have, at long last, gone utterly insane.
“...Here?”
“Sure.” I step toward the stairs, one hand still clasped around the necklace’s pendant for comfort, hoping I can get Harfor to turn and walk back with me. The Enchanted behind me is hidden well enough from view, I think, but one noise from her and it’s over. She’s lost a lot of blood. What if she passes out and collapses? What if she bangs her injury on one of the crates in the dark, and screams?
Harfor’s head tilts to the side.
“I thought you hated being below the waterline.”
“I’m sick of bumping into sailors every way I turn,” I mutter. “Just thought…”
“I’ll help.”
I blink at her.