“That’s… that’s actually not a bad idea,” Katryn said to Loki, when she’d recovered from the shock of the two dazed and battered-looking kids who’d come sailing out of the hole in the wall and landed on the Horizon Chaser’s deck. “If they came from those caves you mentioned, we might be able to send them into town to get supplies.”
“Oh, well, I suppose that might work, too,” Loki said. “Assuming you can trust them… and that they can find their way back out… and that they don’t die of their injuries.”
“They don’t actually look that bad,” Katryn said, getting to her feet and taking a step towards them. She stopped, her hands going to the curved daggers tucked into her sash, and she took another, more cautious step.
“Technically, as they’re on your boat without permission, they’re stowaways, and the law of the sea says you can do what you want with them,” Loki said.
“Oh, hush,” Katryn said. “And she’s a ship, not a boat.”
The boy, wearing a torn black shirt of thin cotton, stirred and groaned. Loki surreptitiously lowered himself down towards the deck, becoming somewhat more solid in appearance.
“Hey, kid, are you alright?” Katryn asked him, taking one hand off a dagger hilt to offer it to him. She noticed he had a bronze-hilted knife hanging on a leather strap slung over his shoulder… it was a wonder he hadn’t sliced himself open during the fall, but its sheath seemed intact and so did he.
“Where… where are we?”
“Kat’s Grotto,” Katryn said, though she’d never thought to give it a name. Loki snorted. “At least, I guess it is, since it’s mine and I’m Kat. Katryn. Katryn O’Sheana.”
“Jace,” the boy said. He was a lithe, svelte thing, with a slick-looking pelt and swimming feet. He was bleeding from one elbow and both knees, but he looked pretty good otherwise. The girl, who seemed slower to recover, looked like a drowned seagull, with grayish-brownish, dirty-looking feathers ruffled up the wrong way and broken. “That’s Sheiral. She’s a skylander, I think… I rescued her from slavers.”
Katryn looked at Loki, who looked at her blades.
“Those would be slavers you thoroughly outwitted hundreds of miles away before escaping undetected to this island, or slavers who are still looking for your in the neighborhood of Keeper’s Cove?” Loki asked him.
“Um, actually, they were following us up the mountain,” Jace said. “I tried to lose them and then block off the cave entrance, but the governor…”
“The governor?” Katryn repeated. “Lord Memnur, Crown Governor of Keeper’s Grove?”
“I don’t know… I don’t think I’ve ever heard his name,” Jace said. “He’s just the governor. He might be the one you said.”
“Do you think Faresia has more than one governor?” Loki asked them both.
“This could get very bad, very quickly,” Katryn said.
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