‘Strange weapon,’ she said. ‘Nothing like what I’m used to.’ She held it up at the sky. ‘Short. Different materials shoved together. Doesn’t look like much.’

She tested the draw and gave a slight sound of surprise, then handed it back. Her brows came together. ‘Who did you steal it from?’

‘I didn’t steal it,’ Dion said firmly.

‘Your family rich?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Yet you somehow end up here in Lamara, looking for work in the sun king’s navy.’

‘Family feud,’ Dion invented.

The stocky woman grinned. ‘And it’s clear you’re not the one who inherited your father’s wealth.’ She changed tack. ‘Have you ever hunted wildren, Dion?’

He thought about the fury he’d killed on the shore at Cinder Fen, and the arrow he’d placed in the head of the coiled serpent before its larger cousin arrived. ‘Yes.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I build boats as well as sail them, so I’m busy now, but come back an hour before sunset. Ask for Roxana. Everyone knows me.’

Roxana suddenly turned and swore as she saw something the slaves were doing on the boat. Considering himself dismissed, Dion began to walk away.

‘Oh, and Dion?’ she added.

‘Yes?’

‘Let’s hope you’re brave. The reason I need men is because I lose so many. But the sun king pays good bonuses for dead wildren.’

She grinned, and Dion left her to her work.

Dion’s room was on the third story of the House of Algar. It was simple but clean, with a linen bed pallet stuffed full of straw for sleeping and a small chest for possessions. A thin curtain covered the window and the room was high enough to provide a view of the streets around the palace and block some of the city’s noises and smells.

He spent the day watching from his window, wondering if the fates would smile on him and he would see the first consul’s daughter. He examined passing groups of soldiers and countless women in shawls and veils, but when late afternoon came and he hadn’t seen her he wasn’t surprised.

He pondered time and again what Kargan and Solon would have done with her. Chloe would have been questioned, undoubtedly, and with such men questioning often involved torture. But would they torture the first consul’s daughter? If they harmed her they would lose some of their negotiating position. Surely she would be in the palace, safe and well.

But he wasn’t certain that their plans involved using Chloe as a bargaining chip. If all they wanted her for was questioning, or if Kargan had taken her on a whim with the sun king having little use for her, she could already be dead.

Dion abandoned this line of thought. He had to assume she was alive.