Mari hopped to the street and raced toward her destination. The wooden planks rattled beneath her paws. Two sailors sat at a small table atop the deck, playing cards and laughing away the evening. They would be no threat to her. Since they weren’t imperial soldiers, they might even be of use…

She landed atop the table in a clatter of cards and chits. The man and woman cursed and fell from their chairs, one reaching for a knife clipped to his belt while the other scrambled in a panic for the gangplank.

“Halt,” Mari snarled. The word-lace around her throat shimmered blue, translating the meaning of her words so the two would understand. “Or else I chase.”

The woman by the plank halted and slowly turned about. Both were young, and the reek of alcohol on their breath was nauseating to Mari’s enhanced sense of smell. No doubt they’d been celebrating their arrival to Vallessau nonstop since that morning.

“Wh-wh-what do you want?” the man with the knife asked.

“I seek the acolytes you brought as passengers,” Mari said, glaring at that knife. The man followed her gaze, saw her bone wings twitching eagerly, and immediately dropped it to the deck with a weak thud.

“You mean the crazy fanatics?” he said. “Oh shit. Oh shit. We don’t know. I swear, we don’t know, do we, Slin?”

“It’s true,” Slin said behind him. “We docked, they got off. That’s it. That’s all me and Kirt know.”

Mari sighed. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Both sailors retreated back a step, and it took all her control not to laugh. In her Lioness form, her sigh had come across as a faint snarl.

“Which bunks belonged to the fanatics?” she asked them.

Slin pointed to the door leading to the lower cabins.

“The doors are numbered,” she said. “Four, five, and six all belonged to them. You, uh, you can read numbers, right?”

Mari smiled sweetly at her, showing off her sparkling white fangs.

“I can read. Now run to the nearest tavern, drink yourself into a stupor, and tell no one of my arrival. Because if I hear rumors of the Lioness visiting the docks, well…” She flicked her tail. “I’ll know who to blame.”

The two sailors were all too eager to follow those commands. They fled down the plank, leaving Mari with free rein over the boat. She trotted through the lower doorway, her wings folded in tightly across her back to fit in the ensuing narrow hallway. The doors had numbers carved across their fronts, and at door 4, she nudged it open with her forehead and entered. There wasn’t much to it, two tiny bunks on the floor, two hammocks hanging above them, and a tiny glass window so dirty and fogged, she doubt it served much purpose beyond letting in a sliver of light during the day.