Once Son and Eiko had finished sewing Backy into his shroud, two other crew members helped lift him over the gunwale. Weighted with a piece of broken chain sewn into the tarpaulin with him, his body slid under as soon as it hit the white chop of the sea.

No one said anything in his honor. They just looked over the side at the approximate area where he had gone into the water. A place set apart from the rest of the sea’s surface, like a doorway Backy had passed through. But it became more and more difficult to remember where it was as the Sea Wolf moved relentlessly away. Finally, it was just ocean, undifferentiated from the rest.

The guards tipped Bjarte’s body bag overboard. After it splashed into the water, the woman called Monk spat into the ocean. Each of the other three guards who had carried Bjarte’s body did the same.

Eiko folded the needle in his palm. They would forget they had lent it. Later he could hide it in the mesh of his hammock or elsewhere.

Now there are seven.

The Sea Wolf’s pace was relentless. But it was still heavy, off-balance. The ship lumbered through the chop.

They would have to put into port soon. Son had said they were moving south. Maybe headed to Vancouver, or Seattle. The slave crew would be locked belowdecks, but there might be an opportunity …

Eiko wasn’t the only one thinking of it. The listless conversations in the barracks, which stank of cleaning fluid and sweat—and of death, though that might be a trick of the mind—were all about when they would put into port. Though nobody talked of escape, afraid the guards were listening—or, more terrifyingly, that the mind behind the armored steel door of the wheelhouse was listening—Eiko knew everyone was thinking of it. Especially after the attack, and Backy’s death.

Was the weather growing warmer? But they could not have come that far yet. There were seven mercenaries left. There were over twenty crew. The guards could make a mistake—or be pushed to make one. Anything could happen. Close to shore, the slaves might have a chance.

Eiko walked the many rooms, gardens, and eras of the Minaguchi-ya, his memory palace, collecting scrolls he had hidden in stone lanterns, in the folded pieces of paper slid beneath tatami mats, under a sake cup on a shelf in the kitchen: everything he knew about the guards’ movements and habits, their personalities and quirks. Each night, after Son had fallen asleep, Eiko lay awake in his hammock. But in his mind, he sat cross-legged in the garden of the Minaguchi-ya, where he had gathered the scrolls in a pile. He read each one carefully, preparing himself.

When they came into port, he would be ready to act.