He looked to Luis, clutching the tree trunk of a tiller, and asked permission to use his bunk. The big trader nodded, and Will went forward, gritting his teeth as a honed needle jabbed his guts, through and through.

The windowless cuddy had the distressing size and feel of a burial vault. Will stretched out in the hot enclosure on a moldy straw-tick mattress. He would be better off prone—blood less likely to run out of the wound. A cockroach darted across the floor, paused to test the air with its feelers, and then slipped into a crack in a vanishing that was the next thing to a dematerialization. Another scampered across Will’s leg. He whisked it off, listened to the welcome sound of water moving under a keel, and felt the old, familiar motions of a vessel under way. Then he arched his back against another jab, sharper and more sustained. Son of a bitch. Must think about something else, he said to himself, something that requires concentration. Will Terhune, his hands folded tightly over the bandanna under his shirt, tried to assemble a plausible narrative explaining how Francisco and Tío Enrique had found out and when. How much did they find out? he asked himself. Only that I slept with Elvira, or do they also know that we’re smuggling her to Havana? If Tío Enrique knows that, then Rosaria had better come with us, because things will go very badly for her. She was right. Must think with a cold head. Not that it made any difference now, but tracing a hypothetical chain of conscious action linked to random accident helped Will detach his mind from his body’s suffering.

There is no such thing as luck, Rosaria claimed. Well, sorry, old woman, there is, thought Will, and what happened to me was bad luck. If Francisco had arrived at the harbor five or ten minutes later, I would have been gone; if Nat had been loading the last cart with Drew instead of me, Francisco would have had to board the boat to get near me, and I doubt he would have had the nerve.