Humusi looked down her long nose at him and grimaced. Ummi flicked him a baleful sneer, as if she hadn’t recently battle-axed the life from a man and casually wiped his blood on her tunic.

“Be careful. Stick close to the Koru.” Dagan put his big hands on my shoulders and kissed me softly on the forehead. “Come home safely to me.”

“You be careful, too.”

They left, and the Koru, Arwia, and I trekked toward the sickroom, kicking up dust in the moonlit night. Eyes wary. Hearts in our throats. As we traveled, I kept the linen pressed to Arwia’s ear while Humusi, ever watchful, gathered stones and tossed them into the brush, checking for assassins who might lie in wait.

As the sickroom came into view and my immediate panic about being caught on the road dwindled, Dagan’s question of marriage floated up into my brain like a specter. For the moment, it seemed we had more pressing concerns to attend to.

I doubted Dagan would like knowing that the delay filled me with a quiet sense of relief.

Unease feathered up my neck as I picked up a candle burning in the dim hallway that led to the Koru sick chamber.

“Through here, Arwia.”

We pushed past rows of beads hanging over the doorway, and stepped inside the room with neat pallets lying in two rows. Ummi and Humusi followed close behind. The overwhelming sense of river rot—the rank, mildewed stench of the fishing docks—greeted me.

The Boatman.

No. I stifled the feeling. Stay away!

But as I stepped into the gloom, the hair stood up on my head.

Something wasn’t right. There was no candle burning near Mirrum’s bed. There was no Mirrum in her bed, either. And where was Mudi?

“Stay back,” Ummi commanded, and Humusi pushed Arwia and me into a corner, covering both of us with her body. Silently, she unsheathed two swords.

Is there another assassin here? For us?

My heart thrummed, fear flowing through my body.

Ummi dropped into a low fighting stance, both battle-axes drawn, and crept through the sickroom, peering under pallets.

I strained to see through the dimness, a single shaft of moonlight from the lone window. I held my candle up higher.

“Mudi?” I called out, my voice choking me.

“Be quiet, Kammani. Let Ummi listen,” Arwia whispered.

Nobody answered me anyway.

“They’re gone! Where could they have gone? Mirrum was too sick to go far.”

She shook her head, a finger to her mouth, and winced against the pain of her ear.

Ummi poked under coverlets with her battle-ax and glided slowly, slowly toward the end of the room, her weapons flashing in the moonlight. Behind Humusi, Arwia and I shivered nervously, her blood soaking through the cloth and running down my arm off my elbow. I had to get her stitched, and soon. She was losing too much blood.

When Ummi reached Mirrum’s rumpled pallet, she bent and flung back the covers to look underneath. She straightened, confusion on her square face.