LITMIR.BIZ

      “Here! What are you doing? Are you mad?” A hand caught Stone’s arm, jerked him back.

      Stone was standing at the prow of a boat, trying to climb onto the railing. The shackles he wore on his ankles and wrists wouldn’t allow it.

      “Of course you’re mad,” the voice attached to the hand muttered. “What was I thinking?” It was male, belonging to the officer in charge of the soldiers escorting Stone up the river to the Adaran capital.

      “Sergeant!” He shouted back down the length of the boat, and the fat guard from the prison came clattering up the stairs to the high foredeck.

      “Sir!” The sergeant came to attention, obviously missing the presence of his pike. He had nothing to pound on the deck.

      “Who, Sergeant, is supposed to be guarding the prisoner this watch?” The icy fury in the lieutenant’s voice made even Stone shiver with fear.

      “I am, sir. Me and Dyrney. The Tibran’s asleep.” The guard’s voice faltered as he realized just who his superior held by the elbow. “Or he was. How’d he get out?”

      “Precisely what I would like to know.”

      So would he. Stone had lost time. Hours, if not days. He did not remember boarding this boat.

      Stone tried his voice, swallowed and tried again. “How long—” His voice crackled, as if he’d either not been using it, or been using it too much.

      “I dunno, sir,” the sergeant answered the lieutenant. “I swear we was watchin’ him. He couldn’t’ve got out the door.”

      “Then perhaps he left by the window, hmm?” The officer turned to Stone, impaling him on the glare from his uncanny blue eyes. Save for those eyes, this man looked like a proper officer. His brown hair was pulled smoothly back from a high forehead into that tight Adaran queue, his face set and hard with an attitude of command. His rank was marked by a single white ribbon on either shoulder of his dun-colored tunic.

      “How long?” He repeated Stone’s question. “Are you with us, warrior?”

      Stone cleared his throat. “How long have we been traveling?”

      The man leaned closer, peering into Stone’s face. “Yes, I believe you are here. Welcome back. Do you recall who I am?”

      It took some effort, but Stone finally dredged up the information. “Lieutenant Joh…I don’t remember your other name. Twenty-first Infantry.”

      “Joh Suteny, but that doesn’t matter.” He continued staring.

      “How long?” Stone asked again.

      “Oh. Yes. We have been on the river almost one full day.” He gestured at the lowering sun, then at the stairway. “Shall we go down?”

      Surprised by the courtesy—it was seldom offered to prisoners in shackles—Stone shuffled toward the steps. The sergeant moved as if to take Stone’s arm, but the lieutenant got there first.

      “I will secure the prisoner,” he said, his voice all ice and iron. “Since it seems your incompetence knows no bounds.”

      “Yessir. Nossir.” The fat guard bobbed his head, backed away.

      The lieutenant had to hold Stone upright during the descent down the steep gangway. The shackles made it almost impossible to maintain his balance.

      “However did you get up there?” Suteny asked in a mild conversational tone as they made their slow way down the walkway to the cabin that was his prison during the river journey.

      “Up is easier than down.”

      “When you leave us—” Suteny opened the cabin door and ushered him inside, then followed to lean against the closed door “—where do you go?”

      Stone shuffled to the bunk and sat down. How had he got out of the cabin? He would have sworn his shoulders could never fit through that porthole.

      “Warrior?” The Adaran spoke.

      Oh yes. He’d asked a question, hadn’t he? Stone fought through the fog clouding his mind. He didn’t have the brains Fox had, but he’d never had trouble thinking. What was wrong with him? Was he mad? “I don’t know,” he said. “I—the time is just…gone. I don’t—”

      But he did remember something. An urgency. A pull. A need to—“I have to go…somewhere. I’m—I’m looking for something. I don’t know what it is. But I must find it. I must. Or…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t find it. Bad things, I think.”

      “I see.” The lieutenant looked down, seeming to think. “I am afraid we are going to have to add to your burden. I have been ordered to treat you with courtesy, as far as I might. But when you do not yourself know what you are doing…

      “I will make the chain a long one so that you may move about the cabin, and you may take the air on deck with an escort, as the journey is several more days. But—for your own safety—I must chain you in place. Do you understand?”

      Stone

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