“Yoh! Heave! Ho! That’s it, yoh, heave, ho!”

The boatman Lesse shouted rhythmically as he rowed the little craft. His handling of the oar was a thing of beauty.

“A night of tryst runs swift like a fast current,
A night of longing drags on slow as a stagnant stream—”

Now he’d even started singing some river shanty or other. Damn good voice for an old man.

That was all well and good, but hopefully he hadn’t forgotten he was carrying a fugitive.

I gripped the cargo lashings and stared absently at the pitch-black surface of the water. Ink poured out across a page—that’s what it looked like. Eerie.

At the moment, I was escaping by water aboard the boat of Lieutenant Crimine’s personal boatman, Lesse. The roads were completely sealed off, but with the waterways we could slip out to the outer canals.