Emilie & the Hollow World - By Martha Wells Page 0,4
he saw the launch returning a moment ago. It should be coming alongside now-”
Sharp cracks sounded from somewhere nearby, and Emilie flinched and knocked her elbow painfully against the cabinet. Startled, Engal said, “What the-”
“Gunshots,” Barshion gasped. “The launch-”
The two men ran down the corridor, and Emilie pushed to her feet. Gunshots? she thought, astounded. Maybe the guard of the Merry Bell and the other watchmen had been so touchy and suspicious for a good reason. Maybe there really are dock-pirates, Emilie thought. She felt a little like she had stepped into a play.
A door banged open somewhere, men shouted, muffled by distance. Emilie bit her lip. She couldn't stay here. The watchmen would be called, the city constabulary too, probably, and if they searched the ship... Her disastrous plan was getting more disastrous by the moment. Emilie eased to her feet, peeked to make certain the lounge was empty.
She stepped out of the cubby, heard shouts and running footsteps but couldn't tell the direction. She had to see where the robbers were before she knew which way to flee.
She ducked out of the lounge, heading back to the stairway she had passed on the way in. She hurried up to the next deck, finding a foyer with four closed cabin doors and an entrance to another cross-corridor. She ran back toward the starboard side, passed two open doors that led to a darkened dining area, then found a hatch out onto the unlit glassed-in promenade. She went to the railing, looking down through the windows streaked with damp and saltwater spray. It's robbers all right, she thought grimly.
There was a fight on the deck below, near the gate in the railing, above the ladder to the launch platform. Five or six men in the blue coats common to sailors and several others in dark-colored uniforms. She had no idea which were crewmen and which were the robbers.
A gunshot went off and glass shattered at the far end of the promenade. Emilie jerked back with a muffled yelp. Her throat went dry from fear. If she had stepped into a play, she wished she could step back out of it. She bolted back through the hatch and down the corridor.
It didn't go straight through to the port side, but turned into a confusing maze of service cabins and smaller lounges. Emilie had forgotten how absurdly wide this strange ship was, and blundered into a smoking room and a small pantry before finally tripping over the rim of a hatchway out into another larger corridor.
Before she ran ten steps down it, three men in black livery shot out of an intersecting passage and slammed past her, heading starboard. She gasped and flattened herself against the wall. One threw her a confused glance but they clearly didn't have time to stop and question stray girls, whether there were supposed to be any aboard the ship or not. In the light of the crystal sconces, she clearly looked a lot less like a scout for robbers than she had to the watchman on the dark pier. Those must be crewmen, she thought. The bluecoats are the robbers. That was handy to know.
Figuring she had truly used up every bit of her small store of luck by now, Emilie ran faster.
As she reached a passage that ran parallel to the outer port side, the deck shuddered beneath her and she heard the muffled grumble of the engines. They're casting off? she wondered, heading for the nearest hatch. A quick look through the small porthole told her the deck just in front of the hatch was empty, and that this side of the ship was facing the pier. The hatch was closed and locked and she had to wrench the bolts back before she could yank the heavy door open.
Emilie stepped out into a cool breeze, and heard fighting and shouting from the other side of the ship. The vessel wasn't moving yet, but the throb of the engines was growing louder. There were a few deck lamps lit, but there was no one out here to see her.
The ship was anchored some distance from the pier; Emilie would have to swim for it again. She went to the railing and realized she couldn't jump from here: the deck below was wider than this one. Also, she was much higher up now. She hurried along to an outside stairway, tucked into a sheltered nook in the side. She made her steps quiet, but she was