The rest of the journey took less than an hour after the crow had left. Rannok spent most of it worrying and trying not to chew on his fingernails too much. They eventually slowed to a stop near a massive body of water, so wide Rannok could barely see across it to the other side. He jumped down from the cart without waiting and peered out over the gleaming water. It was the color of mud, and a few gulls drifted lazily over the surface.

A ship floated next to a wooden dock. It didn't look like the sort of ships that had brought Rannok to Horizon initially. This one was squat, and the ends curved upwards, but in the middle the deck was completely flat and close to the water line. Rannok squinted, but he couldn't see anyone on the decks. He wondered how such a vessel even moved through the water.

"Sit back down!"

Pirya's barking caught him so off-guard that Rannok stumbled backwards into the carriage. His head made a thump sound as it collided with the edge of the carriage. The woman's hawk eyes watched him as he crawled back into his seat.

"I will be very upset if the constable sold me an indentured servant stupid enough to attempt to take off before his debt is paid," she said. Her eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed until it looked like she'd just been sucking on a lemon. "We will be loading shortly. You are to sit here quietly until we are finished."

Rannok nodded his head, but didn't speak or look at Pirya. The tightness in his forearms had not gone away, he still wanted to strangle her. It made his face feel hot and his palms go clammy. She turned away from him and strode off toward the boat. Rannok returned his eyes to the treeline, hoping that somehow Sasha would show up before they departed and he got who knew where.

A few moments passed before the sounds of men working began to drift over from the ship deck. Rannok peered around the side of the carriage, careful not to catch Pirya's eye. He watched as they lowered a wide wooden plank from the ship down onto the bank. The cart lurched forward, and Rannok grabbed the side of it to steady himself.

His eyes flickered to the treeline. Still no Sasha, and no poking at his memories from the crow. His stomach flipped uneasily inside his abdomen. She had to be there somehow. She had to find a way to follow them up the river. Rannok clutched the handrail tighter.

"Are you there?" 

It took a few moments for Rannok to accept that there was no answer. Sasha and the crow weren't there. They weren't coming.

There was no way for her to track him over water, either. Rannok's stomach threatened to push its way up his throat. He wanted to scream at the driver of the cart to slow, or at Pirya to wait for a few minutes. He wanted to beg them to let him go. He wanted anything other than to get on that boat and disappear up the river to where he would never see her again.

Rannok's legs tensed. This was the last chance. He could run off into the woods before they caught him. Surely they could get far enough away on foot that dogs wouldn't find them. They could find another boat somewhere, farther up the river, and slip off into the night.

He couldn't shake the memory of being pressed to a cave wall, hiding from a storm while the dogs bayed outside. He wouldn't be so lucky a second time. He knew that. It didn't make it any less tempting to try to jump anyway.

The cart rattled as it made its way up the plank, then settled in the middle of the ship's deck. It looked comically large nestled up there, like an out-of-scale miniature someone hadn't thought before adding to a display. One of the men grabbed the horses while another began to unhitch them from their harnesses. Rannok didn't care to think about where they planned to keep the creatures.

He didn't wait for Pirya to give him permission before jumping down and rushing to the boat's railing. The vessel swayed back and forth with the lapping of the water. Rannok strained to hear something--anything--over the sounds of the waves, but there was nothing. No movement along the shoreline. No crow. No Sasha. His hands gripped the wooden railing so hard that bits of it poked into his palm.

"Come on," he said under his breath, but nothing happened. There was only stillness in the trees as the men tied the carriage in place and began to pull the plank back on board. 

"Are you waiting for something in particular to happen?"

Rannok turned as Mantu settled his elbows on the railing, next to where he was leaning. He couldn't help but notice the sad look in the man's eyes, and he wondered if he'd always looked like that, so downcast. Like someone had stolen his children and kicked him while he was down.

"I've never seen the river before," Rannok said, the lie slipping easily from his lips, though he was afraid the stiffness in his shoulders would give it away. Mantu let out a brief chuckle and shrugged his shoulders.

"I didn't want to buy your debt in the first place, you know, I'm opposed to the idea. But I do have to defer to my wife." He paused. "I suppose you are waiting for the girl they chased out of town on you."

Rannok's cheeks flushed. He stared down into the water, mind reeling for an acceptable response. "She's gone." 

The words hit him in the chest like an anvil. He hadn't meant for them to be true, but the weight of them lingered. Gone. The word tasted foul on his lips. "She took off into the woods."

"Is that why she was hiding under your bed?" Mantu asked. Rannok stole a glance at the man's face. He'd raised a single eyebrow, and fixed him with a questioning stare. Rannok shrugged, too afraid to say anything one way or the other. He was glad the man didn't ask how she'd gotten under the bed to begin with.

"I saw her," he said, as if Rannok's silence was enough for confirmation. "Pirya was too busy examining you like a horse at auction to notice. I do hope for her sake she got out all right."

Rannok sighed and lowered his head. The tension in his hands relaxed, and his eyes struggled to focus on the shoreline as his vision blurred. A lump rose in his throat. He swallowed it back down and did not look at Mantu. "Yeah."

Mantu patted his shoulder. It was a hollow, empty gesture, all stiff arms and awkward condolences from a man he did not know. "Sometimes the things keeping us apart are circumstance more than difference. You'll find another one day. It won't sting as much, I hope."

It was too much effort to respond without sounding murderous, so Rannok just stayed silent. Mantu removed the hand from his shoulder, then retreated somewhere into the background, where his voice blended with the shrill shrieking of his wife. Rannok could not bear to listen to them argue.

He'd lost.