The stairwell opened onto the deck in a wash of cold night air, salt-thick and sharp after the close, stale dark belowdecks. Zelene kept low, pressed against the shadow of a stacked crate, watching Silas straighten his coat and walk out into the open with an ease that made her stomach twist — like he belonged there, like nothing about the last ten minutes had happened at all.
"There you are." One of the guards, leaning against the rail near the mast, straightened as Silas approached. "Thought you were still below with the new batch."
"Just finishing up," Silas said, easy, unbothered, hands loose at his side. "Counting heads. Master likes his numbers exact, you know how he is."
The guard grunted, apparently satisfied, turning back toward the water — and for one breathless moment, Zelene thought it might actually work, thought Silas might simply talk his way past this the same way he'd talked his way past everything else.
Then a second guard rounded the mast from the far side, wiping his hands on a rag, and stopped dead at the sight of him.
"Where's Renner," he said. Flat. Suspicious.
Silas didn't miss a beat. "Below. Said he'd relieve me in a few minutes."
"Renner doesn't do favors." The second guard's eyes narrowed, moving over Silas with new scrutiny — and Zelene, watching from the shadows, saw the exact moment recognition sharpened into something worse. "You're not supposed to be up top alone. Master's rule. Nobody goes anywhere without a second."
"Feeling generous tonight," Silas said, but something in his voice had changed, tightened, the easy charm stretched thin over something more careful underneath.
The first guard turned back from the rail, frowning now too, gaze flicking between his coworker and Silas with dawning unease.
"Renner's not answering," he said slowly. "I just tried."
For one long second, nobody moved.
Then the second guard's hand went for the blade at his hip, and Silas's charm dropped entirely, replaced by something fast and brutal that made Zelene's breath catch.
He closed the distance before the man's blade cleared its sheath, driving a hard elbow into his jaw that sent him staggering into the rail. The first guard shouted, lurching forward, and Zelene didn't think — she was moving before her mind caught up to the decision, iron bracket still gripped tight from the corridor below.
"Finn—"
"Already there," Finn said, breaking from the shadows a half-step behind her, blade raised despite the bruise still darkening his jaw.
The deck erupted into chaos — Silas grappling with the second guard near the rail, both of them slamming hard into a coiled stack of rope, while the first came at Zelene and Finn together, shouting something that was cut off half-formed as Finn's blade caught his forearm, forcing a pained curse and a stumble backward.
"MORE ON DECK!" the guard bellowed, loud enough to carry across open water. "INTRUDERS—"
No—
Zelene swung the bracket hard, catching him across the shoulder before he could finish the shout, and he went down hard, though not before a door somewhere near the ship's stern banged open, more footsteps pounding fast against wood.
Silas broke free of his own struggle just long enough to glance toward the sound, blood at his lip, eyes sharp with something close to panic for the first time since Zelene had met him.
"That's not good," he said. "That's not good at all."
"You think?" Finn shot back, breathing hard, blade still raised.
"We need to move," Silas said, already hauling Zelene back toward the stairwell they'd come from. "Now. Before the whole crew's up here."
"The women—" Zelene started.
"Are still our priority," Silas said, grim. "But not if we're all dead first."
Behind them, more shouting rose up across the deck, and somewhere out past the rail, faint but unmistakable, a second voice called back from the direction of the dock — too far to make out clearly, but close enough that Zelene's heart lurched hard at the sound of it, some desperate, half-formed hope rising before she could stop it.
Could that be—
She didn't get the chance to finish the thought. Silas was already pulling her back down into the dark, the fight far from over, and whatever — whoever — had just called out across the water would have to wait.