Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [256]
If light can penetrate, so can air, I told myself. It didn't help. I felt my chest heave, gulping involuntarily for breath, and forced myself to calm, thinking, you are breathing, Phèdre; not dying, not suffocating.
A simple thing, this confinement, and yet horrifying. I daresay I would have withstood it better when I was younger—before La Dolorosa, and before my near-drowning. As it was, it was all I could do to keep from pounding on the walls of the trunk and begging for release. Instead I shivered and gulped and prayed it went smoothly with the harbor guard—smoothly, and oh, Elua, swiftly!
The sounds that I heard with my ear pressed to the floor of the trunk were strange and stifled, coming through the wood itself. The lapping of water against the hull of the ship, the muffled tread of feet and the deep scrape of oars. And from far away, very far, an occasional shout. On and on it went, until at last I felt the change when we neared the harbor; our progress slowing, the creak of topsails being lowered, and then the back-stroke of oars, bringing us to a halt.
A measure of stillness, then, until the tread of footsteps increased manyfold.
I know, because Kazan told me, that the Serenissiman harbor guard searched the ship with the utmost of thoroughness. The Illyrians were made to drop anchor, and every man on board assembled on deck, relinquishing their swords and standing at attention while the captain of harbor directed the search. Kazan and his men stood among them, unblinking and unwavering, not knowing if they would be recognized as pirates. All of them had daggers concealed somewhere on their persons; if the worst came, they would die fighting.
Every hammock and every bunk was overturned, every cabin tossed, every soldier's kit opened and searched; a stash of silver denari stamped with the likeness of the Ban of Illyria was seized from the best of the dice players. Pjètri Kolcei lodged a furious protest, claiming that they had not sought to use the coin in trade. The captain of harbor ignored him, and gave orders to search the trunk which held the Ban of Illyria's tribute-gift.
All of this I learned later; then, I only heard them enter the cabin, holding myself still as the dead in my cramped hiding-space, scarce daring to breathe. It seemed the very hammering of my heart would give me away. Pjètri Kolcei unlocked the lid of the trunk and lifted it; the squeak of the hinges penetrated the marrow of my bones. And while I lay tight-curled and terrified beneath the false bottom, the Serenissiman harbor guard emptied the trunk one item at a time, making a tally of the Ban's tribute.
How long it lasted, I cannot say; an eternity, it seemed to me. When a Serenissiman guard reached into the trunk to remove the last of the marten-skins, his knuckles rapped the wood directly above my ear. It felt as immediate as a blow and I could not imagine that he was insensible Of my presence, so acutely aware was I of his.
They will see, I thought; they will look inside the trunk, and they will look outside of it, and they will see there is a foot of space missing.
This thought ran through my head, over and over, while a methodical voice counted out the goods of the tribute-gift in Caerdicci and a quill scratched against parchment. It took on a rhythm of its own, beating in my mind; they-will-see, they-will-see, they-will-see. I fought to keep from saying it aloud, fought to keep my limbs from shivering, fought to keep my breathing quiet and steady.
I was still concentrating on it when I heard the captain of harbor's muffled voice. "This gift is tallied to the last coin and pelt, Illyrian. If it's short in the Treasury's reckoning, it comes out of your hide."
"It will arrive as you have counted it," Pjètri Kolcei said coldly, his Caerdicci precise and fluent. "If your Treasurer is a thief, I will not be held accountable."
The captain made some reply, lost to me in the thump of marten-skins being tossed carelessly back into the trunk. This time, I could have wept with joy at the sense of stifling weight returning. Piece by