Mann responded with a flailing series of gestures that Ves didn’t understand, but there were footfalls on the piers around them, coming closer at a run, so he couldn’t worry about it. Would be a shame, he thought, if Mann made it all this way only to drown in the Bowl of Fom like a rat flushed by the tide.
Shouts from above. Ves put his hand over the nose of the semi-conscious Pasha and dived down, under the prow of a small fishing boat, and emerged on the other side.
The towers loomed on the cliffs, their numbers painted in faded numerals twenty hands high. Twelve. One more to go. He changed his angle to head out, then across, just as a few bolts clanged against the hull of a schooner on his left. The water swallowed a few more with tiny, soft splashes in front and behind him. Cursing,
