The ladder hung like a decision between two worlds.
Aminah's fingers hovered over the rope. The lantern light threw thin bars across faces: Hasb's jaw, Dzeko's clenched mouth, Meren's pale panic. The Empire's officer watched from the launch with a flatness that meant he'd been taught how to bottle emotion for later use. Above, figures moved on the Northstar's rail—shapes in coats, hands that weren't idle.
"Don't take it," Hasb said, close enough that she felt the heat of his breath. "It's staged. If they want us up, they want us up on their terms."
"If we don't," Dzeko answered, voice low, "they sail with a woman and a token and a letter and the world says we begged like curs."
She had one second. A dozen smaller choices piled in that second—the rope, the water, the horn of the Empire, the risk of a trap that smelled like ash. Twelve hours had been shrunk down to a single gut-bolt of time.
She moved.
Aminah's hand closed on the ladder as if grabbing a life. The ladder swung; the deck leaned nearer. For a breath she felt the city fall into her lungs like smoke. She put her foot on the lowest rung and started to climb. The world was a motion of salt and wood and the groan of hemp.
A hand reached up and caught her wrist—not a crewman's clamp but an iron grip meant to stop someone before they could make a scene. She twisted, elbowed, and heard a rope whip through the air—someone above yanking the ladder. The ladder tilted and slammed against the hull like a drawn blade.
"Watch the right!" Hasb shouted. Men around her scrambled; oars struck water like hammers.
A crewman's boot swung for her; she ducked and slipped between ropes, fingers burning on wet hemp. A voice barked in the officer's tongue. The Northstar's deck moved in coordinated steps—men fell into positions like a practiced gear.
Someone threw a net. It unfurled over the little boat and fell like a grey sky. Hands reached over to pull it taut. Oars tangled. The world burned down to the slap of water and the hiss of strained rope. Dzeko cursed and cut at the net with a knife, but the sling stuck to the oarlocks and slowed them like hands.
Aminah didn't let herself panic. Panic was a luxury. She pushed past the crewman and climbed again. The ladder tilted; she lunged for the rail.
A dozen fingers snatched at her like ropes. A crewman grabbed her calf and hauled. Other hands slid around her torso. For a second she hovered, half in air and half in the dark between hull and deck. The world made a loud, ridiculous noise—metal on metal, men swearing in different tongues.
Then something hit the side of the little boat. A blunt, heavy strike. It rocked. Someone shouted. Hasb's voice bled out like a rope's snap.
Aminah kicked. The crewman lost his hold and she flung herself up, claws finding rail. Hands dragged her onto deck and a sailor cleared at her like he'd done it a thousand times. She rolled, came up fighting. The deck smelled of tar and wet wool and a little too much routine.
She had seconds. Above the iron collar of the sky, a woman stood—scarfed, small, hands curled around something like a token. Not Nina. Not the girl she'd hoped for. The woman pivoted and for a heartbeat the lanterns licked the face free of shadow.
It was the kiln woman. The one who sold old pots and gave them bitter advice. The one Nina had followed. Her face was plain and tired and suddenly terrible with purpose.
"You made a choice," the woman said, voice low and practiced. "You climbed."
"Where is she?" Aminah spat. Her voice cut like a knife. People on deck pressed back; they weren't stupid. They read danger.
The woman smiled as if she'd been waiting for that exact line. "Below," she said. "In a cabin with a seal you might know."
Someone behind the woman—thick shoulders, scarred forearm, the same chipped tooth Dzeko had seen in petty bosses—moved like a shield. He had the militia braid around his wrist, re-knotted. The sight of it made the breath leave Aminah's chest in a quick, sharp pull. That braid had been their mark. Now it wrapped another man's arm.
Hasb made it up the ladder two rungs before a crewman shoved him back. The little boat clattered useless against the hull. Dzeko's face was bloodless; they were boxed in against a sea that had been polite until men made choices.
"Search her," the woman ordered the scarred man. He barked, and a pair of sailors shoved through a hatch and disappeared below.
Aminah tightened her hands around the rail until the muscles in her forearms snapped hard. "If you so much as touch a hair on her head—" she began. Threats were useless sometimes; they needed leverage, and her leverage had a life breathing somewhere below.
The scarred man laughed. "We're not monsters," he said. "We're businessmen. But business has rules. You try to mount a ship without the proper papers, you have to expect expenses."
Aminah's brain did the cheap math—traction, men, tide, the Empire watching. The officer's launch had edged closer, lantern raised like an accusation. The officer's face had not moved. He had the kind of emptiness that meant he could sign orders and sleep. The Empire's cards were on the table and they weren't kind.
A hatch thudded above them. A muffled sound, a cough, something like a person trying to make sense of a room and failing. The scarred man grinned and nodded to the kiln woman.
"She calls herself a broker," he said. "Calls herself many things. Tonight she's a courier. She holds your child of the militia—if a child's what you call them—and a token fit for auction."
Aminah's tongue hit the roof of her mouth. "Where. Now," she said. She'd climb every stair if it bought a minute or a name. She didn't care if the ship's crew were paid or soldiers or both. She wanted Nina.
The kiln woman's hand went to the small token she held. She rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. The light caught a hairline fracture in its edge. "We were careful," she said. "We used things that look like home. People trust familiar things."
Someone below them cleared a throat and the hatch thumped. Footsteps came up like the counting of a life. A sailor appeared, carrying a small, tied bundle. He came up the ladder with it like an offering. The scarred man took it.
Aminah's hands were going numb. She had to do something the moment an opening came. She looked over the rail and found Hasb's eyes—a slash of iron and pleading. He'd been shoved back but he'd drawn his blade. There was no theatrics left.
"Make them call the officer," Aminah said, voice flat. "Demand a proper boarding, public. If they refuse, they break law in sight of witnesses."
The kiln woman's smile narrowed. "We don't negotiate."
Aminah kept her voice low and sharp. "Then we force witnesses," she said. "We scream. We force the officer's hand."
At that moment the figure who'd been watching from the rail—a man in an officer's coat with the Empire's braid—took a step forward. The ship's lanterns washed the line of his jaw. He raised a hand, and for a second Aminah thought he would be the man who spoke sense.
Instead he said, in a voice that tasted like paper and command, "Captain Theodore. Step down from that rail. Let the crew do their duty. Any interference will be treated as an act against the Empire."
Someone on the deck laughed, a thin sound that died quickly. The scarred man touched the bundle in his hands and pushed it toward Aminah. The string came loose in the same motion the kiln woman stepped back and the hatch swung open.
The bundle was small and wobbled when the sailor set it on the deck. It looked like a pillow. It smelled like sea and canvas and something raw. The scarred man tugged at the knot and two hands fell out—pale, shaking, with a braid like a watchman's at one wrist.
Nina looked up.
The moment stretched like wire. Her eyes found Aminah's and were full of something that had been carved out of sleep and fear and anger and something fierce and bright.
"Nina!" Hasb's voice broke. He took a step and the sailors stepped between him and the girl.
Aminah's world narrowed to that look—an imploring, a flame. She lunged for the bundle, hands skidding on wet rope. The scarred man laughed and yanked. He slid the bundle back under the shelter of the gaggle of sailors. The kiln woman moved toward a small table and tapped a seal-crowned envelope with her finger.
"Exchange," she said softly. "A name, an hour, a coin."
Across the water the officer's boat bobbed like a dark mouth. The Northstar's deck shifted. Men prepared as men always do for trades and for storms. The kiln woman's token glinted in the lantern light like a promise.
Aminah felt something break—not a bone but a quiet conviction—that things could be clean. The offer was ugly and obvious: trade for trade, name for name, and the oil of empire wet on the hands that made deals.
She swallowed. She had twelve hours and now they had less than that.
"Tell me the price," she said, the words leaving her as a blade. The kiln woman smiled like a prize that had always been hers.
"Two names," the woman said. "Give us who you love most who wears a family mark and we trade the girl for what she carries."
For a beat the deck was a planet and the word spun like a meteor. Then another voice cut through—low, surprised, and old—one from the officer's launch.
"You won't get two names without a warrant," the officer said. "We'll listen, we'll mediate."
"You'll do nothing," the kiln woman answered. "You'll sign the papers and let the city fold. The Empire likes tidy records."
Aminah could feel the city's breath that night like someone's held hand. The choice presented itself like a scale: give names, trade safety for bargaining; refuse and fight an empire in its teeth while a girl hung on the other side of a deck.
She had seconds to decide. Men watched. Water slapped wood. The token sat like a jewel that had cost someone a child.
She tasted ash on her lips and the tidal salt in her throat and then, without ceremony, she said the only thing that could keep her whole and also break her into something dangerous.
"No."