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Firekeeper said, “but not until he has a chance to digest the food within him. He was very ill and might vomit up what he has eaten if we upset him now”
    Blind Seer grunted agreement and went back to his meal. Firekeeper made herself a bed on the side of her cage closest to the wolf. She couldn’t touch him, not even if she stretched her arm to its full length. However, there was a reason other than proximity for putting her bed here. When she had tested the bars of the cage, several in this area had rattled a little. While she thought how to tell Derian about Roanne, she could loosen them.
    Firekeeper had concluded one thing about their captors. They—or at least Harjeedian, and the other men followed their master’s lead—were fairly certain Blind Seer could understand more than the usual wolf. However, either they had not heard tales of her own abilities or they had discounted them as the exaggerations of traveling minstrels.
    She must take advantage of this. They must attempt to escape before the boat reached the ocean. If she could break out of her cage, then she thought she could break Blind Seer out of his. Derian was chained around his ankle, and Firekeeper was not strong enough to break an iron chain. However, if the chain was anchored in wood it might be worked free.
    “Derian,” she said, breaking the silence.
    “What?”
    “I ask before. What is your chain tied in?”
    There was a clanking noise as Derian traced the iron links down to their base.
    “It’s set in a big timber, screwed into the wood.”
    “Is at all loose?”
    More clanking.
    “I don’t think so. I gave it a good tug and it didn’t budge.”
    “Ah …” Firekeeper thought. “Can unscrew?”
    Clank. Silence except for grunting.
    “Maybe a little. It’s pretty snug.”
    “Can you reach cabinet? I not see butter knife go up.”
    Derian dragged his chain behind him, stretched to his full limit, the long, lean length of his body extended along the floor. A moment later he made a satisfied noise.
    “It’s here. Not much of a weapon, but it might hack loose where the iron anchor is set in the wood.”
    Firekeeper returned to working on the bars of her cage, patiently wiggling the hard iron against the wooden socket so that friction wore away the wood. Her captors had taken her knife, but not her strength. After a long while she was able to rub one area thinner than the surrounding socket. Impatiently, she tugged, trying to break through that thinner edge. Nothing.
    Firekeeper continued her methodical rubbing of iron against wood, grateful for her callused hands. Finally, she sufficiently thinned the wood so that a single, focused jerk broke through. A bit of twisting, and the bar came loose from the upper socket and could be drawn out. Now she had both weapon and tool.
    “Derian,” Firekeeper called softly, her voice holding a touch of a musical wolf’s howl. “Look.” When he turned from his labors she showed him the gap in the bars of her cage, hefted the bar triumphantly.
    “I push through,” she said, demonstrating, glad she wasn’t more thickly built, “and put the bar back if must hide what I have done.”
    Derian grinned at her, his first cheerful expression since he had awakened. Firekeeper hated the idea of taking his rising morale from him, so resolved to hold the news about Roanne a bit longer.
    “Now,” she said. “I come and see your work.”
    Given that all he had to work with was an old butter knife, Derian had done very well. The bolt had been driven into the wood fairly recently, and the timber had not been of the finest or driest, even before Derian had begun his ministrations.
    Firekeeper hunkered down next to Derian, focusing lest the persistent queasiness in her gut get the better of her. She grasped the anchor bolt where the chain ran through the loop at the end and twisted. The bolt moved, just a little. She wrenched again and this time the bolt emerged slightly from the wood, leaving a faint haze