“Great” Bella hissed from behind Liaena’s left ear, where she was also surveying the dock. “That stupid bird of yours led us into a dead end! How are we supposed to get past that?”

Liaena was staring at the bronze doors in a manner that suggested she wished to bore a hole in them. While it was now hidden, the only exit out of the cove besides the deep inlet they had flown through, clearly lay behind it. “I need them to bring that back down. Now”

“What?”

“Hester. Cmon. Take us over to that ship, would you?” Liaena hunkered down to whisper into the owl’s ear, who tilted her head back at her in a quizzical motion. “Stay close to the water line – and don’t get us spotted”

“Li…what’re you—oof!”

Bella’s query was lost in a gasp and clinging onto Liaena as the bird took flight again, sweeping across the still water in the shadow of the ships towards the merchant ship. Fluttering to pause near a porthole, Liaena was juggling two large sticks of dynamite in one hand and a tinderbox in the other as she struck a light, lit the ends and tossed them into the belly of the ship before Hester swooped away again. 

Bella blanched. “What’re you [i]doing[/i]!?”

“Bringing the lift back” Liaena spat as she hurled another of Smokey’s ‘toys’ at another porthole as they passed it. Obliviously coiling rope on the main deck, the sailor glanced briefly in their direction at the faint ‘thud’. “Besides, I promised a distraction”
 
[b]“You’re insane”[/b]

“….Well, yeah. DUH.” Liaena looked back at Bella sardonically with a lit stick of dynamite in each hand as Hester peeled away from the doomed ship to flap towards the roof of the dim cavern. Passing over the dock, she let them drop just before Hester hit the wall of the cave to scuttle into the shadow of a crevice not far from the bronze doors. “Don’t mess with my friends then”