Free The Gorgon's Blood Solution by Jeffrey Quyle

gold dishes and goblets.  The girl was crying hysterically, her face reddened, her dress ripped, a dark bruise starting to form on her visible arm, where a sleeve had been ripped off her expensive gown.
    As he looked at her, he realized that he might be able to set her free.  It would be minutes before the Corsairs would return again.  They surely would not miss one captive among the many they had strewn about the pier, he told himself.  But what would he be able to do with her after he set her free?  Could he even really set her free at all, or would the solitary sorcerer observe his efforts, and turn his deadly powers upon Marco?
    Carefully, Marco descended beneath the pier, and slowly picked his steps along the beams and around the posts as he tried to convince himself that there was a reasonable chance he could set Angelica free, without endangering her or himself.  When he reached the edge of the pier, he had only a few narrow inches of space available to climb up between the pier and the Corsair ship that was tied there, rocking gently in place on the harbor waters.
    He crouched, steeling himself for making his move, his dangerous move, the n cautiously raised his head up over the surface of the pier.
    Valuable treasures were piled up just inches in front of him, practically ready to spill off the edge of the pier into the water below.  And on top of the glinting metal, Marco was startled to see a girl’s face, much closer that he had expected Angelica to appear.  A pair of wide-set light gray eyes stared at him in startled fear, and at his appearance the girl began to scream.
    Marco instantly ducked his head, and realized he was trembling with fear.  He took several deep breaths, preparing to go back beneath the pier, when he realized the screaming had ceased. After several seconds, he slowly raised his head again, and saw the eyes staring at him, calmer now, squinting and calculating as they watched him raise up.
    “You’re the boy from the alchemy shop; what are you doing here?” the girl asked.
    “I came here to set Angelica free,” he answered.  He raised his head slightly, trying to look up over the girl and the pile of plunder, anxious about where the sorcerer was.
    The girl said something, but he paid no attention as he saw that Angelica was behind the girl, and above her, while the sorcerer still stood many yards away, staring at the dock-end of the pier, his back to the spot where Marco was squatting.
    “I said, ‘You don’t plan to rescue me?’” the girl repeated, the words registering in Marco’s brain this time as he ascertained that he was momentarily safe from detection by the Corsair sorcerer.
    She was the servant girl, Marco realized.  When he had fallen to the ground outside the door of Algornia’s shop, there had been three witnesses to his awkward moment: the Countess Haubertine, Angelica, and the servant girl behind them.  This was that same girl, still with Angelica, under circumstances that now were dire, not privileged.
    Marco raised his rusty knife and slowly pushed it forward towards the heavy rope that bound the girl’s wrists.  Her eyes, followed the progress of his weapon, and she pressed her hands forwards, closer to Marco, as she intuitively understood what he was about to do.
    The rope was tough.   His first slice left no mark on it, and Marco adjusted, pressing harder, so that the girl’s hands scooted backwards momentarily, before she pressed back, increasing the pressure, and spreading her wrists apart, to improve the tension in the rope.  Marco’s next slice left a light mark, as several strands of the rope split apart, exposing the unsullied fibers on the interior of the knife.
    After that it was just a matter of patient work, taking several minutes.  Marco felt trickles of sweat nervously running down his back, down his ribcage, down his neck – everywhere he could sweat, it seemed he did sweat, until the moment came when the ropes parted, and the