The Reaver

CHAPTER SIX

Evendur Highcastle savored the gleaming and clinking of the gold and platinum pieces spilling through his fingers back into the coffer. He’d claimed his share of plunder as a pirate, but the sums were paltry compared to the treasure that came to the hierophant of a thriving religion.

Flecks of his spongy fingers dropped along with the coins, but noticing things like that no longer troubled him. He’d come to understand that no matter how thoroughly he rotted, he’d remain as strong as ever, and he didn’t care that his appearance was horrific. To the contrary. Even as a mortal man, he’d liked inspiring fear. It was as pleasurable as it was useful.

Although if Imbras Ilshansa was frightened, the pudgy, brown-haired young Impilturian concealed it with the aplomb of an accomplished envoy. “I hope the gift is satisfactory,” he said.

Evendur turned away from the coffer and the eight others like it and back toward the emissary and the deep, round pool at the center of the chamber. “It’ll do for a start. But the proper term is ‘offering’. Or ‘tribute’.”

“I beg your pardon,” Imbras said. “Offering, of course. And, I trust, the first of many. If Impiltur thrives, it will naturally pay homage to the goddess who nurtures it.”

Evendur grinned. “Just what kind of nurturing are you looking for?”

The envoy hesitated. “Well, Wavelord, if you would have me speak frankly … Folk in my land are turning to the worship of Umberlee in increasing numbers, and that, plainly, is exactly how it should be. Unfortunately, in many cases, they’re the same people most dissatisfied with the Grand Council. Thus, their faith often becomes a justification if not a vehicle for riots, rebellion, and anarchy.”

“Yet if Impilturian waveservants preached their sermons just a little differently, they could channel all that anger in a useful direction.”

“The people have the right to be angry,” Imbras replied. “The Grand Council has failed them, and the reason is that such a body is by its very nature incapable of effectively governing a realm. Impiltur needs to restore the monarchy.”

Evendur grunted. “Before my rebirth, I didn’t pay much attention to royal bloodlines. But I believe House Ilshansa claims such a tie to old Imbrar II.”

“I freely acknowledge,” Imbras said, “that my uncle hopes to take the throne. Why shouldn’t my family assert our claim when it’s by far the most legitimate? And once we’ve united the realm, we’ll finally drive out the demon cults that have plagued us for decades.”

“If Umberlee gave Impiltur-and House Ilshansa-such a glorious future, ‘homage’ wouldn’t be enough. Your folk would have to worship her before all other deities.”

“The Queen of the Depths will be the patron deity of the royal family and any noble or merchant who hopes to find favor in our eyes. Her temple will be the grandest in every town.”

“In that case-”

A roar sounded from the center of the room and echoed off the wall. Startled, Evendur and his petitioner jerked in the direction of the noise.

A whirling column like a waterspout rose swaying from the well. Such a manifestation unquestionably involved one of the forces or intelligences to which Evendur was attuned, and he focused his will to probe it.

But before he could begin, the water spun outward and swept him up along with Imbras. They tumbled in an impossible whirlpool that filled the chamber but evidently refused to spill out the doors and windows.

As Umberlee’s Chosen and an undead besides, Evendur had no fear of drowning, but it enraged him to have the element of which he was the rightful master turned against him. He grabbed for the source of the disturbance with his thoughts, his intent now less to comprehend or communicate that to rend and smash.

An opposing power slapped-or perhaps flicked-his awareness back inside his skull with an effortless violence that jolted him. He belatedly realized there was only one entity that could do this, and that might mean he was in real trouble after all.

When he reached out again, his psychic tone was deferential. Unfortunately, it made no difference. The Bitch Queen rebuffed him again, and with equal brutality.

The watery vortex slammed and scraped him against the chamber walls until he feared that even his preternaturally powerful body would come apart. He felt a pang of dread at the possibility of enduring eternity as a detached head or something similarly broken and helpless.

Then, at last, the whirlpool drew in on itself and dumped him on the floor. A waterspout rising from the central pool once more, it took on definition until it was the looming torso of a blue-green woman with seashell ornaments and a cloak made of jellyfish.

Common sense suggested that the water couldn’t simultaneously hold the steady form of a woman and swirl, but even so, Evendur felt that somehow, he could still see the raging tumult of the waterspout as he looked at her. Or maybe the violence was in her smile, all but unbearable with an infinite love of ruin.

Not unbearable to her Chosen, though, and given that, unlike Imbras, Evendur was still intact, he dared to hope he retained that status. He clambered onto his knees and bowed his head. “Goddess,” he said.

In response, pain ripped through him, and he cried out. The torment was Umberlee’s way of telling him she was angry. And that he would be wise to hold his tongue.

“I tasked you to be my hunter,” snarled the Queen of the Depths. “To seize the Morninglord’s Chosen and offer him up to me. And instead I find you playing at diplomacy.” Her malice lashed him again, and then again.

Jerking, Evendur endured the bursts of agony as best he could. A part of him wanted to protest that on other occasions, the deity herself had commanded him to forge alliances like those he’d been pursuing in Impiltur, but he sensed such a plaint would only further enrage her. Reason and fairness were alien to her nature.

After perhaps twenty strokes of the psychic lash, the punishment stopped, although the lingering anger in her voice made it sound as if she might yield to the urge to resume at any moment. “Because of your blundering,” she said, “Red Wizards have seized the Chosen of Lathander. They’re sailing east from Westgate to give him to Szass Tam, who will then put him to death.”

Inwardly, Evendur flinched. This truly was bad. He was supposed to kill the boy prophet in a sacrificial ritual that would both augment his mystical power and discredit the reborn faith of Lathander in the eyes of those who might otherwise have credited its message. According to Umberlee, it was the one sure way to ensure the supremacy of her church across the Sea of Fallen Stars, and it obviously couldn’t happen if the infamous lich lord of Thay slew the child instead.

“Seize the boy,” the goddess said. “Do it with your own hands, and do not fail. You can catch the Thayans’ galley in the straits between Pirate Isle and Gulthandor.”

The towering figure of water lost cohesion as she ceased inhabiting it. With a splash that soaked Evendur all over again, the brine plunged back down into the well.

Though he no longer needed air to survive, the habits of life still lingered, and he took a long, steadying breath. Linked as he was to the Queen of the Depths, he generally rejoiced in her transcendent ferocity. But not when she directed any measure of it in his direction.

He strode through the temple until he found one of the senior waveservants. He told the priest what he wanted done in his absence, then returned to the pool.

There, he roared words that sounded like a raging gale and surf pounding against rocks. Unlike common waveservants, he’d never studied the secret languages of the sea or any form of magic. But his ascension had put the knowledge in his head.

The spell didn’t agitate the pool below him in any visible fashion, yet he could sense it changing. It felt like a door opening, and when it finished swinging wide, he jumped in.

He then swam down the shaft as quickly and agilely as any squid or eel. That was another of Umberlee’s gifts. So was the inhuman sight that allowed him to see despite the rapidly gathering gloom.

The well twisted just where it always had, but shortly thereafter, he swam across a kind of threshold. He couldn’t see the discontinuity, either, but he felt it as a surge of exhilaration. Grinning, he kicked and stroked faster, until he shot out the end of the passage.

The mouth of the tunnel was likewise invisible when he glanced back around. The whole of Pirate Isle was gone. Instead of emerging adjacent to the promontory on which the temple rose, or near any other land, he was in open water.

Specifically, he was floating in the heart of Umberlee’s watery realm. He had only to open his mind to sense currents flowing endlessly on through a thousand reefs teeming with huge, brightly colored fish and the dark gliding or lurking things that preyed on them. Before his transformation, he might have felt alarm upon perceiving the latter, for the least of them could have gobbled up a mortal man without difficulty. But now, fearing them would have been like fearing himself.

In other places, the sea floor dropped away to frigid gulfs where different predators dangled glowing lures on fleshy tendrils, and blind things crawled and slithered in the ooze. Those creatures were Evendur’s kindred, too, and their grotesqueries made him smile like a child beholding a clown’s capers.

In fact, had he permitted it, he could have drifted for a long while marveling at the wonders swimming or scuttling on every side. But that was unlikely to please Umberlee, so he thrust the temptation aside.

Thanks to the esoteric lore the goddess had implanted, he knew that every body of water in the mortal world linked to this ultimate ocean. More, he knew a further secret, one that ordinary priests and mages might never discover in decades of study: Any spot here connected to every place in or on the mundane world’s seas. But only if a mystic possessed the might and skill to force open the way.

Evendur pulled his rotting hands in gathering motions and croaked words that made it sound as if he were drowning all over again. At first, intrigued by the power they sensed accumulating in the water, gigantic hammerheads and rays came swimming close to investigate. Before long, though, the alternating waves of hot and cold became intense enough to alarm them, and they fled.

On the final word of the incantation, awareness pierced Evendur like a hundred arrows hurtling from as many different directions. It was like possessing countless eyes and using each one to peer through a different porthole.

But people, even undead Chosen of Umberlee, were meant to possess only two eyes and use both to look in a single direction. Evendur could make no sense of his jumbled perceptions and felt as if they were punching holes in his mind.

He imposed order by willing his ethereal eyes shut one at a time until only one still peered at a stretch of the rolling gray surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars. He cast about. When certain no ship was in view, he closed the first eye and opened another on a vista that was nearly identical.

The third perspective revealed squawking seagulls perched on the floating carcass of a pilot whale and pecking and tearing at the meat. But still no ship.

Evendur wasn’t counting on spotting the Red Wizards’ galley. That would take considerable luck. But he needed a vessel of some sort. Feeling increasingly impatient, he opened more eyes in quick succession.

On his twenty-seventh try, he found what he was seeking, a caravel on a starboard tack off the southern coast. In fact, it was the Iron Jest, a vessel that had sometimes cooperated with his own now-sunken Abattoir in raids on ports and merchant convoys.

That was good. The Iron Jest was a fast ship, and the hard men aboard should be eager to help him catch Lathander’s Chosen and collect the price on his head. In fact, she’d be ideal if not for her captain.

Evendur had never liked Anton Marivaldi. He’d never liked any of the rare men who refused to defer to him, even in subtle ways, as tougher and more cunning than themselves, and the Turmishan was one such. On occasion, he’d even made his fellow captain the target of his jibes.

But now, surely, those days were over. Because Anton was the same little mortal he’d always been, and Evendur was a demigod. Thinking that it would be satisfying to make the knave grovel, he allowed all his other ethereal eyes to wither out of existence.

Then he focused his will on the connection to the Iron Jest’s vicinity and set about transforming it from a spy hole to a passage like the one that had brought him from Pirate Isle to Umberlee’s ocean. He visualized his hands gripping the edges of the opening and pulling them apart.

When the gateway was wide enough, he swam through then kicked and stroked upward until his head broke the surface. Rain pounded down on him, and the seas were heavy enough to dismay any human swimmer, but he took pleasure in the heaving peril that was no threat whatsoever to him.

He looked around, found the Iron Jest, and swam after it. A trailing line hung off the stern, and he caught hold of it and climbed hand over hand.

As he started to clamber over the railing, a shaven-headed pirate with rings in both ears noticed him and gave a squawk of alarm. The fellow looked wildly about, found a belaying pin, grabbed it, and rushed Evendur with the obvious intent of knocking him back into the sea. Maybe he’d mistaken the newcomer for one of the marine ghouls called lacedons.

Though it was awkward when he was straddling the rail, Evendur ducked the makeshift cudgel, caught the human by the throat, and gave him a single brutal shake. Combined with the pressure constricting his windpipe, the jolt was enough to make the pirate falter.

Evendur pulled his assailant close and glared into his eyes. “Do you recognize me now?” he asked.

“Yes,” the pirate croaked.

“Good.” He gave the mortal a second, harder shake, heard his spine break, and tossed him overboard.

Then he finished climbing onto the deck and ran his gaze over the other men who by now were gaping at him. “Is there anyone else who doesn’t know me?” he asked.

A man with a long, somber face under a broad-brimmed hat cleared his throat. Evendur thought he ought to recognize the fellow, and after a moment, the memory came to him. The rogue was Naraxes Corieth, the Jest’s first mate.

“We know you, Captain,” Naraxes said. “Or am I supposed to say Wavelord?”

“Captain will do,” Evendur said. “Where’s Marivaldi?”

“Gone. I’m captain now.”

Well, perhaps that was better. Naraxes might prove more tractable than Anton would have. But why did the fool seem so nervous?

“But the trouble is,” Naraxes continued, “when Anton left, he took the boy with him.”

The words were so unexpected that it took Evendur a moment to truly comprehend them. “You’re telling me you had the child? The one who preaches that Lathander’s returned?”

“Well, yes. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Evendur decided it wouldn’t look especially demigod-ish to admit he didn’t know the apparently tangled tale of how the paths of the Morninglord’s Chosen, Anton Marivaldi, his estranged crew, Red Wizards, and the stars only knew who else had converged and diverged over the course of the past tenday or so. Fortunately, he didn’t need to know to address the current situation.

“It is,” he said, “but not in the way you think. I’ve decided to catch the false prophet personally, and it’s your good luck that I’ve chosen your ship to do it. Once we take the boy to Pirate Isle, the temple will pay you the promised bounty.”

Naraxes nodded. “We’ll help.”

Evendur sneered. “I hope you didn’t think I was asking.”

“No, Captain! Of course not!”

“Good. Now come about. We’re looking for a Thayan galley, and I plan to catch her in the straits.”

Naraxes turned to relay the commands. Strolling toward the bow, enjoying the way the crewmen tried to cringe from him without being obvious about it, Evendur began a first inspection of his new ship. It felt good to have a deck rolling under his boots again, and better still to be on the hunt for a prize.

Anton woke up cold, wet, and stiff. More promisingly, though, he also woke to the smell of cooking. He opened his eyes, and for an instant was surprised to find himself aboard a vessel considerably smaller than the Iron Jest. Then he remembered capturing Stedd and all that had followed, including the flight from Westgate with Falrinn and Wydda the wizard.

Well, no doubt he’d have ample opportunity to find out. At the moment, she was in the bow, and he was lying under the low shelter amidships that had manifestly done an unsatisfactory job of keeping the rain from blowing in on him. He crawled out and headed for the stern to attend to one of the cruder requirements of nature as far away from her as possible.

Still a gentleman, he thought with sour self-derision. Father would be proud.

Falrinn was in the stern adjusting the tiller, which attached to greasy brass gears that, he claimed, allowed him to do so with exactitude. He made similar boasts about the unconventional arrangements of pulleys, ratchets, and such he’d incorporated into the rigging. Anton remained skeptical that all the various contrivances would do a knowledgeable human mariner any good, but on previous voyages, he’d seen how they allowed one small gnome to trim sail and pilot the boat with ease and efficiency.

As Anton buttoned up his breeches, Falrinn proffered a spyglass. The human accepted it with the care such a valuable tool deserved.

“The wizard says we’re looking for a galley,” Falrinn said. “But she doesn’t know what style of galley, the port or realm the ship calls home, or even exactly where it’s heading.”

Anton grinned. “You’d almost think she doesn’t trust us.”

He ducked back under the shelter to scoop some breakfast-eggs scrambled with chopped fish-from the frying pan on the little wrought iron stove. He wolfed them down and then, feeling more vital and alert, headed into the bow. The mage gave him a nod.

The exertions of the previous night had left her looking bedraggled and weary, with dark smudges under bloodshot eyes. But except for that, her skin was smooth and creamy, a little rosier atop the high cheekbones, and the eyes were a vivid green. Anton realized for the first time that she was comely.

“You know,” he said, “from one secretive soul to another, there really isn’t much point in not telling Falrinn and me exactly what vessel we’re chasing. We’re going to sight her from far away.” He showed the wizard the spyglass. “That first look will tell us a great deal about her, and the gnome will turn our boat around if he doesn’t like what he sees.”

The mage frowned. “Don’t you think I’d tell you more if I could? I want to catch up with my fellow Lathanderians quickly. But my … superior only hired the galley a short time ago. I never got around to learning much about her. Nor did he choose to tell me exactly where he planned to take Stedd. He truly is a ‘secretive soul,’ and he must have thought it safer for me not to know.”

Anton smiled. “Nonsense. You’re the kind of person who never stops observing and discovering, especially information that bears on your own well-being. You’d ferret out the details of your lord’s plans whether he wanted you to have them or not.”

The wizard hesitated. “You give me too much credit.” She lifted her hand to flick stray strands of brown hair off her cheek, and her sleeve slid partway down her forearm. In so doing, it exposed marks on her forearm. They looked faded, but Anton discerned that was because they were actually peeking through a layer of pigment she’d spread on top of them.

The sight of the tattoos made him take reflexive note of the location of his weapons. He only had his dagger and skinny hidden boot blade on his person; he’d left the saber under the shelter. He considered, too, the feasibility of simply lunging at her and shoving her over the side. Yet he realized he was no more inclined to kill her now than he had been on the street in Westgate.

“Actually,” he said, “I didn’t give you enough credit. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that you might be one of the wicked tattooed wizards of Thay.” He gestured to indicate the exposed sigils.

She gave a start and peered at the telltale marks. He could all but hear her thoughts as she quickly considered whether she could possibly convince him that the arcane symbols weren’t what he believed them to be. Then, grimacing, she said, “The Black Hand take it, this stain is supposed to be waterproof!”

“Take it from a sailor,” Anton replied, “nothing is truly waterproof over the long haul. And we’ve had a very wet night and morning.”

“Well, at least I can stop wearing this nasty thing.” She pushed her cowl back, pulled her brown wig off, and gave the shaven scalp beneath a vigorous scratching. A hint of stubble grayed the ivory skin of her scalp.

Somewhat to Anton’s surprise, baldness didn’t mar the mage’s looks. Rather, it made her exotic, like the occasional sea elf women he’d encountered over the years, though he suspected the latter would have mightily resented the comparison.

When she finished scratching, she said, “But you have to understand-”

“Please,” Anton said, “allow me. You and your master are virtuous Thayans, expatriate because you can’t bear your native land’s depravities. You only disguise your nationality to avert prejudice, and you truly do mean to help Stedd. It could scarcely sound more plausible, and naturally I believe it all implicitly.”

A grudging smile tugged at the corners of the wizard’s generous mouth. “As I fervently believe the halfling really did hire you, one of the most infamous reavers from Suzail to Escalant, to help whisk a little boy to safety.”

Anton grinned. “It sounds like neither one of us is able to lie to the other anymore.”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

“Fair enough. But in this interlude of relative candor, will you favor me with your real name? I doubt it’s Wydda. That’s not Thayan.”

“It’s Umara Ankhlab.”

“Well met, Umara.” He offered his hand, and she shook it. She had the soft skin of someone who’d never performed manual labor, but her grip was firm. “I assume you and your leader-”

“Kymas Nahpret.”

“-you and Kymas are actually hoping to collect the bounty on Stedd the same as I was.”

Umara frowned. “You’re wrong there. Kymas and I are in service to Szass Tam. The Lich King tasked us to find Chosen and fetch them back to Thay.”

“And Stedd’s a ‘Chosen’? He doesn’t call himself that, or at least he didn’t while we were traveling together.”

“But he is. The champion of reborn Lathander, as Evendur Highcastle is the hand of Umberlee.” She sighed. “With each, I employed a talisman to be sure.”

“If you knew all that, it might have been more sporting of you to go after the undead pirate lord instead of the wandering farm boy.”

The wizard scowled. “And it might have been more ‘sporting’ for you to win your gold attacking cogs and round ships like pirates are supposed to.”

“I imagined the lad would be older, and likely a lunatic or charlatan who wasn’t doing anybody any good … but as we’re being honest, I’ll confess it wouldn’t have mattered if I had known the truth. Evendur’s offering a lot of gold. Which, given that Stedd is now in the hands of your fellow Thayans, I suppose has now passed beyond my reach. Unless, of course, you care to help me pluck the boy from Kymas’s clutches. You, I, and Falrinn can split the bounty three ways, after which you can live out your days in luxury as a genuine expatriate.”

Umara hesitated just long enough to make him wonder if she was actually considering the proposition. “I’m afraid not. My family is Thayan nobility going back for centuries. I know my path, even if … That is to say, I know my path, and it isn’t treason.”

“Even though your superior left you behind in Westgate?”

“With the sunlords pursuing us, he set sail as expeditiously as possible to safeguard the success of our mission. It was just what I should have expected of him, and I don’t hold it against him.”

Anton suspected that wasn’t wholly true. But he also sensed that pursuing the matter wouldn’t subvert her loyalty. “Well,” he said, “in any case, I can’t honestly recommend treason as the gateway to a happy life.”

“How’s that?”

“Nothing.” He raised the spyglass and scanned the seas before them, meanwhile reflecting that truth was overrated. He and Umara had only been indulging in it for a few breaths, and, ridiculously, here it was already trying to rekindle regrets grown cold long ago.

He didn’t see any ships, Thayan or otherwise. When he lowered the telescope and turned back around, it annoyed him a little that the wizard appeared to be studying him. But if her scrutiny had afforded any insights, she didn’t see fit to remark on them.

Rather, she simply said, “If you and Captain Greatorm get me back aboard the galley, I’ll see to it that Kymas pays you for your trouble. It won’t be a fortune like Evendur Highcastle’s bounty.” She smiled a crooked smile. “As you’ve already observed, my master plainly doesn’t consider me indispensable. But I am a Red Wizard of Thay, and it will be something.”

He wondered if she truly believed he’d settle for that. She might if she didn’t know his reputation for boldness and relentless pursuit of an objective. But even if she didn’t believe it, the suggestion was a reasonable tactic given that, landlubber that she was, she needed Anton and Falrinn to sail the boat. Better, then, to come to a false accord now and defer a fight until they caught up with the other Thayans.

And, Anton realized, pretending to agree to her offer now and saving hostilities for later made just as much sense for him. She knew what Kymas’s ship looked like. He didn’t. Her magic might prove useful as they pursued it. And if she truly did believe he was willing to settle for whatever payment Kymas might offer, she’d presumably prevail on her superior to welcome him aboard the Thayan ship, which should simplify the task of spiriting Stedd off it.

He sighed with what he hoped was a convincing imitation of resignation. “Whatever your master is willing to pay for you, I suppose it will have to do.”

Throughout the morning, a favorable wind carried them eastward. Meanwhile, fiddling with his various mechanisms, Falrinn repeatedly trimmed the sails and reset the rudder. Umara, whose curiosity apparently outweighed any tendency to aristocratic aloofness, alternately pestered the gnome with questions about his innovations and sought to make conversation with her fellow human.

For his part, Anton found that he didn’t much mind the distraction. Trustworthy or not-almost certainly not-she was pleasant enough to talk to. Perhaps it was because she had manners and an education, even though acquired in her sinister necromantic homeland, and it had been a long while since he’d conversed with a lady. Generally, the reaver’s life restricted his choice of womanly companions to festhall bawds and female pirates as coarse as … well, he supposed, as coarse as he himself was.

He pointed out landmarks when the mainland became visible, despite the grayness and the rain, and taught Umara to fish with trailing lines. They grilled the sea bass and dolphinfish they caught, and ate them at dusk.

Afterward, they returned to the bow and Anton peered out into the moonless, starless blackness hoping to spot another vessel’s lanterns. Sitting beside him, Umara asked, “Why do you even need to chase Stedd?”

Anton snorted. “I thought we covered that. For the coin.”

“But why do you need any more treasure?” She tugged her hood down in an effort to keep the rain out of her face. “I mean, I know why my family has a proud name and little else. The great War of the Zulkirs devastated much of Thay, and it certainly blighted our land. And in the decades since, Szass Tam hasn’t much concerned himself with providing opportunities for folk who are still alive. But you …”

“But I’m Anton Marivaldi. The madman who plundered the spice fleet out of Telflamm. The fiend who burned the harbor at Delthuntle. Why is it I’m not already rich as a merchant prince and long retired from the sea?”

“Well … I wasn’t going to say ‘madman’ or ‘fiend.’ But yes.”

He shook his head. “It’s a good question. Somehow, the coin and gems always run through my fingers in a heartbeat. Cormyr could fight Sembia for a year on the treasure I’ve squandered standing drinks for taverns full of rogues who’d knife me for a shaved copper. Maybe it’s because I can’t imagine going away and living a different life.”

“Is being a pirate truly all that grand?”

He thought about it. “No. Not really. But it’s what there is. For me.”

Her tone wistful, Umara said, “I can understand that.”

The sailboat bucked almost like a horse as it met the waves, but as she gazed into the dark and the rain, Umara no longer feared being bounced around on her bench or, worse, being bounced overboard. After several days at sea, she was accustomed to the motion of the vessel.

In fact, she was surprised at how relaxed she was in general. At first, a mage’s disciplined patience notwithstanding, she’d experienced bouts of frustration that a galley that had left port only shortly before Falrinn’s sailboat should prove so elusive. But it wasn’t long before impatience faded, and resignation that actually felt rather peaceful took its place.

She supposed it was because there was nothing she could do to influence the outcome of events. She needed to rejoin Kymas and participate in the final phase of their mission. It was both her duty and the only way she’d receive any measure of the credit for its successful completion. But Falrinn and Anton were the mariners, not she, and they’d catch the galley when they caught it. Meanwhile, for essentially the first time since the start of her adolescence, she had no responsibilities and no walking dead man of a teacher or superior ordering her around. Certainly, her two current companions made for pleasanter company, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to kill them when her time aboard the sailboat came to an end.

Falrinn, she thought, might well be content to accept whatever payment Kymas was willing to offer and go away. The gnome was a practical sort. Anton, however, had a reputation for recklessness, and that accorded with her own impression of him. He might well make another play for Stedd no matter what the odds against him.

She told herself that if he did, he would have only his own stubborn folly to blame for what ensued, but that didn’t make her feel any happier about the prospect. Frowning, she resolved to think about something else, and then a point of orange light appeared and disappeared in the darkness off the port bow, like a firefly that had only chosen to glow once.

But a ship’s lanterns wouldn’t blink. They’d shine steadily. Uncertain whether she’d seen something real or just a trick of the night, she leaned forward and peered intently.

For several breaths, nothing happened. She decided she had been mistaken and started to settle herself more comfortably. Then light pulsed again, but a different light, a hair-thin, crooked white line accompanied by a tiny snap like the crack of a distant whip.

Now Umara knew what she was seeing. “Come here!” she called.

Falrinn had been snoring in the shelter amidships, and Anton had been dozing beside the rudder. They both stood up and made their way into the bow.

“What do you see?” the pirate asked.

“Nothing now,” Umara asked. “But somewhere ahead of us, a wizard threw a blast of flame and followed it up with a thunderbolt.”

“I assume,” Anton said, “that Kymas Nahpret has those spells in his repertoire.”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re finally catching up with him. Good.”

Falrinn spat over the side. “He wouldn’t be throwing battle magic unless somebody else had caught up with him, too.”

Anton smiled. “Don’t tell me the Inner Sea’s cleverest smuggler is afraid of a little scrap.”

“Smuggling’s not like piracy. Pirates make trouble, smugglers avoid it. But I’ll get us close enough to see what all the fuss is about. You two keep watch.” The gnome made a minute adjustment to the headsail, then went to trim the mainsail.

Umara waited. Nothing else flickered in the blackness ahead. After a time, she said, “There truly were spells discharging. I may not be a sailor, but I know magic when I see it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Anton replied.

“So why aren’t we seeing any more of it?” Umara asked.

“It’s possible,” the reaver said, “that a fiery blast and a bolt of lightning were enough to scare off or even destroy an enemy vessel. Or that Kymas discovered it’s still out of range, and now he’s conserving his power. Or that an enemy archer shot back at him and took him out of the fight.”

“That last is doubtful,” she said.

“Why?” Anton asked.

Umara belatedly remembered she hadn’t told Anton that Kymas was a vampire. His ignorance on that particular point might hinder him if he did try to steal Stedd, and in any case, she preferred he have no reason to suspect she herself was occasionally obliged to submit to such a creature’s embrace. She didn’t want the pirate imagining her in that degraded attitude.

“If there was any danger from bowmen,” she replied, “Kymas likely would have armored himself with enchantment.”

“Ah.”

“How long, do you think, before we get close enough to know what’s really happening?”

Anton shrugged. “Obviously, I can’t know when I’m not even the one who saw the flashes, but perhaps a long while yet. Maybe not even until after daybreak.”

“If it takes that long, the fight will definitely be over.”

“Not necessarily. Ships can maneuver and chase each other around for ridiculous amounts of time before they start fighting in earnest. I’ve spent some of the most tedious days of my life just standing on a deck waiting for a battle to start.”

But Umara didn’t find the watching and waiting tedious. She strained her eyes peering, and pictured all the situations she might discover when the sailboat finally drew close enough. Surely, given Kymas’s supernatural might and the mettle of the marines in his service, the galley would prevail in a sea battle. Yet what if it didn’t?

She imagined the broken vessel sinking and carrying Stedd down with it, and the mental picture made her wince. It would be a sad, ugly way for the boy to die.

Then, scowling, she pushed the soft, foolish thought away. Stedd was fated to die no matter what. It was her task to make certain that his death was useful, to her monarch, her master, and herself.

After a while, she and Anton both spotted another wink of red-orange fire. He called out, “Two points to starboard!” Falrinn adjusted the rudder and cold rain drummed on the deck.

Sometime after that, the eastern sky started lightening, revealing massed gray thunderheads like floating mountains. Beneath them, still far apart and small with distance, Kymas’s galley and a caravel emerged from the falling sheets of rain and the gloom. Umara frowned because it appeared her master was running from that one lone ship and it was giving chase. Given equal odds, she would have expected the undead wizard to seek battle as quickly as possible, before daybreak drove him under cover.

Something else surprised her, too. The caravel’s sails bellied with the same blustery westerly that was blowing Falrinn’s sailboat along. But the crew aboard the galley had taken down her sails and were relying on the churning oars for propulsion.

“By the fork,” Anton murmured, “that’s the Iron Jest.”

“Your ship?” Umara asked. He’d told her the story of his mutinous crew.

Falrinn came scurrying forward. “When did the Jest acquire a weather worker?” he asked.

Anton shook his head. “When I took my leave of her, she didn’t have one.”

“Well, she does now,” said the gnome. “He’s stolen the wind from the galley. If not for the rowers, she wouldn’t be making any headway.

As it is, I judge she’s struggling against an unnatural current.”

“It looks that way to me, too,” Anton said.

Umara had no idea how her companions could tell, but she didn’t doubt they were right, and proof that there was some manner of spellcaster aboard the Iron Jest came just a moment later. Making use of the time remaining to him, Kymas hurled a spark at the pirate vessel that roared into a burst of yellow fire when it struck the bow. Despite the rain, the forecastle caught fire. But at once, water leaped up from the surface of the sea, washed across the bow of the caravel, and extinguished the blaze.

Moments later, the water beneath the galley heaved, lifting it high and dropping it back down. A sailor fell overboard. Oars snagged on one another, a couple snapping, and in the wallowing aftermath, some rowers made haste to free the tangled ones and jettison the broken stubs for replacements, but others remained stationary. The zombie oarsmen, Umara realized, couldn’t take the initiative to perform that or any task. Someone needed to command them.

“The Thayans,” Falrinn called from the stern, “are lucky the sea mage hasn’t just sunk them outright. It looks like he’s got the power.”

“He won’t,” Anton shouted back. “The church of Umberlee wants Stedd alive. He’s risking flinging the boy overboard as it is, but he’s probably right that Kymas has him stowed securely.” He turned to Umara. “So in the end, it’s apt to come down to grappling hooks, boarding pikes, and cutlasses, and with both ships locked together, tricks with the wind and the waves won’t be useful anymore. Can your people hold their own in a fair fight?”

Possibly not. Not if Kymas had already shut himself away and the pirates’ wizard had any useful spells left for the casting. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Kymas may have used up most of his power already. We should help them if we can.”

Help? For a moment, Anton wasn’t sure what to make of the idea, for by any sane estimation, both his former crew and the Thayans were rivals trying to abscond with the prize that was rightfully his. So why risk his own life aiding anybody?

Because he was in the straits. Pirate Isle was just a day or two away, while Thay was still hundreds of miles to the east. So if Umara and her folk ended up with boy, he’d have more time to work out a way to steal him.

Besides, he had a score to settle with Naraxes and the other mutineers.

He grinned at the Red Wizard. “I’ll be honored to assist if I can.” He looked back at Falrinn. “Let’s catch up to the galley.”

“Sail my little boat into the middle of a fight between two warships?” the gnome replied. “Aye, Captain! When ice burns and wolves play the whistlecane.”

“Come on! It’ll be fun.”

“Why don’t you should swim over? That will be even more fun.”

The muscles in Anton’s neck tightened. Falrinn was being entirely sensible, but that didn’t make his recalcitrance any less frustrating. “My old friend-”

Umara touched Anton on the arm. Surprised, he fell silent.

The mage then smiled at Falrinn. “What if we were invisible?” she asked.

The gnome scowled, considering. “Well, no one aboard the Iron Jest would throw spells or shoot crossbow bolts at us. But can you hide the whole boat?”

“I think so. I have a knack for concealment and illusions.”

Falrinn shrugged. “If it works, I suppose I’m game.”

Umara took a long breath. Anton assumed she was clearing her head. She started to speak, and then a notion popped into his head.

“Wait,” he said. “Suppose we do get aboard the galley. Are you certain you’ll then be able to out-spell the weather worker?”

The Red Wizard frowned. “No. How could I be? But I have to try.”

“Maybe not. Not if you can wrap you and me in invisibility that lasts even after we leave the sailboat.” He looked down the length of the vessel. “Not if Falrinn can take us to the Jest instead of your ship.”

“I can,” said the gnome, “but the idea is stupid.”

Anton grinned. “Probably. But I have a plan.” He turned back to Umara. “Would you like a tour of the proud vessel I once commanded?”

She smiled. “Why not?”

Anton retrieved his saber from under the shelter, and Falrinn hastily trimmed the sails. Eyes closed, Umara raised her hands over her head and recited words that somehow echoed even without any walls to bounce off. A scent like that of lilies suffused the air.

Then the entire sailboat and those aboard it faded from view. Anton laughed.

Falrinn, however, cursed. “You didn’t warn me I wouldn’t be able to see us, either! How am I supposed to pilot the boat?”

“By touch,” Anton answered. “If you can’t do it, you’re not the sailor I always took you to be.”

Still swearing, the gnome stamped around the deck. Ratchets clacked as he made further adjustments to the sails. Meanwhile, Anton took stock of just how hidden they were.

Plainly, the concealment was less than total. The boat’s wake extended behind it, and a keen eye could make out the rain splashing against surfaces that were themselves invisible. But in the feeble light of an overcast dawn, with everyone aboard the Iron Jest intent on the galley ahead of them as opposed to anything astern, it should suffice.

Once Anton determined that, he had nothing to do but wait while the sailboat made its approach. Fortunately, the smaller, lighter vessel was faster than its quarry, and, still growling obscenities from time to time, Falrinn was managing it with a deftness that justified Anton’s faith in him.

When they were racing along beside the caravel’s stern, the smuggler said, “This is as close as I can get.”

“How do we cross over?” Umara asked.

“You’re a mage,” Anton said. “I hoped you’d have a way.”

She laughed. “As planners go, you aren’t as impressive as you could be.” She recited another rhyme, and for a moment, he felt like mites were crawling on his skin.

Then a line trailing from the Jest lifted itself up out of the water and snaked through the air in his direction. He caught it, and then it slumped in his hand, lifeless as any other rope.

“Have you got hold of it, too?” he asked.

“Yes,” Umara answered.

“Then here we go.” He jumped over the side, and she, presumably, did the same.

The caravel dragged him through the cold brine, and he pulled himself hand over hand along the rope until he could haul himself out of the water and swarm up toward the deck. He noted the Jest was about due for scraping and recaulking, then grinned at his outmoded way of thinking. The condition of the ship was no longer his concern. If he had his way, it soon wouldn’t even be Naraxes’s.

Anton swung himself over the rail just below the quarterdeck, where a different helmsman stood in the same spot where One-Ear Grim had breathed his last. This close, Anton had more concerns about the rain spoiling his invisibility, but so far, the helmsman plainly hadn’t noticed him. Nor had the archers in the fighting top or the men clustered at the bow waiting to board the galley.

The hanging line swung and creaked as Umara climbed up behind him. Looking down, he could just make out the ghost her spell and the raindrops made of her. He took hold of her arm and pulled her onto the deck.

“Thanks,” she gasped.

“Are you all right?”

“Just winded. Crawling up a rope half drowned was harder than I expected. What now?”

“I’ll show you.”

As they skulked forward, he peered in an effort to spot the sea mage Naraxes had recruited. He couldn’t, though. The spellcaster was probably all the way forward, where it would be easiest to target the galley, and masts, cordage, and assorted reavers were in the way.

Well, if the fellow was at the far end of the ship, perhaps that was just as well. Anton took a cautious look around, then undogged a hatch. The ladder beneath it descended to a different section of the hold than the one where he and Stedd had been imprisoned.

With the hatch lowered again, the cramped, cluttered compartment was too dark to see anything more than shadows. Then Umara murmured a charm, and a patch of bulkhead glowed silver, revealing a miscellany of casks, crates, and tools.

“I take it,” she said, “you were counting on me to take care of this detail in the master plan as well.”

“Why not? Whoever heard of a wizard who couldn’t make light?”

“Now that I have, what are we looking for?”

“This.” He gestured to a box with cabalistic sigils painted on it, then remembered she couldn’t see him do that or anything. Smiling, he indicated the container by giving it a little shake inside the netting that held it securely on a shelf.

When Umara spoke again, her voice sounded from right in front of the crate. “These are signs of cold and quiescence.”

Anton sawed at the netting with his dagger. “And I paid a wizard plenty to draw them. Many a captain has doomed his own ship by bringing incendiaries aboard. Until this morning, I didn’t intend to be one of them.”

When he finished cutting the netting away, he pried the box open and lifted off the frigid lid. Nestled in straw, the round black catapult projectiles inside had arcane symbols of their own inscribed on them.

“It looks they’re all here,” Umara said.

“They are. A pirate can’t make much profit burning up the very prize he’s chasing. They were only for an emergency, and lucky me, I finally have a suitable one. Can you set them off from up on deck?”

“I can, but will it matter? The sea wizard put out one fire already.”

“Yes, but surely he was expecting Kymas to throw more flame. We can hope a surprise explosion ripping through the guts of the ship will befuddle him. Even if it doesn’t, flooding the hold to put out our blaze ought to pose its own problems.”

Topside once more, the pair of them phantoms in the rain, she whispered, “When I cast fire, I’ll reappear. I’ll veil myself again immediately, but still.”

“I’ll watch your back,” he told her.

She murmured hissing, popping words that had no business issuing from a human throat, then swept one vague, transparent arm down at the open hatch. A red spark shot from fingertips that simultaneously became opaque flesh and gleaming nails once more.

A detonation boomed, and a tongue of flame leaped higher than Anton’s head. He just had time to think, Not bad, and then a far louder explosion jolted the caravel from bow to stern and sent him reeling. The initial blast had only been Umara’s spell birthing flame, while the one that followed an instant later had been the incendiaries detonating in response.

Staggering, ears ringing, he struggled to recover his balance. A part of him was appalled at what he’d done. But the ship he’d just scuttled didn’t belong to him anymore and never could have again. He thrust such sentimentality aside, pivoted to see how Umara was faring, and cursed.

The Red Wizard sprawled on the deck next to the hatch and had evidently bumped her head when she fell. Her eyes were open and her mouth was moving soundlessly, so perhaps she wasn’t entirely unconscious, but she was near enough that she wasn’t even trying to shift away from the heat of the flames shooting up right beside her.

She was useless in that condition, a liability, and Anton started to turn away. But then he hesitated. For all he knew, she might come to her senses in a moment. And he needed her to convince Kymas Nahpret to welcome him aboard the galley.

The Iron Jest was already listing to port-maybe the blast itself had punched a hole in the hull without the fire needing to burn through-and Anton dragged Umara until he could deposit her at the foot of one of the shrouds to keep her from sliding over the side. Had any of his fellow pirates been paying attention, the knave likely would have realized that an invisible agency was hauling the stunned woman along. But the crew had plenty of other matters to distract them, like their own falls and resulting injuries, the yellow flame leaping and black smoke billowing upward in various places-remarkably, somehow fire was already licking at the mainsail-and a first panicked scramble for the lifeboats.

Anton crouched beside Umara and patted her cheek. “Wake up,” he said, “we have to go.”

The green eyes blinked, but she still seemed dazed. She certainly wasn’t trying to get up.

“Come on,” he growled, “or I swear by every devil in every hell, I’ll leave you behind.” He pinched her cheek as hard as he could.

She pawed clumsily at his hand in an effort to push it away. Then he sensed a figure standing over them. He looked up and caught his breath.

Anton had known Evendur Highcastle was now undead. But he didn’t frequent any deity’s temple, even Umberlee’s, and he’d only glimpsed the Bitch Queen’s new hierophant at a distance in the streets of Immurk’s Hold. And now, even though he’d never liked the swaggering bully his fellow captain had been, it was revolting to finally, truly behold the slimy, swollen horror his transformation had made of him.

Evendur glared down at Umara. “You again,” he snarled. “You did this.” He bent to seize her in hands whose rings were all but buried in puffy rot.

Anton sprang up, whipped out his saber, and slashed.

The rapid motion compromised his concealment. Sensing something whirling at him through the rain, Evendur jerked backward. The tip of the saber still sliced him across the forearm, but the cut was scarcely the lethal stroke Anton had intended. It was, however, a sufficiently aggressive action to make opacity race up the blade from the sludge-smeared point to the guard and then on into his hand and arm.

Evendur peered at his newly revealed attacker with a mix of fury and surprise. “Marivaldi!”

“Wait,” Anton replied. Even as the request left his mouth, he recognized it as likely the most useless word he’d ever uttered.

“Kill him!” Evendur bellowed, and though many of the reavers were too busy trying to fight fires or abandon ship to heed even Umberlee’s Chosen, several came running.

The first one thrust with a boarding pike. Anton sidestepped, and momentum impelled his opponent another step down the slanting deck. That brought him into saber range, and Anton slashed his leg out from under him.

That was one adversary down, but Anton had to pivot instantly to confront the next. This time, the treacherous footing made him slip, and, off balance, he only just managed to parry a cutlass cut to the head and riposte with a slash that opened the other pirate’s belly.

The wounded man dropped the cutlass to clutch at his stomach. As the weapon started to slide and tumble away, Anton stabbed the tip of the saber into the loop defined by handle and guard, flipped the captured blade into the air, and caught it in his off hand.

That bit of panache made his other assailants hesitate, but only for an instant. Then they resumed their advance, and in a more organized fashion than before, spreading out to flank him. Meanwhile, seemingly untroubled by the fresh gash in his arm, Evendur unlimbered the boarding axe slung over his back, stroked a fingertip along the edge, and made it glow a sickly green.

A figure at the edge of Anton’s vision hacked with a broadsword. Anton whirled, parried with the cutlass, and saw that his attacker was Naraxes. He cut with the saber, and the former first mate blocked with a buckler. Steel bit into wood.

Anton heard or perhaps simply sensed motion at his back. With a hollow feeling in his gut, he realized it was likely suicide to turn away from Naraxes and suicide not to. He opted to turn and found Evendur rushing him with the boarding axe raised above his head.

Anton lifted the cutlass into a high guard and whipped the saber in a stop cut to the ribs. He scored, but it didn’t matter. The Chosen started to swing his weapon anyway.

Then, however, two luminous spheres leaped through the air to strike Evendur from behind. On impact, one vanished in a burst of flame, while the other winked out of existence with an earsplitting screech that flensed gobs of rotten flesh off his bones. He jerked, and the slanted deck betrayed him and sent him staggering, too. The flailing axe cut missed.

Anton spun back around toward his other foes. Though he was too late to witness it, magic had plainly attacked them, too. The front of his body encrusted with frost, Naraxes looked like a helplessly shuddering snowman. Two other pirates lay dead, each burned in one fashion or another, one with patches of flesh still bubbling and melting.

Traces of phosphorescence fading on the fingers that had cast the spell, Umara gripped the shroud and dragged herself to her feet. “You said we need to go,” she panted.

Anton grinned. “Now that you mention it.”

“No,” Evendur said. “Stay and die with your ship like a captain should.” He ripped the burning jerkin and shirt from his back and moved to place himself between his foes and the port edge of the deck.

Anton had just about reached the unhappy conclusion that while he and Umara might be able to slow the Chosen of Umberlee down for a breath or two, no power at their command was likely to stop him. But they might as well try. Hoping Evendur was unfamiliar with the stance and the combinations that flowed out of it, he raised both blades high in a guard his father’s master-of-arms had taught him.

Then the Iron Jest gave another great lurch as the sea surged into another breached compartment below deck. This time, the stern dropped, while the bow lifted out of the water.

The motion sent nearly everything and everyone, Evendur included, sliding, reeling, or tumbling helplessly aft. Umara, however, was still hanging onto the shroud, and, dropping the cutlass, Anton managed to snatch hold of a halyard.

Anton rammed the saber back into its scabbard. “Come on!” he said. “Evendur won’t give us another chance.” He made a floundering run at the port side of the caravel and dived into the sea. Umara splashed in after him.

Despite the best efforts of the saber that seemed intent on fouling the action of his kicking legs, he swam away from the Jest as fast as he could. When a ship sank, it created a suction that could drag swimmers under. He’d seen it happen.

Finally, unsure if he truly deemed himself out of the danger zone or was just too spent to swim any farther, he halted, turned, and started treading water. Umara was still with him.

“As you should be,” he rasped, “after the trouble I took on your behalf.”

The Red Wizard didn’t ask what he meant. She was intent on the Iron Jest, and why not? It was quite a spectacle.

The back third of the caravel was underwater. The rest was canted even higher, and much of it covered in roaring flame that made a mockery of the rain. The spars and sails were trees of fire, and as best Anton could tell, most of the boats were burning, too. Some men risked setting themselves alight in what must be an agonizing struggle to lower the smaller vessels into the water. Others, clinging precariously to whatever support they could find, stabbed, chopped, and wrestled for a place aboard them. A gray-black wave of rats flung themselves over the side of the Jest to attempt the impossible swim to land.

Then, with a horrible, sudden smoothness, the rest of the caravel slid under the sea, leaving only smoke above the waves. It was almost as if Umberlee, who supposedly loved sinking ships above all things, truly had taken the Jest in her colossal hand and pulled it down.

The submersion raised a wave that lifted Anton and Umara and dropped them back amid charred scraps of flotsam. A scrabbling rat pulled itself aboard a broken section of ribband and claimed it for its raft.

Hoping for more comfortable transportation, blinking against the water trickling down from his hair into his eyes, Anton peered about and found Falrinn and his sailboat, visible once more, off to the left. “Falrinn! Here we are! Come get us!”

“I’m working on it,” the gnome answered. He threw a line and it plopped down in the water.

Anton used the rope to clamber back inside the sailboat. Umara sought to do likewise, but likely thanks to her knock on the head, exhaustion, and saturated garments, struggled unsuccessfully. Anton took her arm and, with a grunt, heaved her aboard.

“So,” Falrinn said, “on to the galley?”

Umara gave him a smile. “Of course.”

She kept smiling, too, as the gnome adjusted their course, and she and Anton slumped on benches. The Turmishan, however, felt a bleak anger rising inside him.

It wasn’t simply the bitter melancholy that sometimes overtook him after a battle, although that might be a part of it. It was the realization of just how thoroughly he’d wrecked his own schemes.

His intent had been to eliminate a shipload of rivals and then sell Stedd to Evendur. But instead, he’d attacked the undead captain himself and sent him to the bottom.

How was Anton supposed to collect the bounty now? He supposed he could still try selling Stedd to the Umberlant church, but would the waveservants even want the boy now that the leader who’d declared his apprehension important was gone? Even if they did, would they deal fairly with a man who’d assailed Evendur Highcastle with fire and blade?

Curse it, anyway!

Perhaps the most galling aspect of the whole affair was that Anton hadn’t needed to reveal himself to Evendur. He could have preserved his invisibility and then salvaged the situation somehow. But he hadn’t. He’d swung his saber because … he wasn’t even sure of the because. Maybe just because the new Evendur was so hideous to look at, and he and the old one had so seldom gotten along.

In any case, he supposed that now he’d simply have to accept whatever payment the Thayans offered for sinking the Iron Jest and Umara’s safe return and go on his way. It surely wouldn’t be enough to buy a new ship, and the prospect of serving aboard some other pirate captain’s vessel, as he had in the early years of his exile, had little appeal. But what was the alternative?

As the sailboat approached the galley, Umara, still looking annoyingly pleased at the “success” of their foray against the Iron Jest, stood in the bow with her head bared. She hadn’t shaved her scalp during her time with Anton and Falrinn, and her black hair had started to grow out. But plainly, she still trusted the other Thayans to recognize her, and apparently, they did. No one shot at the smaller vessel, and a sailor dropped a rope ladder over the side.

Falrinn waved Anton toward the larger vessel. “Go collect our pay,” the smuggler said.

“You’re both welcome aboard the galley,” Umara told him.

“Thank you, lass,” Falrinn answered, “but I’ll be fine down here.” Where, Anton thought, he’d have a better chance of escape if Kymas Nahpret proved less appreciative of their efforts than Umara had promised. Other than the unsavory reputation of Thayans in general and Red Wizards in particular, he saw no reason why that should be the case, but it didn’t surprise him that the gnome felt he’d taken enough chances for one day.

It did surprise him that when the moment came to board the galley, Umara’s air of exhilaration fell away from her. She stopped smiling, took a long breath, and squared her shoulders in the manner of someone resignedly taking up a chore. But maybe she was simply wrapping herself in the dignity the crew expected of her.

She climbed the rope ladder first, in the slightly hesitant manner of someone unaccustomed to them, and he followed. He reached the deck just in time to find her countrymen still standing at attention.

The living ones, at any rate. Three, currently armed for battle like the rest, were slouching zombies with slack gray faces and a yellow sheen in their sunken eyes. By the essentially intact look of them, they hadn’t been dead, or undead, more than a tenday or two.

Umara waved her hand, and, while casting some curious glances in Anton’s direction, most of the mariners returned to the task of making the galley shipshape after the tossing Evendur had given it. But a middle-aged man with a pocked, sour face and the last two fingers missing from his left hand approached the wizard.

“Captain,” Umara said.

“Lady Sir,” the officer replied. “Did you sink the pirates?”

“With the help of this warrior”-she nodded to Anton-“and his friend.”

“After we abandoned you in Westgate,” the captain said, a note of disgust in his voice.

“We all have to follow orders,” Umara said. “Speaking of which, is Lord Kymas in his cabin?”

“Yes,” the other Thayan said. “He rushed in there as soon as it became clear the pirates wouldn’t be bothering us anymore.”

Anton wondered why. It was strange behavior for any commander in the wake of an engagement. But perhaps Kymas was a landlubber like Umara and realized that, though nominally in charge, he had nothing to contribute to the task of setting the galley to rights.

Umara looked at Anton like she wanted to say something but didn’t know what. After a moment, she settled for, “I’ll go talk to Kymas.” She turned toward the hatch under the awning projecting out from the quarterdeck. Likely knocked loose by the shaking the galley had weathered, the left side of the sailcloth rectangle drooped.

Then an oarsman cried out. Together with Umara and the captain, Anton hurried to the larboard side of the galley to see what had alarmed the man. By the time they got there, other folk were peering, pointing, and exclaiming.

A bowshot away, a shadowy form stood on the surface of the sea. In the gloom and the rain, Anton couldn’t see it particularly clearly, but he had no doubt it was Evendur Highcastle.

And why, Anton thought bitterly, wouldn’t it be? The living corpse was the Chosen of the Queen of the Depths. He felt like an idiot for imagining he could dispose of such a monstrosity just by sinking a caravel out from under him.

“Still,” Umara breathed, “he doesn’t have a ship or a band of followers anymore. Perhaps he’ll give up for today.”

As if in response, the sea heaved beneath the galley and sent it crashing down, throwing the decks into confusion once again. Oars lurched in the thole pins, battering rowers with bone-breaking force. Arms flailing, a marine toppled over the side. For a moment, it looked as though Umara might tumble after him, but Anton grabbed her arm and steadied her.

“Kill the creature!” Anton bellowed. “Kill him!”

He’d momentarily forgotten he wasn’t the captain aboard this vessel, but the Thayans heeded him anyway. Arrows and crossbow bolts arced in Evendur’s direction. Rattling off words of power, Umara thrust out her arms and sent darts of blue light streaking after them.

Some of the arrows and quarrels fell short or flew wide. Waves leaped up to block the others. Even so, two or three actually pierced the bloated, decaying flesh of their target, and Umara’s magic did, too. But they evidently didn’t do much damage, because Evendur started forward.

The sea raised the galley and dropped it into a trough. For a heartbeat, the sea streamed across the deck, and someone screamed.

Then the tall, pale man Anton had met on the benighted street in Westgate strode out of the cabin in the stern. He now wore an intricately embroidered scarlet robe and cloak. “What is this?” he demanded.

Umara stared at him. “You-”

“I know a spell to shield me when I absolutely require it. Now, why is the ship still being tossed about when our attackers are burned alive or drowned?”

“Not quite all of them are.” Anton pointed to the figure advancing atop the sea.

Kymas Nahpret smiled a grim little smile. “The fool doesn’t know when to give up, does he? But if he insists on perishing with his vessel, I’ll oblige him.”

The wizard pulled a slender ebony wand from his sleeve. He hissed an incantation that filled Anton with instinctive revulsion even though he didn’t understand a word of it, then flicked the wand in Evendur’s direction as though miming a teacher’s admonitory tap on a daydreaming pupil’s head.

The air around Evendur darkened. Then vapor puffed from the dead man’s body, and Anton realized it was the rain that had truly darkened in the course of changing from water to something that seared like vitriol.

And, to Anton’s excitement, it appeared to be hurting Evendur more than anything else hitherto. The dead man flailed, staggered, and then plunged down into the sea as, perhaps, the magical assault broke his concentration.

Some of the Thayans cheered. Until, like an invisible cable was drawing him up, Evendur rose above the surface once more.

By then, though, in a manner that momentarily reminded Anton of Dalabrac and his countless blowpipes, Kymas had traded the ebony wand for one made of glass or crystal. He shouted a word that sounded like crockery smashing and stabbed the instrument at the Chosen.

At the same moment, Evendur shook his fist at his attacker. The wand shattered, and a wave of transformation ran up Kymas’s hand and on into his arm, turning the limb as clear as the mystical weapon had been. Immediately after the first wave flowed a second that made the wizard’s altered substance crack and crunch.

Wincing, Anton expected to see Kymas’s whole body break into hundreds of glittering shards. But Kymas arrested the change by dissolving his whole arm into mist, in effect amputating it above the highest point to which the infection had spread. When he willed it back into solidity, it was pallid flesh and blood-red sleeve once more.

Anton thought it an impressive defense, but Kymas still looked rattled that Evendur had reflected his own attack back on him. The Red Wizard pivoted to the captain and said, “Why aren’t we moving?”

“Same reason as before,” the officer answered. “The rowers aren’t ready to row, and the current and the wind are both running against us.”

Now that someone had drawn Anton’s attention to it, the pirate felt the wind gusting from bow to stern driving spattering rain before it. At least, he thought, it was doing Falrinn some good. Unwilling to bide dangerously close to the Thayan ship while Evendur bounced it up and down, the gnome was fleeing westward.

Anton hoped Falrinn would get away, and it actually looked likely. The Bitch Queen’s Chosen appeared to be devoting all his attention to the galley.

All his attention and all his power. The ship rose high and smashed down. The mainmast snapped at the base and fell toward the stern with broken cordage streaming out behind it.

Anton sprang in front of Umara and raised his arm to protect his face. A line whistled past his ear, but nothing struck him. The mainmast slammed into the smaller mast aft, snapping it as well, and both hammered down on the quarterdeck.

“Much more of this,” the captain said, “and the hull’s likely to start coming apart.”

Umara turned to Anton. “You said Evendur wants Stedd alive.”

“We may have made him so angry that he’s willing to settle for drowning without the frills as opposed to ritual sacrifice. Or else he wants to force us to surrender.”

“Then he’s going to be disappointed,” Kymas said, and Anton had to give him credit. He’d seemed shaken for an instant, but he was all resolve now. “Umara and I are more than a match for any jumped-up zombie, especially if we work together.” He turned to the other mage. “Let’s try some necromancy. We’ll command him to pull his own head off.”

Whispering in unison, the Red Wizards whispered words that set Anton’s teeth on edge. But they didn’t make Evendur decapitate himself or even break stride, and a moment later, the sea heaved the galley up and down. The tangled wreckage of the two masts bounced and shifted, and sailors scrambled to keep from being crushed, or swept overboard.

“All right,” Kymas said, “more acid. He didn’t like it before.”

True, Anton thought, but the corrosive rain hadn’t stopped Evendur, either, and he suspected it would have even less effect the second time around. He turned to the captain and asked, “Where are you keeping the boy?”

“The lower rowing deck,” the Thayan said. “But …”

Anton looked around and spotted a companionway that looked like it ought to lead to the lower banks of oars. Weaving around injured men and trying not to trip over snapped rigging, dropped weapons, and other litter, he dashed in that direction.

The next upheaval came when he was partway down the steep little flight of steps. It pitched him forward to splash down into bilge water that sloshed back and forth with the rocking of the boat.

Near the companionway, a mariner had jammed himself in a corner. The captain probably expected him to command the oarsmen, but at the moment, his eyes wide with fear, he didn’t seem to working on anything but making sure the tossing of the galley didn’t throw him around.

Beyond the sailor were the rows of benches with an aisle running down the center of them. There was just enough wan gray light leaking in through the outriggers to illuminate the creatures occupying them. But even if there hadn’t been, Anton would have known them for what they were by the rotten stink that suddenly assailed him.

Like the zombies topside, these looked relatively fresh and had likely started the voyage as living slaves. They still wore their leg irons, and the shackles had held them more or less in place as the galley slammed up and down, although jerking oars had battered them and left them sprawled and twisted in peculiar attitudes.

Stedd lay in the filthy water between two of the central benches. To Anton’s relief, the boy’s face wasn’t submerged, but he wasn’t moving, either.

As Anton splashed toward him, the nauseating stink of corruption intensified, and the air grew colder even as the light dimmed. Or was it? Anton suddenly wondered if it was actually his eyes that were failing.

He might be going blind. He realized he felt weak and sick in a way that his exertions and bruises didn’t explain. He was stumbling, dizzy, and his pulse pounded in his neck. Was the beat irregular? He wasn’t sure, but he thought so.

Then, mere shadows in his murky sight, the dead men started to turn in his direction. They were about to rise and swarm over him. He knew it.

Except, he realized, that he didn’t.

Common mindless zombies wouldn’t do that, or anything, without being ordered to, and besides, these were shackled in place. A curse had evidently poisoned his mind with terror and nonsense. Resisting its influence as best he could, he reeled onward.

Another upheaval sent him staggering, and the lurching end of an oar nearly caught him in the kidney. Then a final stride brought him to Stedd, who didn’t react to his arrival.

The boy’s eyes had rolled up, with white showing all across the bottoms, and he was shaking. Cast in the form of a skull, an amulet made of black metal hung around his neck.

Anton pulled off the medallion and threw it as far as he could. Stedd’s shuddering abated immediately, and so did the Turmishan’s own feelings of illness and dread. Plainly, Kymas Nahpret had used magic to render the boy prophet helpless. Perhaps the amulet had somehow focused the innate vileness of the zombies, the undeath that was antithetical to the life-giving light and warmth of the sun, on him.

“Hey!” called the Thayan braced in the corner. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

Anton didn’t bother to look around. “One more word,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.” And then, to Stedd: “Wake up, lad. Come back to me.”

Stedd’s eyelids fluttered then his eyes focused on Anton. “You …” he croaked. “I was having nightmares …”

“They’re over now,” Anton said.

“I remember, the bad man made me wear the black skull … did you come to help me?”

Anton felt a twinge of discomfort or something akin to it, but there was no time to pause and wonder why. “We need to help each other. Evendur Highcastle, the ‘bad man’ who put a price on your head, is attacking us. Nobody has been able to hurt him, or at least, not enough for it to matter. But maybe you and your sun god can.”

Stedd shook his head. “I couldn’t pray with the skull around my neck. I couldn’t even think.”

“You have to-”

The world, or at least their little bit of it, heaved up and down. Zombies flailed back and forth as though trying to dance despite the impediment of their leg irons. In the aftermath, Stedd looked shocked, and Anton realized that was only natural. The boy hadn’t been conscious for any of the previous tosses.

“As I was saying,” the pirate continued, “you have to use your power, and that’s the reason why. Evendur will sink us if you don’t.”

“But I’m weak!”

“What matters is, is Lathander weak? That’s not what you told me when we were hiking to Westgate.”

Stedd swallowed. “All right. I’ll try.”

The boy had trouble standing, so Anton helped him. Then they hurried to the companionway and up into the rain.

With commendable discipline, those marines who hadn’t yet tumbled overboard or suffered some other mishap were loosing arrows and crossbow bolts as fast as they could shoot. Still casting magic in concert, Umara and Kymas conjured a fiend with the curling horns of a ram and the leathery wings of a bat and sent it flying at Evendur with its barbed spear leveled.

Yet none of the defenders’ efforts were helping very much. Evendur had a couple more arrows sticking in him, and a couple more charred and torn places in his flesh, but he was only a javelin cast away now and still inexorably advancing. Waves leaped to block the missiles streaking at him; one momentarily assumed the form of a gigantic fish to swallow the bat-winged devil whole.

Stedd gawked at Evendur, then took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Hoping the boy was reestablishing a broad, clear channel down which his god’s power could stream, Anton positioned himself so as to screen him. If the Bitch Queen’s Chosen hadn’t already noticed Stedd on deck, there was no reason to give him a second chance.

The ship wallowed. Anton had the feeling that the unquiet water beneath her was getting ready to fling her into the air once more.

“Take all the time you need,” he said to Stedd. “But if that’s more than another heartbeat, hang on to something.”

“I’m ready now.” Stedd stepped into the open and thrust his hand at Evendur.

The undead pirate’s head jerked in the boy’s direction. Whitecaps broke across the surface of the sea. But before the water could do whatever its master wanted it to, a ray of brilliant light streaked from Stedd’s fingertips, struck Evendur in the center of his massive chest, and set him ablaze-not with fire, but painting him with radiance.

Evendur’s will brought waves leaping over him, but they failed to extinguish the dazzling halo. Then he roared words of power that included the name “Umberlee.” When they too failed, he dived beneath the surface and hurtled along for some distance like an undersea shooting star. And then, at last, the glow went out.

Unfortunately, that meant Anton could no longer see him in the depths. He waited tensely to find out if the undead reaver would return to the fray. Time dragged until it seemed likely the answer was no. A breath later, a sailor let out a cheer, and his fellows joined in.

The moment after that, Stedd collapsed to his knees.

Anton crouched beside him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” the boy whispered. “Just … that was harder than making all the food … it was the hardest thing yet …”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Kymas said. “You won’t feel tempted to make a fuss when we put your amulet back on and restore you to your friends in the lower tier. This time, I think we’ll tie you up as well.”

“Hold on,” Anton said.

The senior wizard turned to him. “I can see you and Umara have come to a genuine understanding, and I appreciate all you’ve done this morning. I look forward to welcoming you as you deserve. But it will have to wait until the prisoner’s secure. As he just demonstrated, he’s dangerous.”

“The pirates and sunlords both managed to hold him without torturing him.”

Kymas shrugged. “He’s growing more powerful, and in any case, what’s the difference?”

Anton didn’t know, and the prudent part of him urged him to let the matter go. Unfortunately, another part was set on having its way.

“Make me the boy’s warder,” he said. “I’ll manage him without breaking his mind or making him sick. That way, you can be sure he’ll reach Thay alive and fit for whatever you mean to do with him when you get there.”

“An interesting proposal,” Kymas said, “but I prefer the existing arrangements. Now, please, stand aside.” He gazed steadily into Anton’s eyes.

For a moment, Anton felt lightheaded, and then his sensible side finally came to the fore. He drew breath to tell the Red Wizard he could have it his way but then recalled the malaise that had afflicted him among the undead oarsmen. Kymas Nahpret had created that enchantment, and Anton’s sudden willingness to give way likely derived from a similar source.

The Turmishan clenched his fists. “Stay out of my head, you piece of dung.”

Kymas sighed. “This is so perverse of you. I truly did intend to honor whatever promise Umara made you, but by your pugnacity, you’ve forfeited any claim on my good will. Surrender your weapons.”

Anton whipped out his dagger, lunged, grabbed the wizard by the collar, and poised the blade at his throat. “No. You put the boy and me ashore. Or else you and I can die together.”

“You should have opted for your enchanted weapon,” Kymas replied. “Then murdering me would at least be possible, albeit unlikely. My dear, would you please put an end to this farce?”

Umara rattled off rhyming words and pointed at Anton. Pain ripped through his chest, and, gasping, he stiffened.

In that moment of incapacitation, Kymas wrenched himself free. Then he punched Anton in the head.