Chapter 1

Hell Come Ashore

As we dropped anchor, Moonplum burned.

Blanketing smoke rose from the outpost’s ruins. Caught by a rare westerly harmattan, it drifted out over the blue-gray waters of the Fever Sea. Warm soot fell like hail onto the Aspidochelone’s foredeck.

Seagrave, the saltiest of my four unwilling adjutants, offered me his spyglass. Lines of grime incised his bloated face. Shells, clay beads, and bits of golden coin hung in the tangles of his beard. His night-blue greatcoat, worn

in cussed defiance of the tropical heat, smelled of mutton grease, old blood, spilled rum, ordure, and the combined sweat of several decades. He wore stink as a wizard wears a warding spell.

“Looks like the Whelk, ma’am,” he said, pronouncing the word in the sailor’s manner, so that it verged on mum. As fully as Siren Call had bounded his will, I could never stop Seagrave from calling me that, to say captain as he ought.

Where once I would have corrected him, now I recognized my annoyance as small-minded. To withhold from him this tiny rebellion would be ungiving.

“Who commands it?” I asked. No fact concerning a ship, captain, or crewman of the Shackles eluded Seagrave’s mind. He absorbed the scuttlebutt of our piratical isles as a fish breathes through its gills.

“Josiah Common,” answered Seagrave. “Otherwise known as Josiah Tongue-Cutter, Sy the Fork, or Tragic Joe.”

“The one with the glass eye?”

“Aye, ma’am. Some say he has two glass eyes. But that’s only a jest.”

“And to which of the pirate lords does he owe his charter?”

“Used to sail for Tessa Fairwind. These days, the Wolf.”

Seagrave meant Avimar Sorrinash, lycanthrope commander of a lycanthrope crew. My argument today was not with him.

“Does this Tragic Joe league himself with our man?”

“They ran starboard-to-port against the Rahadoumi navy, and in raids as far north as Varisia.”

The Whelk was a low-slung war sloop. Spiraled tiles on its prow mimicked the shell of the predatory mollusk that was its namesake. A mere handful of sailors patrolled its deck. They spyglassed us as we spyglassed them.

Seagrave licked his sun-chapped lips. “Shall we blast it with fire-spitters, or just come along and board?”

“Neither.”

He communicated his disappointment in a basso profundo grunt. It would have carried great weight, were he still a captain.

“If the internal peace of our free pirate nation is to be disturbed, it won’t be our doing,” I told him. “But if the Fork’s crew come at us…”

A grin surfaced from the dark sargasso of Seagrave’s beard. “Aye, ma’am.”

The crew rowed ashore in five boats—I in one, one of my adjutants in each of the others. The debris of charred, shattered piers drifted by. We beached our boats near a mixed stand of palms and cottons.

Rira, the only woman among my adjutants, stalked toward me, boots sinking into silty soil. The pounding sun highlighted each strange detail on the mask that forever concealed her face. It grimaced at the world with a sea monster’s features: goggling eyes, fanning fins, and f laring, toothy lips. A green patina darkened its dull gray surface. Behind it trailed a bleached and dreadful mane.

From the neck down, Rira affected the prideful finery of a pirate queen. Her neckline plunged aggressively, daring others to stare. Tattoos whorled across her burnished skin.

With the tip of her cutlass she gestured down the shore. She moved with an exaggerated deliberateness, as if the magic of my ancient sword yoked her physically. “I found the Whelk’s boats. We’ll scuttle them, yes?”

I shook my head. “If we want Common’s crew to go, we must preserve their means of departure.”

Rira balled her fists.

“Were there signs of other boats?” I asked.

“Come and gone, Challys Argent.” Where Seagrave tweaked me by calling me “mum,” Rira dropped honorif ics altogether, insisting on my full name. This

odd expression of contempt washed over me now, as it did with the old salt.

I permitted myself a curse—a weakness acquired from my crew. “Then we’re too late.”

“We’re not turning around? Your crew keen for action.”

I led the procession into town. “We may not have him, but we can find out where he went.”

As the burning structures of Moonplum grew clearer through the smoke, I saw how great an overstatement it was to call the place a town. It was less a port than a hope for the future. A sparse collection of storehouses and cottages huddled down the length of a muddied laneway, not far from the ruined docks. The lane terminated at the foot of a wooden temple, its vivid paint not yet scourged by alkaline air.

An earlier self might have mourned the folly of Moonplum’s founders. Its location near a wide river mouth would seem favorable for shipping, with ready

access to riches hewn from the Mwangi Jungle. Instead, its accessibility to the sea merely placed it within easy grasp of my sea-raiding compatriots, whose home islands lay only a few hundred miles to the northwest. Well-placed ports were farther away, and better defended.

The attacking f leet waited till the aspiring magnates of Moonplum had taken in goods worth stealing, then landed with swords and fire. Only a single wonder pertained: that they’d disciplined themselves long enough for the locals to

build this much.

A series of screams cut short my postulations.

At one time the terror and pain in them would have sliced through me as well. In the Shackles I learned to hide such reactions, which serve only to announce oneself as prey. Over the course of my years on the Aspidochelone, I perfected this concealment. Now my pity is so well hid even I cannot find it. I have transformed myself into a grouping of angles and calculations.

I sped my pace to a cautious trot, cutlass at the ready. The faint heat of the four active geas crystals in its hilt radiated into my hand.

Otondo loomed at my left, grinning. “A scrap,” he drooled.

Otondo, once captain of the brigantine Ravager, stood ten and a half feet tall in his shaggy boots. A bony ball of a bottom-heavy head, all jaw and little cranium, balanced on a frame of rippling muscle, with no neck visible between them. Corded veins crisscrossed gray-green flesh. They pulsed so strongly that an astute visitor could count out his heart rate simply by looking at him. Black pinprick eyes stared from beneath a thick and rolling brow. Otondo carried the largest cutlass I had ever seen, specially smithed for his ogre-sized hands. He was as heavy as my next three biggest men put together.

“Remember,” I said to him, “the Rule still applies.”

His blunt-toothed smile faded. “I hoped you wouldn’t say.”

“It always applies, universally.”

“How about a little leeway, Cap’n?”

The ogre’s attempts to ingratiate would induce shudders, were I still the shuddering type.

“No leeway whatsoever. No eating.” I brandished Siren Call’s hilt. His crystal, the one that held a sliver of his soul, brightened. Otondo’s complexion dulled. He shrank back, his face that of a scolded dog.

“One day…” he growled.

When I increased my step, he fell back, muttering. A mocking chuckle whispered through the group. It could only be Adalbert Aspodell, the fourth of my murderous aides. Otondo responded with a canine growl. I plunged on; it was me their jockeying was meant to goad.

For a complement of fifty, we proceeded with admirable silence. The first of the buildings we passed had been reduced completely to smoldering planks. Up ahead, crew from the Whelk—and, for all I could tell, stragglers from departed vessels—lurched between still-extant structures. Each hunched under the weight of something looted: jugs of rum, kegs of ale, casks of salt fish. One pirate bore on his shoulders a plush, outsized chair. Two of the men carried young boys. Their immediate fates I declined to contemplate in detail. If they survived, they too would become pirates aboard the Whelk, perhaps one day completing the circle with like abductions in a similar doomed town.

Drunk on brandy and bloodshed, the crew of the Whelk took us in with molasses-slow comprehension. It dawned on them that they were dispersed, while we of the Aspidochelone stood in good formation. That they were tired and dulled, while we were square awake.

Otondo was at my side again. “A little provocation, Cap’n?”

Were incipient violence a perfume, he’d have reeked with it—as would the other three.

“At this revel, we are uninvited guests,” I told them. “Let us act with matchless etiquette.”

A portly, mutton-chopped pirate dropped an ornate sandalwood box and lunged our way. With one hand he wiped at his mouth; with the other, he drew his blade.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“I am Challys Argent, captain of the Aspidochelone, and this is my crew.”

He squinched his face in disapproval. “The Pathfinder captain?”

I bowed. “The same.”

He spat. The wind blew his sputum toward me. Otondo tensed. He checked my boots. The missile had landed short of its target. I held out my free hand to him, keeping him in check.

The Whelk crew assembled themselves behind their spokesman.

“You did not sign on to our raid. You are nothing but late-lilies. We did not fight and die so that a pack of sea hyenas might show up to trump our loot.”

“I would surmise that you fought and your victims died. Regardless, you may rest assured. We are not here to steal from fellow f liers of the black skull f lag. Such would contravene the code of our Hurricane King.”

“Save your lies for fools. Why else would you come here?”

“For what Pathfinders always seek. Information. Where is your captain?”

Mutton-chop straightened his spine. “I am captain of the Whelk.”

“I am told that honor belongs to Josiah Common. And, as everyone knows, one to two of his eyes are made of glass. Whereas yours, one as bloodshot as the other, do not fit the description.”

“I am Captain Strane Trafton. Joe Fork-Cutter met his final tragedy in the course of the raid. We now mete out vengeance, for the crime of undue resistance.”

“And I don’t suppose Josiah might have been done in by a confederate’s blow?”

“What do you insinuate?”

“Was your raid not designed and led by Kered Firsk?”

The name had scarcely left my mouth when a line of flame burst from the back ranks of the Whelk crew. I caught a flash of a brass spell-spitter—fashioned, as per the local vogue, not as a normal wand, but with a grip like that of a crossbow or pistol. I ducked the burst, though it grazed the brim of my tricorne hat, setting it ablaze. As I pulled the burning item from my head, battle cries rang and the two sides ran to engage. My hair f lew free, impeding

vision. I leapt back to miss the arc of an incoming ax. It was Trafton, engaging captain to captain with a most uncaptainly weapon.

I weaved and turned in search of a patch of unimpeded ground. The Moonplum laneway became the stage for a wild scrum. Though the battlers had as much room as could be desired, they fought like pirates, instinctively clumping themselves into a space the size of a galleon’s deck. But here there was no rigging to seize, no railings to climb upon, no shark-filled waters to heave the foe into. Flashing my cutlass in a series of unpredictable feints, I

forced Trafton back. My blade caught his weapon hand. He shrank from me, grimacing in pain. A white line across his knuckles transformed into a red one. I planted a boot on his leg and sent him toppling. He landed on his spine in the mud and slid, coming to a halt near Otondo, who exchanged blows with a burly counterpart. The ogre glanced back to note the rival captain’s presence. Trafton saw his vulnerability and tried to roll. As he thrust at his primary foe with his enormous cutlass, Otondo casually stepped on the new captain’s throat. Trafton’s larynx cracked, sending a qualm through friend and foe alike. As he choked and died, the melee resumed. The death of a second captain in one day buoyed my crew with homicidal glee, and the Whelk’s with vindictive rage.

This fight offered us nothing. I needed distance from it, to see if I could call it to a truce. Sidestepping an incoming rapier thrust, I leapt onto the porch of a smoldering, emptied warehouse. Charred planks wobbled beneath my heels.

My crew arranged themselves to support their four most potent killers. They gave Otondo a wide berth as he muscled his way through the opposition. He sliced a man’s head clean off, then kicked the decapitated body to down a second enemy. The ogre speared his cutlass through the slaughtered man and into the live one, who then joined his comrade in death.

Seagrave waded into the thickest concentration of foes, parting them as a prow cuts through waves. He took blows unf linchingly, the armor hidden beneath his foul greatcoat turning blades aside. The old salt leveraged his bulk to power his blows. Striking as often with elbows, fists, and kicks as with his sword, he bowled down pirates to and fro.

Crew from the Aspidochelone ranked around Rira to protect her spell-weaving hands from jostling distractions. She conjured balls of multicolored force and sent them spinning through the fray. They unerringly sought her chosen enemies. With each anguished cry or welling bruise, a spiteful chuckle echoed from her mask.

Adalbert Aspodell, who favored a nobleman’s rapier over the expected cutlass, danced lithely around the fight’s periphery. With a dolphin’s grace he stabbed opportunistically. His attacks set aside force in favor of cruel precision. He f licked his blade’s razor tip between ribs, across throats, into

eardrums. Throughout the display he held his high-cheeked, mocking features in an attitude of wry detachment.

Led by these four, my crew sent the Whelk’s reeling. As one, the losers dispersed. Bruised and bleeding pirates ran for the beach, for the jungle, and into the remains of buildings.

“We hunt them down?” Otondo asked.

“Only him.” I pointed. A tall pirate of elven aspect dashed for the palms, silk tunic billowing. From a scabbard on his hip, the hilt of his spell-spitter gleamed. It was he who tried to set me af lame. “He’s one of Firsk’s, I’ll

wager.” Rira sprinted after him, followed by Otondo. “Keep him in condition to talk!” I called.

The crew fell to looting, plucking up the prizes dropped by our rivals. As rightful as these appropriations were, I tasked them to delay in favor of a search for survivors. They took the wounded to a warehouse the fires had only lightly touched. Our priests, Jeffret and Cold Bendani, attended the injured. They venerated green-haired Gozreh, the ever-changeable god of seas and sailors. They incanted her healing magics, sealing wounds and washing away pain.

I left them to their work. The raiders had dealt with their victims savagely; it seemed unlikely that any would be in immediate shape to speak.

Alert for reprisals, we strode to the temple. The four sides of its tower bore the colorful sigils of deities. Gozreh’s faced the coast, as is customary, represented by an inward-curling length of seaweed. Also represented were the golden key of Abadar the merchant, the blue butterf ly of Desna the traveler, and Erastil the provider, who was locally symbolized by a golden boat, its sails filled by Gozreh’s winds.

“I enjoy being teased as much of the next man,” said Adalbert Aspodell. “More so, in fact. Yet isn’t it past time to tell us what you’re after here?”

“We seek Kered Firsk,” I told him.

“Yes, yes, that you’ve said. But there must be a good reason behind this. You don’t follow the wake of the Monster Captain on a whim.”

“I’ll tell all when fact has been sifted from speculation.”

A laugh purred in his throat. “You think me a gull.”

“In what sense, Aspodell?”

“You might tell something. Never all.”

A foreboding creak issued from behind the temple doors. They hung askew on their hinges. The sound mingled a wooden groan with a metallic clatter.

I stepped into a vandalized foyer, over the shards of a mirror knocked from its frame. A version of myself stared back at me from each of the pieces. In this strange context my own features surprised me. I saw hollow cheeks, raised

veins, wires of muscle, and gold-f lecked eyes. My face was all edges and planes, its former softness jettisoned long ago. Years under the pitiless sun of the Fever Sea had bronzed my skin and worn into its surface a network of

tributary wrinkles. What I beheld, I did not dislike. On the deck of a pirate ship, austerity begat authority. Yet there had to be swagger too, and this was supplied by a cascade of coppery hair. Garments of fine fabric and simple cut

bespoke both wealth and practicality. Top salts will sign on with a hard captain, but never a poor one.

Velvet curtains clung tenuously to a bent and broken rod. When I beheld what

waited inside, I swayed as if physically struck.

Nearly a dozen people hung from the temple rafters, suspended on lengths of chain. Rust and gore reddened the links. The victims had been stripped bare, or

nearly so. Then their skin had been f layed from their bodies. Most had none left at all. A few had been flensed selectively, as if their torturer had grown bored or distracted partway through.

The tableau of carnage summoned a tumble of buried recollections. With them coursed phantom sensations: the cooler ocean breezes that swept the coast of Varisia, and the goosebumps they brought. I pictured myself as but a strip of a girl, kneeling on the rocky shores near the towering archive where I was born and raised. My mind’s eye laid them out before me: dozens of lifeless bodies blood soaked through their scholars’ robes. My mother, my father, my uncles and cousins and friends. The raiders had come when our protectors were gone. They sacked the tower, burned the books, threw the tapestries into the sea. They destroyed that which was priceless, and exulted over the few coffers of coins they pried from our meager treasury. For murder’s sake they murdered. Of all of us, only I had successfully hidden from them.

I chilled in that hot Moonplum temple, feeling the ghost touch of the rain that pelted my skin so long ago as I waited for the return of the Pathfinder ship. I heard again the vow I mouthed when finally they appeared. No longer would I follow the tradition of my family and my ancestors, seeking truth in the pages of books. I would be like our patrons, the men and women of the Pathfinder Society, who went out into a brutal world, seizing knowledge with

sword and spell. And along the way, when I found those who followed the creed of

pillage and destruction, I would visit their cruelty upon them tenfold.

“Hooves of Asmodeus!”

Aspodell’s exclamation pulled me from memory. His face had lost its usual sardonic aspect.

“Not quite,” I said. “This was certainly homage to an evil deity. But not the God-Fiend. It was a priest of Rovagug that did this. Note the patches of exposed bone.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“No?”

“A man of my proclivities respects certain boundaries. Butchery of this ilk goes far beyond them. I would not like to do this to anyone. Except you, of course, when the magic of that damnable sword lapses and I’m free to avenge my

enslavement. But that goes without saying.”

I treated the provocation as unworthy of reply. Pushing away revulsion, I peered closely at one of the hanging bodies. There I saw a sigil I despised, a yawning mouth from which the legs of a spider sprouted. “Whoever did this carved the sigil of Rovagug into the surface of their bones. While they lived.”

“Ghastly.” Aspodell swallowed. “And the fellow who did this—you’re sure we wish to encounter them?”

“That I am.”

To my shock, a splutter vented from one of the supposed corpses. Blood spurted from his nose and into his mouth. He moaned, barely conscious.

“Get the priests,” I told Aspodell. He slipped from the temple; I remained with the survivor. He was young and had been well muscled before the f layers started in on him. Blood obscured his features, and the extent of his injuries.

Unintelligible words spilled from the wretch’s faltering lips.

“Do not try to speak. Let us heal you first.”

“Ww-wwon’t l—lll…”

I searched my mind for soothing words but found none.

“Won’t live…” he managed.

“Hush, boy.” Had there been a part of him that was safe to touch, I would have laid a calming glove on it.

“Twill,” he said.

“Twill?”

“Www—wanted to know…”

“He was looking for a man named Twill?”

He assayed a slight nod of the head.

“Had Twill been here?”

His next gesture I took also for a nod, though it could have been a twitch.

“But he was not here when the pirates came.”

He seemed to shake his head, then stopped moving altogether. I took him for dead, but when Jeffret and Cold Bendani arrived, they set to work reviving him.

“Better without the chains, Captain,” said Jeffret, a wan man with hair the color of a pantry moth.

“I’ll see to that, ma’am,” said Seagrave, who had returned with the healers and Aspodell. “No luck so far finding the fire-thrower,” he said incidentally as he sized up the arrangement of columns, joists, and rafters. Withdrawing a pair of spikes from his belt, he hugged a wooden pillar and began to shift his bulk improbably up its length. I had seen him perform acts of unlikely balance many a time before, never ceasing to marvel at his agility. He reached the rafter and swung himself up on it with graceless ease. The rafter trembled, setting the suspended bodies to juddering. He clambered on hands and knees till he reached the chains that held the perhaps-living victim. With his left hand he found a new equilibrium. With his right, he pulled loose his cutlass. “Ready down there?”

“Aye,” replied Jeffret. He and Cold Bendani positioned themselves to catch the poor fellow.

Seagrave brought his cutlass down on the chain. Sparks flew. The magical blade howled like a mistral wind, and the chain fell in two pieces. The sea-priests took the wretch’s weight. On contact, he convulsed, without regaining

consciousness. They carried him out of the temple on a sling of scavenged canvas, and the rest of us followed as Seagrave shinnied back down the column.

“Another dead end, then?” asked Aspodell.

“Quite the contrary,” I said. “Before we lost him, he said the one word that explains all: Twill.”

Aspodell knocked drying muck from his boots. “The significance of which you will now go on to explain.”

“Twill can only be the famed lockbreaker Twill Ninefingers. No other Twill could be worthy of Kered Firsk’s attention. He’s the best lock man within a thousand miles.”

“I believe I heard him spoken of as such, back in Drenchport,” interjected Seagrave. “Never met him.”

“And what does it tell you,” asked Aspodell, “that he seeks this locksmith?”

“When Kered Firsk returned to the Shackles, a rumor came with him. Right, Seagrave?”

“Word has it,” gruffed the fat pirate, “that he dug himself up a legendary treasure, out on some far atoll.”

“If he seeks Twill Ninefingers, I know what it is. The Treasure of Far Thallai.”

Aspodell’s pose of studied disinterest melted away. “Thallai?”

Seagrave’s features widened. “Thallai,” he whispered, as if it were a name that did not bear too loud an airing. “Many have sought it.”

“So much so that doubt pertains to its existence,” said Aspodell.

“The sea coughs up many a wonder,” said Seagrave.

“A golden cask with an impregnable lock?”

I nodded. “Impregnable to ordinary folk, but to one as skilled as Twill…”

“Which, if opened,” continued Seagrave, “becomes a gateway to an unearthly paradise. Where untold wealth lies scattered about, gold and gems as common as sand, ready for any man brave enough to scoop it up.”

“And there is nothing a worshiper of Rovagug, who is mindless destruction personified, would like more than to find and completely despoil an untouched paradise,” said Aspodell.

“Absolutely so,” I answered.

Aspodell lit up with uncharacteristic rapture. “If legend is to be believed, Far Thallai is much more than a beach scattered with gold and gems.”

“You say that like it’s nothing,” said Seagrave.

“Thallai is a place of innocence and beauty,” said Aspodell. “Inhabited by beings of stunning physical perfection, to whom distrust is foreign and wariness

perverse.” He drifted into a pensive pause, then started. “We cannot allow Firsk the Flayer to open that cask.”

“Naturally not! We must be the ones!” A fresh f lood of sweat boiled from Seagrave’s sooty face. It ran in rivulets, soaking into his noisome greatcoat.

I moved upwind of him. “I’m not sure I’d trust you, Aspodell, with lissome beings incapable of suspicion.”

The ex-nobleman scowled. “I was not always corrupt, you understand. In a place like Thallai a man could remake himself.” His voice grew faint. “Perhaps that’s what Kered Firsk seeks as well.”

“You would reform, in Far Thallai?”

“After my last bad act—which, my dear, would be gutting you.”

In the hilt of my sword, his geas gem glowed. I reached for it, prepared to exert its discipline on him, but he stilled himself. “At any rate, you can now explain what Kered Firsk seeks, but we are no closer to finding him.”

“Not so.”

“No?”

“The way to get Firsk the Flayer is through the man he seeks. Instead of chasing the Monster Captain, we find Twill Ninefingers.”

Chapter 2

Butcher’s Rock

A report of cracking wood echoed through the devastated town. The burned husk of a warehouse collapsed in on itself. Black dust mushroomed from it, joining the shelf of smoke overhead.

Otondo and Rira hove into view through the resulting cloud, skirting the bodies of murdered townsfolk. They dragged with them the elf who had tried to kill me less than an hour before. Rira carried his spell-spitter, tucked into a belt. For a moment, I asked myself if it was wise to leave it in her hands. But then, she could cast spells at least as potent as the device could store, with only gesture and speech. I would rely, as always, on the strength of the geas

that my sword held over her.

Instead I trained my attention on the captive: “What is your name?”

“I’ll not say,” the ragged elf hissed. His lip was split, the left side of his face scraped raw.

“Do you not know who my first mates are?” I asked.

“What do I care?”

“You are either not very bright, sir, or new to these pirate isles.”

“The last is true, and I have heard the other.” He stuck out a defiant, pointed jaw. On closer examination I identified him as merely half elven. “What of it?”

“But even as a fool, and a new fish, it did not give you pause to be chased by an ogre and a woman in a mask. It did not occur to you that it might be Otondo and Rira on your heels?”

His impudence dropped away. “Otondo? Rira?”

“And this is Seagrave. And Adalbert Aspodell.”

“Aspodell the Lash?”

“Now that you know their names, perhaps you’d share yours, my friend.”

“They call me Landson,” he gulped.

“Kered Firsk left you behind, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“To see if anyone was after him.”

“He said a lousy busybody of a Pathfinder was asking questions about him back in Hell Harbor. If she poked her nose here, I was to burn it off.”

“And then make your way back to him?”

“We made no specific arrangement.”

A gobbet of drool fell from Otondo’s lip, striking Landson’s shoulder and soaking into the silk fabric of his shirt. “Shall I soften ’im up some, Cap’n?”

“I’m not lying!” Landson said. “I don’t know where the Slicer will dock next. That’s what you’re asking…”

“Keep talking,” Aspodell said.

The man complied. “After serving on that hellish ship, I was happy to part ways with him. Me and Firsk didn’t get along. This way I could leave and it wouldn’t be desertion.”

“And without him f laying you,” Aspodell said.

“That as well.”

“So you thought you’d sign on with Josiah Common and the Whelk?” I asked.

“Until some other, better chance came my way.”

Seagrave roamed the lens of his spyglass along the coastline. “The Whelk has sailed,” he said.

“Let me sail with you then, Pathfinder,” said Landson. “I finally have my sea legs under me, and continue to master sails and rigging. Give me any magical device, and I can work it for you. Your ship is rigged with arcane f lamers, I’m sure. Well, when I aim them for you, their blasts will fall upon your enemies straight and true.”

“You would serve me with the same loyalty you showed to Kered Firsk?”

“Whoever you order me to kill, I will kill. Whoever you ask me to cut, I will cut. I am slaughter itself, remorseless and without quaver.”

“I like him,” said Aspodell.

“And,” I asked, “you killed and cut and slaughtered as Firsk required?”

“All that and more besides. Yet he did not pay me fair due.”

“What else can you tell about him?”

“His men—creatures more like—they’re crazed and feral things, who treat the act of killing as treasure unto itself. They’re no company for an honest privateer.”

I queried him further, yielding nothing worth recording in this journal. Finally I turned from him.

“So am I in?” he called.

Cold Bendani, one of our healers, appeared at my side. “He has awakened,” he said.

The young man, whom Firsk had suspended from the temple rafters and then partially f layed, sprawled on the building’s steps. By cleaning his wounds, our healers had revealed their grotesque extent.

I knelt next to him. “What is your name, friend?”

“Aglund.”

“Twill Ninefingers. You said the man who did this to you came here looking for him. He didn’t find Twill. But he had been here at one point, you said.”

Aglund made his best attempt at a nod.

“When he left, did he say where he was going?”

He gathered in air, then spoke in a burst of exhalation.

“Butcher’s Rock.”

“Why there?”

“Someone would shelter him,” Aglund coughed.

“Who?”

“He kept saying the name…” Aglund’s eyes drifted shut.

“The name, Aglund.”

“Megeus. The name was Megeus.”

“Did you give this name to Kered Firsk?”

“I would not tell him.” Aglund went still. At first I thought him dead, but then I saw his chest rise and fall.

Cold Bendani took me aside. “He won’t last long. And there’s dozens of other wounded survivors. We can’t heal them all, or look after them. Also we must decide what to do with the corpses. Many dozens dead.”

I issued the necessary orders. We would bury the dead at sea, in accordance with the rites of Gozreh. The living we could take as far as Port Peril. They’d likely not prosper there, but it was what was within our power.

Otondo still held a squirming Landson. “What do we do with this one?”

“He willingly served Kered Firsk,” I said.

“And so…?” the ogre asked.

“Kill him and take his stuff.”

Butcher’s Rock took its name from the great f lat slab of gray sedimentary stone that lay atop the rest of the isle. Through the spyglass it indeed resembled a behemoth’s cutting block. At a thirty degree angle, this rectangular

shape leaned over a vast mound of stone that might have been limestone or ancient coral. This block extended from the waterline to reach a terminal point perhaps a thousand feet above it. Below the waters it continued. From its top edge to about its midway point, a fissure split the stone. One could imagine it as the scar left behind by the strike of a cleaver, as might have been wielded by some titanic god.

The rest of the isle, large portions of which the block permanently shaded like an overhanging awning, arranged itself in layers. A ring of jagged rocks composed the shore. Beyond this lay a rising slope of gravel, a patrolling ground for red-shelled crabs the size of ponies. This led to a cliff side perforated by dozens of cave mouths. Above the cliff sat a network of crags and rock shelves. Some were vegetated by nothing but moss, while others held enough

soil to grow twisted trees and sharp-leaved bushes. Gray, billowing shapes f lapped behind them. After a moment of study I identified them as oilskin tents.

An absence marked the isle: Though its shelves and crannies seemed perfect rookeries for nesting seabirds, Butcher’s Block stood bare. Someone hungry lived here.

After ordering the rest of my crew to keep watch for the approach of Kered Firsk’s ship, I put ashore in a single boat, along with my adjutants.

Aspodell wrinkled his nose. “This Twill must be a peculiar fellow, to think this forlorn place a shelter.”

“Would you want to seek someone in those caves?” I asked. “Or, for that matter, up on one of those shelves where the tents are?”

“Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing?”

“Each of us, then, must concede the other’s point.”

As we approached the shore, eddies seized the boat, threatening to dash it against the rocks. Seagrave and Otondo worked the oars, pushing furiously against them. We found a break in the stony shoreline, where gravel spilled down to the water’s edge. After we scrambled from the boat, Otondo picked it up and moved it up the slope single-handed.

Blocks of worked stone, a foot long on each side and nearly three inches thick, dotted this pebbled beach. Ducking down to examine them, I saw that they were covered with carved figures. The crude images spoke through the ages with a terrible clarity. Each stone depicted a scene of violence. Large figures, their frames distorted and not entirely humanlike, attacked, mutilated, or sacrificed humans half their size. Several standard images dominated. In one, the giants stood before an altar, holding aloft a severed human head. In another, a big-bellied man roasted on a spit, as giants danced nearby. The giants displayed a common aspect: in the middle of each massive forehead, a single eye bulged.

“Cyclopes,” Seagrave groaned.

“It doesn’t mean there are cyclopes here,” I said.

“Nor does it mean there aren’t, ma’am.”

The stones survived as remnants of a cannibal empire, Ghol-Gan, which ruled the region uncountable millennia ago. Traces of this primeval civilization could be found throughout the islands of the Shackles, and beyond, especially to the south. Found among them would be the degenerate descendants of their cyclops rulers, who sometimes gathered around themselves the relics of their

forgotten past.

I’d known a few of them in my day, but they were the acculturated ones, who drifted to cities and learned their ways. There was a bouncer, Eriboe, at the Faded Seahorse in Hell Harbor, who told dirty jokes and was pleasant enough—until she had to cave a skull in. Eriboe would never speak of her early life on an island of her kinfolk. I wondered if it was Butcher’s Rock. I tried to imagine her lurking in a cave mouth up ahead, and couldn’t quite bring the image into focus.

Reality mimicked imagining: Movement blurred in the closest cavern, about a hundred yards off. Before I could command otherwise, the others had their weapons out.

“We’re not here to fight,” I said.

“Never assume a warm welcome, Challys Argent,” replied Rira.

I took point, clambering up the slope, cutlass still stowed in my scabbard. I called out to the figure in the cave. “We mean you no harm.”

A round object arced from the darkness. As it came at me, tumbling end over end, I could see that it was a rusted cook pot. It fell a yard short and half a yard wide.

With an exultant howl, Otondo charged the cavern.

“No, hold!” I called.

He surged past me, his rippling muscles a fury of forward motion.

“Otondo!”

He did not stop, so I gripped the hilt of Siren Call, centering my mind on its power of command. The geas crystal attuned to the ogre captain glowed. Its heat suffused my palm. Otondo slid to a halt, spraying shards of broken coral before him. The sudden stop overbalanced him, sending him to his knees. When I walked past him, his face knotted with humiliated rage.

I had to keep the hand on the hilt of my sword to maintain magical discipline over Otondo. To show that I did not mean to draw it, I wrapped my hand over the pommel. It was not the clearest gesture of peace but I hoped it would make the statement I needed. The other hand I held extended, with open palm. “See? You needn’t fear me. If I meant you harm, I’d not have prevented my man from coming at you.” I kept moving, at what was meant to read as a calm and deliberate pace. “A cook pot is not such a terrible weapon. I do not think you are a warrior. Please, step into the sunlight so we can talk.”

I could now see the outline of the figure in the cave. If I was seeing her right, she was nearly nine feet tall. A glimpse of a wrinkled, nut-colored hand f lashed into a beam of light. It held a sword, which in her grip looked more like a knife.

“I know that one.” The voice crackled like a fire. “He is a bad one.”

With a twist of my shoulder, I indicated the ogre. A backward glance told me that he’d returned to his feet.

“Otondo?”

“No, the fat one.” A pointing finger emerged from the dark. Evidently, she meant Seagrave. “He is a pirate captain. When I lived on Undersquare Isle, he attacked us, killing for gold we did not have.”

“I have no doubt that he did. But he is under my command now, by the might of a legendary sword. You have perhaps heard of Siren Call?”

“I have not,” the cyclops croaked.

“You saw me use it to stop Otondo. He is also a bad one, but you saw me bring him to heel.” As I said this, I felt the ogre’s loathing as a hot prickle on the back of my neck. “Your fear is understandable, but you need not worry.”

“Until you decide to unleash your dogs.”

“Which I will not do. If you wish to be left in peace, I will leave you. But I have coin for you, if you have use of it here.”

She stepped an inch or so beyond the threshold of her cave. “There is nowhere so distant in this world that a bit of gold won’t help.” The cyclops was nearly bald, with only odd wisps of bent and wiry white hair encircling her head. Each was anchored by a raised mole the size of a human thumb. Her skull ended in a bumpy point. Drooping lobes swung from the bottom of her sharp-tipped ears, and a collection of rags covered her torso, leaving her arms and legs bare.

I tossed a purse at her feet. The coral gravel muff led the pleasing clanking sound I’d aimed for. She reached down to pick it up, and thick fingers teased open the neck of the purse. Her single eye slowly blinked. She touched the coin and trembled. “I see your future,” she said.

“I am Challys Argent. Tell me your name.”

“Come closer, so they will not hear.”

I did as she asked. Up close, she smelled of dried fish, coconut milk, and curdling sweat.

The croak left her voice when she whispered. “I have not used a name in years, but when I did, I was Xanae.”

“Xanae, we are here to find someone named Megeus. I guess from the sound of the name that he is a cyclops, too.”

She closed her eye to me. “That’s not what I will tell you.”

“And we seek Megeus to find a human, a man who unpuzzles locks: Twill Ninefingers. We believe that he came here to be sheltered by Megeus. We bring

no danger to either. In truth, hazard surely comes their way—and perhaps to all on this island. We’re here to warn them, and fight against their enemy if needed.”

With a surprisingly gentle touch, Xanae reached out to pull me into her

cave. Puddles of brackish water seeped up through its natural flooring. “I am an oracle,” she said.

“As are many of your people.”

Her tongue swept out to wet her rubbery lips. “A doom is upon you.”

“I am thankful for your—”

“I see your death, Challys Argent. I see it in threads and possibilities. Unlike most, you have many possible deaths. But none are good.”

“Are any deaths good?”

“Yes, but not those that await you. Through pride you have sealed your fate.” Her gentle fingers became a clamping vice around my wrist. “You hold a dragon by its tail. When you let go, the dragon will devour you. You cannot outlast it. The conclusion is foregone. Only the circumstances remain in doubt. And the number of waves that will wash against the shore until it happens.”

“You are concerned for me.”

“Yes.”

“Could I not then convince you to tell me what I need to know?”

“One of those four outside—one of them is the one who will kill you. Sometimes they kill by inaction. More often, by piercing you with blade, dosing you with poison, or scourging you with magic. You have done a terrible and foolish thing, and have left yourself without means of escape.”

I have never been the sort to justify myself. Had this lumbering oracle provoked an urge to unburden, I might have shared the mathematics of my choice. By enthralling the four, I had saved countless innocents from their depredations. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, would survive because my adjutants were occupied obeying me, and no longer plied the seas as free-willed captains of their own vessels. Would I prefer to have killed them? Perhaps. But had I not used the magic of Siren Call, each would have killed me. If one day my time runs out, and I pay the price for all those lives with my own, there will be no disputing the value of the trade.

So instead I asked: “If my die is already cast, why are you telling me this?”

“So you might best spend your remaining time.”

Aspodell’s continental accent reverberated down the tunnel. “Is all well down there?”

“Leave us be, Adalbert.”

Silhouetted by the sky behind him, he cocked an insouciant hip. Whether at me, or the cyclops, I could not venture to guess. “I’ve been listening.”

Xanae whispered into my ear, her breath as hot as a Rahadoumi sirocco. “He might be the one to do it.”

“That he might,” I said.

She shrank back as Aspodell swaggered in. “Tell me, oracle: when you see a person’s doom, as you see my captain’s, is it your usual impulse to share it?”

The oracle hid behind me, the difference in height rendering the action sadly

absurd. “Go away,” she said.

“That we shall, as soon as we learn where Megeus is. You may simply nod, which is not the same as telling. Deeper in the caves? Up in one of the tents?”

“You might be the one,” she said.

“The one who kills her?” Aspodell smiled at me. “I harbor no more fervent

hope. But to the business at hand, my dear. Megeus.”

Xanae clutched my shoulders and said nothing.

“Let me explain why you needed to spill your poisonous omens. You are a

pathetic and frightened creature, on an island where all are mightier than you.”

“I said go away.”

“Your only power is the power to frighten. Your only weapon, your dim peerings into the future. Yet none of your one-eyed brethren fear you, do they? I am no oracle, but these truths I see plainer than the blue sky above.”

“I don’t like you.”

“Then send us on our way, never to bother you again. Or I’ll tell you more about yourself.”

She turned her back on us. Scars, some old, others fresh, crisscrossed the patches of f lesh visible through the rags. Xanae clearly bore the worst of Butcher’s Rock. “He dwells on the island’s highest shelf, shadowed by the top of the block. Purple protea f lowers ring his camp.”

We took a wordless leave of her and rejoined the others on the graveled slope. Seagrave used the spyglass to find the spot Xanae described. I could not assume she’d spoken truthfully, but it was a place to start. If we combed the caves first, we’d surely have to fight our way through. Here we enjoyed at least

the possibility of stealth.

Seagrave and Otondo unfurled climbing gear from the boat and carried the heavy ropes as we made our way to a spot below.

We saw movement in the caves and hunkered behind a low wall haphazardly

reconstructed from Ghol-Gan stones.

A trio of cyclopes ventured out into the sun. They wore motley hide armor, into which jagged pieces of metal plate were sewn. Leather visors shaded their eyes. Each dragged behind him a double-bladed axe too large for a human to heft. Sniffing the air, they jumped down a tumble of boulders.

Rira sorted through a leather pouch, withdrawing a section of f leece no larger than the tip of her thumb. She muttered arcane words and made f luttering motions with her free hand. Motes of cosmic force surrounded the

other, consuming the wool.

Cyclopean heads turned as an albatross—or rather, the consummate image of one—alighted down the shore. It preened the feathers of its fat and inviting breast. The cyclops trio pushed and shoved one another to be the first to give chase. As they bounded jostling toward it, it took f light, rounding the isle on a low trajectory suggesting that it would land again, just out of sight.

As soon as their view of us was obstructed, we ran toward a section of the cliff face adorned with promising footholds. Seagrave swung a grappling hook, wrapping it around the trunk of a thorny tree. We were already well up the rock wall—Seagrave in the lead, Otondo bringing up the rear—when the sound of a fight arose from down on the shore. We were exposed to the three, if they’d thought to look up. Instead they gave their attention to an axeswinging brawl: they’d failed to catch the nonexistent bird and blamed it on each other.

We hauled ourselves up, nearing the first of several rock shelves we would have to traverse to reach Megeus’s supposed dwelling place. As Seagrave neared the trunk bearing his grapple, the line swung wildly, dashing me against the cliff. My elbow struck rock, sending shivers of pain through the bone and into my shoulder. I looked below: Aspodell had lost his grip on the rope and slid down.

Below him hung Otondo. The ogre had never learned to mask his expressions. Each of his thoughts played clearly across his great ball of a face, and remained readable even from my precarious angle above. I could see him deciding

whether to catch Aspodell if he landed on him, or to do nothing and allow the nobleman to fall to his death. My adjutants extended little more affection to each other than they had for me. I’d given them a blanket command against actively lashing out at their fellows. But acts of omission, especially those requiring instantaneous decision, introduced unfortunate ambiguities into the operation of their binding geases.

Before I could cry out or attempt to communicate a command through Siren Call’s hilt, Aspodell’s boots gained purchase on the cliff, slowing his descent. He brought himself to a halt mere feet above Otondo. The ogre twitched, as if he’d decided what to do and just as quickly forgotten it.

With the rope steady again, Seagrave hauled himself onto the rock shelf. He pulled us up: me, then Rira, then Aspodell. Otondo required no help; he raised himself onto the ledge in a f lourish of bulging muscle.

Foliage now hid us from the view of onlookers from the shore below. We had four ledges to cross in all. The same leaves that concealed us veiled what might or might not lurk on the other shelves.

Seagrave beckoned me close for muttered advice. “Time to make noise.”

“Why?”

“These ledges are easier to defend than attack. Soon as we try to enter one with an enemy on it, we’re in a scrap. If they come at us while we’re still crossing, they can push us off. Make them charge us, and we can take solid positions and hit at them while they’re crossing. They’ll be jumping down, so

their disadvantage won’t be so great as we’d face, defending against repelling action while climbing up. But so it goes.”

I conferred with the others, assigning Otondo to the forward edge of the shelf, where he could grab attackers and hurl them down the cliff. Rira found a vantage behind the bushes. Seagrave and I took spots in the middle of the ledge, with Aspodell lurking to one side, ready to score opportunistic blows.

“Megeus!” I called. “Ho, Megeus! We would speak with you!”

The brush of the ledges ahead stirred instantly into lashing motion. We braced ourselves, as we would for a boarding.

One-eyed heads emerged from the foliage. There were at least three cyclopes. Otondo anticipated their angle of arrival and crouched down. The first cyclops leapt across the gap between ledges with distressing ease. He landed on Otondo’s back. The ogre thrust himself up like a lever, sending the cyclops tumbling over the edge and out of sight. In the meantime, his mates made it onto the ledge. One seemed young and hale, his f lesh unmarred, his fangs gleaming and sharp. His companion looked old and worn, the tufts hair surrounding his ears as white as sea-foam. Something about his bearing, perhaps the way the younger one looked to him for cues, told me that he was Megeus.

I shouted that we hadn’t come to fight—words soon swallowed by the clash of combat. Lightning arced from Rira’s hiding spot to course around the younger cyclops’s body. Aspodell took advantage of the creature’s convulsions to leap behind him and stab him in the back. The cyclops dropped down into a crouch of surrender, scuttling from the fray.

Loosing a string of imprecations in the ancient Ghol-Gan tongue, Megeus swung his fist wide. I reared, avoiding the blow’s full force, yet was thrown to the ground nonetheless. Butcher’s Rock spun around my addled head. I saw Seagrave thrown through the air. He landed in the bushes that concealed Rira, ruining the casting of her next spell. Aspodell subjected Megeus to a blur of rapierstickings, to no visible benefit. A backhanded blow sent him staggering.

Otondo roared at him, f lailing his great cutlass. Megeus deftly ducked into the blow, grabbing and twisting the ogre’s arm. The cutlass dropped. Ogre and cyclops wrestled, each trying to lock the other in a chokehold. Their grappling took them to the shelf ’s crumbling edge. As I tried to muster a warning cry, Otondo let Megeus place him in a bear hug from behind. Then he pushed off, the two disappearing over the side.

Chapter 3

League of Drowned Ghosts

Still groggy from a blow to the head, I rushed to the edge of the rocky shelf, from which Otondo had pulled the cyclops Megeus. He’d plummeted with him more than a hundred feet to the coral shore of Butcher’s Rock. My first thought was of suicide: Otondo had freed himself from his magical indenture by taking his life. Not to mention that of Megeus, whom we had come merely to speak with. Another addendum, I saw, would have to be added to the lengthening terms of the geas.

Although it was a sound idea, I realized as soon as I looked down that Otondo had maneuvered toward a less permanent conclusion. He lay sprawled in the gravel below, dazed and groaning. He’d let Megeus wrap him in his arms, then pushed off, so that he landed on the cyclops. It was only his opponent his rash move had killed.

Then I saw Megeus brief ly stir, before slumping again. He might breathe, even now.

I remembered Megeus’s ally, a younger cyclops. As I wheeled on him, he held up his arms in supplication. “What’s your name?” I demanded.

“Phagon.” Singed welts, marks of the wizardly lightning bolt he’d taken during the scrap, were rising across his body.

“Is Twill Ninefingers here, Phagon?”

“The human?” He shook his one-eyed head.

“You didn’t eat him, did you?” Aspodell asked.

“Some of us argued for it.”

“Then what happened to him?”

“Ask Megeus. If you haven’t murdered him.” He slumped sulkily against the limestone cliff face.

“Aspodell,” I managed. “Take Seagrave with you and search these ledges. Make sure he’s telling the truth.”

Phagon produced an affronted grunt. Though he took imputations of cannibalism in stride, it was apparently a more serious matter to suggest he might tell a lie.

Aspodell pointed his rapier tip at Phagon. “You lead us to Megeus’s tent. Wouldn’t want to step in any traps, would we?”

“You’ve no cause to trouble us,” Phagon complained.

“We fly the black f lag. You have no cause to deny us your loot.”

Rira led the way as we climbed down. By the time we reached the shore, a group of twenty or so cyclopes had gathered around Megeus and Otondo. I braced, ready for them to rush us; they stepped away as we approached. Why they gave us this freedom, I could not tell. I guessed that Megeus had been their strongest champion, and that they feared us because we’d bested him. Other explanations stood as equally likely: that they deemed him unpopular and not worth fighting for, or that they would wait until they knew more about us before staging a true assault. I kept on guard against abrupt alterations in the crowd’s demeanor.

Otondo pulled himself to a sitting position. Kneeling beside Megeus, I saw that the cyclops’s chest still rose and fell. Aware of the risk of leaving myself alone with the cyclopes, I instructed Rira to take the boat to the ship and come back with healers. Equally aware that I might get myself killed, Rira complied, her equanimity swift.

That both ogre and cyclops had survived a drop that would have ended any man was a wonder, but scarcely inexplicable. The old saw tells us that the bigger they are, the harder they fall; however, in my previous life as a cloistered scholar, I learned that the larger and denser the skeletal structure, the more evenly the impact of a fall is dispersed through the body.

Megeus recovered consciousness before the healers even arrived. Our expenditure of salves and prayers on him seemed to sway the crowd in our favor. I still could not divine their full attitude toward Megeus. Perhaps, after dispatching a thousand and one higher priorities, I will one day dispatch a junior Pathfinder to research a treatise on cyclops politics.

“You got pigs aboard your ship?” Megeus asked, as our salves ebbed his bruises away.

He would take some easing before we reached the subject of Twill Ninefingers. “Pork, but no pigs.”

“I reckon it’s heavily brined.”

“How else to preserve it?”

“You humans and your salt. You spoil everything. What else you got to eat?”

“Megeus, you should be grateful for the repairs we’ve done to your accursed carcass.”

He caressed his throbbing skull. “Not when it was you who made the need for them.”

“A not unreasonable point. Tell us what you did with Twill and perhaps I’ll find a morsel or two for you.”

Megeus stared wistfully at the blue horizon. “I traded’im.”

“Explain.”

“Twill came here to hide out from someone who was chasing ’im. He brought two barrels of pickled eggs, a cask of jerky, a—”

“Skip the inventory part.”

“Then let’s say we ate what he brung us, and then he let slip exactly who he was fleeing from.”

“Kered Firsk the Flayer, the Monster Captain.”

Megeus blanched. “We had no wish for a fight with the likes of that.”

“So you traded him to Kered Firsk.”

“We would’ve, but we got another offer first. Ghosts. Their isle, Drowningtide, arose from the depths in the wake of a blistering storm. They came at night, all green and see-through. They offered us shark meat, deep-water

oysters, and a family of merfolk. It seemed a worthy trade, so I put Twill in a sack and handed ’im over.”

“They sensed you had a human with you?”

“They called ’im by name.”

“And how can you be sure they weren’t in cahoots with Kered Firsk?”

He shrugged, then winced at the effort. “Maybe they were. I cared not about their intent, but the quality of their provender. Those merfolk were firm and fresh.”

Aspodell and Seagrave returned from their search of the hills, hauling sacks of loot. “Wait now!” Megeus rose in protest, then wobbled, seized by dizziness.

“The man we seek? You sold him to ghosts. When we came to talk, you attacked and tried to kill us. If you’d won, you’d have drunk our blood and chewed our f lesh. All of these offenses warrant punitive action. You’re lucky we only care to confiscate your goods, and not those of your neighbors.” I spoke this last part clearly, for the benefit of the crowd. One by one, Megeus’s neighbors slunk off to their caves and tents. They proved themselves ready to defend their own hoards, but not to form a united front.

As we left for the boat, Otondo leaned down and grinned.

“I’d never eat a merman,” he said.

“Stop talking now, Otondo.”

“Too fishy.”

Once back on the ship, I met with my adjutants in the captain’s quarters.

Aspodell lounged with his bony backside in one chair and his long legs slung over the arms of another. He drank port from a tiny crystal glass. It was among the liquors we’d confiscated from the confiscators back in Moonplum.

Otondo paced like a caged bear, as he did when no better distraction presented itself.

Seagrave and Rira sorted through the bag of treasure we had taken from the cyclops. Seagrave stacked coins and counted pearls. Rira poked through potion bottles and assorted gewgaws. Among them she identif ied a magic ring, which one of our sailors could use in place of armor. The bottles, she said, contained doses of waterlung. They would prove themselves useful, likely sooner

than not. Many of the Shackles’ predicaments grow easier when one can breathe underwater.

I knew of Drowningtide from accounts in books, none of whose authors had set foot on any isle of the Shackles. “What can we say for certain about this ghost isle, Seagrave?”

He answered without slowing his counting. “Never been there, ma’am. It moves around, perhaps in keeping with the moontides. It’s an isle of drowned men.”

“You’ve not been?”

“Thank the sea fates, no.” Like several of the crew—who may well have picked it up from him—Seagrave subscribed to a peculiar sort of faith. It held that pirates and sailors were more tightly bound by the forces of destiny than land-dwellers. These forces he personified as sodden hags called the sea fates. After long years sailing together, I still had no idea whether he regarded the sea fates as genuine entities, or only metaphor. Perhaps one day I will learn the truth, and write it in another journal like this one. “And how does one wind up on this ghost isle?” I asked him.

“Gozreh the ocean-god is a possessive deity. When the waters of the Shackles claim a man’s life, Gozreh cleaves to him and does not let him go. When the sailor’s soul swims to the surface from its watery grave, he sometimes finds himself on Drowningtide’s misty shores. That’s as close to land, life, or celestial rest as he’ll ever get.”

“And what can we expect when we get there?”

Otondo stopped his pacing long enough to shudder. Seeing that I observed him, he went on as before, pretending to be untroubled.

“Hard to separate guess from truth, as them what lands there never comes back, even if they still breathed when they arrived. Safe to say only that it’s a melancholy place, more of the sea than the land. They say that drowning is

contagious there.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hanged if I know.”

“And what would they want with Twill? Why would a ghost want a lock broken?”

“I would not care to guess, ma’am.”

Rira spoke up. “It won’t be that, Challys Argent. The possessions ghosts carry with them are only memories, as half-substantial as the stray souls themselves. A f lesh-and-blood man could no more open a ghostly lock than wield a ghostly sword.”

“I have seen that said,” I allowed. I recalled the fact from the tattered copy of Maleg’s Realms of the Dead once housed in the archive of my youth. “But let’s not decide ahead of time what ghosts can and cannot do.”

Rira slowly nodded her mask at me, admitting the point.

“So then how do we find Drowningtide?”

From the pile of assorted loot she plucked a tool consisting of a f lat handle and a long, thin spike. The spike terminated in a small circular form.

“A lock pick,” said Aspodell.

“Yes,” said Rira, “One item from a matched kit. Well-kept. Not encrusted with dirt and mildew like the rest of Megeus’s hoard.”

“And therefore Twill’s, mostly likely,” I said.

Rira rose from her chair. “If we are lucky, I can focus on it and behold its mates.” She withdrew from beneath my bunk a copper cask I required her to store with me. Through her months of magical captivity, I kept to my promise to leave

it unmolested. I suspected that it would not open if I tried.

We retreated from my cabin. Seagrave lingered at the threshold long enough to jab meaningfully at the stacks of counted coins. Rira’s mask muff led a contemptuous snort.

I closed the door; we stood close by and waited. A low clattering sound marked Rira’s unpacking of items from her cask. Arcane chanting followed, in her sharp and husky voice. At length a vapor curled over the doorjamb. It smelled of seaweed and cinnamon. We heard the bang of a small gong, after which the incantation ended. After a few moments to repack her oracular implements, Rira opened the door. “Southwest,” she said. “Two hundred degrees.”

For ten hours we sailed. Rira repeated her magic, whatever it was, twice more. After her last divination, she announced that we’d reached our destination. I climbed to the aft deck to survey a placid ocean. Sunset threw f lecks of gold-and salmon-colored light onto the Fever Sea. By the charts we were on the northern edge of the island cluster we call the Shackles. The closest land was a large island about twenty miles to the south.

“There?” I asked Rira, pointing to it.

“No, there,” she said, indicating the empty ocean just ahead. “Not yet, but there. Drop anchor. We’ll have time to fortify ourselves. It’s always best to be well fed—and more important still, halfway drunk—when rubbing shoulders with ghosts.”

We did as Rira said. I ordered the anchor dropped and joined my adjutants at table. We ate oysters and conch with pickled cabbage. From my cabinet I withdrew a bottle of muscat I’d been saving. We finished it and another lesser

bottle besides. Otondo, for his part, turned up his nose at the wine, sticking to his usual ghastly rum. It was strange, to drink with them as might a friend. Under the inf luence of the vine, Rira and Seagrave softened, seeming to despise

me less. Aspodell and the ogre balanced the equation with ever more vicious snarls and glares.

A shaft of moonlight speared through a porthole.

“Now,” said Rira. We rose on just slightly unsteady feet and strode to starboard. Above, the moon had slipped from behind a bank of clouds. It shone down on the waters, illuminating a floating city of the dead.

Indistinct and contradictory, Drowningtide shimmered, a place from an ever-shifting dream. Luminous spires rose up from a coral base to fill the sky. They recalled, in hazy detail, the styles of a dozen towns. A looming bulwark styled itself like a fortress of Mendev. Turrets evoked a Brevic keep. Beside them jostled a Qadiran minaret, a bronze mantis dome of Mediogalti, and an echo of Fortress Fangspire. Amid them thrust assortments of masts and sails. Loops of rotting rigging, festooned with seaweed, hung between them. There were more towers and roofs than foundations; many of the structures, as if left unfinished by a distracted painter, faded out where their foundations ought to have been.

Portals appeared in these uncertain structures. Figures issued forth, translucent, their edges overlapping. Phantasmal water streamed from them to pool around their hazy feet. Their forms testified to the grotesqueries of death by drowning. Some were bloated and blackened, swollen heads lolling on overwhelmed necks. The incorporeal flesh of others bore the bite marks of scavenging fish. Gobbets of skin and flesh floated from them as if they were still underwater. A few appeared relatively intact; I imagined that they’d been pulled from the water shortly after dying. Ghostly costumes varied from the pirate motley of the Shackles to those affected by the merchant and naval fleets of Rahadoum, Cheliax, Varisia, and Absalom.

In a mass, the ghosts milled toward a point on the shore closest to the

Aspidochelone. They stood silently, arms at their sides, expressions at

once woebegone and expectant.

“We’re taking a boat,” I told my adjutants.

“Are you certain?” asked Aspodell.

“You don’t want to invite them here, do you?”

“On second thought, no.”

The five of us clambered down to a boat.

Otondo hesitated by the rail. “And men who drown in the Shackles ends up here?”

Seagrave had climbed only a few feet onto the rope ladder. “So it is said.”

“This will be bad.”

“Why is that?”

“How many men have you had drowned, Seagrave?”

They exchanged trepidatious looks, shrugged, and joined us in the boat.

As the two of them rowed us toward the shore, a chill suffused the tropical air. By the time its nose touched the ephemeral island, my arms were a landscape of goosebumps. Seagrave tested the island’s solidity. To our collective surprise, it held his weight unyieldingly. Otondo hopped out, great cutlass in hand.

“Stow that,” I said, my lips unmoving.

After the standard show of reluctance, the ogre complied. The rest of us stepped from the boat; he and Seagrave pulled it farther up onto the eerie shore.

I took a central position, f lanked by the others.

A gaunt, shirtless ghost in a whaler’s cap separated himself from the pack and bowed to greet us. His left arm was missing, along with a good chunk of shoulder. The adjoining portion of his torso showed the slashing scars of a shark attack. In his extant hand he carried a long harpoon. He held it with

dignity, as one might a ceremonial staff.

I was glad of the wine coursing through my veins. Middling drunkenness lent a

leavening absurdity to the proceedings. By emphasizing the unreality of the

situation, it somewhat blunted the horror. “I am Challys Argent, of

the Aspidochelone,” I said, bowing in return. “We have no wish to disturb your rest, but—”

“You cannot disturb what we do not have, pirate.“ The ghost’s voice reverberated, out of synch with the movement of its lips. “This existence is far

from restful.”

“I sympathize with your plight.”

“Then you will grant us solace, in the form of your company. We shall lay on a feast.”

I bowed again. “There is no need, for we have just eaten. Who do I have the honor of addressing, sir?”

The ghost’s pale brow knitted in dismay. “You must excuse my lapse. Drowningtide receives few visitors. We have lost the knack for courtesy. I am Geor. Known in my day as Geor Whalespotter. Though that name is not used

here. Come with us to our banquet hall.”

“We do not wish to trouble you.”

Crimson undertones pulsed through his transparent frame. “We insist.”

I gave him a third bow and trooped after him. “We come in search of someone.”

“Let us spend frivolous time at table first, and speak of weighty matters when the port is served.”

“His name is Twill Ninefingers.”

A gout of seawater dribbled down Geor’s lips. “That name may hold significance. Reward us with your fellowship, and I’ll say more.”

“Is he here, then?”

“Come along.”

The ghosts thronged around us, whispering and chattering. The sound crawled across the back of my neck like a bug. They pressed in tight. They smelled us and tugged at our garments. I f linched as ghostly hands came near. When I could not avoid their touch, they seared my skin with cold.

We proceeded to a weird building I had not seen from the shore. It was a keep constructed from the remains of wrecked ships, fused together by some unknowable undead process. A trio of prows jutted from the asymmetrical structure, two to the left and one to the right. An assortment of crow’s nests competed for supremacy atop its gabled roof. Chalky barnacles dotted its surface. The front doors, which now swung open, were fashioned from rudders sized for seafaring giants.

They opened into a vast hall composed of several decks, laid on top of one another. Rope ladders connected the levels. We walked on sodden velvet carpet to the nearest ladder. The ghosts f loated up; we climbed, fearing for the structure’s solidity. On the highest deck, a long table stretched before us. Tarnished silver cutlery flanked chipped and mismatched plates. Nautilus-shell goblets awaited the pouring of wine.

A good four dozen places had been set, with chairs to match. On the decks below, more ghosts gathered, faces forlornly upraised. I found myself wondering what protocol they used to award the coveted spots at the head table. Then I reminded myself that the social strata of phantasmal society was the least of the questions I ought to be asking.

The pushing ghosts separated us from one another, surrounding us to enact a bizarre parody of a grand soiree. They herded me toward a railing. Each of my adjutants they buttonholed in like fashion. I saw Otondo baring his teeth, Seagrave clutching his stomach, and Aspodell disguising his discomfiture behind a barracuda grin. Rira alone, hidden behind her mask, maintained a semblance of composure.

In hissing tones, the Drowningtiders barraged us with questions:

“Does Naleno Long-Tress still dance at the Red Dolphin?”

“What year is it?”

“My name is Komak Kos Sab. Do any now sing of my deeds?”

“I beg you to take a message to my mother at Maquino. It is a small village on the northern—”

“Are there any of the old faith still left in the Cinderlands?”

Geor appeared at my shoulder. “Those four. They stand beside you, but not freely.”

“No.”

“You have enslaved them?”

“I prefer to say that they are imprisoned, and furloughed to my care. My sword—”

The ghost waved an impatient, blurry hand. “Ghosts find many subjects uninteresting. The mechanics of your dominance over them would be an example. You may care to know that you have dulled our days in Drowningtide.”

“How so?”

“We depend on new drownings to swell our ranks. Few flesh-folk visit our lonely home. With a f low of newcomers comes fresh experience, no matter how vicarious.”

“What has that to do with me?”

“No one sent more sailors to the sea’s damp embrace than those four. You prevent them from pirating now?”

“I bend their savagery toward positive ends.”

Geor’s inner light f lickered. “You deprive us of fresh souls.”

I backed into the railing, conscious of how far I would topple if I lost my balance. “If fewer are dying than would have otherwise, I find it hard to reproach myself.” A curious elation added itself to my fear and disorientation. The dead man had confirmed my greatest hope. By collecting my band of adjutants, I’d saved lives, and many of them. Whatever happened to me when the final toll came due would be worth it.

Geor pushed himself closer. “You shine with a lovely madness.”

I slid along the railing, evading him. A witty retort nearly came to mind. I have never been as good with them as I would like.

“You could be my bride,” he said.

“I refuse all such proposals, from the living and the dead alike.”

Geor slid through a mass of ghosts to ring a ship’s bell suspended near the table. The clang cut through me like a blade. I checked my adjutants; they too winced in pain.

“It is time to sit with our guests, and eat, and drink,” Geor announced.

The ghosts shoved us until we sat, arranging us so that none were near any of the others. Geor took his spot at the head of the table. The drowned whaler positioned me to his right. Clay amphorae appeared, borne by phantom cabin boys. They poured a red liquid into the goblets. It was the red of wine on the verge of turning to vinegar, and smelled like brackish water. Geor raised his goblet. “To a cessation from our solitude, no matter how brief.”

As the ghosts consumed the ethereal liquid, a compensating quantity of water poured from their noses and ears.

I raised my goblet, but did not drink. “There are hundreds of you. How can you call yourselves alone?”

Geor’s ghost-form wavered. “Without the spark of life, it is not the same.”

“Again, I express my sorrow at your plight. It is not right that souls should be kept on Golarion, simply because they have the misfortune to drown. Now, if I might ask you about Twill Ninefingers…”

“He and I have much in common,” said Geor. “And much to settle, between us.”

“Why did he not join us at this feast?”

Geor edged toward me, his ghost-vapors fading through those of the table. “You did not drink.”

I adjusted my position, ensuring an unimpeded draw if I needed my sword. “As I said from the outset, we have come here neither thirsty nor hungry. Please do not consider it a slight against your hospitality.”

An angry groan hissed from the drowned host.

“You will drink, Challys Argent, and you will command your slaves to do the same.”

I wrapped my fingers around the goblet. “I am sorry to say it, Geor Whalespotter, but I suspect that this is a drowning potion, and that if we partake, we’ll be with you here forever.”

Geor swarmed at me through a suddenly dispersing table. Ghosts clawed my arms and back, the chill of their touch now multiplied tenfold. I swept my cutlass free. It slashed through them, its magic granting it at least some purchase against their soul-stuff.

My adjutants, like any pirate captains worthy of the title, also wielded weapons of some enchantment. These slashed through ephemeral bodies, which dispersed and then reformed, somewhat diminished.

Despite these swipes, the ghosts swarmed in. They struck back at us not with fist or blade, but with solitude. It weighed me down, buckling my knees, pushing me to the deck. The others folded, too. Aspodell dropped his rapier, hands clawed and teeth clenched. Rira went limp against a railing. Otondo gibbered, weaving on his feet like a drunken man who has forgotten how to fall. Seagrave I could not see at all.

With each gelid touch their bitterness invaded me. Dead and thwarted aspirations cracked through my certitude. My own thoughts turned traitor. Yes, they said, this island of ghosts is where you belong. You killed yourself the moment you enslaved the first of your adjutants. One day one of them will get you. But if you let yourself die here, on your own terms…. At least then it will not be one of them that slays you.

In a vision, I beheld myself as a ghost, among the legion here, dining at their table, forever drinking their wine of drowning. The four of them would sit at my side, prevented forever—more decisively than by the geases of Siren Call—from wreaking murder in the lands of the living. If I wished to sacrifice myself, I could do it now and here and permanently.

I fought these false thoughts. They were not my own, and only felt as the result of ghostly trickery. The enthrallment of the four captains, I reminded myself, was only a means toward the true goal, the quest for lost and stolen lore. In an eternity on Drowningtide, I’d recover not a scroll, not a scrap of a footnote…

The ghosts subsumed themselves into a single suffocating mass. The fortress of ships lost substance. The ghosts had fashioned it from their unslaked desires. Now they shifted its essence to their foremost wish: our demises.

I’d stopped breathing, I realized, and wondered if my last breath had already been taken in and exhaled.

My fingers spread out on the deck. I could see through them. They withered and f lickered.

I was becoming a ghost.

Chapter 4

Foes of Fin and Feather

As I died on the mossy deck of the Drowningtide ship-fortress, an utterance registered at the brink of awareness. With a last spark of curiosity I worked to perceive it. Words, guttural and outraged, cut through the mental assault of the ghosts ranged around me.

It was Seagrave, bellowing. “Curse the mewling lifeless cowardly lot of you!”

In my fading bones I felt the heat of his fury. The ghostly mass reared back from it. Its enveloping wall of soul-stuff broke up. It became a they, reverting to distinct, individualized spirits of the drowned.

Solidity returned to me. Seizing on glimmers of strength, I pushed myself up to my knees.

Seagrave swung on a translucent rope, landing on the feasting table. He kicked, punched, and slashed with his sword. The ghosts fell away from him, pushed not so much by the material force of his blows but by the steel of his will.

“You wish me to lie down and die with you? I will not!” His words struck them like a wall of surf. “I am Seagrave, and I will live!” Spittle flew from his mouth. “I will eat and drink and fight!”

I made it to my feet, Seagrave’s wildness filling me with exultation. My own reasons for living-the protection of others, the joy of discovery, and justice grimly dealt flooded my soul. The doubts instilled in me by ghostly assault-what the scholars would call a psychic attack visibly fled my body, manifesting as motes of sooty energy.

The ghosts groaned in chorus. Seagrave’s display gave heart to the others. Otondo’s scything cutlass dispersed a trio of incorporeal sailors. Rira drove ghosts before her with arcing bolts of arcane force. They quavered at the weaving point of Aspodell’s rapier.

As we rallied, a near-perceptible wave of enervation swept through our attackers. Their soul-forms dimmed and shrank. Their wailing dropped an octave, to congeal into pitiful sobbing. As a last few feinted ineffectually our way, their speaker, Geor Whalespotter, held out his arm in a gesture of truce.

“We meant only to embrace you,” Whale spotter said, his voice now reduced to a wheeze.

“Take your embrace and shove it in the bilge,” said Seagrave. He held his cutlass as if he wanted to use it some more.

“My adjutant speaks harshly, but overall I endorse the sentiment,” I said. “If you typically attempt to keep your guests forever, it is little wonder you get so few of them.”

The stump of Whalespotter’s missing arm twitched. “We are not the only jailors here,” he sulked.

“One day I’ll cast off her yoke, as today we cast off yours,” said Seagrave.

A change of subject seemed apt. “You promised to produce Twill Ninefingers,” I said. “Bring him forth.”

Geor’s features lost another degree of sharpness. “I did not promise that, exactly.”

“Where is he?”

“Not here.”

“You deny that you paid the cyclops Megeus to take him into your custody?”

“That I do not deny. But we were cheated before our ghost-boat reached these shores.”

“You tell your tale in dribs and drabs, drowned one.”

“Harpies f lew overhead, plucking him from our boat, when we were nearly home. They were gone before we could stop them. We were left with only this.” Twill’s kit of thieves’ tools f loated in the air before him. The leather case folded open, showing that one tool was missing-the one Rira had used to find our way here to Drowningtide.

“Your isle moves about,” said Seagrave, as if it were an accusation.

“Indeed,” answered Geor.

“You were here when the harpies got him?”

“No. Further south, near the Fever Sea.”

“When did they take him?”

“Just last night.”

Seagrave’s grudging murmur indicated that he had run out of questions.

I took the kit from Geor. “A mystery remains. This whole island and everything on it-it’s ghost stuff, just like you. As would be any locked door or chest. What need do you have of a lockbreaker?”

“I brought him here not for what he does, but for who he is.” A blue tinge bathed Geor’s ghost-form. “Twill Ninefingers is my brother.”

“And you planned to bring him here and kill him?”

“When you express it so, it sounds cruel. What good have the realms of the living done him? At least then he would be here with me. I miss him.”

The ghosts let us go without further interference. We rowed back to the boat in the silence of our own thoughts. Of all that we had seen on Drowningtide, it struck me that the most chilling was not the weird town or its dead inhabitants, but Geor’s casual lack of concern for his brother’s life. Such was the logic of ghosts.

Once aboard the Aspidochelone, we made our way to a wine cask in wordless agreement. We’d dulled ourselves before going there, and now we did it again, to forget.

Only after several cups were drained did I stir myself to speak. “Our quarry, Kered Firsk, is not called the Monster Captain for merely figurative reasons. He may well command, or have allied himself with, a nest of harpies. We know he wants Twill. If we fail to find him before Firsk makes his rendezvous with the nest, we’ve lost both trails.”

“And with it, the Treasure of Far Thallai,” said Seagrave.

“So, where does one find a harpy?”

“I’ve oft found them in my bed in the morning,” said Aspodell, “mysteriously transformed from the lovely creatures they were the night before.”

I had long ago learned that the best way to combat his woman-hating jests was to ignore them. “Seagrave?”

“I’ve seen harpies on Poison Coin and heard of’em on Footless Isle and Clubber’s Point. But I’m thinking it has to be Sarenvent. They’ve nested there for generations.”

“And it’s within f lying distance of Drowningtide’s likely location.”

“That’s my guess.”

With dawn light on our sails we laid course for Sarenvent. I plotted two routes: a longer path that would circumnavigate many of the Shackle’s more dangerous isles, and a more direct approach that held greater threat of unrelated trouble. On another day, caution might have won. But now we raced Kered Firsk and the Slicer, and could afford no tarrying. Assuming no interference from the fearsome residents of islands various, it would take eight hours to get there. From a small cloth bag that hung on my belt I took my weather predictor, a miniature ship of wood and cloth fashioned by a Sargavan artificer. Its sails shook, predicting strong winds ahead.

They came an hour later, pushing the ship through glassy water. The sun chased early clouds from the sky, turning the sea a brilliant cerulean. In the depths we saw disporting dolphins, fast-moving rays, and a great silvery mass of wahoos. The ship glided over the notorious wreck of the Dusk Poacher, whose crew still guarded its shattered hulls as barnacle-encrusted skeletons. A few hours into the journey, Seagrave shouted from the craw’s nest: He’d spotted something huge with tentacles-perhaps a giant squid or devilfish, maybe even a kraken-waiting in a narrow channel. We altered course to avoid it. The correction would cost us over an hour, a loss preferable to a confrontation with a monstrosity large enough to sink us.

Not long after, Seagrave, climbing down the rigging, spotted another obstacle ahead. He jumped down to the aft deck to pass me his spyglass. I scanned the horizon and saw nothing. He pushed the end of the glass down.

Below the surface surged an armada of the fish-people known colloquially as sea devils. I spied several variants among the fast-swimming horde. Most numerous were the common sort, boasting fishy, toothed jaws and bloodred fins that fanned from heads and limbs. Reptilian tails, also lavishly finned, jutted out from their hips. While swimming, they kept their legs tucked in tight, using the tails for propulsion and balance. Across their backs they had slung tridents and crossbows lashed together from lengths of bone. Among them swam dozens of sharks: I spotted makos, hammerheads, allmouths, and a quartet of great whites, easily twenty feet long. A specimen of a type I have never seen before dwarfed them all. Black as the ocean depths and fifty feet long, it opened jaws large enough to bite off the prow of a galleon.

Bizarrely, this massive shark, which I mentally dubbed the bigtooth, was caparisoned with an assortment of belts and harnesses. These accoutrements appeared from a distance to be made from seaweed and polished coral. They held in place a sort of carriage or howdah, in which sat a splendid party of exotically colored sea devil grandees. Their scales flared with the bright blues, golds, reds, and oranges of tropic fish. These alternated in variegated patterns that dazzled and confused the eye. The leaders’ fins jutted out in an assortment of spines and projections. Concentrated around the head, they resembled the crowns and ruffs of peacocking kings. The creature occupying the howdah’s highest, central seat-who for no good reason I took to be a female-had a face reminiscent of a scorpion fish. Others in her retinue glowered through visages like those of sharks or morays. I could also swear that I fleetingly glimpsed one that looked more elf than fish.

The sea devils swam roughly parallel to us, on the port side, heading south as we did.

Rira stood alert on the rail, trembling strangely, a long knife in each hand. In this reaction I sensed a story-which I would have no hope of drawing from her, now or later.

I called the crew to battle stations. Every sailor learns to fear sea devils, because they come at you with no ship to sink. A battery of fire-spitters does nothing against an underwater force. When the fish-people attack, they can simply proceed to board, climbing up your hull and over your rails. To hurl them overboard is simply to return them to their natal waters, allowing them to refresh themselves and then surge at you again.

“If Kered Firsk is the Monster Captain,” asked Seagrave, “does that mean he commands sea devils, too?”

“I hope not.” Every treatise on this fierce underwater people begins with their overweening hatred of all other beings. But if any human could convince the shark-riders he was their peer, it would be Firsk. Commanding would not be the right word, but I would not put an alliance past him.

When the riggers were in place, I ordered them to tack. Otondo relieved the helmsman. He responded to my signal to veer with a ferocious pull of the wheel. Groaning, the Aspidochelone obeyed, angling away from the shark flotilla. The winds favored us; within moments we were outpacing the sea devils by a speed of three to four knots. With Seagrave I dashed to the aft deck. Through the spyglass, they appeared as a dwindling collection of black dots beneath the surface. Then they seemed to speed up.

They were indeed giving chase. This did not prove they served Firsk; their intentions could easily be opportunistic. If they caught us, the question would be largely academic.

Then a frothing arose behind them, sending the tight swimming formation into disarray. Black tentacles lashed up into the air. They rose and fell, coming up each time curled around a squirming sea devil, who was then hurled into the far distance. It was a great squid-surely the one we’d adjusted our route to avoid. As I lost sight of them, the tentacled beast had wrapped itself around the bigtooth shark, hauling a third of its bulk above the waterline.

For hours afterwards we remained on uneasy watch for a return of the sea devil legion. Later, we had to duck down below the rails to avoid the spearing noses of a school of flying fish. This thankfully proved our sole remarkable incident as we closed the rest of the distance to our destination.

The isle of Sarenvent rose abruptly from the sea. Steep slopes covered with lush green vegetation converged on a central, bowl-shaped depression. Identifying it as a geographical anomaly, I called for Young Hallegg, the ship’s artist, to sketch it. Where I knew the Shackles in general as the remnants of a sunken landmass, Sarenvent, on their periphery, showed all the traits of a volcanic island. Its central depression could be nothing other than the crater of an extinct volcano.

I spied a swift shape swoop down from the sky and past the crater’s lip. It could only be a harpy, headed to its nest.

After gathering the four for a conference, I braced Seagrave on his knowledge of harpies. This would not be my first time encountering the beasts; during my days of early wandering, after the destruction of my cloister but before I came to the Shackles and adopted the pirate f lag, I’d blundered into a nest of them. However, the prepared Pathfinder readies herself for local variation. “The harpies I recall captivated their prey with a song that pierces the soul. Should we expect the same from these?”

“Aye, ma’am. Or so go the tales.”

“Can we hope to negotiate with them?”

“They like pretty baubles,” he said.

“And thus will have plunder,” said Rira.

“Given the chance, you’ll get your loot,” I said, “but it’s Twill we’re here for.”

“If they don’t serve Kered Firsk, as you guess they might, Ninefingers is already a jumble of stripped bones,” said Seagrave. “What they covet more than wealth is the flesh of humans and their kin.”

Otondo licked his lips.

Seagrave paid him no heed. “Harpies favor meat that’s had a soul in it. They say they can taste the lingering tang of thoughts and dreams.”

“What rot!” spat Otondo. “It’s not the mind that makes the meal. Whether man or pig, the flavor’s in the roasting.”

The ogre saw my grimace and responded with a wink.

Ignoring the provocation, I continued. “I acknowledge that they may have taken Twill for the simple reasons you state. Still, we must chance it.”

“Their gold is reason enough to fight them,” said Rira.

“But if they’re holding him for Firsk, he’s paying them in the jewels and rich adornments they covet. Perhaps we can outbid him.”

“Why start with talking?” Otondo grumped. “If there’s to be stupid palavering, do it after we’ve crushed them, and they’re weak and begging.”

“The big one has a point,” said Aspodell. “Rudely stated, but salient.”

“You’ll be glad to hear that I agree. If we take the nest by stealth, we may be able to snatch Twill away without a fight.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Otondo.

“But let’s not count on it. Harpies sense keenly and may sniff us long before we reach the summit.”

“We’ll smell ‘em afore they smell us,” said Seagrave.

“What does that mean?” asked Aspodell.

“Just you wait.”

“You mean there’s an odor you find offensive, Seagrave?”

An obscene gesture supplied Seagrave’s answer.

“That leaves the matter of the song,” I said. “They’ll try to steal your wills, forcing you to fight each other as they shriek and f lap above the fray. I believe I can prevent this, by the magic of my sword and its geases upon you.”

Their expressions darkened, the glee with which they anticipated a scrap giving way to resentment of their enthrallment.

“Perhaps, Challys Argent, it would be better to be controlled by a harpy’s song,” said Rira.

“It wouldn’t be as much fun to skewer you while puppeted by some feathered hellspawn,” said Aspodell. “But I’d delight in it anyhow.”

“It was of course indelicate of me to mention the matter at all,” I said. “But necessary.” We exchanged further plans, then prepared a boat. As usual, I left Old Hallegg in charge.

That the harpies might attack the ship while we sneaked onto their island was a danger we had little choice but to accept. Old Hallegg listened intently as I laid it out for him. His sharp-eyed son, the sketcher, would watch the isle from the crow’s nest, shouting an alert at the merest hint of aerial movement. A full complement of sailors were to vigilantly man the fire-throwers. These would be unscrewed from their brass mounts to permit free firing at sky-borne targets. They were to avoid damage to the sails and masts where possible, but to shoot down harpies at all costs. The man-eaters were fast, so the rest of the crew would keep harpoons ready to spear up at them as

they dived down.

The crew bid me a silent, anxious farewell as we clambered down into the boats. Again I was reminded of the bravery it took to sail aboard the Aspidochelone. Though I treated my sailors better than any captain of the Shackles, I also steered them into worse scrapes, for less money. They’d signed on fully aware of the diciest of propositions: When I fall, the adjutants will be freed and ready to vent their wrath. I was not the only one who had steeled herself for a terrible reckoning.

Otondo and Seagrave bent their considerable strength to fast rowing. If harpies spotted us on the boat, all our scheming would be for naught. As fliers, they’d have every advantage over us. We’d be unable to stand, much less swing a sword, while in the rowboat. They could grab us up one by one and take us off to be digested at leisure. We’d agreed that if they did spot us, that we’d jump overboard and take our chances, swimming either to the boat or on to Sarenvent, depending on which was closer. This eventuality would not be a happy one: they might have a harder time snatching us, but as the sea devil sighting showed, the sea held surprises equally carnivorous.

The task of keeping watch fell to me. Constantly compensating the angle of the spyglass against the motion of the rowboat, I kept the volcano mouth in view. Several times I thought our attack doomed, only to realize that the moving specks I saw were not harpies but ordinary seabirds.

Sarenvent offered us no real shore, only a treacherous slope covered with

mangroves, white-barked palesaints, and a carpeting of grab creepers. We all climbed out of the boat, finding the soil dry, thin, and loose.

It slid out from under us, sending our boots slipping. We fought for balance; Otondo lost, tumbling into the water. He boiled up moments later, damp and fuming. Only by some miracle of restraint did he strangle the cries of outrage we could all see swelling in his throat. Still furious, he seized the boat and, with Seagrave’s unsteady help, shifted it onto the rock. It immediately slid; as we all grabbed at it, it became my turn to lose my footing. I winced as pain slowly manifested from the scraped skin of my left leg. Rira and Aspodell gathered stones while Seagrave and Otondo kept the boat in place.

I kept my spyglass trained on the island’s summit. A harpy emerged from the crater and proceeded to circle the island. In response to my hissed warning, the others flattened themselves against the slope. Several of the freshly gathered boulders bounced down to plop into the water.

Pressed against the rock, I couldn’t see where the harpy had gone. Only after five or so minutes did I slink out to scan the sky, to find no sign of it. It had either dived back into the crater-perhaps alerting its sisters to our presence-or flown off to a destination unknown. For all I could say, it was flapping its way to an appointed rendezvous with Kered Firsk.

Finally we stabilized the boat, building a cairn of rocks to hold it in place. We peered up the slope; from this angle, we could no longer see the summit. We’d chosen the spot that seemed to offer the best climb. Just how relative a measure that was now became apparent. We would ascend on foot, without the need for ropes. But by the time we reached the top, we’d be well fatigued. The longer we took, the greater the chance that the harpies would gird themselves to raid the ship. Our sole advantage lay in the density of the thinly rooted vegetation. It might shield us from airborne observation.

With all due urgency, we embarked on the climb. Hot winds buffeted us from the Fever Sea. It took only moments for sweat to drench us. The scent of our perspiration attracted biting flies. Scarlet centipedes crawled up our legs and tried to bite us with toxic mandibles. Thorny creepers and nettle ferns clawed our ankles.

“Let’s see to it,” said Aspodell, “that the next fool you set out to rescue lives in a nice city, and is perhaps held prisoner in a brothel.”

Aside from this witticism, the four made their way up without comment or complaint. At the end of their trek they would find enemies to slay, and perhaps good loot besides.

When we were within striking distance of the summit, we found a natural alcove in the slope, left by two parallel flows of ancient lava. We crowded ourselves into it, regathering breath and force for the battle to come. As soon as we were rested enough to fight, I signaled to Seagrave. With his usual awkward deftness he shinnied up to the crater’s edge. He held up a warning hand, then waved me to follow. Hugging tight to the rock, I made slower progress.

As I crouched by his side, I heard why he’d summoned me: the harpies were talking.

“The spider-god man said not to do it,” shrilled one voice, high and fluting.

“Whatever his powers, he’s just a human,” chirped another. “They’re all the same, when you taste what’s between the ribs.”

“He said guard this gristled old one, and we would get a dozen better in return. All soft and healthy and raised on sweetmeats. He said he would bring an emerald pendant, shiny as you please, and a hundred silver bracelets, and

rings of electrum and platinum.”

“He’ll never know.”

The first speaker cawed in irritation: “I flew over that ship, and they are ready, with harpoons and magic. What if the spider-god man comes when we’re at it?”

“That happens later. We hunger now,” a third voice shrieked.

Having heard enough, I waved the others up. Rira stood and blasted lightning into the crater. It forked in two, striking a pair of harpies.

The kidnappers looked like human women, save for their flaring wings, talon-like hands and feet, and feathery patches on their arms and legs. The feathers were bright green and red, like parrots. Blazing yellow crests flared from their heads in place of hair. They each wore a modest fortune in jewelry, slung around their necks, encircling their wrists, or piercing their ears. Their cruel, distorted features flared in anger as they flew at us, swinging primitive morningstars.

Their smell reached us before they did, a wave of nauseating carrion stench. Even Seagrave faltered.

Otondo threw a weighted net of merfolk manufacture. It landed on two of the screeching bird-women, bending back their wings and sending them tumbling into the crater. As they struggled, he bashed another’s head with the side of his cutlass. The neck snapped audibly; he pivoted to spear another harpy behind him.

Aspodell leapt down, aiming the fire-thrower we’d confiscated back in Moonplum at the netted harpies. The blast set the net aflame, burning them to death.

Feathers filled my field of vision as a sinewy harpy clawed at my face. Siren Call slashed at her, forcing her back. She brought her morningstar down on me; I parried each strike with decreasing ease.

“They look to you,” the harpy skirled. “You lead them.” She opened her throat. A wrenching, high-pitched sound poured out of her. Her sisters, each raking or flapping at one of my adjutants, joined her in chorus. They rose into the sky, disengaging from their skirmishes.

One by one, my adjutants stiffened, expressions glazing over, as the hypnotic cry washed over them.

The sinewy harpy hovered nearby. “See, human? You lead no one and nothing.”

The others kept up the song. As it crescendoed, my four allies moved with jerky steps into a line.

“We will make them kill you. When the last of the flesh is off your bones, we’ll have them slay each other.”

Seagrave grabbed me, pulling me into the crater. The others formed a circle around me. They tottered my way, blades outstretched. The harpies slowed their approach, savoring their control. A wobbling laughter entered the harpies’ song. They landed in a tight circle around my adjutants, anxious to see the bloodshed close up. They pushed their singing faces close, as if hoping some of my blood might spray in.

I clutched Siren’s Call, mentally focusing on the power of its geases. The four crystals corresponding to each adjutant glowed but dimly.

“Enjoy your helplessness, pirates!” the senior harpy shrilled. “You will mourn inside, as we force you to your captain’s slow murder.”

Otondo fought their control, managing to shake his head.

The harpy’s face fell in confusion.

“You. Don’t. Force,” the ogre managed. “You. Allow.”

The song faltered. Otondo shuddered. The harpies shook off their bewilderment and resumed their cacophonous outcry. Otondo stiffened again, as did the others. The bird-women pressed in closer, putting aside the ogre’s disappointing cooperation in my coming demise.

He raised his great cutlass. Rira readied a spell. Aspodell placed himself for an ideal rapier blow. Seagrave readied a decapitating strike.

I clutched tight the hilt of my sword, reaffirming my superior hold over them. The heat of the crystals grew, then cooled, then spiked again. It shook in my hand, vibrating to the frequency of the harpies’ song. I felt the breaking of mesmeric hold as a piercing surge, blazing through my palm, up into my neck and shoulder, and around the back of my skull.

My adjutants pivoted and fell upon the harpies. The first to fall died with surprised expressions still plastered on their faces. The rest tried to fly off, but were too closely gathered. They sang, but to no effect. Their slaughter came in a chaos of tangled wings.

Chapter 5

Becalmed

The harpies had strewn an assortment of bones around their nest, mostly human, all well gnawed.

As my adjutants stripped the monstrous corpses of their jewels, they tripped over rib cages and tumbled skulls from their resting places. Among the gruesome litter I spotted also the skeletons of elves and halflings. Not all of them had been adults. The large bones had been cracked open to get at the marrow. I wished one ofthe harpies would rise back to life, so I could send it right back to Hell.

A burlap sack, blotched with rusty stains, held a man sized form. A dirty length of cord tied its mouth shut. I stepped my way through the pile ofbones and slain harpies to tear loose the cord and open the sack.

My shoulders slumped in frustration-the pot-bellied, white-haired man inside appeared to be dead. Then came a flutter of movement. A blue tinge below the eyes told the tale: He’d been dosed with a sedative. I waved Otondo over and dug into the supply pack he carried on his back. Though the healers back on the ship likely had a cheaper remedy, I uncorked a healing potion and dribbled its contents onto his lips. The man awoke with a start. Goggling in terror, he scuttled back, clutching at his hip and finding only an empty scabbard. His frantic effort to free his legs from the sack entangled him further.

I knelt down, placing a foot on the burlap to help him work himself free. Gently taking hold of his right arm, I pulled it clear ofthe sack. The forefinger was missing.

We’d found Twill Ninefingers.

“My name is Challys Argent,” I said.

Comprehension eluded him; it would take him a few more moments to shake offthe mind-dulling effects oft he sleep draught. He held out his hands, as ifafraid I was about to run him through. A shadow passed over my shoulder: it was Otondo. “What have I told you about looming?” I said. The ogre retreated, smirking. Twill’s expression veered from abject dread to mere apprehension.

“We came here to rescue you,” I told him.

“W-why?” he managed. Like the nest around him, he stank of carrion. A general pallor, coupled with inflammation of the eyelids, showed that he had not been properly fed in a good long time. Judging from his sagging cheeks, he’d

begun his recent misadventures as a much portlier man.

“You are Twill Ninefingers, the famous lockbreaker?”

“Who wants to know?”

“As I said, I am Challys Argent, captain ofthe Aspidochelone.”

“If you are she … ” He swiveled his gaze to each of my adjutants in turn. “… then these are the Devil’s Four!”

Otondo chortled at the term, which I had not heard before.

“If you have heard that much about them,” I told Twill, “you are also aware that they now atone for their past crimes.”

“No one believes that will last,” he whispered.

“She does,” said Aspodell.

I moved to block Twill’s view of the others. “Whether you think they serve me or the devil, you’ll have to admit we’re preferable to a nest of ravening harpies.”

“They weren’t going to eat me.”

“No, they were holding you for Kered Firsk. Who do you prefer to sail home with? Him or us?”

“Do not think me ungrateful.” He finally made his way fully out of the sack, leaving it in a bundle at his feet. “But I’m not opening no treasure box for you.”

“We don’t have a treasure box.”

“No, but the Monster Captain has the Treasure of Far Thallai, and you want it. I’m not getting mixed up in no set-to between the two of you. Just drop me someplace secluded, and you can tell whatever fool god you serve that you’ve added another good deed to your ledger book.”

I held out my hand to him. “Perhaps we’ll do exactly that. It’s true I seek the treasure, but I won’t force you to open anything. Did you hear the harpies say what they were supposed to do with you?”

He took my help, wobbling to his feet. “They were waiting for someone to arrive.”

“Who?”

“Someone they didn’t much like. There was a lot of squabbling over whether they’d go down to meet them, or would make them come up to the nest. They called them nyoggot, or some such. Any meaning in that?”

I scribbled the word in my small carry-diary, for later transcription into a logbook proper. “Harpy slang, I suppose, or a fragment of some long-lost tongue.”

“Whatever a nyoggot is, the harpies didn’t trust them. They argued about whether they should just fly me to the destination themselves. But that wasn’t what Firsk told them, and they feared him.”

“Destination?”

“They mentioned Dead Slave Cove.”

“That’s on Raptor Island,” Seagrave said. “South side.”

“He’ll slay me ifhe finds me with you,” Twill said.

“You’re worried that he’ll do it anyway, once you’ve opened the Thallai case, or you wouldn’t have fled Moonplum to escape him. You heard he was coming?”

Twill tottered to the edge of the volcanic crater, where he surveyed the formidable slope below. “A spice trader putting in at Moonplum said he’d heard that Firsk had the Thallai case but needed someone to open it. I needed to hear no more than that. Sooner or later word would get back to him I was living there.”

“So you sought the protection of a cyclops ? “

“Easy enough now to call me a fool. I thought even Kered Firsk might think twice before raiding an island teeming with one-eyes. And whatever Megeus’s faults, I’d dealt with him in the past. It was a point of lunatic pride with him, how he’d never violated an oath. And he swore up and sideways he’d never betray me to Firsk.”

“He didn’t.”

“But the ghosts … “

“They weren’t working for Firsk. They wanted you for themselves.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your brother is now a grandee of Drowningtide. He misses you. And would like you at his side, forever.”

“Geor?” Twill grimaced. “He never cared for me in life.”

“Death exists, for some, as an eternity of pondering and regret. At any rate, they weren’t delivering you to the harpies. The bird-bitches intercepted you.”

Twill leaned against the crater’s edge. “That explains it. They were all set to open me up and feast on my liver, till they saw my face and counted my fingers.”

“Firsk has more than one set of monstrous allies scouring the Shackles for you. If we drop you off on a lonely atoll, how long do you think it will be before you’re sniffed out by a sea drake, draugr, or something worse?”

The lockbreaker noticed an overlong fingernail and commenced to neatly clip it offwith his teeth. “I see your point.”

“And, in a more urgent vein, how long before more harpies return to this nest?”

Even in the best of health, no one would mistake Twill for a climber. We nearly lost him twice on the way down Sarenvent’s slopes. Nonetheless we conveyed him to the boat, and from there to the Aspidochelone. After turning him over to the ministrations of the healers, Jeffret and Cold Bendani, I consulted with Old Hallegg.

“Any trouble?” I asked him.

” Shapes move beneath the waters, captain.”

“Haul anchor and ready the sails.”

“Where to?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

I met with the Devil’s Four-a term that lodged itself in my head, despite its idiocy-in my quarters. “Where do we take him?” I asked. “At first I’d thought we hide him inland, at Neruma.”

Seagrave’s beard appeared to writhe with disapproval. “An overland j ourney? As tough on us as it would be on Firsk.”

“Right. Other suggestions?”

“We’re using Twill as bait, yes ?” Rira asked.

“Well-protected bait.”

“Then north, to the edge of the Abendego storms ?”

Seagrave twitched. “Firsk’s crew is as able there as we. If we’re to fight an even battle, let’s not do it on the skirts of a hurricane.”

“We take him to Port Peril, then,” said Aspodell. “Firsk doesn’t dare invade the very city of the pirate king. He’d have to come at us by stealth, alone or with a handful of crew. And when it comes to subtlety, my wager’s on us. By which I mean, me.”

I left a moment’s pause for objections, nodded my assent, and left the cabin to order a course for Port Peril.

A good wind cleared the sky and filled our sails. As the Aspidochelone bore down on the Terwa coast it grew stronger. The ship’s hull and decks sang in harmony as we cut the water, carried on the waves. Seagrave took the helm, belting out a ribald shanty about a ship besotted with a mermaid. I’d heard the song before, but never so many verses of it. The crew bellowed the chorus and left the verses to him. I joined him on the aft deck, not to better hear what rhymed with “weatherduck,” but to scan the horizon for signs of Kered Firsk’s vessel, the Slicer. From my eavesdropping on the harpies before we slew them, it

seemed more than likely that they’d already alerted the Monster Captain to Twill’s presence. His dark ship could be waiting for us behind any island.

Twill stumped up beside me. The set of his brow suggested that he’d also mulled the chances of an ambush.

“You look haler already,” I said.

“Salt cod and hardtack. Now I remember why I promised myself never to sail again.”

“When we get to Port Peril, we’ll feed you better than that.”

“Your healers say you’re a Pathfinder.”

“That I am.”

“So you care more about discovering facts to put down in your little books than you do about the fates of others.”

“These goals are one and the same. The soul needs knowledge like the belly needs food.”

“There’s nary a lesson I’ve learned that I don’t wish I hadn’t,” he said, almost to himself. “How to break locks most ofall. Things are put behind lock and key for a reason, that’s what I’ve discovered. Best to leave secret doors secret and closed chests shut. Ain’t nothing I e’er opened wasn’t more trouble than good. It’s a curse, a punishment for curiosity and greed. For caring more about ill-got riches than my own kinfolk and comrades. They say I’m among the best in the world. Near as good as Vitta ofMendev, they say. And what’s it got me? Bad company and worse grub. What’s money? It runs through your fingers. What’s lore? A bunch of words. Dead thoughts about dead men.”

“Men prosper when they learn, and suffer when old truths are lost.”

“How many truths are my life worth?”

Before I could answer him, the ship lurched. I flew against the rail, catching myself just in time to avoid a nasty bang on the head. Twill landed face-first on the deck. From the corner of my eye I saw a sailor plummet from the rigging. A loud splash announced his fall into the sea. I looked to the anchor, wondering if some fool had let it drop. But it remained in place, drying and swinging, its chain still well secured.

The Aspidochelone continued to slow until finally we were becalmed altogether. The winds blew as powerfully as ever, rattling in the sails to no effect. It seemed like magic, so I called for Rira. In the meantime, men leaned

over the port rail, looking for the fallen sailor. They cried his name. It was Feddick, a recent recruit who signed on with us at Hell Harbor, bringing with him a haunted look and a history ofhaving been press-ganged.

We waited for him to break up through the waves. They ran fast, so he could easily have been pulled out ahead of our inexplicably halted ship. Old Hallegg took command of the detail, leaving me to deal with whatever had stopped us.

“What is this?” I asked Rira.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to like it, I’m asking you to account for it.” This outburst I immediately regretted. An angry captain is a weak captain. I wondered what sly expression hid behind Rira’s mask.

She wove a looping pattern in the air with the fingers of her left hand while muttering a barely audible arcane formula. A faint hum followed her movements. It stopped when her hands did. “Whatever it is, it’s not a spell.”

“The work of an enchanted object?”

“Not that, either.”

“Battle stations!” I called. The crew broke from the search for Feddick to take up the cry. Soon they were arrayed with swords in hand, or behind ballistae or fire-throwers.

The waves broke into a white froth. Creatures bubbled up from below the waves. Fishy heads appeared, framed by fans of red gill-fins. Some were drably colored, others splendid. It was the sea devil war-party we’d outdistanced on our way to Sarenvent, back to greet us again. How had they stilled our ship, if not by magic?

The most outrageously patterned oft he sea folk, whom I took to be a queen or the like, rose up from the water, held aloft by two lesser subjects. Droplets of water fell from the tips ofher face-spines, some ofwhich extended to a yard in length. Her enormous shark and its aquatic howdah were nowhere in evidence. We’d last seen the sea devils as they fought off a squid-thing; presumably her mount and its apparatus were now in its gullet.

“Who leads you greasy airbreathers ?” the sea devil queen called, her voice a distorted burble.

I swept to the rail. “I am Challys Argent, captain of the Aspidochelone.”

“Your appearance disgusts me. The sound produced by your useless lungs and lips is like unto the coupling of clawfish. To address you is to demean myself. So I shall merely specify my name, which is Kless of milting Snasn, breeding Shalligilat, lineage Sho-ese. The remainder of this parley shall be undertaken by one oflesser worth, the herald Drid, of milting Lellij, of breeding unspecified.”

As captain of a pirate vessel, I should have perhaps interrupted her insults and asserted my authority. As a Pathfinder, I’d won a priceless opportunity to observe the speech patterns of southern sea devil royalty, and to record them accurately for future posterity.

A mottled specimen, its headdress of fins thin and punctured, bobbed up in the waves ahead of Kless. “Though I am but a worm, I am still of the true race, and thus infinitely superior to all else who swim the waves, and, it need not be said, landwalking nonentities such as yourselves. Yet at the behest of the great and merciless Kless, I command you to obey.”

This had gone far enough. ” Show respect, sea-trash, or I’ll boil the water around you with our battery of fire-throwers.”

The drab fish-people darkened; the vivid ones grew even more so.

“Let me demonstrate,” said the herald Drid.

The prow ofthe Aspidochelone rose into the air, seemingly pushing itself up out of the water. Sailors tumbled down from the fore deck to the aft. They dangled from the rigging. A few thudded to the deck. The prow then fell, abruptly released. A shockwave ran up through the ship and into our bones. Loosened nails jutted up through the planking. A fire-thrower fell from its housing to clatter and roll. Rira stopped it with her foot.

“Were it our desire, pathetic motes,” continued Drid, “we could, with a shrug, tear your ship to shreds. This will become our desire should you make any untoward or hostile motion, or speak in such a way as to offend the supremacy of our race. Is our position clear, ape-spawn?”

“You have articulated it precisely,” I replied, hands curled tightly around the rail. In the hilt of my cutlass, a crystal pulsed with cold blue light. Of the five stones, it was the one that held Rira’s geas. Its sudden gleam meant that she was fighting its hold over her. My adjutants always chose inopportune moments to test their magic bonds. This struck me as particularly ill-timed.

Drid gurgled on: “Be it also clear that the true race never acts out of mercy toward inferiors.”

I caught Rira in a sidelong glance. Her position mimicked mine-spine straight, gripping the rail as if to strangle it, quaking with contained rage. Was her rebellion aimed at me? Was it even conscious? As fully intent as I should have been on Drid’s demands, I couldn’t help but consider her mask. Of its origins, Rira refused to speak. Its metal lips and flaring gills certainly bore a striking resemblance to the creatures below.

“If we do not destroy your ship,” Drid said, “it is merely because we do not wish unnamed others to count themselves over-pleased by our cooperation.”

“You mean Kered Firsk. If you hate all humans, why do-“

“Do not inquire of us!”

The queen flared her face-spines. In response, the prow of the ship again pushed itself up, though not quite so high or for as long as before. The crew let me see its collective fear. If it were only me in danger, I’d have restated the question. Instead I fell silent.

“Inutile landwalker Challys Argent, you will do as we command. We intuit that on board your laughable vessel quivers a contemptible bag of flesh known by your people as Twill Ninefingers. For reasons we do not deign to enumerate, we demand this chattel. It will be surrendered to us forthwith. We will then depart, without feeding any of you to our sharks. Though you might be inclined to fall to your knees and weep with gratitude, we eschew such displays. Give us the Ninefingers, and consider our business transacted.”

At some point during the parley, Aspodell had eased up next to me. “They can’t tell one inutile fleshbag from another. Tell them I’m Twill.”

“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself”

“Nor am I suggesting it. That queen’s last meal will be the steel of my rapier.”

“Even you can’t take an entire sea devil war party.”

Twill Ninefingers appeared at my other elbow. “Nobody’s going in my stead.”

“Twill-“

“This is my doom. That’s plain to see. I should never have opened that first lock. Anybody taking my place dies for nothing.” He leapt up on the railing. “I’m Twill Ninefingers! You want me?”

I grabbed for him, but Aspodell pulled me back.

“You got me, you rotten nyoggot!” Twill leapt from the rail into the sea below. Unprepared for this, the sea devils swam in a confused pattern. Ninefingers hit the waves on the outer periphery of their formation. One of their great white sharks lunged at him. Sea devil soldiers leapt on it, grappling its slippery hide. It bucked and snapped at them. A soldier cried out in thrumming tones, the underside ofhis arm stripped to the ulna. Blood pooled in the water, sending the other sharks into frenzy. The sea devils fell on them, hauling on reins of seaweed, or prodding them with long poles. The ends ofthese devices glowed when they made contact, and seemed to exert a pacifying magic. One by one the sharks succumbed to docility. In the meantime, Drid and several other of the queen’s attendants had plucked Twill from below the surface. They yanked his head up and back as still others produced a drinking

vessel fashioned from the ornate shell of some deep -sea mollusk. Holding his

mouth open with their webbed claws, the attendants poured a saffron-colored

liquid. It spilled acros s Twill’s face and into the water. Having thus dosed him-undoubtedly with waterlung-they ducked his head down and out of sight. Still working to calm their sharks, the entire party disappeared into the depths.

The crew held its collective breath, waiting for the force holding our ship

to release it. Though fresh gusts rattled the Aspidochelone’s sails, it did not budge. Pressure built in the masts and booms; they groaned as if ready to crack.

“Lower the sails,” I shouted.

The crew rushed to seize the halyards.

A yell from the aft deck sent me running, to see Feddick’s upper halfbobbing in the waves below.

” Shark bite?” I asked Seagrave.

“If so, it’s no shark I’ve ever seen. See how the bite is shaped like a narrow V?”

I nodded, though in truth I could make out nothing more precise than a gruesome smudge of severed entrails.

“What did this was more beak than sharky jaw,” Seagrave said.

“Giant squid? Kraken?”

“Or the like.”

A dark mass snaked under the surface of the water. Feddick’s remains jerked and were gone, pulled below.

I ordered Old Hallegg to fetch our own supply of waterlung. We’d liberated several doses from Megeus the cyclops, and so had draughts to spare. When he came back with the chest containing the potions, he said, “You wouldn’t be going yourself, would you, captain?”

Otondo growled over Old Hallegg’s shoulder. “We don’t need you talkin’ ‘er out of things. Do we?”

Hallegg withdrew a step.

“I need one to come with me,” I said.

Rira stepped forward. “It should be me.”

When Hallegg offered her the potion chest, she waved it away. In response to my questioning stance, she tapped her mask. “What do you think this does ? Who do you think put it on me?” Before I could turn these rhetorical questions into an occasion for further inquiry, she plucked up one of the specialized crossbowlike weapons the crew sometimes used for spearfishing, strode to the rail, and jumped over. I quaffed the waterlung potion and followed her, doffing

superfluous items of clothing along the way. An instant of vertiginous suspension followed. Then I angled my body to mimic a knife, and in this shape sliced down through the waves. I rode the force of my dive until it dissipated,

then curled around to view the underside of the ship from a vantage dozens of yards below the surface.

An enormous creature, half fish, half octopus, dangled below the ship, seven spined tentacles wrapped around our rudder and much of the hull’s aft section. Its skin, mottled and fibrous, was the color of a blood blister. Bony projections protected its glowing cerulean eyes. Muscular, elongated flippers extended past its vestigial tail. These fluttered in tandem with a prominent anterior dorsal fin, holding our ship in place. They would have worked harder still when the sails were up. My memory flashed to a page from a long-destroyed copy ofthe second folio of the Abyssal Synoptic. The author, Praligeus, called it a devilfish. He identified the term as a misnomer, however: It was an escapee not from one of the layers of Hell, but from the aquatic regions of the demon-haunted Abyss. Praligeus also claimed for it the rudiments of a mind. But then, he also assured readers that it grew no larger than a horse. This specimen was nearly as large as my ship.

If it was capable of thought, it could have received and carried out instructions from its sea devil masters-or it could choose to disobey them. However, I had no means of divining what its instructions were, or plumbing the extent of its loyalties. Nor could I communicate with it while underwater. We would have to dislodge it the simple way.

Rira, a string ofbubbles pouring from her mask, directed a barrage of complex gestures at me. She swam toward the devilfish, enacting a spell. A pulsing, white energy rippled from her fingertips. They traveled outwards in a series of expanding circles. As each ripple struck me, my muscles spasmed in agony.

She was throwing lightning bolts beneath the water. Rira had been struck by the force of her own spell, and seemed worse off than I. She floated in the water as if stunned.

The first of the white circles reached the devilfish. Energy danced along its rugose flesh. Instantly, it released the ship’s hull. It collapsed into a defensive ball, with its tentacles wrapped protectively around its body. Each time an electric ripple struck it, the beast shuddered. As badly as it had hurt us, Rira’s spell had clearly done greater harm to the creature.

It remained in its ball as the last ripple washed over it. With sluggish movements, Rira seized the cros sbow she’d slung across her back. I swam forth, cutlass ready.

As I neared it, the first of Rira’s projectiles struck the creature. Guided by enchantment, the spearlike bolt homed in on a spot between tentacles, lodging in the devilfish’s eye. The behemoth uncurled itself from its ball, emitting a black liquid. This billowed out to fill a sizeable volume of water centered around the nexus of its tentacles-what would have been its nose, had it been configured like an ordinary fish.

I reversed course too late; clouds of the dark substance washed over me. As soon as it made contact with my flesh, my gut erupted with the urge to vomit. Fighting this with all my will, I swam back, out of the cloud. Concentrating my strength into my legs, I dove behind and beneath the devilfish. Above me Rira had done much the same, avoiding the cloud. A succession of bolts already pierced the thing’s spine. I stabbed my cutlass into the muscle fixing its flipper to its body.

The creature rolled over, grazing me with its half severed flipper. It skittered through its inky cloud and made a foolish attempt at flight. In the panicked effort, it caused its flipper to detach entirely from its side. Only a

threaded cord of nerves connected the creature to it. Gouts of blood blackened the water. The devilfish pitched onto its side and bobbed to the surface.

Rira and I clambered onto the ship to the cheers ofthe crew. She leaned against the rail. I lay on the deck, gasping. My next command was is sued flat on my back and heedless of my dignity.

We would make speed to Dead Slave Cove, and a decisive reckoning with Kered Firsk.

Chapter 6

Dead Slave Cove

On a bench near the helm, Seagrave unrolled a sea chart. It would be a race to Dead Slave Cove, where the sea devils were to rendezvous with Kered Firsk. They had departed to the west, meaning that they would likely round the large isle of Motaku along its north face. From there we mapped their most probable route. It would take them deep into the Shackles, traveling west till they reached Shark Island. Twenty miles, give or take, separated its westernmost point from Raptor Island, where our destination lay.

Our ship would make its best time on the open waters, where our course would plot straight. No channels, shallow or narrow, would impede us. We faced a somewhat unfavorable wind-south-southwest where south-southeast would have served us best-but with able tacking we had a chance of catching up to them. Like infantry on land, a party of swimming fish-people would be limited to the speed of the slowest among them: here, Queen Kless and her retinue.

The ship’s priests struck up a prayer to the god of sea and storms. They did not seek his intercession; to beg Gozreh’s aid is to risk his caprice. Instead they proclaimed merely their respect, and their hope that he would intercede neither for us nor for the fish-people, instead leaving air and water-breathers alike to their own devices. I added my own silent entreaty, to Shelyn the muse.

As if in response, the wind shifted a few degrees in our favor. The sky stayed clear and winds strong. The sun dipped below the horizon, replaced by a lantern moon. His spyglass on the stars, Seagrave kept us on course.

The Aspidochelone reached Raptor Island in the late afternoon. Dead Slave Cove jutted into its south shore. In the hope of surprising whoever we found there, we swung wide and came in from the west side. We dropped anchor alongside a spit of land that concealed us from the cove. I was about to order a scouting party to row out there when the hissing of thunder lizards alerted us to the presence of Kered Firsk’s crew.

Atop a grassy ridge, a trio ofbipedal, human-sized beasts, part lizard, part bird, stared down a motley foraging party. The animals, which lent Raptor Island its name, swiveled their long necks at the intruders, baring rows of razor teeth. One balanced on a single leg, leaving the other free to brandish its scythe-shaped claws. The pirate group consisted of a hyena-headed humanoid, an olive-skinned bruiser with obvious ore ancestry, and a pale green goggle-eyed humanoid of uncertain provenance, clad in a long coat and tricorne hat. The hyena-man fired a crossbow. The bolt flew between the thunder lizards, which leapt at the pirates, who in turn pivoted and fled. The raptors landed on the humanoid and set to tearing him apart. His comrades left him without looking back, tumbling down the slope toward the cove.

There was no question to whose ship they belonged. Kered Firsk was named the Monster Captain because he crewed the Slicer with humanoids ofexotic extraction, from kobolds to tengus . Half of his sailors fit this description;

the other fifty percent were humans, or members of the common races. Their monstrousness lay in their deeds.

We gave the survivors of the raptor encounter time to return to their ship. Then Rira took to a boat, with the sailors Jumlet and Shoutt along for the rowing. This was our stealth boat, painted blue and chased with white, to blend in with the waves. I’d learned the trick from Seagrave, who used it against me when I first hunted him. It worked because watchers in a crow’s nest tended to scan the horizon, paying only glancing heed to objects nearer their ships.

Lying low in the boat, the three headed out to a position past the spit, where they could see the Slicer.

Little more than an hour later, Seagrave, his spyglass trained on Rira’s position, cried out. A shower of magical energy blossomed in the sky. She’d loosed her signal: the sea devils had come. By the time we’d unfurled our sails,

the boat was back.

“They’re handing over Twill?” I asked Rira, as she clambered over the rail.

“I detected a snag in the negotiations.”

Either the sea devils had decided to hold out for more, or Firsk had insulted their arrogant sensibilities. Whichever explanation held, it bought us the time we needed. I ordered the crew to battle stations. The portside fire

throwers rattled in their heavy brass casings as the crew wheeled them to starboard.

Seagrave executed our planned maneuver: We would sail by fast and close, concentrating fire on their masts. Along with the wand-blasts, we would send ordinary fire in the form ofblazing ballista bolts. These we would train on the

Slicer’s hull, most particularly the stern, where we hoped to damage the rudder. A successful fusillade would cripple the Slicer’s ability to maneuver before it even raised anchor. We would then control the pace and angle of subsequent sallies.

With the Treasure of Thallai aboard Firsk’s ship, the use of fire gave me some pause. As he hadn’t taken custody of Twill, I could safely assume that the treasure remained safely in its protective cask. In this hid an advantage I prayed the Monster Captain would not suss out: He would try to sink the Aspidochelone. To protect the treasure, I could not let the same happen to the Slicer.

Firsk’s ship came into view: a low-slung sloop of purest darkwood. A sculpted wooden spider affixed itself to the prow. In its spearing legs, it held the figure of its prey, a gutted mermaid. With every curve, its design declared a speed superior to ours. Its slim masts wouldn’t withstand direct hits, but at the same time made small targets.

The fish-people, gathered in the water between ships, were the first to spot us. A sea devil sentry blew alarums from a conch horn. Shouts arose from the Slicer as its crew scurried into position. On the aft deck, I beheld a tall figure of skeletal frame. As I did, he held a spyglass. This was Kered Firsk, spotting me as I spotted him.

Beside him cowered Twill Ninefingers . Whatever the nature of the initial delay, the sea devils had evidently completed the handover. Perhaps the fish-people would declare their interest in the matter done, and let the ships fight it out.

As soon as we were within thrower range, Rira shouted the command to fire. Overlapping bursts of flame appeared above the Slicer’s deck. As we raced closer, the ballista crew loosed their missiles. Some fell short; others lodged in the enemy hull. A black-garbed sailor fell from the Slicer’s rigging, his clothing aflame. But when the fire dissipated, the enemy ship stood largely unharmed. The wrappings on our ballista heads burned out. Neither masts nor rigging nor sails had been touched by the flame, arcane or natural.

“He’s warded his ship against fire!” Rira called.

This I hadn’t bargained for. The Aspidochelone enjoyed no such defense. Our throwers were useless; his could puncture our hull and send us to the deep.

As we completed our ineffectual pass, the Slicer crew hauled anchor and loosed their sails.

I ordered Seagrave to execute a turn, positioning the ship for a second pass.

Rira bounded up for revised instructions.

“Aim throwers at the crew,” I told her. “If we can’t burn his ship, we can certainly singe his crew. As for the ballistae, leave off the flaming rags and aim for the rigging. A lucky shot might bring something down.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The Slicer made good on its name, cutting through the water at a startling rate. Protection against fire was not the only enchantment on Firsk’s ship. Despite Seagrave’s best attempt to angle away at the last moment, their helmsman

outmaneuvered us. We passed the other side to side, with the advantage going to the fireproof Slicer. Motes of flame appeared above our heads. They spread out, consuming sail and mast. Flaming shards rained down.

Ballista bolts shot from our deck and at it. One such missile struck Young Hallegg a blow. Though glancing, it carried sufficient force to send him sprawling into the opposite rail.

The pass completed, our water-crews grabbed at bucket lines. These, fixed by pulley mechanisms, upended containers arranged atop the masts . Seawater rained

down, dousing the consuming flames.

I surveyed the damage: the best that could be said was that it was not as devastating as I first imagined.

The sea between the two ships frothed: the sea devils were coming for us.

Rira ordered the fire-throwers trained on the advancing wave.

I ran to her side. “Don’t shoot until some have already boarded.”

“Have you gone mad?”

“You’ll see,” I said.

She nodded, as if realizing what a boarding by the fish-people portended.

The crew girded themselves for a shipboard fight. Within moments, the first of the monsters were up over the railing. Cutlass met trident as the mass melee

was joined.

Otondo dove from the rigging into a mas s of sea devils. The first few he killed merely by landing on them. The next rank he hacked through with rhythmic cleaves of his great cutlass. Aspodell kept a quartet offish-men at bay on the railing, until each in turn fell away from the hull, clutching slashed throats.

The black bulk of the Slicer barreled at us.

“He’s coming alongside for boarding!” Seagrave yelled.

“That’s the plan!” I responded. The sea devils were our shields against further fire from the Slicer’s throwers. Even Kered Firsk didn’t dare antagonize them by opening up with Queen Kless’s soldiers on board.

For the first time I found myself

grateful for the legendary spite of the sea devils, which had

tempted them to this mistake.

The Slicer swung alongside, ready to board. Our fire thrower crews got off a last fusillade. Flames enveloped the line of men along the enemy rail. Ballista bolts thudded into the Slicer’s hull and masts, filling the air with wooden shrapnel. A new row of monster sailors sprung up to replace those the fire-throwers had burned. They dropped planks to bridge the two ships, or swung across on ropes. Seagrave barreled in, bashing at them as they tried to cross. A hunched goblin pirate came up from behind him to jab at his kidneys. He pivoted, smashed the creature with his gut, then grabbed him and snapped his neck.

A booming voice called my name. Kered Firsk ran the length of my deck, scattering his and my crews before him. A red headband wrapped around his temples, just above his flaring ears, leaving exposed a nearly hairless scalp dotted with black, cancerous moles. In its center appeared an embroidered

mouth supported by spider’s legs-the emblem of the mad god Rovagug. Only a hide vest adorned his torso. Below the waist, black silk pantaloons puffed over a pair of high black boots. He carried a bulbous black cudgel, had slung a crossbow over his back, and kept an array of butcher’s knives in the various pockets of his vest. These last were more implements oftorture than of combat.

Lines of catgut stitching traversed his exposed skin, from the cheeks of his face to the chiseled muscles of his lower abdomen. In keeping with certain rites of Rovagug, he had sliced open his own flesh and allowed it to be sewn hideously back together. A few irregular patches of skin either had died and been permitted to remain as cured sections of human hide, or had been transplanted from some other being entirely. On his arm bristled a hairy patch that might have originated on a giant caterpillar or tarantula. From his shoulder sprouted a patch of canine fur. The Monster Captain should long ago have fallen prey to fatal infections-that he had not was surely a reward from

his god for his nihilistic exertions.

Around him a smoky aura radiated, shooting out writhing protrusions recalling the hair of a spider’s leg. He clawed his way through my crew, breaking limbs and smashing in skulls. Wherever they tried to strike at him, the aura gathered, turning away blows and blunting blades.

He bellowed my name and swung at me with his club. I parried, the power ofhis strike vibrating through the steel of Siren Call and into my bones.

Firsk’s spidery aura flared. “I had no quarrel with you, woman, until you made one with me! “

His club grazed my elbow, shooting needles of pain up my arm. “You’ve been on my list for a while,” I said, through gritted teeth. “When I heard you had the Treasure of Thallai-“

“So what they say about you is wrong.” He pushed into me, keeping me on the defensive.

“How so?” I labored to defuse his strikes.

“It’s greed that drives you, too.”

“True, but not the kind you’d understand.”

An enemy crewman swung by on a charred rope. I kicked him into Firsk, then grabbed the rope myself. It carried me toward the foredeck. I dropped onto a bugbear, slashing his forearm open to the bone. Kered Firsk pursued, once more tearing through his crew and mine.

Rira leaned over the rail, attention fixed on the sea devils remaining in the water below. A ball of flame appeared, then plunged into the water they swam in. For yards around this central point, the ocean boiled. Fish-people shrieked and vanished beneath the bubbling surface. Sharks went belly-up. Rira had carefully placed her fireball, so that it touched down mere feet from Kless, the sea devil queen. The heat rendered her ostentatious face spines translucent. They drooped and slipped offher head entirely, taking with them great chunks of overcooked fish flesh. Half-poached fish-people swam clear of the boiling circle, only to expire in horror as their muscles came away from the bone in white flakes. Steam rose from this swirl of death, wafting over the ship as the tantalizing smell of a seafood feast.

Then Kered Firsk was upon me, striking a blow to my shoulder that sent me bumbling into Shoutt. Firsk aimed a blow at me and hit the crewman instead, audibly cracking his skull.

I tried to catch Firsk while he was off balance, but he recovered too quickly and retaliated with a surprise blow. The force of it threw me against the foremast.

Firsk barked like a hyena. “You’re no match for me, woman.”

“I only need to hit you once.”

“Ridiculous ! No one can down me in a single blow. Not the mightiest warrior alive-and certainly not you!”

“The others said the same.” I ducked a n overhead swipe.

His club smashed through a length of sturdy rail.

“Give me a free hit,” I said, “and prove me wrong.” His gaze traveled to the hilt of Siren Call. I feinted; he shrank back.

Sensing movement behind me, I pivoted to avoid the dagger of a backstabbing dark elf. He j erked and fell into me, one of Aspodell’s throwing knives buried between his shoulder blades. His leg tangled between mine. As I stepped free, Firsk smashed my sword-hand.

Siren Call arced from my grasp.

Smiling, Firsk clutched my throat. “That was the weapon that would fell me? That would enslave me, as it did the others?”

As one, my adjutants stiffened and stopped fighting. Firsk’s men stepped back from them, either instinctively aware of what had happened, or simply grateful for the respite. Rira laughed. Seagrave straightened his hat. Otondo

licked his lips.

Their pause in the fighting rippled outward, until all the blades on the ship were stilled. The remaining sea devils took the opportunity to slip over the rails and vanish beneath the waves.

Firsk addressed them. ” She can’t control you when her sword’s over there, can she?”

“No,” answered Rira. ” She cannot.”

“What do you bid, then, for the right to slay your captor?”

I thought about the knife in my boot, and how little chance I had with it.

“I can lead you to a buried cache of fifty thousand gold sails,” said Rira.

“My best cache is twice that,” Seagrave bid.

“I’ll serve you for a year and a day,” said Otondo, “and from my cutlass you’ll earn more than either ofthem can give.”

“Attractive offers all,” Firsk said. “But I’m still inclined to do her myself.”

Young Hallegg leaped at him from the rigging. Firsk downed him with his off-elbow, jabbed into his larynx. He released me in order to casually kick at him, smiling at the sound of a cracking rib.

“There’s one offer you haven’t heard.” Aspodell had eased his way through the halted serum, and now stood a few feet behind us. At his side, he held Siren Call. Crew from both ships stepped out of his way. Through his fingers, I could see that the light in the crystals had gone dead-the sign that its geases were suspended.

“You’ll give me the sword?” Firsk asked.

“Yes and no.”

Aspodell winked and threw it to me. Before Firsk raised his club, Siren Call was back in my hand. Before he could lower it, I’d buried my weapon in his breastbone. Pale blue energy surrounded it as I pushed it deeper. Firsk went limp. His falling weight freed him from the blade.

As I wiped Firsk’s blood from it, the enthrallment crystals in the hilt blazed back to life. The four grimaced in discomfort as their geases took hold again.

Deprived of their captain, the crew of the Slicer surrendered. I let them leave in its boats. The ship itself we would sail to Port Peril, where we would sell it, dividing the proceeds in accordance with our charter.

Twill Ninefingers was borne on a stretcher from the Slicer to the deck of the Aspidochelone. On the right side of his face, patches of bone showed through a mess of black, burned flesh. A shard ofwood, most likely a piece ofrailing shrapnel, protruded from his chest cavity. Remarkably, he clung to consciousness still. His hand reached out in a futile attempt to clasp my wrist.

“Captain Argent,” he wheezed.

“Don’t try to talk.”

I directed a searching gaze to the healers, who replied with empty-handed gestures. There was no need to ask further: they’d used up all our healing draughts, and exhausted for the moment their entreaties to the gods.

“I told you my doom was coming,” Twill coughed. “Sensed it for months now.”

“Let’s have none of that.”

“I won’t last the hour. I won’t be able to open Firsk’s treasure after all.”

“Never mind that.”

“You don’t owe me nothing, but I ask a favor anyways.” He paused to choke on blood. “Throw me in the ocean.”

“Of course we’ll bury you at sea.”

“No, throw me in the water now. That way I’ll not die from bleeding.”

I began to ask, but then understood.

“I’ll drown instead … “

“… and go to meet your brother, on the island of ghosts. Twill, hear me out. Is Drowningtide truly where you wish to spend eternity?”

His fingers closed over my sleeve. “Better than the likely alternatives. Leastways I got a brother there.” At this he lapsed into the sleep that precedes death, his chest barely rising and falling.

“Otondo! ” I cried.

He limped to my side, a long gash still untended on his upper thigh.

“Throw this man overboard,” I commanded.

“With pleasure.”

The ogre tossed Twill over his shoulder, took him to the rail, and subjected him to an undignified dumping. The inevitable splash soon followed. How long would it take, I wondered, for his soul essence to migrate to Drowningtide? I envisioned him on the deck of that eerie ship-fortress, raising a goblet with his brother Geor. They would have until the end of time to bridge the gap that

separated them in life.

Seagrave dropped a brass cask, chased in gold and silver, at my feet. Pewter suns, moons, and stars dotted its face.

“So it’s all for naught, then.”

“Why would you say that?”

“We were after Twill, as Firsk was, to open this outer shell and gain the Treasure of Far Thallai. The entrance to a fabulous realm, where maidens fair cry out from desire unslaked. Where nectars beyond earthly intoxication wait

for the swilling. Where gems and rubies lie about for the scooping.”

“About that, Seagrave … “

The others gathered around. Aspodell pressed a rag to his forehead, staunching a wound. Otondo held his great cutlas s as if ready to slash the cask open. Rira pretended that she wasn’t studying it.

“With the lockbreaker gone, we can’t open it, can we, ma’am?” Seagrave asked. “It’s so much jetsam.”

“I said that only Twill could force it open,” I said. “He was Firsk’s only way to get at the treasure. Which is why we sought him, because he would lead us to the Monster Captain. As indeed he did. But if, in another life as a cloistered scholar, I studied plans for the cask’s design, I might happen to know the combination, and not need to force it at all.”

“You revel in the withholding of information,” Rira said.

I squatted beside the cask. “I admit to a wide range of flaws, but would argue this is one ofthe charming ones.”

In fact, it took me several attempts to remember the exact sequence. Each of its celestial bodies was mounted on an interior peg and could be moved either vertically or horizontally. With a sequence of five movements, the lock would unlatch and the lid pop open. This, under the near palpable stares of my adjutants, I finally achieved. “And here it is,” I said.

Inside the cask lay a scroll, browned with age. Dampness had fused its pages together-though with expert work, these could be prised apart.

“That’s the incantation?” Rira asked. “That takes us to Thallai?”

“Again, in the interest ofkeeping your motivations keen, I have failed to cure you ofa misapprehension. This is a poem.”

Otondo and Seagrave uttered contrasting obscenities.

“This is Thallai, an epic once thought lost to the ages, and known now only in this single copy. Written in the days of legend, by Zeneus of Azlant.”

“Zeneus,” Aspodell mused. “I believe my tutor mentioned him, when I was a boy.”

“And what did you learn?”

“That I was more interested in the pain thresholds of various milkmaids.”

I returned the document to its cask and pressed shut the lock. “Yes, it transports you to a land ofbeauty, opulence, and eroticism. In your mind’s eye, as you hear it recited. Through ages past scholars have spoken ofit as the greatest triumph of Azlanti letters. To have lost this forever-as surely would have happened if Kered Firsk opened a cask and found only poetry inside-would have been our age’s greatest tragedy. He would have torn it to shreds.”

Aspodell walked away. Otondo and Seagrave ran out of common swear words, and switched, respectively, to the languages of giants and dwarves.

“We shall convey this to a college in Rahadoum, so it may be safely copied, and then dispersed to all the peoples ofGolarion. Lest you consider mischief-heaving it overboard-! hereby charge you, by the power of your geases, to protect Thallai and its cask with full and unstinting diligence.”

A strange sound rang from Rira’s mask. After a moment, I recognized it as laughter.

At my hip, I felt a stab of heat. The fifth and final crystal in Siren Call’s hilt flickered to full illumination. I made quick progress to Kered Firsk’s body, which some sailor had naively covered. With the tip of my scabbard, I pulled the blanket from him.

Kered Firsk emerged grimacing from the sword’s transformative sleep. Like four others before this, an interval of confusion and spluttering attended this awakening. When he calmed himself, I bid him rise.

He snarled. “I take no orders from you, woman. No matter how trivial.”

“Incorrect.” I tightened my grip on Siren Call’s hilt, concentrating on the fifth crystal. Kered Firsk trembled, as if shocked. He stood, crying out in disbeliefas his body betrayed him.

“You’ve made a puppet of me! “

“In some senses, yes . Yet some portions of your free will you’ll retain, so that you can best serve life, and justice, and knowledge-the very interests you’ve fought all your life to destroy. Without inaccuracy, you may use the word cruel. I would instead call it a deserved irony.”

Spittle flew from his lips. ”I’ll slit you stem to stern. I’ll dance on your corpse.”

“Perhaps some day you will. Provided one ofthe others doesn’t beat you to it.” I gestured to his four colleagues, who huddled in colloquy on the aft deck.

“Until then, you’ll strive to balance all the destruction you’ve sown. Summon what patience you have, Kered Firsk. Over the next days you’ll need it, as I explain the terms of the geas. You can save yourself much useless effort by committing them to heart. Rest assured that your predecessors have thoroughly tested its provisions, resulting in a comprehensive list ofimprovements and codicils.”

Kered’s acceptance of these facts was less than instantaneous. As I let him ramble through the expected litany of imprecations, my attention drifted to the other four. They stood too far away to hear, but as I have already mentioned, I read lips. Rira was immune, of course, and Otondo gave me only a view of his muscular back. He and Seagrave took turns shoving Asp odell. The nobleman bore

these assaults listlessly, his shoulders slouched in apparent sympathy with his tormentors. It couldn’t go too far. Among the aforementioned improvements and codicils, the first to be adopted had concerned hostilities between the geas’s co-sufferers.

“You idiot!” Seagrave kept saying.

“I can’t argue,” answered Aspodell.

“Why did you do it?”

“I don’t get it either.”

“It wasn’t the geas. If she’s that far from the sword, she can’t assert it.”

“I knew that.”

“And yet you didn’t slay her?”

“I should have, yes. I should have.”

“That wasn’t the puppet Aspodell then. That was you, the true Aspodell, who returned that accursed cutlass!”

Then Rira took charge of the excoriations, for a good long time.

When she was finished, Seagrave said, “You could have slit her throat. Or just let Firsk end her, and we’d have finished him.”

“Could have,” said Aspodell.

Seagrave seized him by the shirt. “Then why didn’t you?” He threw Aspodell into a cabin wall.

For a moment, Aspodell seemed dazed. Then: “I wish I knew, Seagrave. I surely wish I knew.”