'We're waiting until one of the fishermen Borha sent out comes back with something by which I can read the omens for the rest of the pearl harvest.'

'How long's that going to be?' Dev looked askance at the warlord.

'Who knows?' Kheda shrugged. 'Which is all part of the omen in itself And who else will be here to read the omens and cast their own interpretations around once the Yellow Serpent has carried me away?

As he drank his juice, the warlord glanced idly around the crude huts, eyes alert for any man with the long, untrimmed hair and beard of a soothsayer. There was none to be seen, wherever he looked.

Does that mean there are no seers here? Or are they just staying out of sight till I'm gone?

Kheda tried to put such thoughts out of his mind and enjoy the shade beneath the pavilion. They had waited there long enough for Dev to discreetly eat most of the sweet cakes before a cry of anticipation went up along the waterline. A sturdy skiff was approaching the beach, the two men crewing it shouting and waving urgent hands. Chazen islanders abandoned their toils over baskets and tubs to splash into the shallows and help drag the craft on to drier, firmer ground. Pearl drillers and pickers alike stood up, their tasks forgotten as they strained to see what was being brought ashore. The spokesmen forgot their dignity as they hurried down to the shore with everyone else, Borha and Isei shoving their way to the fore.

'There's a favourable portent in itself, that they've found something so soon.' Kheda got to his feet, feeling a welcome lightening of his mood.

'Here you go again,' Dev said under his breath, 'getting up to your elbows in something's innards. Have you any idea how the laundry maids complain when I take them a tunic with blood up to the armpits?'

Kheda laid a hand in the middle of the sarcastic barbarian's mailed chest. 'I've told you before: curb your tongue. For a man so keen to boast of his cleverness, you can be remarkably stupid.' Not waiting for the barbarian to find a reply, he strode out from the shade of the little pavilion, the sunlight striking down hard on his unprotected head.

Which is pretty stupid of you, oh wise and powerful warlord, and you can hardly ruin the moment for all these onlookers by going back for your helmet, you fool. You need to curb your temper or you'll both end up dead, your blood spilled along with Dev's. There are some things no domain's people will forgive.

'It's a flail-tailed shark, my lord!' The press of people around the pearl skiff parted to reveal Borha.

'Have you seen many of them this harvest?' Kheda looked around for some diver or boatmaster among the anxious, anticipatory faces clustering close.

'This is the first sign of any shark, my lord.' A thickset man spoke up, bare-chested in coarse cotton trousers faded to colourlessness. 'And we've manned a ring of watch boats at first light every day, well before the divers take to the water.'

'Then it's a good omen when the very first shark to come sniffing around ends up on a spear.' Khedanodded his approval. 'What else can we read into this? A flail-tail is a dangerous shark but nowhere near as deadly as a ragged-tooth. A ragged-tooth will eat a flail-tail, so the very fact that a flail-tail is in these waters should mean the bigger sharks are elsewhere.'

'Very true, my lord,' agreed the confident diver and the crowd's smiles broadened perceptibly at this happy thought.

Though it's no meagre specimen, at least as long as I am tall and doubtless as heavy as any three men here.

'Let's see what else we can learn from this fish.' Kheda stepped back to let the crowd press forward, eager hands grabbing at the harsh-skinned bluish-grey fins and tail. There didn't seem to be any life left in the creature but he kept a prudent distance from the vicious maw all the same. The skiff's master and his helmsman lifted the shark's head between them, using the broad-bladed spears that had slain it and which were still embedded deep in its gills and through its snout. The islanders wrestled the inert mass over the side of the boat and dumped it on the ground. Dark blood oozed from its mouth, staining the sand.

'Show me its belly.' Kheda held out a hand and Dev provided him with a heavy barbed spear acquired from someone. The skiff's crew rolled the unwieldy creature over to lie half on its back, half on its side, glaucous underside pallid in the sun, the long pennant of its tail trailing lifeless across the sand. Kheda lifted the spear high above his head with both hands and with a grunt of effort thrust it clean through the shark just below the vicious curve of its jaw, pinning the creature to the ground. There was a murmur of uncertainty from a few directions.

Not what Chazen Saril used to do, then? Perhaps his father never told him of warlords who'd been surprised by a moribund shark and bitten even after they'd cut the beast's head off. That's not the kind of omen we want today.

'A knife.' Kheda reached behind him.

'Here.' Dev slapped a long, brutally serrated blade into his palm.

'My lord?' Isei was looking expectantly at him.

Kheda took a deep breath and pinioned the fish's tail firmly with one foot. He dug the point of the blade into the fish's cloaca and ripped a jagged slit up its length, fighting against the tough, clinging skin, harsh as a carpenter's rasp against his knuckles.

Not too deep. Don't pierce the intestines or mar the liver, blighting the interpretation before it's even begun. Stars above, this is easier with a deer or a hog.

Wiping sweat from his forehead, he persisted until he had laid the shark's entrails bare for all to see. A powerful smell rose from the dead fish, not yet edged with the sickly stench of decay, though that wouldn't take long in this strong sun.

'The beast is certainly healthy, nothing ill-omened among its entrails, no marks, no deformities.' Kheda waited to be quite sure that the shark was motionless, then stuck the knife into the sand by his foot. He reached both hands into the cavity to lift out the dark liver, searching for stains or blemishes.

What's the first thing I will see mirrored in its sheen? That's always the crucial portent.

As he sought to get a grip on the solid, slippery mass, something squirmed among the coiled lengths of the shark's guts. Kheda abandoned all thoughts of securing the liver and snatched up the knife instead.

'Has it eaten something alive?' Dev peered into the beast with lively curiosity.

'Or someone?' quavered Borha. 'It's a flail-tail, not a ragged-tooth.' Kheda took a firm grip on the salt-roughened handle of the knife.

Which is fortunate because we've all heard the tales of ragged-toothed sharks cut open to reveal whole skeletons inside them or at very least fateful collections of skulls and bones. Flail-tails can only take an arm or a leg at worst and one of those could hardly be still fighting or kicking. Besides, the divers said there 'd been no mishaps on the reefs.

Dismissing his incoherent thoughts, Kheda used the point of the blade to push aside the pallid loops of the shark's gut, less concerned with piercing them now than with revealing this mystery. He exposed a swollen sac, feebly contorted by whatever lay within in. 'Whatever this is, it isn't in the creature's belly,' he said, bemused. Setting his jaw, he seized one end of the sac where it was anchored within the fish and sliced it open with a deft stroke of the knife.A miniature shark twisted out of the wound, as long as a man's arm and about as thick, perfect in every detail. Black eyes bright, its snapping white teeth missed Kheda's hand by a hair's breadth. A frisson ran through the mesmerised islanders.

Teeth more than big enough to do damage. How would that have been for an omen?

He skewered the wriggling infant through its flapping gills and hoisted it out of the dead shark's belly on the knife blade. It was surprisingly heavy.

'Has anyone ever seen such a thing?' he enquired, letting a hint of amusement colour his query.

Heads shook all around, some faces awestruck, others apprehensive.

'Then we certainly have a mighty portent to read.' Kheda smiled and threw the baby shark down on the sand, sending the nearest islanders stumbling backwards into those pressing close behind them. 'But let's not get ahead of ourselves. What has the liver to tell us?' As he bent to tug at the uncooperative mass, using the knife to cut it free, he thought furiously.

What might be read into such a thing? A shark with a live baby in its belly? What is that an omen for?

Who is such a portent meant for?

The dark, unwieldy mass of the adult shark's liver came free with a suddenness that surprised him and Kheda felt Dev's steadying hand in the small of his back. The ground was treacherous now, slick with the shark's blood, and the stench was growing heady, red-eyed flies gathering to defy the islanders' swatting hands.

'My lord?' It was the bare-chested diver, the confident one.

Kheda saw the man's face reflected in the last gloss on the rapidly drying surface of the shark's liver and let the weighty organ fall back into the gutted hollow of the great fish with a soggy thud. He smiled at Borha, hovering anxiously on the other side of the shark. 'We've seen all we need to, so I'll wash now, if I may.'

'Here, girl!' The spokesman beckoned to the maidens who had been serving by the pavilion. One hurried forward cradling a broad silver bowl of scented water and, tense beside her, a younger girl clutched a sizeable sponge.

'In the water with it,' Dev prompted briskly, taking the bowl. 'The sponge, girl, the sponge!'

'I see most favourable omens in this shark's death,' Kheda announced as he squeezed water over his arms to wash the worst of the blood and slime off on to the sand. To his relief, besa oil's astringency cut through the fishy stench hanging all around. 'To add to all the other positive portents favouring this pearl harvest and this domain at present.' He submerged one forearm in the bowl and scrubbed with the sponge.

'This shark came to feed at dawn, as is their habit. But it came alone, so we need not fear a season of losses among the divers, not to the sea's predators. That's how I read the matter, anyway. Mind you, I believe it came to lay claim to the reefs and whatever prey it might find there. To give birth in a place is to tie your future to it.' He looked around to see rapt agreement on every face. 'It didn't succeed, did it?

Your watch boats spotted the creature and your fishermen speared it before it had a chance to flee or to hide. It had no chance to make its bid for a stake in these waters.' He gestured to the dead infant shark before beginning to wash his other arm.

'The mother was a healthy beast which indicates that the omens overall are to be read in a positive light and everything that I saw in the mirror of its liver was a favourable indicator for the success of our pearl harvest. The spawn did its best to bite me. It failed and, more significantly, it died at the hands of your warlord, which suggests that Chazen interests will be safe for some while, wouldn't you say? Dev, we'll take that with us.' He nodded at the infant shark. 'Borha, have the jaw cut out of the adult's head and share out the teeth among the divers for talismans. Take the carcass well out to sea before you dump it, where the currents will take it away from the reefs. We don't want its kin coming to see where it got to.'

The burly diver was the first to raise a cheer. Loud approbation spread among the islanders, even those faces that had been uneasy before soon clearing. Kheda waited, smiling, as he dried his arms on a white cotton cloth offered by yet another maiden, this one all coquettish smiles that faded a little as he waved her away. At the first hint of an ebb in the surge of fervour, he turned to walk unhurriedly back up the slope towards the pavilion and the crowd drifted apart.Dev walked at his shoulder, studying the infant shark as he carried it skewered on a spear he had pulled from the larger fish. 'So all the omens are good.' His face was studiedly neutral. 'Does that mean we can get back to hunting down those invaders? There's no telling what might have happened out to the west while we've been trailing around the rest of the domain,' he concluded with ill-concealed frustration.

'For the pearl harvest, the portents are certainly most favourable. As for that shark spawn, I'm not sure what such a thing might mean,' Kheda admitted in a low voice as they returned to the shade of the pavilion and its illusion of privacy.

'Does it really matter?' Dev was unexpectedly curious.

'It almost got its teeth into me,' Kheda said soberly. 'That has to mean it's a personal portent. I'll have to consult Chazen Saril's library when we rejoin Itrac at the residence. I'm really not clear on the lore of sharks.'

And I had better be before I have to counter whatever verdict any other soothsayer sets running around as rumour, out of honest belief or treacherous intent.

He tossed Dev the cloth he'd been wiping his arms with. 'Wrap it in that. I don't want to be mobbed by gulls all the way back.'

'What now?' Dev took the cloth and swaddled the infant shark securely.

'Favourable portents are all well and good but once word spreads, that'll encourage any hovering sea hawks to prey on such a plentiful pearl harvest.' Kheda shaded his eyes with a hand as he stared out to the strait where the Yellow Serpent waited; light skiffs were busy ferrying food and water to the rowers.

'There are still too many opportunists sneaking about Chazen waters for my peace of mind. Itrac won't do much trade for sailer grain or horsehair or anything else if some enterprising pirate plunders the galleys she sends to collect the pearl chests.'

'Which would be an unfortunate omen,' Dev commented sarcastically.

'Quite,' said Kheda shortly. 'So when you've dropped a pearl or two into every hand that's done us a service here, we need to get back to the Yellow Serpent and tell Hesi to set a course to check up on that motley flotilla of boats we left to guard the seaways. Share out the rest of that box between Hesi and the trireme's shipmaster.'

'Which means yet more delay before we sail back to the western isles,' muttered Dev with stifled anger.

'We will still be back at the residence for the night of the new year.' Kheda looked at the barbarian, his green eyes cold as jade. 'Though if I deem it necessary after that, we'll repeat this entire voyage around the domain, just to be sure all is well.'

'Why?' demanded Dev. 'When I can tell you precisely where every boat might be - every islander if you give me time - be they friendly or unfriendly, without you having to move a muscle.'

'And how do we explain how we came by such knowledge? What will you do when we're discovered?'

Kheda looked at him with ill-concealed anger. 'You using magic and me condoning it? You think I'd escape having my throat cut so that my blood might dilute the stain of wizardry in yours, as it soaks into the ground while you're skinned alive and your hide turned inside out to expiate your every touch on Aldabreshin soil?' His voice thickened. 'Do you think Itrac would lift a finger to save either of us? Do you think she could? These people of Chazen don't just detest wizardry like the other domains of the Archipelago, for all its foul assault on the natural order of things. They truly fear and loathe it after all the misery and death those invaders and their brutal enchanters brought with them. The day your secret is out is the day you die.'

'Fools, the lot of them.' Dev gritted his teeth. 'When it was my magic saved them from those savage mages. Just so long as we head west as soon as we can after you've played your new-year games.' The barbarian wizard bent to retrieve Kheda's helmet. As Kheda reached out to take it, Dev's fingers closed over the warlord's, pressing them painfully against the hard metal and unyielding facets of the diamonds on the brow band.

'You promised me I'd be there to see the last nests of those savages rooted out. I killed their wizards for you but the survivors may be hoarding something that could give me a hint of how they worked their magic. You really don't want to break your word to me, Kheda. You shouldn't need any portents to warn you just what a bad idea that would be.'

CHAPTER TWO

Just where have our supposed guardians of these seaways got to?' Kheda scowled past the upswept stern posts of the Mist Dove as the trireme pulled away from yet another landing empty of Chazen ships.

'At least no one's offered tales of trouble washing up on their beaches.' Dev waved as the trireme eased along the shore watched by a party of huntsmen clutching the heavy square-ended blades they used for hacking paths through the dense forest.

'And at least they look ready to drive it off, if trouble turns up.' Kheda raised a hand to acknowledge two fishermen pausing to raise their long spears in salute on their hunt for the ugly bristle-mouthed fish that lurked among the roots of the coppery reed beds.

'There should be more boats on the waters, shouldn't there?' Dev queried idly. 'Trade's in the Aldabreshin blood around here as much as in the central domains.'

Where you hid so effectively under the mask of a thoroughly amoral merchant for so many years.

'Village spokesmen should be keeping in touch with one another, at the very least.' Kheda's irritation was unabated. 'I want to know where Nyral is.'

The trireme continued to pick a cautious path between low, muddy islets, slowing almost to walking pace to navigate the turbid channel between the encroaching groves of knot trees. The breezes off the open seas were baffled by the smothering vegetation and the sun beat down ever hotter from above. The still air smelled more of silt than of salt and the raucous cries of crookbeaks crashed through the taller lilla trees set back from the shore.

Kheda wiped sweat from his face and accepted a cup of water from Dev. 'Shaiam? Any suggestions where we might look for Nyral next?'

A tall, wiry man with plaited black hair and beard climbed up the ladderlike stair from the rowing deck.

'Nothing we haven't already thought of, my lord.' The trireme's shipmaster clutched a battered and salt-stained black book in a hand almost the same hue as the leather cover. His naturally dark complexion had been deepened by years in the strong southern sun, striking against the vivid red of the long sleeveless mantle he wore over his bare chest. His russet trousers were cut short just below the knee, revealing sturdy calves and long splayed toes that gripped the smooth wood of the deck.

'So we're still heading for Kalan?' Alert in his seat just in front of the shipmaster's lofty chair, the helmsman Yere gripped the twin stern oars that governed the mighty trireme's movements. He spared a glance for the book open on his knees, bound in unfaded indigo leather.

Kheda noted that the helmsman's painstakingly compiled record of Chazen's sea lanes was nowhere near as thick as Shaiam's mute testament to the older man's years of experience.

A book holding so many of the secrets that the shipmasters barter between themselves. How many of Chazen's hapless mariners were forced to trade away such precious knowledge as they fled the invaders? What else could they offer in return for water or food or a secure anchorage? Who has such knowledge now?

He stared out over the clouded waters as the narrow channel opened up and the rowing master down below signalled for the piper to pick up the pace.

'We'd best not make a long stop at Kalan, my lord, not if we want to be back at the dry-season residence for the new-year rites.' Yere's serious expression sat oddly on his cheerful brown face, exuberant black hair curling untamed to his shoulders.

'Let's hope we find Shipmaster Nyral quickly, then,' Kheda said curtly. 'I'll be interested to hear just how he and his crew plan on keeping bilge rats out of our waters when he's nowhere to be found in the reach he was set to guard.'

'We can make up some time here, my lord.' Shaiam lifted callused fingers to his mouth to whistle down to the rowing master, who looked up from the sunlit aisle between the rowers on their staggered seats.

Nodding, he clapped his hands briskly to encourage the oarsmen, indistinct on each side in the shade cast by the split upper deck of the trireme. The shrill note of the flute gathered speed, the piper sitting on the wooden block half-way down the aisle where the mast would be stepped, should Shaiam decide that the wind was favourable enough to call for the sail.

Kheda looked down at the shadowy oarsmen as the trireme shivered beneath his feet.What would you rowers think if you knew I'd taken an oar in a merchant galley, pulling my weight all the way to the northernmost domains in search of lore to drive the invaders and their magic out of these southern waters? Would it strengthen your loyalty to know that I understand how the world shrinks to the oar in your hands and the pipe note in your ears after a long day's haul? Would you be impressed that I know all the tricks of tying a rope grommet to secure an oar and how best to repair an oar port's leather sleeve?

Or would you just want to know exactly what it was that I found in the far north? Would you guess it was Dev? Would you start speculating on just how it was that he could help me kill the savages' wizards?

The oarsmen murmured a count among themselves to measure their increasing pace. The ship gathered speed, driven on by the rushing oars. The rowers fell silent as they settled into a regular rhythm, the only sounds from the lower deck the pipe, the creak of rope, leather and wood and, lower still, the susurration of water beneath the trireme's long, lithe hull.

'Of course, Nyral could have found someone making free with Chazen resources,' remarked Dev thoughtfully, 'and come to grief himself.'

Kheda shot a glance at the barbarian before nodding slowly. 'It's possible. Let's be certain we're ready for a fight.'

He walked swiftly forward along one half of the uppermost deck as the Mist Dove ploughed through a broad, shallow channel thick with mats of floating lily leaves. The small detachment of armoured men on the trireme's bow platform rose dutifully to their feet at his approach and bowed low.

Ten swordsmen and four archers is the complement for a fast trireme sailing as advance scout or messenger. A heavy trireme like this should have fifty men ready to put paid to any mischief. And loyal as they are, these hopeful warriors are the remnants of those too old and too young to fight the savages last year. All Chazen's best swordsmen died in defence of their women and children as they fled the murderous magic.

'My lord.' The senior warrior stepped forward and bowed low. In a plain chain-mail hauberk like the rest, helm of dull steel unadorned, he was sweating profusely in the breathless heat.

'Aysi.' Kheda inclined his head by way of acknowledgement. 'I was wondering if Shipmaster Nyral might have run into trouble. Will you be ready to meet any challenge that comes our way?'

'Ready and willing to serve, my lord.' The grizzled swordsman stroked his close-cropped beard thoughtfully. 'Ridu will probably be safest in a fight. His strokes are still so wild no one will dare come near him, for fear of losing their head by accident.' He spared a glance for the youngest of his ill-assorted detachment, a lad with a beard barely a hopeful shadow on his round jaw. The lad ducked his head in discomfiture as the others studiously avoided catching each other's gaze.

Atoun would never have embarrassed a lad like that. He had the knack of welding the most ill-matched men into a fighting force that won respect for Daish from all our neighbours. There's no one in Chazen to equal him, to take his place as commander of the warlord's warriors. Any man who could is probably dead like Atoun, at the claws of the monsters the invaders wrought with their magic.

Kheda turned to the archers. 'Will we have fresh meat to feed these brave warriors this evening, Tawai?'