"Come on," Thom hissed, and they trotted away from the fish plant, flames growing behind them. The flame flashed as gunpowder caught here, then a bigger flare as the wood, soaked in long years of oily fish, took fire.

They ran, then, up the gangplank onto the Steadfast. A sailor who'd held a boarding net wide for a passage let it fall.

"Man the guns and send the watch aloft," Gareth ordered. He went on up the ladder to the quarterdeck.

"Very well, mister," Gareth told Nomios. "Put us to sea."

"Yes, sir," Nomios said. "For'rd! Let go the main sheet."

There was a splash as a rope dropped into the water.

"Hard aport your rudder," he said in a low voice to the helmsmen, and the current drifted the Steadfast a foot or so away from the dock.

"Set the fores'l and mains'l," and the barefoot men above sidled out on footropes. Yards clattered, and canvas rattled as it unfurled. Sails caught the wind and pulled the prow of the Steadfast away from the dock, toward the sea.

"Helmsman," Nomios said. "Th' course is south by south-southeast. Hold firm, and you'll be in the center of the channel."

"Aye."

"Labala," Gareth called down to the main deck.

"What, Gareth?"

"Can you sense the Linyati out there?"

"No," Labala said. "Tried. Didn't work. Sorry."

"Anyone in the waist with good eyes, up to the foredeck,"

Gareth ordered. "Give quiet warning if you hear or see anything. Anything!"

Gareth closed his eyes, listened, forced his mind away from the Steadfast, into the foggy dark. The wind was coming from due north.

"'Nomios," he said in a low tone, "correct the steering a point south or so. The wind might blow us a bit wide of the channel on this course."

"Aye, sir. I was just about to do that."

Gareth went down the ladder to the maindeck, called the four gun captains to him, Knoll standing in for Gareth.

"We'll be cutting through the fog sooner or later into clear air," he said. "When we do, if you spot the Linyati, aim your guns, but wait, for the sake of the gods, until I give the command. Maybe we'll be able to slide past them without being seen."

The men nodded, went back to their cannon. Knoll N'b'ry lingered for a minute.

"What're you grinning about?"

"Just about how much you sound like a real captain."

Gareth tried to keep from laughing. "To your gun, sir."

Gareth went back to the quarterdeck, went back to listening. The Steadfast was mostly silent, except for the creak of her hull, a quiet splash as a wave broke against the prow now and again, the rustle of the sails.

Labala came up the ladder.

"Gareth," he said, voice low, "I think my damned mist is staying with us!"

"Is that possible?"

"I dunno," Labala said. "I'm making this up as I go along. Maybe it thinks I'm its daddy?"

Gareth nodded. Maybe, just maybe, this would make things easier, and they wouldn't have to a"

a" He heard a shouted command to starboard, and the clatter of lines through blocks.

A moment later, he could see dim light.

Enough of creeping along, he thought. I'm tired of always running.

"Nomios," he said, "steer for that light."

"But a" "

"Do as I order!"

"Yessir!"

The bosun gave quiet orders, and the helmsman spun the wheel.

The light grew brighter. Gareth went to the railing and leaned over.

"What're you loaded with?"

"Grapeshot," came back.

"Good. Aim at the light, and fire when I order. Reload with solid shot, and aim below the light, into the hull, for your second shot."

He went back to the wheel.

The light was very close. The Steadfast was closing on a Linyati a" at least Gareth hoped it was a Linyati a" from the stern, on the Slaver's port side.

"Ready a" Gareth shouted, and the ship was close enough for him to see startled figures on the ship's deck turn toward him a "Fire!" The two starboard cannon bellowed, and men on the Linyati ship screamed and fell. There was confusion on their deck as the Steadfast sailed past, not twenty yards away.

"Bring her about, Nomios! We'll have another taste of that!"

"Aye, sir," and the Steadfast came about.

"Bring her down close alongside!"

"Aye, aye."

"Port cannon," Gareth ordered. "You can't miss! Ready a"

And the Linyati ship was close aboard. Sailors aboard her jumped back from the railings, afraid the Steadfast was intending to ram.

"Fire!" And the two guns crashed. Gunsmoke swirled as the grapeshot scattered across the Slaver's maindeck, and Gareth heard men shriek.

"Load solid shot, and fast," Gareth said, and again brought the Steadfast about.

"Ready a Fire a" And this time the port guns slammed their tiny broadside into the Linyati's stern.

"Up her port side," Gareth called.

Just as they closed on the Slaver, one of its sternchasers blasted, and the round whirred past, scant feet overhead, and thudded into the Steadfast's sterncastle. Fire sparkled along the Steadfast's starboard railing, and Gareth saw men a" his men a" unordered, firing muskets at the sternchaser's crew, and two Linyati went down. His starboard guns fired, aiming low as ordered, and they were even with the Linyati ship just as Gareth saw a small robinet on the quarterdeck fire.

The round came close enough so he felt the rush of wind, then the splatter of something warm on his face, his arm. He glanced up at clear skies, no rain, then saw the helmsman stumble back from the wheel.

He was missing his head, and Gareth knew what the rain had been, tried to keep from throwing up as he took the wheel, steering the Steadfast past the Linyati as the Slaver lost headway and fell away to port.

Then the fog was gone, and the sea ahead was clear. Gareth ordered full sail, and a new course: Due south.

a a a Two days later, the Steadfast lay in the lagoon off a tiny tropic island. The horizon to the north was empty, and there'd been no signs of pursuit after Herti.

The thirty-seven sailors were gathered in the waist. They'd buried Kelch and the helmsman the morning after the battle with the Linyati ship.

Gareth, before he'd told everyone to gather and decide what to do next, had sent a boat ashore to gather limes and a barrel of absolutely fresh water from a creek that purled into the ocean. He ordered the cook to make a cool punch from the fruit, some sugar, and brandy, served a moderate amount to each man.

Knoll N'b'ry had come to him as the others were lined up around the barrel.

"I'm starting to think you're a dangerous man, Gareth Radnor."

"Oh?"

"I think it's most interesting that you take the time to make sure we're all refreshed a" with a fruit no one but a nobleman might ever see in Saros a" before we discuss the future. A hint of the good things to come.

"Just as I think it's interesting you set the course south after Herti, instead of north, toward home."

"I just figured," Gareth said with an honest smile, "that would be the least likely direction for the Linyati to think we were headed."

"But of course." Knoll sipped from his pewter mug. "I was just thinking about some things you used to talk about when we were boys.

"Do you want it to be my idea, or yours?"

"What are you talking about?"

Knoll didn't answer, but smiled mysteriously, and found a place to sit on a cannon.

Gareth climbed up a couple of steps on the ladder to the quarterdeck.

"All right, men," he said. "I think we've got to decide what to do next."

"Get our sorry asses home," somebody said.

"That's the most obvious plan," Gareth agreed. "The seas are wide and empty, and we should be able to slip past any Linyati. I don't think they'll be looking for us too hard. Or anyway I hope not."

"We go out from Saros," Knoll said in a musing tone, as if to himself, "and then we rush right back, two months later, with our tails between our legs. What proud seafarers we be."

Men looked at him, some frowning in agreement, some puzzled.

"What about the Steadfast?" Thom Tehidy asked. "Who owns the ship?"

"I'd guess Captain Luynes's heirs, if he had any."

"I don't rec'leck," Bosun Nomios said, "the skipper ever talking about kin. Though that don't mean he had none."

"If that's true," Gareth said, "we could put in to the King's Courts, and perhaps end up owning the ship, and being able to sell it. Or sail it out again on shares."

A rough-looking man, one of Luynes's original hands, snorted.

"Men like us bein' allowed to own somethin' this fine? Not in Saros, not ever. Likely there's outstanding debts and writs and we'll end up on the beach wi' nothing but our dicks in our hands.

"I'd say we should carry on with the skipper's original plan and go slavin', but I can count noses as good as anybody, and know there ain't no likelihood of that bein' allowed. Even if we could somehow get ahold of whichever Linyati the captain dealt with, and try to cut some sort of deal again."

"I don't think that'd work," Gareth said. "Plus, I'm no slaver, as I've said again and again.

"Another option is that we could take our chances," he went on, "and stay in these seas, looking for cargo we could barter the swords and muskets for to take back."

"That's an idea," somebody said.

"I've got a better one," Knoll said, and jumped down off the cannon. "We could say screw it, and run up the black flag and make ourselves rich, fast."

There were gasps a" from the less experienced men, Gareth noted a" and exclamations.

"I've no desire to see a thirteen-wrapped knot about my neck," the ship's cook said. "Or worse."

"Pirating a" Gareth said, as if considering the idea for the first time. "But maybe there's a safe way to go about it."

"Like what?" somebody said skeptically.

"What happens if we only prey on the Linyati? Take and loot their merchant ships where we find them. If we're successful enough and the cargoes are rich enough, we keep their ship, if we haven't sunk it in battle, and send it home to Saros with a prize crew."

"Or, better," the rough man said, "we anchor any such ships we take a" not that I think we'd have that great a luck a" away from Saros, mebbe in Juterbog, till the Steadfast sails back. Just in case the king or some godsdamned nobleman thinks of seizing our booty before we reach home."

"I don't understand," a sailor said. "If we just pirate against Linyati, how'll that keep us away from the King's Justice?"

"I think what we'd do is go to my uncle," Gareth said, "who's got other friends in high places. If we petition the king, and say that we've gone against known enemies of the kingdom a" "

"Not to mention offering him a cut of the loot," Labala said.

"That too," Gareth agreed. "We could stand a chance of pulling it off."