"The fire. Megan, I think..." She craned her head. "I think it's..."

Megan tore her hand free and started sliding through the crowd, using every trick she had ever learned to get past taller folk, started to use her claws to help her. Koru, my ship. My ship . The pain was rising, singing a high, eerie, elf-whine between her ears. It was snowing again, felling white-grey from bright grey sky, sweeping in fitful gusts.

Behind her, she heard Shyll yell, "Inu, go to the ship. Push!

Push boy!" The Aenir scrambled to get out of his way, scattering like the bow-wave curling away from a ship's ram. Angry shouts followed their passage.

Megan's eyes tracked over where the Zingas Vetri had sat, neat and well-trimmed, this morning. In the eye of memory and expectation, it was still there; ropes coiled, jollyboat bobbing under the stern, hull blue-black and shining with the Brahvnikian paint that had not had time to weather. The cage gleaming with the obsessive care of Piatr and Tze, oiled blue steel and gleaming brass. That hulk isn't my ship ...

The Vetri sat under a pall of smoke, smoke mixing with the snow and sullying it; she could smell it, the dusty smell of old aged wood, mixed with burning tar and the foul smells of things not meant to burn. The long hull was down by the bow, the whole ship moving with a sluggish drift, held by the stern anchor-cable alone. The rigging was down, smoking ends trailing in the slushy water, and the mast was a column of white flame. The boom with its furled sail had swung free and broken the collar linking it to the mast; it hung over the port forequarter, tight-packed canvas smoldering.

A fire-barge was alongside, with three burly Aeniri on each bar of the pivot-pump, two others directing the stream that arched out from the pipe. The fire around the scuppers and ondeck was out, curls of moisture half-concealing places where the ribs and strakes showed through planks that seemed to have been chewed to lacework tatters. Water lapped through the holes as they watched, and the ship lurched and settled. The fire-barge was concentrating on the quarterdeck, where yellow flame was wreathing the entrance door and the place behind the wheel where the sail locker had been. Steam billowed and flung bits of wood and cordage high, with a hissing as if the guardian dragons had come alive.

One of the jolly boats drifted near, empty. A handful of crew were slinging buckets of water hand to hand, trying to douse the boom. Bits of ash and soot floated on the grey water. That burning hull was my ship. What happened to the watch? What happened to the wards? That burning hulk is my ship.

Near the wreck, fighting was going on. Around another merchantman: round-hulled, Zak by its lines, with a F'talezonian House-pennant, Slaf Hikarme. The Aenir'sford harbor-watch was out in force, two flat-bottomed barges, oars and shields along their flanks. Flights of arrows hissed through the snow from the Aenir craft, black, horizontal sleet through the whirling drift of snow. Then they closed, grapnels swung, two-handed axes and curved swords flashing along the gunwales.

Megan stood frozen for a moment, then wheeled and trotted for where the second jollyboat had been moored, her face yellowish, orange light flickering in her eyes, overstrain or no, the burning ship mirrored the burning in her mind, like an echo from her childhood-the fire roaring up out of the house, riot noise in the street; the groan as the mortar in the walls gave way and fell in. No, that was childhood. Fire has eaten more of my life, my ship. My Lady. My Lady. She clenched her hands into fists and pressed them to the sides of her head, then forced a series of deep panting breaths.

Behind her, a hysterical wail: "Francosz! Francosz!" The sound of a palm slapping a face. Shkai'ra moving up beside her, Rilla. Shyll grabbing a sailor of hers by the shoulders, shaking him, barking orders to run for the others at the Great Bitch and fetch the Haian healer, litter-bearers.The Zingas Vetri's bosun had gathered more crew and they were just pulling out.

"Hoy! Agniya!" The petty-officer stopped; the sound was not loud, but she could no more have ignored it than acid on her skin.

"Captain." Two strokes brought them back to the dock, bumping the rope fenders. Megan stepped down into the boat, Shkai'ra followed, Sova, Rilla. The gunwales rocked close to the harbor.

"No, Inu!" Shyll's voice had the sharp, clear tone he used for emergency orders to his giant companion. "Swim!" The boat rocked again as the greathound leaped ten feet out from the dock; it was a yard down, and his mass made a considerable wave. The teRyadn followed in a clean dive, caught up in two strokes, took a grip on the dog's thick ruff.

"Bend to it, you tavern scuts," the bosun snapped. "Catch any crabs and it's the ropes end-now."

The inner pair of rowers braced their oars against the dock and pushed; the jollyboat swung away, curls of cold water lapping over the gunwales to twist around their feet and seep, numbing. Megan felt the boat move with aching slowness, through a world carved of blur-edged crystal, hard and distant.

The Zingas Vetri lurched again, and the stern came up a double handspan, bending down to port where the stern anchor-cable had come up taut, like a water-spurting bar down into the harbor.

Shipping more water in the compartment under the foc'sle, she thought: it was as if she watched another ship in travail, long ago, far away in a story. Much more and she'll either break her back, tear the anchor-cable loose and go down by the head or the weight of water inside will peel the hull-strakes away from the ribs. She's long, won't take much more strain.

Crew were at the pumps, scummy water pouring out of the bilge, thick with soot. They coughed as they worked in the waves of smoke and heat pouring from the stern and mast; she couldsee the strain on their faces as the jollyboat neared, gasping mouths and sweat.

If the holes are too big, she won't last to be towed the hundred yards or so to the shipyard. She looks like my heart after Sarngeld was finished with me.

The Slaf Hikarme's ship had hacked herself free of the Aenir, trying to limp out of the harbor. The horn belled again from the tower and the chain-boom held by the Dragons rose slowly out of the water to block her way, streaming water.

The jollyboat pulled alongside the Vetri, hands and boathooks reached out. Shkai'ra half-stood and linked her hands; Megan accepted without a word, springing upward with the boost of the Kommanza's strong arms. She landed, almost slipping in the scum of soot and snow-slush and water; flakes landed on her cheeks, melting with the heat of her skin and the flames at the stern to form tracks like tears of ice. The others scrambled up the side and followed as she walked up the canted deck. Behind her, Agniya spoke with Rilla in low tones, then began to bark orders at the crew, sending them to look for unburned sailcloth to warp over the holes in the bow.

Megan walked up the slanted deck; as if up a hill whose summit receeded before her. There were Aenir harborfolk at the stern, hacking at rigging and throwing it overboard to hiss and settle. The mast roared at her back, and the heat of it was like a blade scraping over naked skin, turning the leather of her jacket collar hot enough to pain the back of her neck.

Wind gusted in, drawn by the flames, setting the slanting boards to vibrating beneath her feet. She found dangling shreds of rope, ignoring the bite of coals, to pull her forward. Two Aenir hesitated at the door below the quarterdeck, with broadaxe and prybar raised. A row of bodies was laid out, hastily dragged, leaving smears on the deck that dried and bubbled in the furnace blast. Some were burned, others marked by knife and dart.

Megan walked past them, counting, naming, blinking as the flame dried her eyeballs. Her crew:Mateus: First Mate. Healer. Your life was ships and the smooth feel of the tiller in your hands; could make a ship dance like a spark over a fire. You made such a poor beggar, my friend.

The look of pained surprise on his face and no mark on him that she could see. It must have killed him when they broke the wards.

Vodolac: Able crew. He could swim like a gar, and drink like one too. Never a sour word out of him. You were laughing with your net-mate just this morning, joking about settling and raising children.

Mara: Able crew. Seer. Card-reader. Quick hand with knots and knives. Married to Rowing Boryis. He's going to come and see this. I'm going to have to tell him you've died.

Nikola: Able crew. A wild dancer. She was nineteen; swearing to grow her hair down to her feet before she was thirty-five. Her neck was almost cut through.

Renar: Third Mate. Singer. She had just pledged troth to Yuri. Not married for so long because she said she was fussy.

Three more bodies, two she didn't know, the third a spy for the Woyvodaana. One of Avritha's Eyes and Hands, she thought with icy clarity. That's his friend at court: the DragonLady.

Smoothtongue's charm. The others are River Quarter gangblades, but this one was working for the Nest, I remember him.

"We're missing two," she said tightly. Ten-Knife must be around somewhere, that cat knows how to take care of himself.

She felt Shkai'ra's hand on her shoulder.

The Aenir with the prybar looked back at her from a black, streaked soot-mask, spoke. His voice was drowned as the hose-stream from a second pump-barge struck the burning mast. A huge soft thump of steam, and then a cannon-crack as the tough white pine pole split, crashing, hissing as it fell, and the upper half plunged into the harbor. Some distant part of her cursed the bargecrew for idiots; that could have fallen on them, or back along to the stern and guaranteed the loss of the ship.The prybar-wielder spoke again: "Teik Captain, the sterncastle windows're open, if we bring the door down the flames- look, you can see light from under the sill, there must be fire at the base of the stairs."

"I have people in there. Open the door!" The two harbor workers looked at each other, shrugged, pulled the water-soaked clothes back up over their faces and attacked the wood. The door had jammed into the frame as the ship twisted in the water, groaning. It opened in a shower of white oak splinters, and there was a belch of smoke and hot, dead air as the door opened. The fire at the base of the stair-ladder had been small, for lack of draft; now it sent a tongue licking up at them, and the axeman stumbled back with a yell.

A hand thrust a wetted cloth at her. She snatched it, held it over her face and crowded recklessly close.

"It's small," she said, retreating and snatching at a fresh cloth; the first was dry. "Quick, sand-there, that barrel there, fishgutted fools-"

Shyll and Shkai'ra came up at a stumbling run with the hundredweight burden of the chest-high cask between them; sand was always kept under the quarterdeck railing, but the Aenir had not known it was there to use. The two ran the open end of the barrel into the deck-lip at the head of the stairs and stood to it as the damp sand cascaded down, heads craned back from the heat, gasping breaths sucking the wet clothes across the shape of their lips. Megan and Rilla and Sova gathered swift armfuls from a pile of soaked burlap sacks and pitched them through as Kommanza and teRyadn shook out the barrel and threw it bouncing and rattling down the deck toward the seven-foot stump of the mast.

Megan tucked one of the sacks about her head like a shawl, tied the ends into her belt and dove through head-first, landing crouched and scuttling forward along the companion-way. The smoke was thinning in the upper section, and cold air was coming in in pulsing blasts from the sterncastle windows, but she could feel a glow like a smith's forge from overhead. The stubborn oak planks were not burning, not yet, but the heatfrom the sail locker overhead was enough to warp and buckle, the mahogany treenails screaming in protest as they were ripped from the framing. Embers fell through, and shreds of burning canvas.

Thumps behind her as the others, Rilla, Shkai'ra, landed. And another groan hit their ears; a human one. Yvar Monkeyfist lay where he had crawled, halfway down the corridor from the ladder.

Sova swarmed down the way, knee-and-handing through the coals and glass shards to kneel beside the man; his face was distorted, as if something heavy had struck it on the side and the bones had flowed away. Blood glistened black in the fire and kraumak light, rough-surfaced with clotting. On his face, and from the hip joint where the broken stub of a dart jutted, quivering as he arched to keep it from grating on the deck, braced on knee and cheek. More blood from the cracks on his feet where they had lain in the fire before he came conscious enough to crawl. One eye swollen closed; the other swivelled to see her, but she couldn't tell if there was anything in it, anything but pain.

"Yvar, lie still." Megan beside the wounded man, sliding a balk of rope beneath him as Shkai'ra and a dripping Shyll helped; the heavy wool of the doglord's clothing was already drying and shrinking. Yvar's mouth moved, but only bubbles came out of it, and strings of red and gluey white.

"Lie still. We have a litter coming, and a Haian," Megan said, her voice trembling as much as his bloodsmeared hand, already hoarse with the need to shout over the noise and the rawness of smoke. A glance back; the Aenir had turned the hose on the base of the ladder long enough to quench it. She braced herself on the wall and put her hand on the wound in his side that was seeping his shirt red.

"I've got him," someone said. Megan didn't notice who it was.

Crouching, she scuttled down the remainder of the companionway, the light of the kraumak shining from the floor in the midst of shards of broken glass.The cabin door was open, swinging back and forth on its hinges, banging against the warped frame in the fierce draught from the windows; the glass was broken out of them, and the wind howled through the hanging brass, blowing snow into her face, even as the blackened patch above grew and turned coal-red in the center. It was cooler in here, a little, but the heat grew from second to second. There was a body by the door, face clawed, Francosz's shortsword in it, jammed up between the ribs and stuck fast; it still grasped a short, forged-steel mace in one hand. Shkai'ra touched the hilt of the boy's sword; the body rocked, but the blade stayed rigid.

"I told him not to aim for the heart," she whispered.

The snow cleared for an instant, and in the watery daylight Megan could see Francosz sitting braced against the bed, Ten-Knife on his lap. She thought he's all right, then took in the dark red splattered around the both of them, the drag-marks where Franc had pulled himself up.

The boy was still alive. He raised his head as they came in, tear-trails on his bloody cheeks. One hand cuddled the cat, the other pressed to his side, his fist clenched. "Khyd-... hird, Cap-t-ain. I-tried. Ten-" He gulped and whimpered. "-Knife tried. They-cut... him in... h-h-al-f-I- hurt." The cat was already rigid, bloody fur standing in spikes around his claws and over his face, eyes open, staring.

Shkai'ra moved past her to kneel beside Francosz. The fist was clenched over a deep cut in his right side, toward the back, just below the short ribs. Blood all down the side, clotted in sheets on his tunic, but the flaps of the wound were still gaping, and more dribbled. She bent to look. There were bubbles along the edges. She glanced up again, and his eyes were half-closed; there were snowflakes on his lashes and in the tousled brown hair. The room shook again, a vibration like a wagon at speed over rough road, as the hose washed across the deck above.

Wood splintered, and water dripped through onto her back, hot enough to scald. Shkai'ra leaned over the boy, shielding him.

She touched him on the cheek, with infinite gentleness. The eyes flickered wide open, awareness upwelling slowly, like amuddied current near shore. Shkai'ra waited until she saw he knew her.

"You did well, Francosz," she said, slowly and distinctly. "I am proud." His mouth worked, in an attempt at a smile. She continued, "Your blood is mine." Turning to Sova, "Quickly. But don't try to touch him!"

Only the boys eyes moved as his sister knelt and reached out a hand black with soot, blistered; a hand that halted, hesitated. He sighed, or it might have been, "Sovee." She shuffled closer, and her knee brushed unnoticed against his leg; Francosz went rigid, mewled, slumped. Shkai'ra's hands blurred to catch him, lay him down on the uninjured side and pack the wound with sheeting.

"He's going to be all right, isn't he?" Sova clutched at Shkai'ra; the Kommanza lifted a blank face and shook her head, a single slow motion, completed the bandaging and stood.

"Tell me he's going to be all right, Khyd-hird. Please."

"No. Sova, your brother is going to die; only a god could save him. If he is lucky, he will die asleep." The Thane girl sagged against the wall with a small sound, cramming one fist into her mouth. Shkai'ra bent, still expressionless, and picked up the cat to lay it on the bed.

"Goodbye, Zn'Aiki," she said. "Warrior rebirth for you."

Reaching down, she smeared some of Francosz's blood onto her palm, mixed it with a little of the cat's, then drew a line with it down from brow to nose, repeated the process with Sova. The girl threw herself at the tall woman, who hugged her with brief ferocity. The heat from above grew.

"You must be strong for his spirit," she said. "Do you understand, girl?" A long second, and Sova nodded.

The Kommanza knelt again, sat back on her heels, closed her eyes and brought her hands up above her head, palms up, took a deep breath. Then she opened her mouth and keened, a long, wailing cry of naked grief and anger; Megan stood immobile, then threw back her head, joined her grief to Shkai'ra's, thedouble note of anguish rasping cold teeth down the others'

spines. The Aenir outside started and shivered at the chilling ring of it. It lasted a full breath, and then Shkai'ra rose.

"Ten lives to make hellwind for you, Francosz," she said. "Five for the cat, who was a better warrior than many with hands. It will not be enough."

Dead. Francosz is going to die. My crew, dead. Yvar might die. Megan looked at the washbasin lying overturned on the floor, thinking, someone should right that. And we should get out. I've obviously seen enough death that it isn't affecting me much or I'd be going crazy right now.

"Rilla," she said. "Get the litter here. Get the Haian here." Her cousin went out into the corridor in a crouching run. My voice is shaking like my brain. She reached out and petted Ten-Knife's head, scratching where he liked it, along his jaw, along his fixed snarl, pulled her hand away as if it were on fire rather than cold when she realized what she was doing. She backed up a step or two, put an arm around Sova. "Get on deck. They might not be able to stop the fire."

AENIR'SFORD.

EVENING, ELEVENTH IRON CYCLE, SEVENTH DAY.

"Well, that's the lot of them," the Aenir magistrate said.

Megan stared dully at the row of prisoners standing on the deck of the watch-barge. Five of them, none unwounded. Zak faces, triangular and dark. River Quarter faces, thin and prematurely aged by hunger and overwork, bitter, feral eyes that trusted nothing and hoped for nothing. As she might have been, if the fates were otherwise.

The barge rocked beneath her feet, and the short, early winter day was dying, leeching the sky to the grey of charcoal. Behind her the wounded Zingas Vetri was being towed toward the pulling-up slip, her bows almost out of the water, the melted tar leaving bluish oil in her wake. The Aenir made a sound in his throat; he was a big man, in a leather breastplate strapped withbrass, leaning gauntleted hands on the haft of a long axe. There were scars on the armor, and nicks and blood on the edge of the weapon; his second stood behind him, with a headsman's sword over her shoulder.

"The others were just sailors, acting under orders. They'll get fifteen years in the quarries for breaking the city's peace. These are the ones that attacked your ship; there are a dozen witnesses, no need for formalities. We'll have their heads off right here, or whatever you want, as the injured party."

Megan stood without moving or speaking for a time that made him frown and shift the grip on his axe.

One of the prisoners spoke first. "Give us to the birds then, waterrat." He spat, lifting the glob of phlegm toward her. "Dark Lord's luck, that you weren't sick in your bunk like we were told; I'd have cut you then, bitch, worsen I cut your little Thanish whoreboy."

There was a low chinnng, the sound of a blade leaving the bone-rimmed mouth of a scabbard. Sova stepped out, face to face with the Zak. He was a young man, with pockmarks and the wispy beginnings of a beard and one eye purpling from a blow.

He had time enough to open his mouth; it might have been for a plea, or defiance, or a question. Sova moved, without taking her eyes from his; her mouth quivered, but the hand moved as it had been taught, a straight upward thrust under the breastbone, angling to the left. The knife was double-edged, nine inches of F'talezonian water-steel with a rondel guard. The jarring impact of the guard on his breastbone hurt her wrist.

The black eyes were only inches from hers; close enough to see the pupils flare open. Disbelief, for an instant. Knowledge of death. His mouth made no sound, only an exhalation of breath that sprayed droplets into hers, saliva and blood. He slumped against her, pushing the knifehilt back painfully against her ribs.

Mouth moving again, but again he made no sound; it was the Thane girl who screamed as his head lolled forward on her shoulder and the whole bony length of his body rested against her. She pushed, pushed again, and the dead man's head rolled toward her, the surprise still in his eyes, and the snowflakeslanding on the unblinking whites of them, half-melting.

"You killed my brother!" she wailed, as the corpse dropped away from her, drawing her forward one step, two, as muscle-tension locked on the blade. It pulled free with a sucking sound, and the pit of her stomach heaved uncontrolled, shooting yellow-green bile and pieces of mangled roast beef onto the dark-clad form at her feet. Sova dropped forward, body arching with the spasms, coughing and retching thin acid between clenched teeth and through her nose, the screaming climbing to an intolerable shrillness as she stabbed, and stabbed and stabbed.

"You killed Franc! Francosz, Francoszzzzzz"- Then she was sobbing, not child's tears but the deep sobs of a human old enough to know loss is absolute. "Give me back my brother. I didn't have enough of him, give him back!"

Shkai'ra stepped to her side, lifting her up as she dropped the knife, lifting her and wrapping her in a cloak, holding her as she wept.

Megan spoke at last, soft, a whisper. "You don't even deserve the Goddess's mercy and you'll never get it." She raised her eyes to the Aenir. "Burn them," she said. "I don't care if they're alive or dead when they burn. Bury the ashes in stone."

Chapter Seventeen.

F'TALEZON,.

EVENING.

ELEVENTH IRON CYCLE, NINTH DAY.

The wind howled outside, shaking the windows with its fist of snow, the first blizzard of the winter pounding on the closed shutters of the city. They would have piled rocks on their roofs down in the River Quarter; in the morning the children would slide down steep cobbled streets on cloaks and bits of board. Silence, shadows, creaking as the huge, soft pressure of the air leaned against the House, probing, seeking, looking forweakness...

Habiku set down his cup and excused himself from his mother's table. In the office he looked out at the wall the storm had thrown against the glass. The attack in Aenir'sford had been partly successful, though Whitlock wasn't dead, yet. He entertained a fleeting notion of somehow putting her in the cage she had destined for him, then shook it off as a dangerous fancy.

I have to be sure of her soon. Avritha had suggested strongly that he hire one of the really powerful witches in the city, never thinking that perhaps she should help with the ferocious expense that entailed. The manrauq.

Smoke and lies. Still, it might do something. The Wizard was out of the city, therefore out of the question, leaving only two almost as powerful, Eyeless Sinka or the Blue Mage; one of whom might be persuaded to take part in a House war and kill for a price.

AENIR'SFORD.

ELEVENTH IRON CYCLE, NINTH DAY.

"Captain," Sova said.

Megan looked down at her. The ship that took the dead of Aenir'sford across to the east bank of the river was small, with an open well and a dozen oars a side; her party stood next to the tiller. The bodies were below, with her thoughts.

"Yes, Sovee?" Her brother was there; last night he had simply stopped breathing. Yvar was still alive and the Haian was optimistic that he would stay that way.

"What... what do you think happens to people when they die?"

The Zak glanced off over the backs of the rowers, to the waste of snow and dead reeds on the eastern shore.It was morning-dark and dank cold, just light enough to see the ragged clouds above and the wind blowing spume off the waves. Porridge sat uneasily in her stomach, and her eyes felt sandy.

"What were you taught, Sova?"