"Done!" Megan said and shifted her weight off the other woman's chest. The Aenir clambered to her feet and headed forthe edge of the sparring circle. "No, stay," the Captain called to her, as she accepted a towel from the one-foot sitting on one of the bales of fodder stacked for shipment.

Megan motioned to him and threw the second towel at the Aenir who, startled, caught it against her chest.

"But... you beat me."

"So. I want a crew that can fight, not competition! Wipe your face, you're bleeding on yourself. Name?"

"Ilge," the woman said, dabbing at her chin and wincing.

"Go stand over there, we'll dicker price later, Ilge." Megan turned to Shkai'ra. "You want to take the next one?"

"Teik, " Piatr cut in, looking down the list in his lap. "We've got the lot." He looked up at the Kommanz, expressionless.

She returned the look blandly, then away, at Megan. "Well, that makes seventy. They all know which end of a blade to pick up, they all have two... hands, and they were all alive yesterday sunset."

She didn't look over at the snort that came from the bales on one side. Megan looked at Piatr, then at Shkai'ra, and thought, Sshaa, the damn fools, not talking to each other. Have to thrash it out between them. Her grin answered Shkai'ra.

"Now do you feel like a game of cniifta? We're both warmed up. Only four knives?"

"Ale," the Kommanz replied, looking at the ship, where the lascars were trundling the last of the cargo aboard. The Zingas Vetri was fifteen meters at the waterline and four at her maximum breadth, fifteen oars to a side and a single raked mast slightly forward of amidships. That had been lanteen-rigged, now converted to a jibsail; the fore-and-aft rig would enable her to point higher to the wind, and the two booms would let a crew of ten handle her in all weathers. Bundles of five-meter ashwood oars were going aboard, with barrels of salt pork, fish and hardbiscuit. Even the timber and stone anchor swinging beneath the bows and the ship's boat trailing from the square-transom were new.

She looked lean and fast and dangerous, a hull built for things other than running cargo. A pirate's ship, or a blockade runner's, with enough keel and carrying enough sail to make speed, yet with the oars and bottom for inshore work or a darting swiftness in a calm. Not as good as a horse, Shkai'ra thought. But for a ship, she'll do. Although the rest of the crew would be crowded, as was inevitable on an oared ship.

"All right, why don't you see to the ale you want and your cat, he'll be making Piatr's life hell enough once were under way. I've got a few things to look up if we want to leave tomorrow."

"Ia. When..."

"You fishgutted, ham-handed idiot!" Megan leaned over the railing and her voice, surprisingly strong, froze one of the dock-handlers in his tracks. "Any fool can see that barrel isn't secure on the left side! Lift that with the tackle and I'll have salt port and brine all over my deck! Do it right, or I'll complain to your guild, if I don't take the mess out of your hide!"

Shkai'ra heard Piatr mutter, "That's the old Captain all right.

Touch her ship wrong and she'd gut you," under his breath.

She gazed past his head at Megan who was swinging down to supervise the last of the stowing, when he swivelled his head around sharply, checking to see if she'd heard him. She shook a hand that someone earlier in the day had bruised, to loosen the muscle.

It was just dawn and frost glittered on the cobbles, only a few people out in the cold. All of Brahvniki had been talking of the Zak Rivercaptain rumored to be Megan Fleetsbane, Whitlock, Shadow'sdaughter, for the last week, but Mateus hadn't given them credence. Over the last year he had hoped, had looked for the Captain at every rumor, trying to repay guildprice that Habiku had said he owed. With no guild, he'd found nothing but day labor, and little enough of that. Then, at last, all he could dowas beg. He no longer believed the rumors. He sat at his corner in the lower market, idly running his fingers over his ribs, trying to warm his hands; he wasn't a good beggar. He caught a flea and cracked it between his thumbnails, wondering greyly how much longer it would take him to starve to death. What use was it all anyway, all he could do well was sail and that was denied him. Under verminous rags his hands clenched with hate.

Habiku. For his loyalty to the Captain, who had kept him on even after he had rebelled against her under Habiku's goading-he remembered that flogging-the man had paid him by beggaring him.

He didn't bother looking up as someone walked up the street toward him; didn't even bother with the rasping whine of the professional beggar. He pressed his hands into his armpits to warm them, shivering.

"Mateus," a familiar voice said. "Sitting around on street comers when there's work to be done!" His guild papers hit the ground in front of him, raising a tiny puff of frosty dust, his eyes tracked up to lock with Megan's.

"Ship sails tomorrow," she said in the flat tone he remembered. "You've got a lot to do till then." She turned and walked back towards the harbor. He gaped after her, then scrambled to clutch the papers and the precious bone plaque and follow, leaving the empty begging bowl in the dust behind him.

BRAHVNIKI.

TENTH IRON CYCLE, TENTH DAY.

The Lady Winter spider-walked out of Brahvniki harbor on a morning black with cloud. Even with her mast bare, she heeled sharply as a gust of cold air struck at her; Megan ignored that, and the first scattering of raindrops, standing beside the wheel wrapped in her dark cloak and mood. Mateus cursed under his breath and wrestled with the spoked circle, bringing the sharp head back into the waves.

Damned newfangled things, he thought absently. Mostriverboats still used tillers on the Brezhan. From below came the steady thump-thump-thump of the oarmasters's mallets on a hardwood log; the oarlocks creaked, and the thirty blades went shissst as they struck the choppy surface of the estuary in unison. Or almost; the rowers were experienced but not with each other, and it was a rough day for their first serious work.

The narrow hull pitched; the waves on the broad estuary were enough to hide the low line of the opposite shore.

"Captain-" he said.

"No," she said. "They'll learn quickly or not at all." I've delayed here long enough. Habiku. I'm coming after you at last.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Captain, when you hired me on, years ago, you said 'Don't listen to foolishness, even if I say it. Tell me then, not when disaster's struck,' and I swore to it. This is harbor weather, until the crew settles." She wheeled to face him.

"Mateus, are you rebelling on me again?" she snarled at him, saw his face change. A pause, and calm settled on her with visible effort. "Use that onshore wind." She turned away, pulling the cloak closer against the cold autumn wind, her mind again focusing north, barely hearing Mateus's aggrieved sigh, "Aye, Captain."

She caught a feint, scattered shout from up forward. Shkai'ra was standing, hands on hips, staring up at the two children in the stays.

"Quick! Move, move, keep moving. Stop and you'll row another hundred strokes!" Her shout carried well.

Four meters above the deck, Sova whimpered as the harsh fibers of the forestay bit into palms rasped raw by the loom of an oar; she and her brother had been paired on one, and even together they'd lasted a scant half-hour. Tears ran down her face, mingled with sweat to sting her bitten lip; she struggled to swing her hand forward, but the fingers wouldn't unclench.

Weights seemed to be dragging her downwards, she couldn't breathe; lights shimmered before her eyes, against the black ofthunderclouds and dark water. She fell.

Shkai'ra snapped forward from her relaxed pose against the railing and caught the slight shape, knees and arms flexing to absorb the impact. Blue eyes stared into grey in a blind shock of relief. The Kommanza held the girl out at arm's length and dropped her to the deck, bending over with her fists on her hips and shaking her head in disgust.

"How can I teach someone to be a warrior if they'd rather die than feel a little pain?" she said. "Don't you have any will to survive at all?"

Sova lay on the heaving planks, unable to tell the spinning in her head from the motion of the ship, debated being seasick and decided she was too exhausted and... no, not bruised, she was a bruise, a large one. Fighting for air, she forced herself to draw breath down to the pit of her stomach the way the barbarian had taught her, resenting the source of the knowledge but needing it.

"I'm... I'm not a warrior, I'm just a girl. I don't want to fight!"

she wheezed indignantly.

"Keep this up, and you'll be a girl all your life." Sova watched the lean grin on the older woman's face with helpless anger. "As for fighting, you're fighting now, fighting me, and losing."

She bent and examined one of the girl's hands, grunting; then probed at her shoulder muscles with a finger, ignoring winces and whispers. "Enough for now, more would damage, not build.

Go draw some salve for these, then work on the stretching exercises for half an hour. Then three hours sleep, no more. Go!"

She scurried off, hunched; her brother landed on the deck a moment later. Shkai'ra turned and chucked him under the chin; he clenched his hands, then relaxed them hastily as nails bit into burst blisters. His glare was as blue as his sister's, but filled with a steady, unconcealed resentment.

"Better," Shkai'ra said. "You're not quite so flabby." Her smile spread. "Now for reward-do it again!"The ship ran before the storm until an unseen noon. Megan stood beneath the sluicing water, feeling it gradually seeping through the tight-woven feathers of her cloak; most of the crew stripped to loincloths as they wrestled with flailing lines and taut canvas, above a hull that shuddered and bucked, driving deep and rising with a heaving roll to throw gull-banners of spray from her prow. The river had narrowed to half a chiliois, and by midmorning they were out of the cultivated lands that acknowledged Brahvniki law. Wildwood replaced pasture and orchard, crowding to the waters edge on both banks: pine on the higher, sandier ground of blufls; patches of sere brown grass and leafless bush-once the snaggletoothed bulk of a ruined castle.

Bandits or charcoal burners, she thought once as they passed a fugitive gleam of firelight seen through the trees. Or hunters, perhaps; woods elves, if you believed the stories...

Mateus shouted an order through his speaking-trumpet, and a crewwoman moved along the spar to reef sail, nearly lost her footing, and stood for an instant gripping wood and canvas.

Megan couldn't see her face from the afterdeck.

"If we kept this pace, we'd be in Staadt by the day after next,"

she said, adding to herself: With half the crew dead and most of the rest deserting. Thunder cracked, the light throwing tossing branches stark against an upcoming bluff; the river curved about it, swinging right. "What was that, Captain?" Mateus shouted, over the wind and water. "I said, strike sail and tie up in the lee of that rise ahead," she replied, throwing back her hood. "We'll wait it out."

The first mate grunted with relief and bellowed orders, reassured; that was more like the old Captain. Although he himself was anxious enough to meet Habiku again... The thin wooden cone of the trumpet cracked under his hand, and he recalled his attention to the tricky maneuver, conscious of Megan's eyes on him. She wasn't one to keep a first mate for old time's sake, unless he'd kept the skills. The ship drove north into the shelter of the ridge, slackening as the sail fluttered and boomed down; heeled broadside to the bank as his hands swung the wheel and lay, pitching, until grapnels were tossed into thewoods and strong arms pulled her under the shadow of the twenty-meter oaks.

"Good," Megan said, and astonished him with a smile. Brief, but still a smile. "Where's Shkai'ra?"

"Still below somewhere, with those Thane brats," he said. "I could almost pity them, Captain."

Megan snorted. "Talk to Piatr," she said. "I'll be below. Keep a tight watch, it's a good spot for river pirates."

She kicked the door of the cabin shut behind her and hung her cloak beside the lantern, spread out to dry on a wooden stretcher; the smell of damp wool mingled with silty water and the whale-oil flame. She rubbed her hands together, started to pace, barked her shins on a stool and forced herself to sit at the table. Her mouth was dry, but she ignored the hanging canteen.

Careful hands lifted a book from the wallrack. Not the Lannic rutter, she thought. The old one, from Illizbuah. That was still carefully packed in its buckled case of oiled leather, and wax-coated paper within. Opening it brought a sharp smell of musty linen-rag paper, and a scent of Fehinna, spices and heat.

Remembering: the musky Illizbuah wine, that first night she had met Shkai'ra in the City; there had been a thunderstorm then, too. The manacle scars had been fresher on her wrists and ankles, as well. Habiku.

No, she thought, and jerked a sheet of paper towards her, forcing her fingers to steadiness as she sharpened a quill on one razor-edged thumbnail.

Should get one of those reservoir pens from Arko, she made herself muse. The hard mental discipline of translation from the complexities of the archaic Fehinnan into Zak would be calming.

Besides, she did not even hate Habiku that much. Hate was warm, and she was cold, colder than a star... Lightning flashed through the rain-blurred glass of the aft windows; thunder cracked after it: she jumped. The door opened in time to prevent her from throwing the inkwell at the wall and Shkai'ra ducked through, dripping.Putting on a lighter face, Megan looked up from where she had very gently set the inkwell down, saying, "Done chasing the Thane brats around the deck?"

"No, I was checking the lookouts," Shkai'ra said, stripping and toweling herself down with a rough length of cotton cloth.

"Francosz and Sova are asleep. I took them off the oar and sat with them awhile."

"Doing what?"

"Oh, telling stories."

Megan lifted an eyebrow. Change, she thought. Not two years ago she would have thought a whip a better teacher.

"Stories!" She smiled. "I can better see you feeding them to river gar rather than tucking them in with bedtime stories... Are they still complaining about the pallets outside our door?

"Not likely," Shkai'ra said. "My Warmaster used to tell me stories, too..." She cast a glance over her own shoulder, at the faded whipscars. "Don't know why I'm doing this, really; it started as a joke, but now..." She shrugged. " 'Sides, I'm not giving them the full treatment; leaving out most of the beatings, rape and general abuse. Beatings only when they need it, and as for the rape," she shrugged, "I never went in for it. Well, sometimes, but not children. Anyway, they're already mean enough, it's the tough they need to work on. A challenge."

She slid into the bunk and began a series of isometric exercises, tensing the muscles against each other on their foundation of strong bones. "This boat-travelling, you could get soft, if you don't have to haul on ropes." She paused, looking out through the diamond-paned windows, to where a vent let out a torrent of water from the scuppers. "Makes me wonder, a little, where that get of mine is, this night." She counted mentally, moving her lips. "He'd be ten, now. Second grade instruction; hmmmm, this time of year, home to his kinfast for the harvest.

Hard work, but a good time." She sighed and stretched, then halted.

"What the fuck-" she said, throwing back the covers.Something had touched her foot, something bony, hairy and wet.

The coverlet flew aside and revealed a rat: huge, mangey and very dead, lying in a broad stain of its own blood.

Megan leaned back, tipping her head to one side, snorted with supressed laughter. "Ten-Knife. He likes us." She caught a smug thought from the cat, somewhere in the room, "small hairynastytastecrunch."

"Glitch take it, the thing's crawling with fleas!" Shkai'ra shouted, and grabbed it by the tail. She opened the window and blinked as the cold rain sleeted onto her face and breasts, then flicked the animal out of the rear window into the blowing chill.

Crossing the cabin in a single long stride she jerked the door open.

"Clean sheets and a straw tick!" she snapped at the Thane children. She whirled, grabbed: the spitting black form of Ten-Knife appeared at the end of one arm, held by the scruff of the neck, legs splayed and claws out. A dangerous rumbling merrreoww was coming through his open jaws, and deep grievance had laid his ears back. "And take this abandoned beast and feed him! Feed him so full he loses all interest in rats; give him cream, give him fish, and keep him out of here" The small, solid weight of the tomcat sailed the length of the corridor with a flick of her wrist, landing with a soft thud at the base of the ladder to the poopdeck.

Shkai'ra slammed the door shut on Francosz's blinking bewilderment and Sova's nervous, "Here, kitty, kitty," and stamped back to strip the bed, mumbling under her breath.

Megan looked steadfastly over Shkai'ra's shoulder out at the darkness of the storm, trying to keep from laughing at the look on the Kommanza's face as she joined in removing the soiled bedding. Yowls came faintly through the door: an indignant, "He bit me!" in Sova's voice, and Francos^s: "Throw a blanket, you silly ouch." Still, the subdued knock came quickly; Megan moved to take the pile of fresh linen and ticking.

"Children," she sighed, once the door was closed. "Mine- would be seven seasons now-and until I find him, I will neverknow what he does or did as a child. Whether he's alive, well or badly treated..." She sighed. "I have nightmares about it. He's a young boy in Arko somewhere."

Shkai'ra grunted and lifted one corner of the mattress to tuck the brown linen sheet more securely. "Always planned to have a few more myself, did I ever have a home and the time," she said.

"Seven, hmm. What were you doing at seven?"

Megan looked a bit startled. "Seven. I haven't thought about it much. I was running with a River Quarter pack, learning how to steal jewelled buttons and buckles to sell, or fruit out of the stalls." Mama didn't like me doing it, but we needed the food sometimes. "Learning how to throw and catch wooden knives.

Learning to swim in the river in high summer. Sliding on the lake in winter with bone blades. Dreaming and talking about what kind of power we'd have when we got old enough with the rest of the pack. Listening to my Papa tell stories. And you?"

Shkai'ra shrugged. "Riding herd with the home farm flocks on a pony. Learning to scout. Sword and bow-drill; picking out tent pegs with a little lance. Swinging the exercise bars with a Warmaster behind me with a switch. Hunting rabbits and duck with blunt arrows; night-survival exercises in winter. Getting whipped a lot; I talked back. Running away to the river on summer days, or shield-sledding in snow season." Seeing Megan's look, she explained, "You stand on a shield, and someone tows you behind a horse with a lariat." A grin. "If you fall, they drag you. Sneaking into the Hall to listen to the bards."

And finding places to hide when a warrior was drunk or ahrappan or just looking for a child to abuse.

"It makes me feel old, having a son that old." Megan said, peering through the rain streaming down the window. "Look there, on the south bank-see the blue flicker? A night-siren, just one or two or we'd hear them over the wind."

Shkai'ra looked over her shoulder, saw the faint blue spark arcing across to ground and river. "Your friend Ivahn mentioned them. I thought they were a tale of some sort."

"They are, so to speak. The folk down here that only see one ortwo say they are the souls of lost children barred from Halya, until someone released their name to the wind. Further north, where they grow thicker, they say that they mark where war was fought. They keen in the wind when they spread their petals. No one goes near them, really; a big one can kill a man. The blue spark jumps through him to the ground and he dies. During the day, though, they fold up and are usually safe."

She paused. "They'd make a good system of defense if you could plant them, but most people fear them too much to ever try. Our people..." She closed her eyes a moment thinking. "Our people tell a story of a man who loved a woman he could not marry, in the days when the Armahi ruled us and tried to decree and control who we married. They met despite the law and were discovered. When they took them to try and separate them, shame them before the people, they broke free and joined hands.

From them a blue spark sprang and killed those who would have taken them; power, the manrauq rose and the glow spread, seeking out only Armahi who held the land, grinding their taxes out of our blood and our sweat.

"It is said that they drove the Armahi away, never to return, but when the manrauq faded they were changed. Their feet fused into the ground, spread hands always spreading power.

Black petals in the night and, unable to become human again, they cry for joy that they are always together, for loss of humankind, warning to those who would take us or our land again, one of these. Or all." Her voice had taken on the rhythmic cadence of the market storyteller, her face taking on the blank look of someone seeing what she told, then shook back to awareness. "We rather like them. My Papa told that story many, many times."

The tension had faded from the muscles of the Zak's neck and shoulders. Shkai'ra smiled inwardly and turned on the coverlet, her back to the flare-lit darkness of the river, grey froth under iron sky. She unfolded a chess set from the ledge above and began placing the carved ivory pieces.

"Spot you a knight?" she said.

The cat hid under the ladder stairs, glowering, his eyes yellowspots in the gloom, focused on the children in an unwavering stare. A rumble warned them as they pushed the dishes of milk and river gar closer with a stick; then a silence, Lapping and crunching noises.

"Stupid cat bit me," Sova said again, rubbing the bandage Piatr had put on her hand after washing it with boiled water and the stinging purple medicine the Brahvnikians made from boiled seaweed. He sort of grinned when I yelped. He's mean too.

"Bit you?" Francosz said sullenly. "He climbed right up me and danced on my head with his claws out when I tried to put the blanket on him."

Sova pouted, her lower lip jutting. It was chilly in the corridor; she returned to the tick and pulled the quilt about her.

It was sound but old, sewn from rag-linen and wool and stuffed with raw cotton. Servants' beds, she thought resentfully. A bag full of straw to lie on, cheap, machine-loomed wool blankets from Staadt, and the musty-smelling quilt. Her muscles ached, and her hands hurt and her head nodded lower despite herself.

"She's mean," she mumbled.