He was floating, trapped beneath the curve of the ship's hull, bumping gently against the wood. No cladding, those witless Lowmian ship-builders...

The Chenderawasi kris. It was swimming, right in front of him. It had severed the rope, stopped the keel-raking.

Now what? It's too late. I can't think. Air all gone.

The kris slipped itself between his hands to slash the bonds apart. He could swim now, and felt a frustrated grief. Flashes like tiny bursts of lightning obscured his sight. His ears were filled with a rushing sound as if the ocean was weeping against his eardrums. Sorrel, what of Sorrel. He must not die...

She has a witchery. She's strong and brave.

He'd run out of air. He clamped his now free hand over his nose, refusing to take water into his lungs, but had nothing left to drive his body through the water. His last coherent sensation was the comforting grip on his arm, a hand closing around his bicep. He wasn't alone.

Va?

The lights exploded in his head, his lungs ached and ached, pain was everywhere, and fear and terror and horror and...

Peace.

His next thoughtwas it immediate?had to do with the gripping pain in his chest as he dragged in a much-needed breath. He coughed, racking coughs. He heard a voice saying in his ear in Pashali, "Can you possibly be a little quieter?"

He opened his eyes. Gasped and heaved, sucking in precious air. Spat out saltwater. Ardhi was floating next to the ship's planking, holding on to him. When he looked up, he saw they were on the surface, sheltered by the bowsprit. It was not much of a hiding place; if anybody looked over the bulwark at the prow, they would be seen. A temporary safety, at best.

"Thanks." One more breath, and then he was ready to have his question answered, the one that had been hammering at him ever since he'd been taken to the brig. "Where are they? What happened to them?"

Ardhi was silent.

"Tell me!"

"I don't know. When I came off duty, I went to my hammock. I didn't know they'd sent you to the brig. When I woke up, one of the tars told me you were in big trouble. He also said Fels and Voster had taken Sorrel and Piper off in the dinghy. He said they were being sent ashore."

"But you don't believe it."

Ardhi shook his head. "Not likely, is it? You know what Fels and Voster are like. Worst scum in the bilge. Lustgrader knows what they are. The only good thing was that Banstel was with them, and we know he's besotted with Piper. Saker, we have to get out of here. Now."

"Have you got the kris?"

"Of course. It swam back to me. The question iswhat do we do? We can hardly wait here until nightfall, hoping no one will spot us. That's not going to happen. Yet they'll see us if we swim away."

He was silent, thinking. There would be bumboats from the shore, supplies arriving. They were sheltering directly under the ship's heads. He and Ardhi would indeed be seen sooner or later, probably sooner. Va damn, the ship's crew would already be looking out for his body.

"No suggestions?" Ardhi asked neutrally.

"Not really. Apart from saying it might be wiser for you to sneak back on board before you're missed. Did anyone see you dive?"

"I'm not sure."

"Look, I can start to swim away under the water, bob up every now and then to take a breath, hoping no one sees me. If someone does start a ruckus, it would at least give you an opportunity to get back on the ship."

He pointed to a rope, the end of which was floating in the water only an arm's length from them. Ardhi rolled his eyes. They both knew where it began: in the heads. A piece of rope was dropped through each of the two latrine holes in the decking above them, one on either side of the bowsprit. When needed, the rope was hauled up and the wet fluffed-out tip was used to wipe a sailor's arse.

Saker looked at him, and his compassion stirred. "If you leave the ship now, you'll never get back on."

Three plumes, still on board hidden in Ardhi's baggage. And the fourth not far awaybut only as long as the lascar stayed with Spice Winds. If the fleet sailed without him, he might lose the plumes for ever.

Ardhi bit his lip, thinking.

"You know that's true. Look, I can swim to shore from here. Well, I can try anyway. I can use the birds to conceal me every time I come up for breath. Better still, I can go several hundred paces and then let them see me. That'll give you the chance you need to climb back unseen."

"If they catch sight of you, they'll send a boat after you. They can sail or row faster than you can swim. You mustn't be seen. Saker, it's a matter of life or death for you. You know that."

He did, too.

At that moment, the decision was taken out of their hands. Above their heads, someone yelled, "He's here! At the bow!"

Another voice replied a moment later. "The lascar is with him. I told you I saw someone else go into the water. Tell the captain!"

Neither he nor Ardhi hesitated. As one, they dived and began swimming underwater. Ardhi's instinct was to swim directly for the shore, but Saker grabbed his hand and pointed to the stern. Fortunately, Ardhi followed his lead; if they'd swum directly outwards they would have been easily visible in the clear water. Instead, they swam underwater alongside the ship where they couldn't be seen from the overhanging deck. Neither of them surfaced until they were at the stern. There, it was easy enough to remain out of sight, next to the rudder.

"Well, that answered your question. They know I helped you," Ardhi whispered. Above, they could hear the sailors calling to one another, organising themselves to scan the sides of the vessel, arranging to man the pinnace, which was already in the water, and to launch the long-boat.

"We swim together. I'll bring the birds down onto the sea. Cormorants, gulls, pelicans. Every time we come up for breath, we come up in the middle of the floating flock. All right?"

Ardhi nodded.

But it wasn't all right, he knew that. Everything the lascar had worked for, every sacrifice he had made, his years of workthey were all for nothing if he had to leave the plumes in the hands of Lowmians.

And not so good for us Ardronese, either, he thought, his gut twisting. There's too much power in those fobbing plumes. We'll all suffer for this. "Ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

They dived away from the ship, side by side. While he swam, he called the birds again, gentling them down onto the water in a raft of floating bodies. When he and Ardhi surfaced in the middle of the flock of mixed seabirds, he was assailed with guilt. Because of him, so many birds had died that day. Yet they clustered around him, reaching out with their beaks, tapping him gently in affection, and his guilt doubled.

"Let's move on," he said, and the ache inside him was a physical pain. Sorrel and Piper were gone; Va knew if they were even still alive. He knew Voster and Fels; everyone on board did. They were the ship's rats. The bullies who had no moral compass. And Lustgrader, damn him to a choiceless hell, must have specifically chosen them for the job.

Only one answer made sense. The captain wanted Piper and Sorrel dead.

He stopped that thought before he could dwell on it. You have to hope. You always have to hope, at least until every vestige is snatched away from you. Sorrel. And Piper. No, he couldn't think that. He wouldn't think that. Not yet...

Sorrel's a fighter... and she's clever.

For a second time, then a third and a fourth, they submerged and swam on. The birds flew ahead and alighted on the water once more where and when he asked. From within the safety of the flock they looked back at the ship to see that both the Spice Winds' longboat and its pinnace had been launched.

"They haven't seen us y-" he began, but before the rest of the sentence was out of his mouth, sailors lined along the rail started shouting, pointing them out to the two boats.

"I think they realised that looking among the birds would be a good idea," said Ardhi. "We might do better without them from now on."

"Better ideawe confuse the issue with lots of birds." The next time they surfaced, there were separate floating rafts of birds in all directions.

Let them try and work out just where we've gone, he thought as he looked around in satisfaction. When he glanced back at the ship again, no one was pointing at them, but his complacency vanished much faster than it had arisen. Spice Winds had opened up some of the gun ports and was running out the guns.

"Pox on them!" he muttered, then asked with more optimism, "Can they hit us with cannonballs? Isn't that a bit like hurling acorns at an ant floating in middle of a very large lake?"

"It would be, yes, if they were about to use the cannon. But those are the carronade ports. They intend to pepper us with grapeshot, or maybe canister shot. Effective at short range. They spray musket balls in all directions."

"Can they hit us from there?"

"Oh, yes. Let's get out of here." Ardhi didn't wait; he dived and was gone.

Saker lingered a moment. No more deaths. He sent a vague sense of unease to the birds and then snapped his connection to them, to all of them. And dived once more.

When he broke the surface again it was to hear the explosion of gunpowder. Water twenty paces away dimpled as it was peppered with grapeshot. The birds had already disappeared.

After that, it became a frantic race, one he didn't think they could win. It was a matter of which happened first: being hit by the shot or found by Spice Winds' boats.

21.

Shipboard Reunion

What the blistering pox was that?" Lord Juster, seated in the prow of Golden Petrel's sloop, twisted around in his seat. A puff of smoke was still drifting in the air around the gunports of Spice Winds. "They are firing at us?"

"Not at us, methinks, cap'n," the able seaman at the tiller replied. "That were grapeshot, that were. Couldn't hope to hit us with grapeshot, not from this distance."

Juster considered that. "No, you're right. But I'd like to know just what they are firing at. Or whom." He sighed in a mixture of hope and worry. "Look for someone in the water."

Rampion would have escaped, of course. The impudent witan had the sneakiness of a wharf rat and the luck of an alley cat on the prowl. "Head towards wherever that grapeshot is landing. Mister Cranald, what's your assessment? Will these scurvy Lowmians risk hitting us, do you think?"

"Doubt it, cap'n," the mate replied as another cannonade was fired. "Karradar councilmen take a dim view of outside conflicts being brought into the Bay. Killing some of their own crew wouldn't shiver the Karradar Council none, but hitting another ship's boat? Deliberately?" He shook his head. "If the Lowmians want to come back again, they'll behave themselves."

"My thought exactly." Still, he was glad he'd left Finch in charge on board and brought Grig Cranald with him, rather than the other way around. If anything happened to him, Finch could take charge of Golden Petrel. Grig was a fine sailor, but he was only thirty. Finch was the one with a lifetime of experience of handling men.

He stood up, holding on to the mast, as several more volleys of grapeshot scattered like hail into the waves, but after that, nothing. He laughed. "Ah, we're safe. Their own boats have just joined in the search and they won't risk hitting them."

The Spice Winds' pinnace and longboat had separated, obviously looking for someone in the water. The birds clustering around earlier had all dispersed.

"A Karradar gold guinea," he said, "to the first person to see someone in the water!"

The able seaman in the prow spotted the swimmer before the Lowmians did, but when the man pointed him out, Juster was disappointed. It wasn't Saker.

That's a Pashali, surely. Or maybe the lascar Mistress Marten mentioned. No, not Marten. Redpoll? Redwing. Confound it, I want to get to the bottom of that story, too.

When the man saw the Golden Petrel's sloop approaching, he swam towards them using an unusual swimming stroke that involved keeping his face down and bringing his arms up out of the water one at a time to drive himself forward with powerful strokes, occasionally breathing by turning his head to the side. Juster had never seen anything like it before. Weird, but effective.

And fast. Fascinating. I must try that sometime.

Unfortunately, the Lowmian pinnace was faster. A strong breeze had filled the sails and the boat was scudding after the swimmer like a shark after a meal.

"Give those Lowmian lowlifes something to think about," he told his crew. "Steal their wind. Show them how Ardronese sail!" Golden Petrel was a disciplined ship, where drills were a part of every day, on the voyage and in port, and it paid off in a situation like this one. He nodded to Cranald. "You take the tiller."

He sat back to watch Grig's skills unfold with seamless precision. The race between the pinnace and the sloop culminated in a clever manoeuvre that robbed the pinnace's sail of the wind at the crucial moment, followed by another that stopped the more manageable sloop dead in the water alongside the swimming man just long enough for the two crewmen to heave him in. The pinnace, trying to make up for the earlier mistake, now shot past them too fast.

The master of the Lowmian boat yelled as they raced by. "That there tar is a deserting scut! A no-good grog-blossom of a lascar! I demand you return him."

I know that fellow. They'd met in Karradar years before. Juster stood again. "Overly fond of the demon drink, is he, Tolbun? In that case, I imagine you'd be glad to get rid of him."

"You know the law, Dornbeck! You tell him he's ours until he is released from his contract."

He turned to Ardhi. "Did you sign a contract, my good man?"

"No. They think I not read or write. They never bother ask me sign paper." His lips were twitching as if he was trying not to laugh.

And you can read and write? Now that's interesting...

He turned back to the Lowmians with a bland expression on his face, shouting across to the other boat as they drew apart, "No contract. Sounds like he was a passenger, not a crewman. Tell your captain that Lord Juster Dornbeck says if the contract is produced, signed and sealed with the Ustgrind company seal, then he'll get his man returned, forthwith!"

There was no reply from the other boat as it sailed away.

"Picaroons," Juster muttered and grinned at the lascar. "Now tell me, where is that dammed witan?"

The man grinned back, pulled his dagger out of its sheath and flung it into the sea.

"Best follow that," he said, "if Factor Reed Heron is man you mean."

The only time Sorrel had heard the sound of cannon fire was to celebrate the birth of the Lowmian heir, but she knew exactly what she was hearing when Spice Winds fired its carronade. The sound carried over the sea like thunder and she leapt out of the tin bath, careless of dripping water, to kneel on the bed and peer out of the windows of Juster's cabin. All she could see was the shore.

She glanced at Piper. The baby had been bathed and wrapped in some of the fine linens in the trunk delivered to the cabin, and was now asleep on Dornbeck's bed. She wasn't stirring. Grabbing up a towel, Sorrel dried herself and began to dress, flinging on clothing as quickly as she could. The trunk had contained a selection of women's attire, all of it of a quality she'd never dreamed of wearing. Even the most modest was more akin to something worn at the Ardronese court by a noblewoman's wife, not by a humble handmaiden, while the immodesty and flamboyance of several other gowns made her eyes widen and wonder just what type of woman would ever clad herself in something so daring.

Donning one of the more modest gowns, she glanced in the mirror and halted, astonished at the image before her. Her hair was wildly disordered, out of keeping with the rest of her appearance, but it was the soft curve of her breasts that caught her eye. Dear Va, she couldn't walk out on the deck of a privateer with a bodice that displayed more than it hid! Nor could she cover her shoulders with a wrap, not in this warmth which was already causing perspiration to sheen her skin.

She dug into her own bundle of clothing and brought out an item she'd carried with her everywhere: a grey kerchief with an oakleaf-patterned trimming of lace. Tucking the ends into the cleft between her breasts, she arranged it to make up for the deficiencies of the gown.

Pickle it, that would have to do. Ignoring the paints and powders she'd also found in the trunk, she found a hairbrush and dragged it through her sorely neglected tresses full of salt-encrusted tangles. Surveying the result, she sighed. Vex you, Lord Juster, I think I'm not in the least like your usual onboard female company!

In truth, the whole cabin was a witness to Dornbeck's extravagant lifestyle. Silk sheets and a feather mattress on the bed, paintings on the wall, lush carpets on the floor, a chamber pot of finest porcelain... She had never thought to see anything like this on board a ship.

Leaving Piper asleep, with pillows arranged to make sure she couldn't roll off the bed, Sorrel propped open the cabin door and hurried up on deck.

The rumbling of gunfire in the distance had ceased.