He froze, then dropped the plumes and whirled around, almost falling out of his chair. He looked straight through her. Standing, he hesitated and took a pace in her direction. She side-stepped nimbly, backing up against the bed out of his way and adapting her glamour as she moved. He opened the door and looked out. The ship's boy was still asleep across the threshold. He closed the door, frowning. For a moment he stood there, looking at the desk.

She was terrified. The cabin was too small. He could walk straight into her before she could dodge him.

Returning to his desk, he sat down again. She flattened herself against the wall beside the door, so that if he opened it again, she would be behind it. "Put them away," she whispered. "Put them back in the bambu."

This time he didn't even look around. "No. They are mine!"

"They belong to your liege lord. Put them away."

"They are so beautiful..."

"They will bewitch you. Put them away."

He sat still, with his back to her, trembling. "Whowho are you?"

"A servant of Va, who commands you."

"I can't see you."

She adjusted her glamour. "Then look."

He turned. This time he saw a woman, ethereal, fascinating, demurely clad in Lowmian clothing but, or so she hoped, so beautiful her beauty would appear otherworldly.

He stared, jaw dropping. She changed the glamour again, fading the image into the wall behind her, vanishing before his eyes.

"Put the plumes away," she whispered. "Leave them inside the bambu on your desk and go to sleep. All will be well."

He was weeping now and trembling like a leaf.

Va, I hate this.

Still he didn't move.

Are my ten minutes up? Move, you clay-brained man!

Any more of this and she'd be the one trembling. She clasped the kris in her hand, ready to stab him if he didn't move to obey her.

"Yes," he murmured. "Yes, lady." He turned away and picked up the larger of the two sticks of bambu.

Va, he was so slow!

And then success was ripped away from her.

The ship jolted under her feet. The door juddered, the floor tilted. She staggered. Lost her hold on her glamour. A flash of light dazzled her from outside the windows, left her blinking, disoriented, followed by an assault on her ears that made her head ring with noise.

When her senses returned, she was leaning against the wall and the captain was half sprawled across the desk. Outside someone was screaming. Glass littered the bunk from broken windows. The captain levered himself upright, blinking. She reached within herself to reassemble her glamour, but she was shaking so hard she couldn't seem to grasp her power.

The captain stared at her in bewilderment. The door flew open, and the ship's boy was standing there, his mouth opening and closing, his eyes wide with terror. She did the only thing she could think of: she changed her glamour into the appearance of a ball of fire.

The lad shrieked.

The captain plunged past her, grasping his sword as he went, the plumes forgotten. He and the lad disappeared down the companionway.

She snatched up the four feathers from the desk and dived out of the cabin. Halfway down the passage, she realised that she no longer held the kris. She plunged back again, saw it on the floor and scooped it up. She flew out onto the deck, into a Va-less hell of heat and flames and noise.

Right in front of her, Saker and the captain were fighting, which struck her as ridiculous when there was a gaping crater in the middle of the deck. Flames spiralled upwards from the hole in scorching gouts, licking at the shrouds and furled sails. The main mast was slanted at an odd angle.

Ardhi wasincomprehensiblyhanging upside down over her head, one foot trapped in a tangle of rigging and ropes.

Saker screamed something at her. She didn't hear the words, but she didn't need to; she knew what he wanted to tell her. The ship would blow up once the flames reached the magazine where all the gunpowder was stored.

Somewhere, in the midst of her terror and panic, a rational, cool part sorted through the scene and made decisions. Saker must look after himself. Ardhi couldn't. She needed to get the plumes safely to the prau. It would be on the port side; that had been the plan.

She looked away from Saker to meet Ardhi's gaze. He too shouted something she couldn't hear and once again that rational calm part told her he needed the kris. She had no idea how to throw a knife, but she also knew it didn't matter, not with the kris. She tossed it to him and, without even watching to see if he caught it, she ran for the port bulwarks.

The prau was there, but not against the hull. It had moved away by several lengths. Now it was Juster shouting at her, Juster's words that were lost in the hideous roar of flames, vanished into the crackling of burning timber, the sizzling of fire doused in water and the screaming of men. She climbed up on to the bulwarks, knowing she must jump.

She didn't know how to swim.

The water was littered with debris. Perhaps, if she grabbed something floating... Her terror overwhelmed her. She clung to the shrouds with one hand, gripped the plumes with the other, and searched for the courage to leap into the sea.

In the end, it was the flames that scared her more. She held the plumes high above her head and jumped.

For Ardhi, everything had gone according to plan at first. They'd opened the gunport, loaded the canvas on to the platform lift, run up the steps to the lower gun deck and wound the platform up from the orlop deck using the capstan. The alarm had not been raised, and they'd had time to carry the canvas to the open gunport and lower it into the prau.

That was when Hawthorn, one of Golden Petrel's seamen, lit the fuses on the shrapnel balls with the lighted smoulder he'd brought on board in his tinder box. He and Ardhi then left the others to wriggle out of the gun ports and down the rope ladder. The plan was for Hawthorn to return to the orlop and deposit the balls where they'd do enough damage to cripple Sentinel, yet give the crew time to abandon ship before the magazine blew. At the same time, Ardhi was to head on up to the main deck to inform Saker it was time to go.

He emerged on to the open deck through the aft companionway to see Saker crossing the waist from the forecastle. The next thing he knew he was upside down in a tangle of ropes, swinging above the deck. His head was packed with noise, which was odd because he couldn't hear anything else. When his vision cleared and he was no longer seeing red blossoms exploding into yellow, he decided he was still alive. It took him a few moments longer to conclude that the grenade balls must have exploded too soon, deep under his feet, and the force of the blast had shot him up into the shrouds.

He looked around, blessing the fact that his foot was entangled. Otherwise he would have fallen back down into the fire, or dropped headfirst on to what was left of the deck. His immediate problem now was to leave the ship before the flames below reached him and cooked him like a hen on a spit. Reaching up, he clasped some of the ropes above his head and felt for the dagger he'd been wearing as a replacement for the kris.

It was missing.

Holding on tight, he attempted to free himself by wriggling his foot. Unfortunately, a heavy tangle of rope and lines was dragging the loop around his ankle as tight as a hangman's noose. Splinter it. He was going to die up here.

He smiled grimly. Maybe that was better than dying on the blade of the Chenderawasi kris, which would have been his fate soon anyway.

All would be well as long as Sorrel had found the plumes.

Twisting around, he surveyed the deck. One good thing: with the fire blazing out of control, there was sufficient light to see everything. Saker had evidently survived the explosion too, because he was now intent on skewering Captain Russmon with his sword as the two men battled on what was left of the deck. By the look of it, he had run his blade through one of Sentinel's officers first, if the bleeding body on the deck was any indication.

Just then, Sorrel shot out into the open, the regalia in one hand, his kris in the other. She looked up at him. He shouted to her to throw him the kris. He was doubtful she could have heard his words over the roar of the fire, but she tossed the dagger to him anyway. He grinned at her, but she was already leaping towards the bulwarks, still clutching the Raja's regalia.

All four plumes. May the blessings of the Chenderawasi follow you, Sorrel, all the days of your life.

The dagger flew true, turning through the air until the hilt slapped into his waiting palm. He used it to saw through the rope that trapped him, hauled himself up higher, away from the leaping flames. Swarming up one of the braces attached to the foremast, he reached the fore topmast yard. Once there, he knew he was safe. He ran out along the yard and dived off the end.

It never occurred to him to wonder if Sorrel could swim. In Chenderawasi, everyone could.

This is madness, Saker thought. I don't want to kill this man. Captain Russmon ought to have been ordering the abandonment of the ship, not fighting a duel.

At least Sorrel was safe. He'd seen her run past him to the bulwarks. Juster would look after her.

His next thought wasn't so sanguine: would Juster stay close to Sentinel when there was burning debris raining down? Of course he wouldn't! If the prau wasn't there, Sorrel was jumping into the sea. And Sorrel couldn't swim.

The thought terrified him. When a piece of burning wood fell near his feet, he grabbed it up and thrust it between Russmon's legs. The man jumped backwards. Instead of taking advantage of that mistake to run the captain through, Saker turned and fled. Sword in his hand, he vaulted the bulwarks.

On his drop into the water, he glimpsed a hand raised above the surface holding tight to four billows of golden feathers. He plunged down feet first through a sea turned red by the glow of fire, and Sorrel was there, staring back at him, her eyes wide with panic, one arm ineffectually thrashing the water into bubbles, while her other hand grasped the shafts of all four plumes in a tight fist. He grabbed her around the waist with one arm and bore her upwards. His other hand still held tight to his sword.

When he surfaced, he shoved the weapon back into his sea-filled scabbard.

She spluttered, coughed up water, gasped some more and then asked, "Did the feathers get wet?"

He stroked her face, pushing her hair away. "I doubt it matters. Birds don't mind the rain."

She coughed some more, stared at him, and then her lips twitched and she gave a weepy laugh. Another explosion rocked the ship and a wave washed over them. She yelped and he began stroking for the prau, towing her after him.

"You have to learn how to swim," he yelled.

She ducked as a piece of burning debris just missed them. "Another time perhaps?"

A moment later, a rope snaked across the water from the prau. Just as they were grabbing for it, Ardhi appeared as well, churning through the waves, and the three of them were hauled on board together.

Dripping, singed and exhausted, Saker had to clamber over the pile of canvas that was taking up most of the area near the stern in order to reach a place to sit. He glanced around those onboard. Hawthorn was missing.

"What the fuck happened?" he asked one of the other seamen as Juster gave the order to set the fobbing sails and get the fobbing hell out of there.

The man shrugged. "Don't rightly know. Hawthorn must've dropped his smoulder into a butt of gunpowder. Or maybe the grenade ball was faulty, or the fuse burned too blistering fast. Reckon he was blown to specks and shreds, poor bastard. Rest of us made it out of the gunport." He grinned. "Vetch here was the last. He was blowed out like a cannonball, straight into the boat. Ended arse up in the cap'n's lap!"

Saker looked over at Sorrel. "Are you all right? Were you burned?"

"Scorched a bit, but nothing much." She looked back at the burning ship. "There'll be plenty who aren't so lucky."

"Not as bad as it looks," Juster said cheerfully. "The explosion was amidships; no one has quarters there. Look, there are boats all over now, picking men up."

It was true. Boats from the Lowmian fleet were coming to the rescue. As the wind caught the sails overhead and the prau picked up speed, what was left of the gunpowder in Sentinel blasted the galleon into the sky in a massive ball of yellow light. Even as they gaped at the red billows of flame and fiery ash in the aftermath, a crack of sound assaulted their eardrums and a blast of wind sent the prau skimming as if before a storm.

Saker bowed his head to recite the prayer for the dead. "May they who have died this day find their rest in the quiet of Va's creation, at peace with the world, as part of the land and sea, oak and wave, to live again within every creature that walks this way in days to come."

Everyone gave the traditional response. "So be it, verily."

Saker looked over Sorrel's head to where Juster sat.

"Ten Karradar golds," Juster said, meeting his gaze without flinching, "to every crewman here, and double to Hawthorn's widow. You did a fine job, all of you."

Innocent men died today, Saker thought. And I played a part in that. It wasn't the first time, and he guessed it wouldn't be the last, Va help him.

34.

Dyer's Dilemma

When you've damned yourself to eternal darkness after death, what can the torture of one more man possibly mean?

The answer was nothing. Not for him, but still he felt the weight of guilt. Of horror at his own existence and of what he was doing.

I suppose, though, right now torture means the whole world to you, Master Fox.

Herelt Deremer regarded the prisoner in front of him with as much objectivity as he could muster. Mostly, though, there was hatred, and perhaps just a tinge of compassion. Theddor Fox was young, after all, and he'd never had much of a chance to be anything except what his father chose, until one night a month previously when he'd gone to sleep in an inn and woken up the next day chained in a Deremer dungeon. No one had touched him since he'd been chained there in a standing position with his back to the rough stones of a wall, mostly in the pitch dark, in his own filth.

He must have been in shock, although no one had actually heard how he felt about it. His jailers had all worn wax plugs in their ears when they'd attended to his basic needs. Herelt needed information and he suspected the only way he was going to get it from a sorcerer while staying safe himself was to starve him into a state where he had no strength to call upon to coerce anyone.

The time had now come to take the risk. He nodded to the two jailers he'd brought into the cell with him. With their ears stoppered, they were there to rescue him if the need arose.

"How do you feel, Theddor?" he asked.

The man raised his head to look at him. It was an effort. His eyes were dulled, his cheeks sunken. His hair was falling out and his flesh had melted away from his bones.

Well, the next moment will tell.

"Food," Theddor mumbled. His gums were bleeding and his tongue looked sore.

Herelt assessed the impact of the words. A slight tug and a vague feeling of uneasiness, a mild compassion for his hunger, but no real desire to bring this man a meal. He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. I think we have you now, Master Fox.

"You can have as much as you like to eat soon. But first, let me tell you what I know."

"Release me."

"You have no power over me. Your sorcery is not going to work in here. No one is going to feed you until you've answered some questions." He made himself comfortable by leaning against the wall and folding his arms. "My name is Lord Herelt Deremer. I suspect you know who I am. I know that your father is the sorcerer Valerian Fox."

He could almost feel sorry for Theddor, who was still blinking in the lamplight, frowning in a confused way, so weak he was finding it hard to keep his head raised.

I wonder if the lack of food has affected his ability to think clearly?

When Theddor finally forced out some words from between his loosened teeth, he said, "I need food."

"I know you do. In fact, you are starving to death. You are too weak to coerce us, so don't try. We need information and we won't give you anything to eat until we have it. Your choice. Do you understand?"