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‘I DON’T LIKE THIS.’ Vivacia spoke softly, but her words thrummed through him.

Wintrow was stretched belly-down on the foredeck, letting the early sun touch him.

He had discarded his blanket during the muggy night, but his shirt was wrapped around his head.

The new warmth of the sun soothed the ache in his arm, but the light from it nagged his headache into wakefulness.

He was resigned to it. He had to wake up soon anyway.

How he longed to just lie still. All the others seemed long recovered from the injuries taken at Divvytown.

He felt a weakling that a couple of blows from a club still bothered him.

He pushed away the idea that his injuries hurt more because he had killed the man who had given them. That was a silly superstition.

He rolled over onto his back. Even through the shirt and his eyelids, the light danced on his eyeballs.

Sometimes it seemed he could see things in the patterns.

He clenched his eyelids, and green flashes snaked across his vision like darting serpents.

He loosened his eyes and the colour became paler and took the shape of sunbursts.

The days of high summer were dwindling now, falling away one after another as the year inexorably carried them towards autumn.

So much to have happened in the passing of a handful of months.

When they had left Divvytown, half a dozen motley structures, constructed of wood old and new, had already risen from the ashes.

A wooden tower as tall as a ship’s mast was already manned, while one of stone took slow shape around it.

The folk there called Kennit King. It was a term of affection as much as title.

‘Ask the king,’ they would advise one another, and nod to the tall peg-legged man with the scroll of papers always tucked under his arm.

Their last sight of Divvytown had seen the Raven flag flapping boldly from the flagstaff atop the tower.

‘Here To Stay’ was embroidered beneath the bird’s outstretched wing and rapacious beak.

Vivacia was now anchored, fore and aft, in Deception Cove off Others’ Island.

The tide was swelling in around them. Kennit had said this was the only safe anchorage of the island.

When the tide was fullest, he and Wintrow would leave the ship and row in to the shore.

They were here to seek the oracle. Kennit had insisted that Wintrow walk the Treasure Beach.

Farther offshore, the silhouette of the Marietta was just visible in a drifting fog bank.

She would stand off and watch them, coming closer only if they appeared to need aid.

The peculiar weather had everyone unsettled.

To look out to sea was like peering across a distance into a different world.

The Marietta ghosted in and out of the mist; here in the cove, all was breathless warm sunlight.

The silence cupped Wintrow’s ears and made him sleepy.

‘I do not like being here,’ the ship insisted.

Wintrow sighed. ‘Neither do I. Some find them exciting, but I have always feared omens and portents. At the monastery, some of the acolytes would play with crystals and seeds, casting them out and reading what they foretold. The priests tolerated it, more or less. A few were amused by it, saying we would learn better as we grew. At least one said we’d be better off playing with knives.

My instincts led me to agree with him. All of us stand on the edge of the future; why venture off the precipice?

I believe there are true oracles, who can peer ahead and see where one is destined to tread.

But I also think that there is a danger in —’

‘Not that,’ the ship said sharply. ‘I know nothing of that. I remember this place.’ A note of desperation crept into her voice. ‘I remember this place, but I know I’ve never been here. Wintrow. Is it your memory? Have you been here before?’

Wintrow spread his hands flat on the deck, opening himself to her. He tried to be comforting. ‘I have never been here, but Kennit has. You have become close with him. Perhaps it is his memories that are mingling with yours now.’

‘Blood is memory. His blood has soaked into me and I know his memory of being here. It is the memory of a man. But when last I was in these waters, I slipped through them, swift and sleek. I was new and young. I began here, Wintrow. I began here, not once, but many times.’

She was troubled. He reached for her, and felt the swift shadows of memories so old she could not grasp them.

They flitted away from her, soft-edged and elusive as the sunlight patterns under his eyelids.

The glimpses he caught disturbed him. He knew them as well as she did.

Wings against the sun. Sliding deep-water images framed in green light.

These were the images of his deepest sleep, fever shapes too bright and hard to meet the light of day.

He tried to mask his uneasiness. ‘How could you begin many times?’ he asked her gently.

She pushed her glossy black hair back from her face and pressed her temples as if it would ease her.

‘It’s all a circle. A circle that turns.

Nothing stops, nothing is lost, and it all goes spiralling on.

Like thread on a spool, Wintrow. Around and around it goes, layering on in circles, and yet it is always the same piece of thread.

’ She shivered suddenly in the sun, hugging herself. ‘This is not a good place for us.’

‘We won’t be here long. No more than the turning of one tide. It will be —’

‘Wintrow! Time to go!’ Etta’s voice broke into his words.

He ran his hand along the wizardwood planking of the deck.

‘It will be all right,’ he assured her. He jumped swiftly to his feet and hurried off to join the others, unwinding his shirt from his head as he went.

He dragged it on and tucked it in. Despite his reservations, his heart beat faster at the prospect of landing on Others’ Island.

Kennit watched Wintrow’s face as he pushed the oar.

The traces of his pain were there to see – a pinch of white about his mouth, a sheen of sweat on his forehead – but the boy wasn’t whining.

Good. Etta sat on the bench next to Wintrow and manned another oar.

They kept pace with the other two rowers.

Kennit sat in the bow, his back to the beach.

He spared a glance for the Vivacia. He trusted her safety to her as much as the man he’d left in charge.

Jola was the new mate. He’d given the man a direct command to defer to the ship’s wisdom if they disagreed.

It was a strange order, but he’d ignored the query on the man’s face.

In time, as Jola proved himself, perhaps Kennit would trust him more.

Kennit had been sorry to let Brig go, but he had earned a ship of his own.

Kennit had given him the ship they had managed to raise from the Divvytown harbour.

An ample measure of coin went with it, and the order to obtain some lumber and hire some stonemasons for the tower.

After that, Brig was to stop a few slave-ships, and rebuild Divvytown’s population.

Most of Brig’s new crew was from Divvytown; Kennit had chosen men and women with family in Divvytown, to be sure the ship would not be tempted to abandon their mission.

He nodded to himself, pleased with how he had managed it all.

His only unanticipated factor was Sorcor’s new tie to the town.

Alyssum had been pregnant by the time they had left.

Sorcor already wanted to return as soon as they had finished at the Others’ Island.

Kennit had had to remind him sternly that as a family man he had to earn a respectable living.

He could scarcely return to Alyssum with empty pockets, could he?

Especially as Sincure Faldin had not been in town when the slavers struck.

Any day now, the man and his sons would return.

Sorcor should be ready to show her father that he could provide well for his daughter.

That had re-ignited the man’s fervour for piracy with a fierceness Kennit had not expected, either.

Truly, there was more to Sorcor than he had first suspected.

The bow of the boat grated against the black sand of the beach, snapping his mind back to the present.

He looked about the sombre little cove as the rowers jumped over the side and dragged the boat up onto the shore.

Rocky walls and evergreens fenced the small beach.

Little had changed here since his last visit.

The green scummed bones of some large animal were tangled in the rocks.

The roots of one tree on the cliff above had given way; the dark evergreen now dangled tip down to the sand.

Seaweed was tangled in its dying branches.

A narrow path climbed the cliffs via a crack in the black wall of stone.