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Malta took a few hesitant steps into the darkness.

‘Reyn?’ she whispered again, her heart hammering.

Foolishness, she knew. But it had seemed so real.

She had felt his touch on her hair, she had tasted his scent on the air…

It could not be. It was only her childish heart, yearning after a lost past. Even if she could return to Bingtown, she could never be who she had been.

The ridged scar down her forehead was stigma enough, but to it would be added rumours and gossip.

Reyn himself might still want her, but his family could not permit their marriage.

She was a ruined woman. The only socially acceptable end for her in Bingtown was to live simply and out of sight.

She set her jaw and let anger be her strength.

She would never go back to that. She would churn her way forwards against a tide of misfortune, and build a new life for herself.

Dreaming of the past could only cripple her with longing.

Resolutely she set thoughts of Reyn aside.

Coldly she assessed the only tools that remained to her.

Her body and her wits were hers; she would use them.

She had crept out on the night deck to be alone, away from the two men who currently plagued her life.

Each continued his obstinate efforts to possess her body.

Captain Red fancied himself as her instructor in carnal pleasure; the Satrap saw her body as an infant might see a sugar-sop, as a physical consolation for times of duress.

The avid gallantries of the one and the pawing pleas of the other left her feeling grimy and jaded.

Each must be discouraged, but not completely denied all possibility.

Men, she had discovered, were ruled by their imaginations in that regard.

As long as Captain Red and the Satrap fancied that she might give in, they would both keep striving to impress her.

From Captain Red she was able to extract the small liberties that made life tolerable: she could walk the deck alone, dine at his table, and speak her mind almost freely.

From the Satrap, she gleaned information from his bragging tales of his glories at court.

It was information that she hoped to use to buy their freedom from Kennit.

For she was determined to ransom Cosgo as well as herself.

Somehow, during her captivity with the Satrap, he had come to be her possession.

As annoying as he was, she felt a proprietary sense towards him.

She had kept him alive and intact. If anyone was going to profit from his value as a hostage, it would be Malta Vestrit.

Satrap Cosgo would be the key to her survival in Jamaillia.

When the Satrap was released to his Jamaillian ransomers, she would go with him.

By then, she would be indispensable to him.

She summoned her courage once more. She dreaded these sessions with Cosgo. She left her hair, her last aspect of beauty, long and loose as if she were a girl still, went to his small chamber and tapped.

‘Why bother?’ he called out bitterly. ‘You will enter whether I wish your company or not.’

‘That is true, lordly one,’ she conceded as she entered.

The room was dark, save for a guttering lamp.

She turned up the wick and sat down on the foot of his bed.

The Satrap sat hunched, his knees drawn up to his chin, on the pillow.

She had known he would be awake. He slept by day, and brooded by night.

As far as she could determine, he had not left his cabin since they had come aboard.

He looked very young. And very sulky. She mustered a smile.

‘How are you this evening, Magnadon Satrap?’

‘Just as I was last night. Just as I shall be tomorrow night. Miserable. Sick. Bored. Betrayed.’ This last he uttered while staring at her accusingly.

She did not react to it. ‘Actually, you appear to be much better. But it is stuffy in this little room. There is a cool breeze outside. I thought you might wish to join me in a turn around the deck.’

The Satrap’s seasickness had finally passed. In the last two days, his appetite had increased. The plain ship’s fare she brought to him had not changed, but he had given up complaining about it. Tonight, his eyes were clear for the first time since she had known him.

‘Why should I?’

‘For variety, if nothing else,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps the Lordly One would enjoy –’

‘Stop it,’ he growled in a voice she had never before heard him use.

‘Magnadon Satrap?’

‘Stop mocking me. Lordly this and Mighty that. I am nothing of that, not any more. And you despise me. So stop pretending otherwise. It demeans us both.’

‘You sound like a man,’ she exclaimed before she could stop herself.

He gave her a baleful glance. ‘What else should I sound like?’

‘I spoke without thinking, my lord,’ she lied.

‘You do that frequently. So do I. It is one of the few things I enjoy about you,’ he retorted.

She was able to continue smiling by reminding herself that he belonged to her. He shifted about on his bed, then lowered his feet to the floor. He stood uncertainly. ‘Very well, then,’ he announced abruptly. ‘I will go out.’

She covered her surprise by stiffening her smile.

She found a cloak and put it around him.

The garment hung on his diminished body.

She opened the door and he preceded her, keeping one hand on the wall, and surprised her by taking her arm.

He walked like an invalid, with small hesitant steps, but she resisted her impulse to hurry him.

She opened the outer door for him, and the crisp winter wind blew past them. He gasped, and halted.

She thought he would go back then, but he went doggedly on.

On the open deck, he hugged his cloak tightly to himself as if it were far colder than it was.

He looked all around and up as well before stepping away from the ship’s house.

In his old man’s shuffle, he toddled towards the railing, to stare out over the wide water and up at the night sky as if it were a foreign landscape.

Malta stood beside him and said nothing.

He was puffing as if he had just run a race.

After a time, he observed aloud, ‘The world is a wide and savage place. I never fully realized that until I left Jamaillia.’

‘Magnadon Satrap, I am sure your nobles and your father felt the need to protect the heir to the Pearl Throne.’

‘There was a time,’ he began hesitantly.

A line furrowed his brow. ‘It is like recalling another life. When I was a boy, I used to ride and hawk. One year, when I was eight, I caused a stir by entering the Summer Races. I raced against other boys and young men of Jamaillia. I did not win. My father praised me, all the same. But I was devastated. You see, I had not known I might lose…’ His voice trailed away but Malta could almost see the intentness of his thought.

‘They neglected to teach me that, you see. I could have learned it, when I was younger. But they took away the things I did not succeed at, and praised my every success as if it were a wonder. All my tutors and advisors assured me I was a marvel, and I believed them. Except that I began to see the disappointment in my father’s eyes.

When I was eleven, I began to learn the pleasures of men.

Fine wines, cunningly-mixed smokes and skilled women were gifts to me from nobles and foreign dignitaries, and I sampled them all.

And, oh how I succeeded with them. The right smoke, the right wine, the right woman can make any man brilliant.

Did you know that? I didn’t. I thought it was all me.

Shining like the high jewel of all Jamaillia.

’ He turned abruptly away from the sea. ‘Take me back in. You were wrong. It is cold and wretched out here.’

‘Of course, Magnadon Satrap,’ Malta murmured. She offered him her arm and he took it, shaking with chill, and leaned on her all the way back to his chamber.

Once inside the room, he let the cloak fall to the floor. He climbed into his bed and drew his blankets closely around himself. ‘I wish Kekki were here,’ he shivered. ‘She could always warm me. When no other woman could stir me, she could.’

‘I shall leave you to rest, Magnadon Satrap,’ Malta hastily excused herself.

His voice stopped her at the door. ‘What is to become of me, Malta? Do you know?’

The plaintive question stopped her. ‘My lord, I do not know,’ she admitted humbly.

‘You know more than I. For the first time since I became Satrap, I think I understand what Companions of the Heart are supposed to do…not that many of mine did it. They are to know the details of that which I have no time or opportunity to learn. And they are to be truthful. Not flattering, not tactful. Truthful. So. Tell me. What is my situation? And what do you advise?’

‘I am not the Companion of your Heart, Satrap Cosgo.’

‘Absolutely true. And you never will be. Nonetheless, you will have to serve as one for now. Tell me. What is my situation?’

Malta took a deep breath. ‘You are to be a gift to King Kennit of the Pirate Isles. Captain Red thinks that Kennit will ransom you to the highest bidder, but even that is not assured. If Kennit does, and coin is all that you can bring him, then it will not matter to him if the buyer is your enemy or your ally. Captain Red has urged me to discover who among your nobles would offer the most for you.’

The Satrap smiled bitterly. ‘I suppose that means they already know which of my enemies will bid for me.’

‘I do not know.’ Malta thought hard. ‘I think that you should consider which of your allies might offer a fat reward for your life. When the time comes, you should write a letter asking them to ransom you.’