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In the silence that followed, a long snore sounded from the Satrap’s bunk.

Malta jerked as if awakening, then gave a small sour laugh.

‘It sounds as if I may now speak freely, without interruptions, corrections and accusations of treachery.’ To Althea’s surprise, Malta swiped at sudden tears, smearing the paint from her face.

She drew a shuddering breath. Then she tugged off her gloves, revealing hands scalded scarlet.

She snatched her headwrap off and threw it down.

A shocking ridge of bright red scar began high on her brow and stood up well into her hairline.

‘Get the staring part over with,’ she ordered them in a harsh hopeless voice.

‘And then I will speak…’ Her voice broke suddenly.

‘There is so much. What happened to me is the least of it. Bingtown is destroyed; when last I saw it, fires smouldered and fighting was widespread.’ Althea watched her niece as she spoke.

Malta spared them nothing. Her tale was in its details, but she spoke swiftly, the words tumbling from her lips, her voice soft.

Althea felt the tears run down her cheeks at news of Davad Restart’s death; the strength of her reaction surprised her, but what followed left her numbed and reeling.

The rumours of unrest in Bingtown were suddenly a personal disaster.

She was devastated when she realized Malta had no idea if her grandmother or Selden still lived.

Malta spoke of Bingtown and Trehaug with detachment, an old woman telling quaint stories of her vanished youth.

Emotionlessly, she told her brother of her arranged marriage to Reyn Khuprus, of fleeing to his family in Trehaug when Bingtown fell, of the curiosity that had drawn her into the buried city and the quake that had nearly claimed her life.

Once, Malta would have made an extravagance of such a tale, but now she simply recounted it.

When Malta spoke of Reyn, Althea suspected the young Rain Wilder had won her niece’s heart.

Personally, she felt Malta was still too young to make such decisions.

Yet as Malta spoke on, her voice hushed and hurrying through her days with the Satrap, Althea realized the girl faced the world as a woman.

Her experiences aboard the galley left Althea shuddering.

Malta laughed, a terrible sound, at how her disfigurement had preserved her from worse treatment.

By the time Malta finished, Althea loathed the Satrap, yet understood the value Malta placed on him.

She doubted he would keep his promises to her, but it impressed Althea that even in her time of danger, Malta had thought of her home and family and done all she could for them.

Truly, the girl had grown up. Althea recalled ashamedly that she had once felt that some hardship would improve Malta.

Undoubtedly she had been improved, but the cost had been high.

The skin on her hands looked as coarse as a chicken’s foot.

The cicatrix on her head was a monstrous thing, shocking in both colour and size.

But beyond the physical scarring, she sensed a dulling of her high spirits.

The girl-child’s elaborate dreams of a romantic future had been replaced with a woman’s determination to survive tomorrow. It felt like a loss to Althea.

‘At least you are with us now,’ Althea offered her when Malta finished. She had wanted to say, ‘Safe with us,’ but Malta was no longer a little girl to be cozened with falsehoods.

‘I wonder for how long,’ Malta replied miserably.

‘For where he goes, I must follow, until I am sure he is safely restored to power, and that he will keep his word to me. Otherwise, all this has been for nothing. Yet, if I leave you here, will I ever see you again? Althea, at least, must find a way to get off this ship and away from Kennit.’

Althea shook her head with a sad smile. ‘I cannot leave my ship with him, Malta,’ she said quietly. ‘No matter what.’

Malta turned aside from her. Her chin trembled for an instant, but then she spoke harshly.

‘The ship. Always the ship, distorting our family, demanding every sacrifice. Have you ever imagined how different our lives would have been if great-great-grandmother had never bargained our lives away for this thing?’

‘No.’ Althea’s voice went cold. She could not help it. ‘Despite all, I do not begrudge her anything.’

‘She has made a slave of you,’ Malta observed bitterly. ‘Blind to all else.’

‘Oh, no. Never that.’ Althea tried to find words to express it.

‘In her lies my true freedom.’ But did it?

Those words had once been true, but Vivacia had changed.

She and the ship no longer completed one another.

A tiny traitor portion of her mind recalled her stolen day with Brashen in Divvytown.

If he had lived, would she have been able to say such words?

Did she cling to Vivacia because she was all that was left to her?

The whole ship suddenly reverberated with the trumpeting of serpents. ‘They come,’ Malta whispered.

‘It would be safest for all of you if you stayed here,’ Wintrow announced. ‘I’ll find out what is going on.’

Kennit stood on the foredeck, relief coursing through his body.

The serpents were coming. He had spoken boldly to the envoy from the fleet, wondering all the while if the serpents would aid him.

When he granted the Jamaillians time to confer, he was secretly stealing time for Vivacia to persuade the serpents.

When first Vivacia had called them, the water about the ship had boiled with the serpents, but had dispersed suddenly, and for a time, he feared that they had forsaken him.

The Jamaillian ship rejoined its fleet and boats from the other vessels converged on it.

Time dragged for Kennit. There, across the water, men discussed strategy to crush him while he waited docilely on his foredeck in the biting wind.

After a time, the Jamaillian boats returned to their ships.

He had not dared ask Vivacia what was happening.

His crew had come to the ready and now waited.

The anticipation aboard the ship was palpable.

Kennit knew every pirate waited to see the serpents suddenly flash towards the fleet.

At a distance, he would see a sudden turmoil of serpents and hear their muted calls.

But none came near. Soon he would have to make a decision: stand and confront the Jamaillian fleet, or flee.

If he fled, the fleet would certainly give chase.

Even if they didn’t believe he held the Satrap, the odds against him were too great for the Jamaillians to resist. His piracy and his destruction of the slave trade would rankle with all of them.

Then, with a suddenness that roused whoops of delight from his crew, a forest of serpent heads on supple necks rose suddenly around the Vivacia. They spoke to the ship, and she answered in their tongue. After a time, she glanced at him. He drew close to her to hear her soft words to him.

‘They are divided,’ Vivacia warned him quietly.

‘Some say they are too weary. They will save their strength for themselves. Others say, this last time, they will aid you. But if we do not take them north tomorrow, all will leave without us. If I fail to keep my word –’ She paused before stiffly resuming, ‘Some talk of killing me before they leave. Dismembering me and devouring the wizardwood parts of me for my memories might be helpful to them.’

It had never occurred to him that the serpents might turn on Vivacia. If they did, he could not save her. He would have to flee on the Marietta , and hope the serpents did not pursue them.

‘We’ll take them north tomorrow,’ he confirmed to her.

She murmured something that might have been agreement.

Kennit considered only briefly. Tomorrow, this weapon might no longer be his to control.

He would wield it one last time, in a way that would become the stuff of legend.

He would break Jamaillia’s sea power while he had the strength to do so.

‘Attack them,’ he commanded flatly. ‘Show no mercy until I say otherwise.’

He sensed a moment of indecision from Vivacia. Then she lifted her arms and sang in that unearthly voice to the gathered serpents. The maned heads turned towards the fleet and stared. As silence fell, the serpents surged forwards, living arrows flying towards their targets.

The serpents flashed and glittered as they streamed towards the oncoming ships. Only about a third of them went. Those that remained were impressive, he told himself, flanking his ship like an honour guard. He became aware of Wintrow behind him.

‘I did not send as many this time,’ Kennit hastily told him. ‘No sense in risking sinking the ships, as they did with Paragon.’

‘And safer for the serpents as well,’ Wintrow observed. ‘They will be more spread out, and harder to hit.’

This had not occurred to him. Kennit watched the phalanx of serpents.

Perhaps no other human eye could have discerned that they did not move as swiftly as they once had, nor swim as powerfully.

Even their colours were less jewel-like.

Truly, the serpents were failing. Those who surrounded his ship still confirmed his fears.

Once-gleaming eyes and scales had dulled.

Rags of skin hung from a maroon serpent’s neck as if it had tried to slough its skin but failed.

No matter, he told himself. No matter. If they would get him through this final battle, he would have no further need of them.

He had pirated well before the serpents allied with him. He could do so again.