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Kennit’s men, never trusting souls, sprang to meet them.

In an instant, the main deck of the Vivacia was a mêlée of struggling men and flashing blades.

Everywhere Malta turned, there was chaos.

Kennit stood, sword drawn, barking orders about cutting lines and pushing off, while Etta guarded his back with both a sword and a shorter blade.

Even Wintrow, her gentle brother, had drawn a knife and stood ready to repel any who tried to come up onto the foredeck.

Jek and Althea, empty-handed, had moved to back him.

All this, in the merest blinking of an eye.

Horror transfixed the Satrap. He shrank back in his chair, even drawing his feet up from the deck.

Malta stood helplessly beside him. ‘Protect me,’ he cried shrilly.

‘Protect me, they’ve come to kill me, I know they have.

’ He seized her wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.

He sprang to his feet, stumbling on the too-long cloak, and pulled her in front of him.

‘Guard me, guard me!’ he pleaded. He dragged her away from the chair to the point of the bow and huddled there, clutching her wrist.

Malta struggled desperately to break free. She needed to see what was happening on the main deck. ‘Let me go!’ she cried but he was too frightened to heed her. More men were pouring over from the other vessel.

There was a great crash as Jek snatched up the Satrap’s chair and smashed it on the deck.

She seized one leg of it, and tossed another carved leg to Althea.

She was grinning wildly; the woman was crazy.

‘Malta!’ she shouted, and Malta ducked as the woman flung a heavy rung from the chair at her.

‘Use this!’ Then she sprang back to the ladder, clubbing savagely at the men who had nearly gained the foredeck.

Althea joined her. Wintrow had taken up a position near Kennit, who was shouting orders to his men.

Malta threw her head back and stared wildly around her.

The other ships of the Jamaillian fleet were drawing near.

She caught a glimpse of the Marietta charging down on them.

She could not see the Motley , but she doubted it had fled.

She glimpsed another ship, coming swiftly, not flying Jamaillian colours.

Had another pirate ship chanced upon the fray? Then she saw the figurehead move.

‘A liveship comes! A Bingtown ship comes to our aid.’ Malta shouted the news, but no one paid any heed.

The Satrap had hold of her shoulder. Now he shook her frantically. ‘Get me below, take me to safety. You must protect me.’

‘Let me go!’ she cried desperately. ‘I can’t protect you if you cling to me like this.’ She strained against his grip and managed to reach the rung Jek had thrown. She hefted it in her hand, but didn’t feel any safer.

‘We have no idea what we’re charging into!’ Amber shouted up to him.

‘We know Althea’s on that ship!’ Brashen bellowed angrily as he clambered down the mast. ‘We can’t hold back here and do nothing while the Jamaillians take the Vivacia.

I don’t trust them any more than I do Kennit.

She may be killed, or captured. I’ve no desire to see Althea with a slave tattoo across her cheek.

So let’s try to turn this to our advantage.

’ He sprang to the deck. ‘Semoy! Break out the weapons!’

Semoy came on the run. ‘Right away, Captain. But you ought to tell the men who we’re fighting.’

Brashen grinned wild and reckless. ‘Anyone that gets between us and Althea!’

A surprising bellow burst suddenly from Paragon. ‘But save Kennit for me!’

The battle, confined to the main deck of the Vivacia, suddenly shifted.

The sheer pressure of men pouring over from the Jamaillian ship was turning the tide.

In horror, Malta saw Jek pulled down. Althea dove into the mêlée after her.

As she vanished, a wave of Jamaillian warriors came up over the lip of the deck.

She had one glimpse of Wintrow, Etta and Kennit, all in a tight group, fighting for their lives.

‘Here he is!’ roared a Jamaillian sailor as he leapt up to her.

She swung her rung at him. It hit his sword arm, but he simply shifted his arm so the blow was glancing.

With his free hand, he snatched the rung out of her grip as easily as taking a toy from a child.

He roared with laughter and pushed her aside.

His push and the Satrap clinging to her sent her sprawling.

The man grabbed the Satrap by the back of his collar, shook him free of his grip on Malta.

When she snatched at the Satrap, the fighter held him out of her reach and drew his sword back to plunge it into Malta, then stared in sudden disbelief at a sword tip standing out from his chest. Behind him, a tall man roared his fury.

He jerked both sword and victim back and away from Malta.

He shoved the dead man into his comrades, pulling the sword out as he did so.

‘Get down! Be small!’ Reyn shouted at her furiously, and then he turned his back to her. His copper eyes flashed through his tattered veil. She had a glimpse of his left sleeve, sodden with blood. Then three men flung themselves at him and he went down before her very eyes.

‘Reyn! No!’ she cried and tried to spring forwards, but the Satrap was a clinging, shrieking weight behind her.

He latched onto her shoulders like a limpet, gibbering and weeping.

A man seized her by the hair and flung her aside.

With a wild laugh, he sprang on the Satrap as if he were a child seizing a cornered puppy. ‘I have him!’ he roared. ‘I have him!’

Malta jerked her head aside to avoid a kick.

It glanced off her skull, dazing her for an instant.

It was not deliberate. Now that they had the Satrap, no one was interested in her any more.

She saw him picked up like a sack of meal and flung to a man’s shoulder.

He bore him away, roaring his triumph. The battle parted for him and receded after him.

The boarders had what they had come for and now they were leaving.

She had one glimpse of the Satrap’s white face, his mouth and eyes wide with terror.

She could not see Reyn anywhere. She scrabbled to her knees and stared wildly about.

The Satrap was toted across a deck where dead men sprawled amongst the rolling, groaning wounded.

The pirates who still fought were in defensive positions, battling for their own lives, unable to spring to his rescue.

The Satrap was an annoying, useless person, but she had cared for him like a child. Day and night, she had been at his side. It smote her heart to see him being borne off to his death. ‘Malta!’ he cried, and his one free hand strained towards her.

‘The Satrap!’ she shouted uselessly. ‘They have taken him! Save him, save him!’ No one could answer her cry for help.

As his captors bore him off, the other Jamaillian warriors fell back around him, grinning and shouting with triumph.

As the focus of the battle shifted, Malta caught a glimpse of Althea.

She had taken a blade from someone. She made an abortive attempt to break free of the knot of fighters that engaged her, but Jek dragged her back.

‘He’s not worth your life!’ the tall woman shouted at her. Her blonde tail of hair dripped blood.

Then, from a tangle of bodies on the deck, Reyn reared up.

Malta shrieked aloud with joy at the sight of him.

When he had gone down, she had given him up for dead.

‘Reyn!’ she cried, and then as he snatched up a blade and staggered after the Satrap’s captors, she screamed, ‘No! No, come back, don’t, Reyn! ’

He did not get far. A wounded man clutched at him as he dashed past and Reyn fell solidly to the deck.

Malta staggered to her feet. Reyn was all she could see.

He grappled with the man who had dragged him down.

The other man had a knife, already reddened with blood.

Heedless of all else, Malta flung herself towards the struggling men.

‘Let me go!’ Althea tried to break Jek’s grip, but her friend was relentless.

‘No! Let him go. They’ve taken him onto their deck. Will you take the fight there, where the odds are even worse? We’ve lost him, Althea, at least for now!’

Althea knew she was right. The man carrying the Satrap had caught a dangling line and swung across to the other ship’s deck.

The Jamaillian sailors were retreating in triumph, cutting the lines that had bound the ships together during the short, fierce fighting.

As swiftly as they had come, they left, taking the Satrap with them.