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She broke her flow of words suddenly. She stared at Kennit’s still body.

An old woman and Etta on either side of him seemed unaware of anyone else.

‘He’s dead,’ Brashen whispered into her hair.

‘He died in Paragon’s arms.’ Althea clung to him as she never had before.

He held her, wishing there were time for them.

But there was not. Death threatened all around them.

‘Break free,’ he muttered sceptically. ‘How?’

Paragon spoke suddenly. He looked at Brashen over Althea’s bowed head and spoke as if they were completely alone.

‘Once I promised not to kill you. I was mad, and you knew it, and still you believed in me.’ The ship looked around, scanning their situation with cold blue eyes.

‘I’m whole now. Now I make you both a new promise. I’ll do all I can to keep you alive.’

‘Take them up!’

The command came from behind them. Malta, Reyn and the Satrap turned to it. Wintrow, his shirt crimson with Kennit’s blood, pointed at the desperate nobles on the foundering ship. Jola hastened to his side. ‘Launch a boat?’ he asked incredulously.

‘No. I won’t risk any of mine for them.’ He raised his voice to the Jamaillian nobles. ‘We’ll throw you a line! Those brave enough to cross may survive. It’s your choice. Your fleet isn’t giving us time to rescue you. Jola, see to it.’ He strode off to the foredeck again.

Chaos broke out among the nobles. They crowded the side of the listing ship.

One old man lifted his hands and begged Sa to be merciful.

A dapper young man, more pragmatic, ran to the other side of the ship, where he waved his cloak and cried to their ships to cease their attack.

No one heeded him. The waves lapped over the top of the railings now.

Jola prepared a heaving line and threw it.

All the men snatched at it, and one immediately tried to swarm up it.

‘Not like that, you fool!’ the mate roared down at them. ‘Secure the end to something, and come up it hand over hand.’

But some were greybeards and others gentlemen of leisure.

Few could make the climb unassisted. In the end, it took several lines and some diligent but rapid hoisting to bring them aboard.

By the time they arrived what remained of their finery was in tatters.

‘Be grateful she’s a liveship,’ Jola informed them callously.

‘They don’t hold barnacles like regular wood.

A smoother keel-hauling than most is what you got. ’

They stood before the Satrap, a dozen men that he knew by name, men he had dined with, men he had trusted.

Malta gave him credit for a small courage.

He stood face to face with them. Some met his gaze steadily, but most stared at their feet or off to the horizon.

When he spoke, it was the last word Malta had expected to hear from him.

‘Why?’ he asked. He looked at each in turn. Malta, still holding the rag to his belly, could feel that he trembled slightly. She glanced up at his face and saw a truth that perhaps no one else did. He was hurt by their betrayal. ‘Did you hate me that much, to seek my death by treachery?’

The one he had called Lord Criath lifted grey eyes to stare at him. ‘Look at you,’ he growled. ‘You’re weak and foolish. You think of nothing except yourself. You’ve plundered the treasury and let the city go to ruin. What else could we do but kill you? You were never a true Satrap.’

Satrap Cosgo met the man’s eyes squarely.

‘You have been my trusted advisor since I was fifteen years old,’ he returned gravely.

‘I listened to you, Criath. Ferdio, you were Minister of the Treasury. Peaton, Kreio, did not you offer me counsels as well? Counsels I always heeded, despite what some of my Companions said, for I wanted you to think well of me.’ His eyes moved over them.

‘That was my mistake, I see. I measured myself by how sweetly you complimented me. I am what you taught me to be, gentlemen. Or I was.’ He stuck out his jaw.

‘A time out in the world among true men has been very enlightening. I am no longer the boy you manipulated and betrayed, my lords. As you will come to discover.’ As if he had the authority, he instructed Jola, ‘Secure them below. They need not be too comfortable.’

‘No.’ Wintrow had returned. He countermanded the order without apology.

‘Fasten them about the ship’s house, Jola.

I want them visible to their fleet. They may discourage some of the arrows and boulders that will come our way when we break free of this.

’ He spared a look for his sister, but she scarcely recognized him.

Grief had set lines in his face and chilled his eyes.

He tried to soften his voice, but his words still sounded like a command.

‘Malta, you are safer inside the captain’s stateroom.

Reyn, will you take her there? And the Satrap, of course. ’

She gave a final glance to the sinking Jamaillian ship.

She did not linger to watch the nobles tied up as a living shield.

This was war, she told herself harshly. He did what he did to try to save them all.

If the nobles died, it would be because their own men fired on them.

Death was a risk they had chosen when they plotted against the Satrap.

That did not mean she took any satisfaction in it.

Bitterly she reflected that scores of Bingtown folk, slaves and simple tradesmen as well as Traders, had died for their ambitions.

If their plot had succeeded, Bingtown itself would have fallen and eventually the Rain Wilds as well.

Perhaps it was time they felt what it was like to stand in danger they could not avoid.

From the top of Paragon’s mast, Althea had a wide view of the battle.

She had told Brashen she would climb the mast to try to see a way out of their situation.

He had believed her, not knowing she fled Paragon’s blue-eyed stare and his own possessive touch on her.

The combination had suddenly filled her with unease.

Brashen had not noticed. He had put Semoy to assembling Paragon’s reduced crew into defence while he took Paragon’s helm.

It had wrung her heart to see how many of the sailors had perished, and how many of the survivors bore wounds.

Amber’s scalded face and burnt scalp and Clef’s still-peeling burns horrified her.

She felt oddly shamed that she had not shared their danger.

From her vantage, she looked down on a scene of disaster and battle.

She saw crews abandoning their serpent-damaged ships, and others struggling with fallen rigging and injured men.

But those of the Jamaillian fleet that could still function seemed intent on continuing the battle.

As far as she could see, there was no easy escape.

The Motley had rammed a ship that had tried to head her off.

The ships were locked together now, their rigging tangled and bloody battle raging on both decks.

Althea suspected that no matter who won, both ships were doomed.

The Marietta could have slipped through and escaped, but Sorcor held her back, trying to aid the Motley .

Flight after flight of arrows soared from her deck, picking off the Jamaillian sailors, while her own small catapult launched stones at the surrounding ships in a vain effort to keep them back.

It was a very uneven contest, growing worse.

Now that Vivacia and Paragon were on the move, only their desire to keep their catapults at a useful range kept the Jamaillian ships from hemming the two liveships completely.

The white serpent hummocking through the water beside Paragon kept some of the ships at bay, while the lingering effects of the earlier serpent attacks delayed others.

Althea saw a mainsail on one vessel suddenly crash down, and surmised that an earlier spraying of serpent spittle had finally eaten through the sheets.

Their only hope was to break out of the circle and flee for Divvytown.

Wintrow had said the town was defensible, but defensible did not mean it could withstand a prolonged siege.

She suspected that as long as the Satrap lived, the Jamaillian fleet would not give up.

And once he had died, they would eliminate all witnesses.

Would they hold back from wiping out a whole pirate settlement? She did not think so.

Down on the deck, men were moving Kennit’s body.

The old woman trailed after her son’s body, but Etta lingered on the foredeck, gripping the railing and staring past the figurehead’s shoulder, careless of the battle around them.

Perhaps she, too, sensed that more of Kennit remained with the figurehead than in the lolling body.

Kennit was a part of Paragon now. He had died on Paragon’s deck, and the ship had welcomed him. She still had not grasped why.

Amber suddenly spoke below her. ‘Best come down. Brashen is sure a rock is going to come by and carry you off with it.’

Paragon had already taken one solid hit that had taken out part of his railing and scored his deck.

‘I’d best get down, too,’ Amber continued. ‘It sounds like Kyle is making a fuss over Kennit’s body being here.’

‘Kyle?’ The word burst out of Althea.

‘Didn’t Brashen tell you? Kennit’s mother brought him on board with her. Evidently Kennit had stashed him on Key Island.’

‘No. He didn’t. We haven’t had much time to talk.’ Now there was an understatement. Mother? Key Island? Althea scooted down the mast, passing Amber to gain the deck. She had thought that nothing could further complicate this day. She had been wrong.