THE VOYAGE SOUTH 
by Nicola Griffith 
	
	The night was thick and hot, glossy foliage twined dense and motionless over the waterway; all Ariel could hear was the soft plash of oars and the steady creak as she and her sister leaned forward then back, pulling their boat deeper into the trees. It was the first time she had rowed a boat since she and Isabel were young enough to run wild on the de Courtivron family estates. She could see nothing. The air was heavy with evening heat and the drifting perfume of forest orchids. There was a storm coming.
	"Here."
	The boat scraped along the overgrown jetty. Among the trees, there was a crumbling statue. It was strange, half man and half woman. One of the arms was missing. The features were still beautifully clear and fine.
	They climbed out; Isabel looped the rope through an iron ring Ariel had not seen.
	"This way. There's a path."
	This was not the first time Isabel had been here, then. The realization changed things. Ariel was not used to knowing less than her younger sister.
	She stopped to adjust her beltpouch then followed Isabel along the path. Rotting leaves deadened her footfalls.
	Ariel recognized only one person: the red-haired younger son of a family who, like the de Courtivrons, were summering in the higher ground by the forest, away from the heat and stink of bustling Quenelles. Isabel seemed to know everyone.
	Separated from her sister, Ariel wandered around the clearing. Someone offered her a pipe: Stardust. The druids of the old religion used it, she knew that much. The smoke was rich and satisfying; as it snaked down her throat, she imagined it turning different colours, curling pink and mauve through her lungs. She drank some wine but ate nothing; by now, the food looked too beautiful to eat. She smoked some more.
	The people looked beautiful, too. Torchlight made their eyes glitter like stars, cold and far off. Their clothes had become gauzy and insubstantial, like her own. She rubbed her shift; it ran between her thumb and forefinger like milk. She smiled.
	"Ari." Torchlight turned Isabel's hair into a shimmer of hot gold. "Come on," she held out her hand, "it's beginning."
	The clearing was full of people and torches. Shadow licked and fluttered across bare arms and legs, across faces that were all turned in one direction. On the far side of the clearing stood another statue. This one was whole, and splendid. The right arm, the woman's arm, held a jewelled sceptre. The right breast, a woman's breast, was bared. The nails of both hands and both feet were gilded.
	And people were queuing before a man who held a small clay pot.
	"Olla milk," Isabel breathed, "all the way from Araby." Her eyes were round, brilliant blue. "It costs more than a princess' dowry."
	Ariel hardly heard her; she drifted in her own private dream. Then she was standing before the man. Like the statue, his chest was bared on the right side. She watched muscle move smoothly under his skin as he raised the bowl, dipped his fingertips, touched them to her lips, the inside of her wrists. Numbness spread across her face, up her arms. Colours writhed. Waves of silver washed through her head. She wandered off into the trees.
	The moss was cool. She pushed her fingers past it and deep into the loam. The earth was a soft-breathed beast who held her fingers in its mouth. She lay on her back. It was so dark that she could not see where the tops of the trees met the sky. Thunder grumbled; she was sticky with sweat. Music wound thin and light between the trunks.
	Voices. She turned her head slowly. The red-haired man and a woman slipped through the trees; Ariel recognized Isabel. She watched, invisible.
	Isabel's clothes fell to the ground one by one, like butterflies. From the folds of his tunic, the man produced a small pot. He held it in his palm. Isabel shivered as he dug out a glob of the olla milk.
	"The cost..."
	"I've found a source that's cheap, Isabel, cheap. Imagine being able to do this every week," he smeared the white stuff over her neck, "every day."
	Isabel moaned.
	"Imagine: every night Isabel." He dug more out of the pot, smoothed it between her breasts, down over her stomach. He knelt. Isabel sagged against him as he rubbed more into the pale skin on the inside of her thighs.
	Ariel turned away. Her cheek was wet; she let herself drift away from the here and the now.
	Whimpering and the sound of retching dragged her back. She turned her head. The red-haired man was crouched on the moss, wiping his mouth.
	"Isabel?" he panted, then heaved again. Nothing came up but milky drool. "Isabel?"
	He levered himself to his feet, shook her. "Oh, gods."
	He swayed, then staggered off into the trees. Ariel listened to his crashing progress fade. She went to her sister.
	Isabel lay on her back. Her mouth was stretched open, her feet and hands twisted inward. She was locked in a frozen muscle spasm. The pot, almost empty, nestled by her hip.
	"Nuh," she said.
	Ariel concentrated on her own breathing, the way her chest filled out and her stomach rounded when she took a particularly deep breath.
	"Isabel?Bel?"
	Isabel's eyes were open. Ariel waved her hand in front of them. Nothing. She picked up the pot, sniffed it, put it in her beltpouch. Light and thunder cracked across the sky sending shadow flickering across Isabel's face, like a smile. The first raindrop fell on Isabel's thigh and Ariel watched it trickle over the tiny white hairs on the pale skin, then fall onto the moss.
	"Nuh," Isabel said again.
	"Yes, baby, I know." She picked up the shift, began to untangle it. "I won't let you get wet." The front was moss-stained. "Put your hands in here." She tried to pull Isabel's arm straight, pushed it through the sleeve. "And the other one." She buttoned up the front. "Where are your sandals?"
	Rain sheeted down. Ariel could not fit the sandals over her sister's twisted feet, so she took them off and put them carefully down on the moss, side by side. Rain dripped from her nose, her chin. Isabel choked.
	"On your side." Ariel pushed her onto her side; rainwater poured from her open mouth and she began to breathe again.
	"We've got to get you home, Bel."
	Then the storm hit.
	Later, she never really knew how she managed to take Isabel under her armpits and haul her upright. Wind punched through the forest roof, beating branches against trunks and leaves against branches; rain plastered the hair to her head and washed over the forest floor, endless as a waterfall. Isabel's heels left two neat tracks in the mud as Ariel dragged her backwards down the path.
	There was no other way to get Isabel into the boat than to tumble her in and climb in after. The waterway, swollen by the rain, pulled the boat to the limits of its restraining rope. In the distance, the river roared.
	The rope was wet, difficult to handle. She pulled and pushed, pulled again carefully, worrying at it methodically until the knot began to loosen. She unshipped the oars and tugged sharply at the rope.
	The river took them in its fist.
	High up, the window was open and sunshine dappled the whitewashed walls of the sickroom. A servant stood by the window, fanning the bed. Ariel listened to the trees rustling below. The draught blew a strand of golden hair across her sister's eyes but Isabel did not blink; Ariel leaned over and brushed the hair away. For the first few days after the accident, she had refused to leave Bel's bedside, frightened she would miss some movement, some sign that Bel was waking up, getting better.
	"Ari." Michel, her brother, stood by the door. "Dr Gauthier is here."
	She stood. "Dr Gauthier."
	"Ariel." He nodded to her, then moved to the bedside. He took Isabel's pulse, looked in her eyes, palpated the tendons along her arm.
	"Help me turn her over."
	He tapped her back and drew his finger along the soles of her feet. There was no response. Using what looked like a wooden horn, he listened to her breathing. He straightened.
	"She's getting worse, isn't she?"
	"Yes. I'm sorry."
	She stared out of the window, listening to the trees. "The olla was contaminated?"
	"Yes."
	She turned to face him. "What with?"
	"Does it matter, child?"
	"Doctor, I have not been a child for several years. And it matters very much to me what was in that ointment and where it came from and why."
	She looked down at the trees again, did not look up until he left.
	Ariel handed the tiny glass vial to the apothecary. The woman unscrewed the top and sniffed.
	"Olla milk," she said. She looked at Ariel who was cloaked and hooded, even in the heat. "But that's not all you wanted to know."
	"It's contaminated."
	"Ah."
	"I want to know what with and where the extra ingredients came from."
	"This is all you have?"
	"Others have tried. That's all that's left. Can you do it?"
	"Maybe."
	The funeral was held in Quenelles itself. The de Courtivron funeral barge, draped in black with the family crest gleaming dully in the river haze, was followed by others crowded with representatives from all the important families. The town, a jumble of grey stone and wood and red tile, stretched along both sides of the river. On the right bank, its cold blank walls shouldering above the smaller merchants' houses, stood the de Courtivron mansion, where Monsieur de Courtivron would return to the business of trade as soon as was fitting. The river stank.
	Ariel stood straight. Her mourning dress was stiff and her hands sweated inside their gloves. She felt cold and numb. She remembered one of the nights, years ago, when Bel had sneaked into her bedroom in the middle of the night and they watched the river, mysterious with lights and its all-night docking and loading, until their feet got cold on the stone floor. Then they jumped into bed top to tail and, while she scared them both to death with a story about dead fishermen rising from the river, rubbed each other's feet warm.
	It did not seem like the same river. It would never be the same river.
	Again, Ariel went cloaked and hooded. The apothecary was waiting for her.
	"Whoever sold you this should be guillotined." She looked grim. "Do you know what it can do?"
	Ariel said nothing. She refused to remember Bel lying on the forest floor. The woman motioned for her to sit.
	"The olla milk is contaminated with ground carenna pod."
	"As in Estalian carenna flour?"
	The woman nodded. "Usually, the pods are soaked and dried and soaked and dried over and over to leach out all the poisons before being ground into flour." She tapped the vial. "This was deliberate: olla flowers grow in Araby, the carenna comes from Estalia. And I tell you something else, the carenna was added while it was still fresh. The olla isn't discoloured, which it would be if the pods had been picked more than a few hours before being added to it."
	"So the carenna was added in Estalia," Ariel said slowly. She stood up. "Thank you."
	Madame de Courtivron raised her goblet of thick, Tilean glass and sipped at the light wine the family always drank with lunch during the summer. Ariel watched a servant fill the glass. Without Isabel at the table, this would be the first time she, Michel and her mother would not need a second bottle opening. She was tempted to drink more than usual, so that another bottle would be needed and the ritual maintained.
	"I've not seen much of you these past few days," her mother said.
	Ariel finished her mouthful. "No."
	"You've been busy, I hear. In Quenelles."
	Ariel wondered how word had reached her mother and how much she knew. "Mother, I need to know what happened."
	"We know what happened. Your sister was greedier than usual, only this time she died from it. We know all we need to. Asking questions only means others are finding out about how she died." She put her knife down, reached for a fresh bread roll. "Or is it that you want all the other families in Bretonnia to know what your sister was?"
	Ariel went white.
	Michel darted a look at his sister, then his mother. "Mother..."
	His mother ignored him. "Well, Ariel?"
	Ariel leaned back in her chair, wiped her lips with a napkin. "You may be sure," she said distinctly, shaping each word with care, "that any further questions I ask will be discreet." She dropped her napkin on the table. "And now, if you will excuse me."
	In her room, Ariel leaned her forehead against the cool plaster. She had to think.
	Her brother tapped on her door. "Ari?"
	"Go away."
	He pushed the door open. "She didn't mean it, Ari."
	"She did. We both know that." She strode over to the window. Today there was no breeze to make the trees whisper. "Michel, if you're coming in then come in, don't hover by the door."
	Michel sat on the bed.
	"I'm going to find out," she said.
	"How?"
	"That red-haired man might know something. Will you help me?"
	Ariel took off her jewellery and bundled up her hair in an old piece of blue serge as she had seen the servants do. The old cotton shift she had stolen from the servants' chest was a little too big. She checked herself in a mirror. The headscarf made her eyes look a deeper, darker blue than usual.
	Sunlight bounced off the water, making her squint as she pulled the boat into Quenelles. The red-haired man had told her brother that the contaminated olla had come from a native of the Estalian city of Magritta who called himself Jorge. She was here to find out more. The sixty francs in her pouch should loosen enough tongues, one way or another.
	After the bright sunlight, the tavern was dark. The low room smelled of sharp new wine and stale sweat. It was almost empty: most of the customers were outside, in the courtyard. A man was mopping at a puddle of wine on one of the rough wooden tables.
	"M'sieur?"
	"Wine's six francs a jug or one franc a cup," he said without looking up.
	"No, m'sieur. I don't want wine. I'm looking for someone, a man."
	"We already have one girl working here, and she doesn't have much trade. Try the waterfront."
	He moved over to another table and began to clean it.
	"M'sieur, I'm not looking for work but for a particular man, a Magrittan. Called Jorge."
	He straightened. "Jorge? What do you want him for?"
	"Do you know him?"
	"No." He grinned at his own joke. "Got yourself in trouble by him, eh?"
	Ariel looked at the floor and tried to remember how the servants spoke when they wanted something.
	"Please, M'sieur, you look like a knowledgeable man." She raised her eyes to his. "If you know where I might find him I would be most grateful." She wondered if her servants ever despised her as much as she did this man.
	He considered. "Sailor, is he?"
	"Very possibly, m'sieur."
	"Well then, do like I first said, try the waterfront." He leered at her. "And if you want to show your gratitude after you've found him, I'm always here."
	As she picked her way through the filthy streets to the waterfront, she felt uneasy. Every so often, she glanced over her shoulder but saw nothing.
	It was the middle of the day and the waterfront seethed with people: sailors free for a day while one cargo was offloaded and another brought on board; rope menders swearing at those who stood in their light; fish sellers trying to out-shout each other; women buying vegetables.
	A woman in the coarse cotton and canvas of a sailor was sitting on the cobbles, leaning against a wall, her eyes closed. Ariel stepped over the woman's carry sack and stood in front of her.
	"M'selle."
	No response.
	"M'selle?" She tapped her on the shoulder.
	The sailor exploded off the ground and grabbed both her wrists. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was tall, taller than Ariel.
	"Can't you see I was sleeping!" the woman roared in a thick Empire accent.
	"Drunk more like," Ariel said. She was surprised that the beating of her heart did not make her voice wobble. "Let go of my arms."
	"And if I don't?"
	"Then I will break your legs."
	The woman's face went stiff as a mask. Her hard brown hands tightened on Ariel's wrists, then let go.
	"Be careful who you make such threats to." She bent to pick up her sack.
	"No, wait."
	The sailor turned around, hand on hip, sack slung over her shoulder.
	"I'm... sorry I woke you. I need to know if you know where I can find a Magrittan called Jorge."
	"What do you want Jorge for?" She looked wary.
	"Do you know him?" Ariel waited for her to laugh and say no, like the man in the tavern.
	"I might. Tell me why you want him first."
	"I can't."
	"Then I can't tell you, either." She turned and began walking.
	"Wait!" It rang out cold and arrogant. One or two heads turned but the sailor kept on walking. Ariel cursed under her breath and ran after her. "I mean, please, wait. My sister used some contaminated olla. She died." The woman slowed. "I think the olla came from Jorge."
	The sailor stopped and looked up and down the street. "Come in here," she said abruptly, and pulled Ariel into a tavern.
	"I knew he wasn't on the voyage for the sake of it," she said to Ariel over a cup of rough red wine, "I told Helseher. But no," she gulped thirstily at her cup, waved it in the air until a wineboy filled it, "Kapitan Helseher says to me, 'it doesn't matter what else he's up to, Marya, he's a good sailor and he'll do while Franz is sick in Brionne.' And now he's gone."
	"Gone? Where?"
	Marya shrugged. "Back down the river. All the way to Magritta maybe. Who knows."
	Ariel tried to think past her disappointment. "I don't suppose you knew his real name?" She sipped at her wine, put it aside with a grimace.
	"Well now, you suppose wrong. Here. No sense wasting good wine." She reached for Ariel's cup, tipped its contents into her own. "Jorge was his name all right."
	"You're sure?"
	"Ought to be. I took a look at his papers one day while he was on deck. No doubt he thought they were well hidden. According to the papers he was, or is, Jorge Martinez Castelltort, Officer of the Fleet no less, under Admiral Escribano himself."
	Ariel wondered how this woman had learned to read. Instead, she asked: "What would a Captain of the Magrittan fleet be doing posing as a sailor and selling poisoned olla?"
	Marya shrugged, had another drink.
	"It doesn't make sense," Ariel persisted.
	"Doesn't seem to, does it?" Marya waved her cup again. "TheRosamund sails in four hours and I need more to drink. Won't get the chance again till Brionne."
	"But it takes days to get to Brionne. Won't you be stopping along the way?"
	"Weeks," Marya corrected carefully, "Three weeks in the Rosamund. Fine ship. If we do stop, it'll be work work work, no fun."
	The wine boy came over. Marya paid for two jugs of wine.
	"Maybe you should get yourself closer to where the Rosamund is berthed before you drink yourself senseless." "Not far. On this bank, five minutes walk. Can do that even after twice as much as this." She picked up her cup, poured, reached for Ariel's. "Stay for a cup or two."
	The five minutes walk turned out to be nearer fifteen. Once, Ariel was sure someone was following her but the dockside was crowded and she could have been mistaken. A high-sided, three-masted ship stood at anchor. TheRosamund.
	Two men were fastening hatches.
	"Captain Helseher?" she called up.
	One of them peered down at her. "He's busy. We sail in half an hour."
	"It's important. Mademoiselle Marya is unconscious in a tavern."
	He laughed. "It's the first time I've heard her called M'selle."
	"But it's not the first time she's been senseless in a tavern, eh Rudi?" the other said. "Tell us where, girl, and we'll bring her on board."
	"No. I want to speak to Captain Helseher."
	A small, round man with greying hair came on deck. "I'm Helseher."
	"I need to speak to you. About passage to Brionne."
	"We don't carry passengers. Not normally." He squinted down. "But I'll take you for two hundred francs."
	"I only have sixty here. I can get the rest if you wait."
	"We sail in half an hour. With or without you."
	"Would you take me as crew?"
	Rudi laughed. Irritably, Helseher waved him to silence. "Don't waste my time, girl."
	"But I hear you're one short. And I can sail, climb, tie knots, row."
	"Wait there."
	For someone so round, Helseher made easy work of swinging himself down the rope ladder to shore. "You ever sail anything this size before?"
	"No. I could learn."
	"Um. You drink?" "No, except with dinner." Helseher raised an eyebrow. "That is, I mean..."
	"I know exactly what you mean. You're hired. It'll take you two weeks to learn the ropes, so all you'll get is food, three cups of wine a day and passage to Brionne in exchange for working so hard you'll wish you'd never been born. Acceptable? Good. Now, where's Marya?"
	Marya was heavier than she looked.
	"Help me get her up."
	The way Marya flopped reminded Ariel of dragging Bel out of the forest.
	"I said help me, dammit."
	Ariel jerked at Marya.
	"Careful. She's not a sack of turnips."
	"Sorry."
	Between them, they trundled Marya through the door.
	"Wa... happening?"
	"You're drunk again and it's time to sail. We..." He looked at Ariel. "What's your name, girl?"
	"Ariel."
	"...Ariel and I are lugging your pickled carcass to the Rosamund. So keep quiet and move your legs."
	Marya stopped abruptly, leaned forward and threw up.
	"Hold her steady."
	Ariel did as she was told while the captain pulled a square of white cotton from his pocket and wiped at Marya's mouth. "No one should have to walk through the streets with vomit on their face."
	A crowd coming out of another tavern jeered as they passed. Helseher ignored them.
	Ariel's arms were aching with the strain by the time they reached theRosamund.
	"Here." They eased her down onto the stones. "You go aboard. Tell them to let down the cradle. She'll never make it up the ladder like this."
	By the time Ariel scrambled to the top of the ladder, Rudi and Hugner were already unshipping the cradle. Ariel looked down at the dock. From the height of the raised foredeck, everything looked different: she could see Helseher holding Marya's hand and talking quietly; over there, behind one of the netting sheds, a boy was relieving himself into the river and, closer to the ship, a man wearing a woollen cap was... Ariel frowned and leaned as far over the rail as she dared: he was nowhere in sight. He must have dodged behind that stack of barrels.
	"Let's get out of here," Helseher shouted once everyone was aboard. He turned to Ariel. "You, in my cabin."
	"But what about Marya?"
	"Uti knows what to do."
	She followed the captain below.
	"Now tell me," Helseher said when they were in his cabin, "why has a woman been following you?"
	"A woman?"
	"Yes," he said irritably, "all the way from the tavern."
	Ariel pondered that. A woman. But it had been a man she saw earlier.
	Helseher gave her a long look. "I'll get to the bottom of this when there's time. For now, get yourself on deck and do what Jean-Luc tells you."
	The captain turned to the charts on his table and Ariel realized she had been dismissed. It was something she would have to get used to.
	TheRosamund moved slowly into midstream, tacking around smaller fishing craft and the occasional rowing boat. Ariel watched Quenelles and all that was familiar to her slip away in their wake. Above her, a sail snapped as it caught the wind. For the next three weeks, this would be her world.
	Jean-Luc turned out to be the first mate, a small-boned man who was slightly balding and never spoke more loudly than he had to. He set Ariel to coiling ropes - thick as her arm and rough as freshly sawn wood - and stowing them in lockers. She was surprised at how cramped everything was; theRosamund had looked to be such a big ship. She asked Jean-Luc about it.
	"TheRosamund is an ocean-going vessel. Not a river boat. We've sailed her through the South Sea, the Black Gulf, even across the Middle Sea as far north as Albion."
	"Don't let him get on to the subject of Albion," said a rough Empire voice behind her. "He hates everything about that island. Especially the people."
	Ariel turned. "Shouldn't you be sleeping it off?"
	Marya shook her head. "With something to do I'll be sober before we've gone another league."
	"So take her below and show her her berth," Jean-Luc said. "Then bring her back up here and show her the ropes." He looked at Ariel. "I'll assign you to a watch tomorrow. Make sure you know what you're doing by then."
	Marya laughed and took her below.
	"Here."
	It was dark and cramped. She was supposed to sleep between what looked like the ribs of the ship.
	"Everyone sleeps here except Helseher, Jean-Luc and Gerber, the cook."
	Ariel counted the bundles of clothes. There were four. "Only seven of us for a ship this size?"
	"Eight. There's you, too. We'll find you a bit of sailcloth to pad out your bunk, otherwise you'll bruise when we hit weather. Not that we're likely to have any weather to speak of on a journey like this. And eight is plenty for a river run."
	Ariel heard the bitterness. "Marya, if this is an ocean-going ship, why isn't it at sea?"
	"It's not profitable to follow the old trade routes any more, we get taxed out of existence by people like Jorge and his friends. The Magrittans."
	"But what right do they have?"
	"The oldest one in the world. Might." She reached for one of the bundles of clothes and pulled out a map. She traced the outline of the Horn of Araby. There was dirt under her fingernail. "Anyone wanting to move goods from here to anywhere past the Estalian coast - Bretonnia, Marienburg, Erengrad, anywhere - has to pass here." She tapped the southern tip of Estalia. "And that's where the Magrittan fleet has been manoeuvring for the past four or five months. Nothing gets through without paying taxes. They even dared tax an Elven ship that stopped over on the horn on its way from Lustria."
	Ariel absorbed the information: the resources they would need to seal off the whole of that coastal route must be enormous. How did they sustain it?
	"The Magrittans have gone crazy."
	"That might literally be true. I've heard..." Marya stopped, and her forehead tightened. Ariel could not decide whether from fear or hatred.
	"What?"
	"Nothing you need to know, girl."
	Ariel waited. It was plain that Marya wanted to tell her.
	The sailor stared at the bulkhead. "Escribano has allied himself to a Power." Her mouth stretched in an attempt at a smile. Ariel was not sure that she had heard right. "Cat got your tongue?"
	"Which..." Ariel cleared her throat. "Which one?"
	"The Blood God."
	Khorne. The Destroyer. And Escribano had allied himself to this Chaos Power. Deliberately, she let her grief overwhelm her fear: Escribano had at least one more death to offer his God. That was what she had to think about.
	She looked at the map again, trying to understand the enormity of the Magrittan's corporeal influence.
	"Why didn't I know about all this?"
	Marya shrugged. "People tend to know only what affects them. When the price of Tilean glass goes up or you can't get your Cathay silks any more because nobody'll risk that journey only to have their profits taxed to nothing, then you'd know about it."
	Ariel wondered if her father knew all this. Not yet. Most of the family business was centred around river trade. It occurred to her that theRosamund might be carrying de Courtivron goods.
	"What are we carrying?"
	"I'll show you in a minute." She stowed the map in her bundle, pulled something else out, She weighed it in her hands a moment then held it towards Ariel. It was a knife. The handle was plain wood, well polished. The blade was twice the length of her hand. "Might be useful."
	Ariel accepted it silently.
	"There's a loop on the sheath. Put it on your belt."
	Ariel did, settling it comfortably on her right hip. Marya nodded. "I'll take you to the hold."
	To Ariel's unpractised eye, the cargo seemed haphazardly arranged. Huge crates were stowed forward of smaller cases, while timber obviously from the same lumber merchant lay stacked in different piles. One corner of the hold was full of empty trays stacked one atop the other.
	Marya patted them. "These are for the Cixous pate. Captain Helseher will work us half to death getting it to Laguiller. Pate doesn't last too long away from ice. The fresher it is when we get it there, the more it'll sell for. And for that cargo, we get a percentage of the profit."
	"We?"
	"Helseher. But if he doesn't make much then it's one less hired next voyage. But there's no real worry this time, it's downstream all the way. Means we can take the short route through white water. On the way up we carried Cixous pate to Quenelles. Upstream. We had to come through the slow curve of the river. Helseher nearly had us in the boat, towing."
	"How many stops are we making?"
	"Eight. Cixous, then Brusse, then through the gorge to Laguiller. After that it's Aubenas, Muret, Ferignac, Sibourne and Brionne."
	"Then back to Quenelles?"
	"If we must." Marya shrugged. "Let's find you some proper clothes, then I'll take you on deck."
	TheRosamund nosed its way into Cixous past floating pieces of dead fish and old netting. It smelled worse than Quenelles. Jean-Luc and Gerber the cook had taken the boat and rowed into harbour earlier to arrange for their onward cargo to be waiting when they docked. Ariel stood on deck, holding the bundle of rope ladder ready. The muscles in her shoulders and back burned with the strain of hauling her own weight up and down the masts. Her face was red and peeling. Sweat ran down her arms and soaked through the strips of cloth wound around her hands. Her raw palms began to itch.
	The anchor rattled and she threw the bundle over the side. It unwound with a wooden clacking and bumped gently against the side. Marya and the thick-armed Rudi took one rope, Hugner and Uti the other as they swung the cradle into position and began lowering it. Helseher paced. The stacked lumber shifted slightly. Uti cursed and staggered.
	"Ariel, you're the lightest." Helseher gestured at the cradle. "Get that wood balanced."
	Ariel used Rudi as a mounting block, fitting her bare feet first on his bunched thigh, then his shoulder. The hilt of her knife dug into her side. She gritted her teeth as she pulled herself up by her hands. Marya grunted with the strain of the extra weight. She worked quickly, efficiently, then let herself down by her hands, not letting go until she was sure her weight was firm on the deck and would not set the cradle swinging again. Hugner managed a brief nod of approval.
	"Well done, girl," Helseher muttered. He leaned over the side, looking down at the cobbles. There was no sign of Jean-Luc. "Where in the name of the gods is he?" He wiped his forehead. "Damn this heat."
	The cradle reached the dock safely. Ariel climbed down the ladder with the others to help unload. She found that if she swore very softly under her breath as she and Marya stacked plank after plank, she did not notice the pain in her hands so much.
	The owners of the timber were already supervising its removal when Jean-Luc and Gerber arrived on an ox cart driven by a patient young woman. Jean-Luc scrambled down and strode over to Helseher, where he started talking in a quiet voice. Ariel helped the driver unlace the leather sheet covering her wagon. Jean-Luc paused and Helseher looked over at Ariel for a moment, then turned back to his first mate. Ariel wondered what they were talking about.
	"Girl!" Helseher's voice was sharp. "Get back on the Rosamund and go below."
	Ariel blinked, uncertain.
	"Hurry it up. I want Gerber to take a look at your hands. And stay below out of the sun, hear? I don't want you getting feverish in this heat."
	Ariel did as she was told, wondering.
	She was sitting on her bundle of clothes, her hands freshly bandaged and still stinging from Gerber's attentions, when she felt the anchor come up. A few minutes later, Marya put her head through the hatch.
	"Helseher wants you." She withdrew, then put her head back through. "That story you told me about your sister. Was it true?"
	Ariel nodded.
	"Well, that's something."
	Helseher's cabin was crowded with the captain, Jean-Luc and Marya. They were all standing.
	"I don't want this to take too long, girl. We've a ship to get to Laguiller and a cargo to sell. But I want the truth from you and I want it now. Marya here tells me you've been asking questions about a man I hired to Quenelles, that he's mixed up somehow in your sister's death."
	"I have reason to believe that he sold some deliberately contaminated olla to a man who gave it to my sister. She died as a result."
	"And?"
	"And now I'm trying to find Jorge and ask why. If I can't find him then I'll go to Magritta and find someone who can tell me."
	"Magritta. That's interesting. Perhaps that explains why Magrittans have been asking about you all over Cixous."
	Ariel could find nothing to say.
	Jean-Luc cleared his throat. "The pate seller told me that a Magrittan woman who made port earlier in the day has been asking around to see if theRosamund had docked and if one woman in particular - tall, pale, long blonde hair, icy eyes - had been seen. Apparently she was most anxious, offered the pate seller a great deal of money for information and to keep his silence. He told me anyhow. Doesn't like Magrittans, he said."
	Helseher nodded then gestured for Marya to speak.
	"When I was in the tavern, the innkeeper told me a story: last night a strange man, very tall, very thin, was asking questions about the crew of theRosamund and what our ports of call were likely to be. According to the innkeeper, the man wasn't Magrittan."
	Helseher turned to Ariel. "I want to know what they want of you and why, and whether they're likely to harm the Rosamund."
	"I don't know." She laid her hand on her knife.
	"Is it your family?"
	"No. They wouldn't do it like this."
	"So who?" Helseher sat behind a table and tapped at a chart in irritation. "I don't like this sneaking about."
	"Nor does the girl, Captain," Marya said softly, nodding at Ariel's hand on the knife. With an effort, Ariel put her hands behind her back.
	Helseher stood up abruptly.
	"From now on, when we come to a port, stay below. It won't do you any harm to keep out of sight."
	Ariel's hands healed; she had to strap them only for the roughest work; her face and arms were no longer red and peeling and her legs, bare below her knees, were lean and brown. Without sandals, her feet hardened. She had proved to the rest of the crew that she was quick and reliable and that if she was unfamiliar with a knot or a method of splicing, she needed to be shown only once. Out on the river she drank the rough red wine with her meals like everyone else. Several days out of Cixous she had taken to wearing a cap to cover her silver-gold hair; she no longer ducked out of sight everytime the Rosamund tacked past a river boat or was overtaken by some sleek dinghy. The knife at her hip was just another eating implement.
	Ariel was lying between the ribs of the ship, her head propped on the small bundle made of the clothes she had first come aboard in. It was hot. The others were either unloading on the docks or in the waterfront's two taverns, finding out if anyone had been asking questions about theRosamund or about Ariel.
	Time dragged. The ship rocked slightly at anchor; the lamp hanging from the beam above her swung from side to side. She stretched, imagining that she was lying on the sloping grass of the river bank, drying off in the sun. During the summer when she was twelve and Bel ten, they were always by the river playing with the local children. What was the game they had perfected that summer? It had no name: the only rule was to throw someone in the river, then they had to help you throw someone else in. The trick was to sweep the victim's legs out from under them while at the same time clapping your hand over their mouth and nose to stop them yelling to alert the others, then both jump in together. It had the added bonus of stopping the victim swallowing water as they plunged headfirst. Between them, she and Bel had raised the game to an art.
	She fell asleep with tears running down her cheeks.
	When she woke an hour later, her tears had dried leaving her face drawn and tight. She heard the hatch swing open. It did not bang; whoever had opened it was trying hard not to be heard. She eased her knife from her sheath and stood up. A step creaked: someone was coming down the stairs.
	He had to duck to get through the doorway. It was the same man she had seen on the wharf at Quenelles: she recognized the cap pulled low over his ears. He was as slender as a dart.
	They looked at each other. Ariel stood poised, knife drawn; the man was relaxed, still, with no weapon that she could see.
	"Who are you?"
	"Mademoiselle de Courtivron, I have no intention of harming you in any way. I have come to give you a warning."
	She lifted the knife. "Out." Her voice was thick and tight.
	"I could have that breadknife away from you and at your own throat without breaking into a sweat."
	All her fear, all the uncertainty and grief of the last weeks, coalesced around a point in the middle of his breastbone. She went for him.
	She dived into a roll and came to her feet under his chin, her knife striking up like a snake. It surprised him: she got close enough to see the empty earring holes in his lobes before he moved faster than she thought possible to take the knife point across his shoulder. Then, she did not know how, he had the knife at her throat and her arms pinned behind her. His body felt odd: padded in strange places. Blood, his blood, dripped on her wrists.
	"You scratched me. No-one's done that in years," he said softly.
	"Let me go."
	"Not until you listen. I want you to leave theRosamund.Go back upriver, go home, go anywhere. Don't stay on this ship and don't ask any more questions."
	Ariel noticed that his hands were very long and slim, and calloused in the wrong places.
	"Why?"
	"Because you're ruining months of work with your blundering. You're alerting dangerous people. When they've killed you they'll start asking questions of their own. They might find out that other people have been interested in them for a long time. You don't know what you're dealing with."
	"Let me go."
	He did. She backed off, hands spread. He laughed but it was flat, like his eyes. He threw her the knife. She sheathed it.
	"They killed my sister. I want to know why."
	"This is about much more than the death of a young woman."
	"Not to me."
	"Go home before you learn too much. Or they will kill you."
	"Who? Capitano Jorge Martinez Castelltort-in-disguise, or Admiral Escribano himself?" Her voice was sharp.
	His face flattened into something alien. "Perhaps it is already too late for you," he said softly. Then he was gone.
	When Helseher returned, Ariel went to his cabin and told him about their visitor.
	"Do you think I should go back home?"
	"Yes, but I'm not going to try and persuade you: you're too useful to me as crew."
	"Thank you."
	"I'm not sure I'm doing you a favour."
	Half a day downstream from Brusse, the Brienne was joined by the fast flowing Sirthelle tributary. Where the two rivers met, their churning waters had carved out a gorge two miles long with granite cliffs a hundred yards high in places. As they approached the gorge, Helseher took the wheel himself.
	Ariel worked a capstan with Uti on the starboard side. They were sweating. The ship hit white water and lurched. Spray arced over the bow and drenched Ariel. She grinned at Uti: the water was deliciously cold.
	"Brace yourselves."
	TheRosamund, and a skiff also taking the white water short cut, bucked and slid into the gorge. Helseher spun the wheel this way and that, then hauled it right over. With most of the canvas furled they were relying on the current. It made steering difficult.
	They were thrown into the deep shadow cast by the cliffs to starboard where the thunder of water echoed and re-echoed from the granite.
	"It's calmer when we get past the bend!" Uti shouted through the roar.
	The bend loomed ahead: a curve to port so sharp that it looked like a dead end. Rocks, black and slick, reared through the foam. Ariel shivered. Helseher spun the wheel clockwise, held it, spun it counterclockwise and they headed straight for the biggest rock in the river. At what seemed like the last minute to Ariel, Helseher moved the wheel a fraction and the Rosamund slipped sweetly through. They glided into calm open water; sunlight glistened on the taffrail and Ariel's wet hair.
	"Raise sail," Helseher called to nobody in particular. He sounded pleased with himself. He squinted at the sun. "If we get that pate to Laguiller before first light tomorrow, five hours shore leave for everyone."
	Ariel scrambled for the rigging along with Rudi and Marya.
	Below, the river looked beautiful: sandbars covered in stands of white-plumed cane jutted out from the bank and in the small lateral channels thickets of oak crowded behind willows whose leaves swept the water with their fingertips. Behind them, the skiff had come through unharmed.
	"Why before first light?" she called across the yard arm to Marya. She swayed as she edged along the rope.
	"The market starts first thing. Pate always fetches a better price if the buyers have seen it being unloaded from the hold an hour before."
	"But we could have been lying at anchor for hours, days even."
	"Doesn't matter. If they think it's fresh, they pay more." She laughed.
	Ariel wondered if her brother or father ever paid too much for a cargo. And suddenly she missed them, missed her room with its cool white linens, missed the whisper of trees outside her window. She smiled to herself, hearing the whisper of those trees...
	But it was not trees. It was the splash of six pairs of oars as two boats swung out from opposite side channels towards them, it was the soft buzz of arrow fletching cutting the air. Ariel watched, fascinated, as an arrow caught the sunlight on its downward spiral towards Helseher.
	"Captain!" Marya, already halfway down the rigging, jumped the rest, knocking Helseher to the deck. The arrow thunked into the wheel, still humming. Then the air was full of them.
	The archers were on the left bank; Ariel could see them clearly as they nocked, drew, released and nocked again. She kept the mast between her and them as she shinned her way down. The skiff behind them raised sail, chopping through the water towards them. While it was still four hundred yards astern, a tall, thin figure stood in the bow and raised a bow of his own. Ariel heard each arrow he loosed at the archers on the bank: a deeper, stronger sound. More deadly, like his aim. He killed three in the time it took Ariel to draw as many breaths. The archers retreated.
	The first boat drew alongside their starboard bow. Two of the six stayed sitting; the others shipped their oars. A grapple thumped onto the planking and snaked back, gripping the rail. Ariel half fell and half jumped the rest of the way down; without standing upright, she scrambled across the deck like a four-legged spider. She hacked at the rope. Everything slowed down; even the smallest movement took forever; while she hacked and sawed, a man leapt for the rail. Then he was clambering aboard and everything clicked back into real time. Ariel howled and lunged at him, stabbing without science or method. She stabbed him in the face, the neck. Blood, hot and bright, arced through the air, spattering her mouth and hair. The man screamed and screamed and Ariel stabbed him again. He would not die. His screams went on and on. She heard the grinding thump of the second boat coming alongside, Helseher bellowing, Marya singing of all things and the hatch banging as Gerber and Jean-Luc charged onto the deck armed with a meat cleaver and boat-hook - but she was crazy with revulsion for the blood clinging thick and sticky to her hair and clothes, insane with the need to rid the ship of people so she could wash herself clean again. She attacked mindlessly. A man facing her dropped with an arrow in his hip; she slashed at him anyway.
	On the other side of the deck, a man lifted his short sword at Gerber but fell gurgling with an arrow in his throat. A woman hacked at Rudi, had time to swing a second time before she groaned and fell, a purple-fletched arrow in her back.
	Now the attackers were outnumbered. They leapt over the rails for their boats. One missed and thrashed in the water until the stranger's arrows found him. The skiff altered course to chase the boats down. The bow hummed again and again. Soon, theRosamund was the only thing in sight on the river.
	"Ariel."
	Ariel turned with bared teeth.
	"Ariel," Marya said again. "It's over. Put down your knife."
	Ariel blinked, looked around. Several bodies lay tumbled over the stained planking; Helseher leaned against the mainmast, holding his arm and groaning; Hugner was sitting on the chest of a man who was bleeding heavily; Gerber was being sick over the side; Jean-Luc had the wheel; Uti was checking bodies. Rudi was dead.
	Her knife was clotted with blood. She dropped it.
	"Are you hurt?"
	"Hurt?" She looked up from her knife to Marya. "No." She took a deep breath, then another.
	"You're bleeding."
	"It's not mine."
	"No, here. Look."
	Ariel looked. Just below her left breast blood seeped through a slash in her shirt. She felt nothing.
	"Let me see."
	Ariel raised her arm obediently to let her unlace the shirt.
	The cut was six inches long and deep enough to gape, showing pinkish bone. She swayed.
	"Easy. Here, sit down." Marya lowered her to the deck.
	"Why doesn't it hurt?"
	"It will." She eased the shirt off and wadded it up. She pressed it against the wound. "Hold it on." She guided Ariel's hand to the makeshift pressure bandage then stood up and went to where Hugner sat on his prisoner.
	"Let him up, Hugner."
	He lifted his tear-stained face to hers. "They killed Rudi."
	"I know. Let him up."
	"He might kill someone else."
	"He's dying, Uti. Look at the blood." It was pooling underneath the prisoner. "And we need you."
	He hesitated, then climbed off. Marya laid a hand on his shoulder.
	"Thank you. We need this deck clearing. Push them overboard, we haven't time for niceties. Not Rudi," she added. "Uti" - he straightened - "you and I have to finish setting some sail. We need to get moving. They might be back." She crossed the deck to where the cook was still heaving dryly. "Gerber," she said gently, "there's nothing left in your stomach and Ariel and the captain both need attention. Can you see to it?" He nodded.
	"See to Ariel first," Helseher said, pushing himself upright from the mast. He had some of his colour back. "It's only a broken bone." He glared at Marya.
	"Better than a hole in your head," Marya said, swinging herself up the rigging.
	Ariel was cold. A great deep ache began to build in her ribs. She felt sick.
	"Marya?" she said. "Marya?" And fainted.
	She insisted on coming on deck for Rudi's funeral. Helseher, with his arm splinted and strapped across his chest, spoke the ritual to Manann, god of the sea, in Reikspiel, the sailor's native dialect. A stiff breeze made the ropes thrum. When the captain nodded at Marya, Ariel was startled to hear the sunburned sailor offered tribute to Morr, god of death, in classical Old Worlder. She spoke of Rudi's strength, his good humour, his willingness to help anyone when he could. Her words were soothing and peaceful.
	Rudi's body, wrapped with a chain, sank with a splash. They were silent for a while.
	"Let's not waste this breeze." Helseher said. "Rudi would have liked us to get this cargo to market and make enough money to drink to him in style."
	Ariel went below again. In the galley, she found a pair of shears.
	Gerber found her five minutes later. "Sweet gods! What have you done?"
	She looked up from the pile of shining hair lying around her ankles.
	"It had blood on it."
	They got to Laguiller in time for the market, though they were so late that they had no time to unload; Jean-Luc had to persuade the buyers to examine the cargo in the hold.
	They went to a tavern and drank to Rudi. Ariel drank more than she should have, but the wine would not lessen the numbness deep inside. The others were talking about the stranger in the skiff. "Why'd he go, anyway?" Hugner demanded. He was drunk. "Only the gods know that," Jean-Luc said. "But why'd he help us then run away?" "I don't know, my friend," Marya said. "But I'll tell you this: that was an Elven bow he was using. I've heard the sound those arrows make before now."
	Helseher's temper got worse as his arm itched inside its splints; Ariel's wound began to heal and she was strong enough to help Gerber in the galley so he could take the wheel now and again, freeing Jean-Luc to do her share of work topside.
	The nights were quiet: now and again Uti or Hugner would stop mid-laugh, remembering how often Rudi's laugh had sounded. Ariel dreamed; again and again she pushed her knife into the man's neck and watched that impossible streak of blood arcing through the air.
	She woke up sweating and went up on deck for cooler air. One moon was half full, the other only a sliver in the sky. Marya was steering.
	"Here." Marya handed her a bottle. "It helps, sometimes." "Does it?" "Your choice."
	Ariel lifted the bottle and drank. "I should leave this ship now." She handed the rum back.
	"Can't. We need you till we get to Brionne and can hire someone else." She looked out across the water for a while. "Ariel, they won't attack theRosamund again." "How do you know?"
	"It's you they want. Helseher told me. They'll wait until you're alone. Easier for them that way. You'd be safe if you stayed with us until we got back to Quenelles." She handed over the bottle. "Ever been up the coast to Bordelaux? Worth seeing. Take us a week to get there from Brionne, a day to load the wine, week to get back to Brionne and sell it. Three weeks after that you can be back in Quenelles. With your family."
	"Bel won't be there."
	She sighed. "Let go, Ariel."
	"I can't." She was silent for a while. "Marya, there's nothing for me in Quenelles. Unless I want to get married."
	Moonlight glinted on the upraised bottle. "What will you do when we reach Brionne?"
	"I don't know yet. Ask more questions."
	"And get yourself killed. Lots of people get killed in Brionne."
	"Any better ideas?"
	"Stay with theRosamunds."
	Ariel shook her head.
	"Why not? You're good crew. And the Magrittans won't be able to strangle the life out of trade forever. Some day soon we'll be able to sail to Araby again, or right across the Great Western Ocean. I've always had a mind to see the New World."
	Ariel stayed on deck until the stars began to fade, drinking rum and listening to stories of Lustrian treasure.
	TheRosamund lay in Brionne harbour. The last of the cargo for Bordelaux was secured in the hold; they would be sailing in four hours. Ariel stood in Helseher's cabin.
	"And you're sure you don't want to reconsider my offer?"
	"I need to find out about my sister."
	The captain sighed, tried to scratch inside the splint on his arm. "Marya was right." He opened a drawer, pulled out a pouch. "Here."
	It clinked.
	"If you still insist on following Jorge all the way to Magritta, there's enough in there, Empire coin, to buy you passage as far as Bilbali. How you manage from there is up to you. Well, pick it up," he said irritably. "You earned it." "But you said..."
	"Didn't think you'd be much use, then. But you learn fast, girl. And Rudi won't be needing his share. Take it." Ariel picked it up. It was heavy. "Thank you." Helseher nodded. Halfway through the door, Ariel paused. "Where will I find Marya?" "Try the tavern nearest the Elven quarter."
	Like everything in Brionne, the tavern was huge, overcrowded and noisy. Even though it was officially outside the area populated and run by trading elves, the owner had made an attempt to attract their lucrative custom: the musician in the corner was playing the light, lilting airs preferred by that race and Lustrian wine was available, at a price.
	Marya was at a table by herself with a jug and two cups. She was sober.
	"Thought you'd find me to say goodbye. Still going ahead with this nonsense?" Ariel nodded. "In that case, I've got news. Jorge came through here a week or more ago. He's gone. Probably to Magritta." Ariel nodded again. That much she had expected. "Also, I've found someone who'll take you as crew as far as Bilbali." She leaned over and tapped the money pouch at Ariel's belt. "That way, you can save your money to buy passage from Bilbali to Magritta."
	Ariel did not know what to say. She reached across the table and poured wine for them both. It was sparkling yellow white: Lustrian.
	Marya walked her to theGenevieve."Fornan, her master, runs a tight ship, everything just so. Not like Helseher. I told him you were an experienced hand. Don't let me down. And don't ask any questions, just keep that pouch out of sight and your knife handy."
	Ariel touched the knife, remembered their talk of Escribano, and Khorne the Blood God. She reached out and took the sailor's hand. "Goodbye, Marya."
	"Until we meet again. Something tells me we will."
	On the fifth day at sea, when she was stripping off her sodden shirt to wash it as best she could in a bucket of scummy water, one of the crew saw the newly healed scar across her ribs.
	"Who came off worst?"
	She paused, remembering the blood, the way he had screamed. "He died."
	After that, the crew left her alone. She began to brood. In her nightmares, the figure who spurted blood under her knife was Bel. She would wake and think of Bel laughing and shuddering with pleasure as the olla seeped into her bloodstream. She could have stopped her, if she had not been olla-dreaming herself.
	If Captain Fornan had allowed rum on his ship, she would have drunk herself insensible during the hot lonely hours of the night. Instead, she thought about the stranger. Then she thought about Jorge, and fingered her knife.
	On a moonless night almost three weeks after leaving Brionne, Fornan gave the order to heave to. All lights were extinguished. Without the hiss and sputter of lamps or the flap of sail, the toll of Bilbali's great bronze bell rolled clearly across the water.
	A light blinked in the distance. Fornan, using a shuttered lamp, answered. He gave a few low-voiced orders and there was a bustle of activity. The bell tolled again. As the sound died away, Ariel heard the splash of oars. A boat bumped alongside and the crew started loading it with small casks and bolts of cloth until it rode low in the water.
	Fornan whispered to the men below, then motioned Ariel over.
	"There's room on that boat for you. They'll be landing three or four miles north of Bilbali. You can walk the rest of the way. Watch your step when you get there - the Bilbalis don't like private vengeance. Or private enterprise." His teeth gleamed white in the darkness.
	She let herself down the ladder, hand over hand. The shadowy figures in the boat nodded to her as she crouched against the gunwale. It was so dark she could not tell if they were women or men. But they could not see her either.
	They came ashore on a rocky beach.
	"Bilbali," one of them said in a heavy Estalian accent, and pointed south and west.
	"Thank you."
	As she picked her way up the cliff side the lap and foam of waves breaking against the beach grew fainter. It felt strange to be wearing sandals again. At the top of the cliff she stopped and breathed deep. The grass was springy under her feet and the air was sweet with rock rose. She looked down at the sea, then inland towards Bilbali. With nothing except her knife and her money pouch, tucked inside her shirt out of sight, she started walking.
	The outskirts of the city were closed and dark. In the flat light of dawn, the smell of the Estalian limegrass which hung in baskets outside many of the shuttered houses cut sharp and green through the dust. Ariel took her sandals off; she did not want to be heard and stared at at this hour. With her cropped hair and sailors' clothes, she doubted she would be taken for a servant hurrying through the street on some errand.
	The streets narrowed and the smell of limegrass and dust was replaced by humanity and all its filth. After so long at sea, the stench made Ariel feel ill. She put her sandals back on and picked her way through the sewage and refuse. Here, people were awake and moving.
	The smell of rotting fish led her to the wharf where the calls of fish sellers screeched through the air like bright, exotic birds. Feeling pale and insubstantial next to the dark-haired and colourfully clothed Bilbalis, she stood in the middle of the noise and bustle, battered by their harsh and unintelligible cries.
	She began to tremble: long slow shudders as though someone had hold of her ribs and was shaking her. Her hands and feet went cold and her heart began to thump up against her ribcage so hard she felt she might fly apart. She was alone. There was nowhere to hide.
	"You're sick?"
	A middle-aged woman with a sun-wrinkled face peered at her from behind her stall.
	"I don't know. I..."
	"Well, move out of the way. You're blocking my stall."
	Ariel stood there, shaking.
	"Move. You think people will buy my fish if some sick foreigner is breathing all over them?" She came out from behind her stall. "Go on, move." Several people were looking. The woman raised her voice, enjoying the attention. "You foreigners think you can get away with anything. Well, things are changing around here." She nodded towards the waterfront where two huge ships lay moored. "And the Magrittans will be sending more soon enough. They're making the water safe from pirates like you." A murmur went round the crowd. "And then you won't be striding around here like lordlings."
	"And the cost of fish will come down!" shouted someone from the crowd.
	"And wheat," shrilled another.
	To stop them shaking, Ariel hooked one hand in her belt, laid the other on her knife.
	"I am not a pirate. I'm looking for a particular man. His name..." Her voice caught. She took a deep breath and said firmly, "his name is Capitano Jorge Martinez Castelltort."
	Someone threw a cabbage. It hit her arm and she stepped back. The crowd stepped forward. She looked around, searching for an escape route.
	From behind the crowd came the jingle of armed soldiers trotting on the double. Several of the crowd turned. Ariel ran, pushing aside bystanders, using her elbows where necessary. One of them caught her on the side of her jaw with a wild punch. She did not stop. Behind her she heard the crowd shouting to the soldiers:
	" - and she said she was here for Capitano Castelltort."
	" - drew her knife, she did."
	" - said she was going to kill him."
	" - ran off that way."
	She tried to think as she ran, but the streets grew more and more narrow and the sounds of pursuit increased behind her. She ran round a corner into an alley of top-heavy houses, and cursed. The end was a blank wall. She ran to it and leaped. She was too tired: it was too high even to get a fingertip over the top. She tried the nearest house door. Locked. And the next. The shouting was getting louder. Desperate, she ran to the next door.
	The figure in the doorway clapped one hand over her mouth and the other around her waist, pinning her arms. Two soldiers trotted into the alley.
	"Don't struggle," he whispered, "unless you want them to catch you."
	The hand over her mouth was long and calloused; she did not struggle. A cloak of cold air dropped over her shoulders and something flickered and surged past her. The two soldiers stopped mid-stride, turned, and left the alley. Refusing to think about what had just happened, she allowed herself to be pulled back into the house.
	"Lock the door."
	She turned the key, then took it out of the door and tucked it inside her shirt. Across the room, the strange man was running his hands over a blank wall. With a click, it opened. Ariel followed him through a brick-lined passage. They came out into a garden warmed by early morning sun. From somewhere inside the high walls a bird sang.
	"Where are we?"
	"The elf quarter." He pulled off his hat. Ariel looked but said nothing. Tiredly, she wondered if he expected her to be surprised. They walked into the house.
	"Wait here."
	Sunlight streamed through the open shutters, throwing leaf shadow onto the wooden floor. The room was empty but for a plain bench and table of light, sanded oak. Tired and thirsty, she sat down. What had happened out there?
	She closed her eyes. She was too tired to think.
	He was gone a long time but when he returned he brought food: bread, fruit and a flagon of water. He put them on the table. They ate together.
	"You'll have to stay here," he said.
	Ariel cut a slice from her apple. "How long for?"
	"Several weeks at least."
	She shook her head. "No."
	"You don't have a choice. If you go back out there, your life is at risk. If you stay here in my house, you do as I say."
	"There are other houses in the elf quarter."
	"In this matter, they listen to me."
	Ariel pondered that. "Tell me why. I don't even know your name."
	"You don't need to know."
	"If I'm to stay here, what harm could it do? And, if I knew what was going on I might be more reasonable."
	"My name is Senduiuiel Cortengren." It sounded like glass in his mouth. "You will find it easier to call me Send."
	"You have followed me all the way from Quenelles to Bilbali. Why?"
	"We travelled the same route, no more."
	"Why did you have to sneak me in to the elf quarter instead of doing it openly? Elven trade used to be too valuable for humans to risk squabbling over the whereabouts of one female." She looked up at him. "But that's no longer true, is it?"
	The muscles around his eyes tightened. "You think you know so much."
	"But I'm not wrong so far." She leaned forward. "I could help you. By being out there and visible, I could draw attention away from you. If I knew what questions not to ask."
	"Why?"
	"I have to know why that olla was contaminated. I think you stand a better chance of finding that out than I do. We could both benefit."
	He contemplated her with flat, alien eyes. "Eat. Then get some rest. We'll leave tonight."
	They travelled on an elven ship. Ariel was glad that she was not expected to crew: everything aboard felt alien, even the ropes were coiled the wrong way round.
	There was none of the sweating and cursing, none of the sheer brute struggle to force the ship through the waves she had witnessed aboard theRosamund or theGenevieve. Standing on deck, her cropped hair shining white in the sun, her arms and legs brown and corded with muscle, Ariel watched the way the elves sailed their ship and understood why they were the best mariners in the world: the elves knew the sea and loved it. There was no fear.
	Send, wearing neither his cap nor the clothes padded to disguise his slenderness, was unmistakably an elf. But it seemed to Ariel that he took care to avoid the other elves.
	"Will we be harbouring in the Magrittan elf quarter?" she asked him.
	"No. That option is no longer open to us." He looked out across the ocean. "For years we have sailed these waters carrying goods from the New World to Erengrad, from the southern tip of Lustria to far Cathay, and all we asked in return was our own area in each port to trade from, to govern as we saw fit." He contemplated the horizon. "In Magritta they think they no longer need us: the elf quarter had been declared Magrittan territory; their militia march through it at will and they demand a tithe of everything we trade."
	She was shocked. The Magrittans had ignored etiquette centuries old. If the elves withdrew their trade Marienburg, L'Anguille, Brionne, Magritta itself, Luccini... all the major ports of the Old World would be devastated.
	She thought back to the way the crowd in the Bilbali fish market had spoken of foreigners, the Magrittan ships in their harbour. "Why are they doing this? They can't sustain it. Surely they don't have the ships or crew to bottle up every shipping lane and every harbour."
	"That's what I need to find out."
	There was a lot he was not telling her. Aboard theRosamund he had told her he had been working on this for months. She would find out, one way or another.
	They sailed out into the Great Western Ocean in a vast loop to avoid the Estalian coastline as much as possible, and it was after mid-summer when Ariel and Send made their way ashore at night carrying enough food and water for the three-day walk east to the deep water harbour of Magritta.
	Ariel, wearing a shift and with her short hair dulled with dust, sat in the room at the back of the shop and watched Pilar work. She tried not to worry about how she looked: Send had told her foreign-born slaves were not uncommon in the city. Although it was only two hours after dawn and the sun had not yet turned the air outside to a roaring furnace that dried sweat to salt on the skin, inside it was viciously hot. Sweat rolled down Pilar's meaty forearms as she lifted a fibrous mass from a bucket and spread it over a wire frame which hung by the fire. She took a second frame down and scooped the whitish fibres off onto a solid wooden board. They rustled like hay.
	"Now you chop it, and that's carenna flour?"
	"Si. Chop then roll. First I put on my scarf." The woman tied a square of bright cloth across her nose and mouth and began to chop. After a while, she laid down the heavy knife and rubbed a little of the carenna between her thumb and forefinger. She chopped some more, then checked the consistency again. Ariel could see a fine white dust rising from the board.
	"What happens if you breathe the dust?"
	"First time, nothing. Second time, nothing. Sometimes lots of times and nothing. But if the carenna isn't soaked enough times..." She shrugged. "All kinds of things happen. I've seen people who always have to be near the flour. When they're too old to work making the pastries anymore, they shiver, they can't eat, they cry like babies until they can come back and breathe the white dust. But not me." She examined the carenna critically. It was done. She took her scarf off.
	"And now you roll it?"
	"First we drink a cup of limegrass tea." She looked Ariel up and down. "And you eat one of my pastries. You're too thin." She led her into the back room where it was even hotter. A kettle was simmering over the fires which burned under the three big iron ovens. Pilar busied herself. "How many did you say your mistress wanted? Two dozen?"
	Ariel nodded and perched on a three-legged stool. Using the thin end of a long wooden paddle, Pilar opened one of the ovens. Hot air roared out. Ariel felt fresh sweat burst out all over her body and she wondered how Pilar stood it. With the other end of the paddle, Pilar scooped out the pastries.
	"Why do you use carenna if it's so dangerous?"
	"You must be new in Magritta?" Ariel nodded. "Um. Then you answer the question yourself after you've eaten one of my pastries. Choose."
	They were golden brown, still singing with hot air. Each was fashioned into the shape of an animal. They smelled delicious. But it was carenna that had killed Isabel.
	"Choose," Pilar said again.
	Ariel reached for a delicate golden swallowtail.
	"Eat," Pilar encouraged.
	Ariel bit into it. The pastry crumbled and clung to her tongue like light mead. Pilar had used only a little fruit in each.
	Pilar laughed at the look on her face. "So now you know why. Enjoy it while you can. I make the best carenna pastries in Magritta, and the Magrittans make the best pastries in Estalia. I doubt you'll ever afford to buy one." She handed her a cup of tea. "Unless you buy one of those foul cakes the government workers make on the side after they finish grinding carenna for the navy."
	Ariel sipped at her tea, careful to keep her expression neutral. "Carenna for the navy?"
	Pilar scowled. "They're fools, all of them. Listen to me girl, if some navy man comes up to you and offers to buy your freedom if you'll come and work for the government grinding carenna, say no."
	"Is the work so bad it's worth refusing my freedom to avoid?"
	"Worse. Whoever leaches their carenna does a sloppy job. If it weren't such a crazy idea, I'd say it was deliberate. There's no one worker there who could stay away from the white dust now. And," she looked bitter, "more than one person has gone down with twist disease."
	Ariel put her cup down carefully. It did not rattle. "Tell me about twist disease." Her voice was cool, calm.
	"I'll show you. Come."
	Everything seemed very quiet and far away. She got to her feet and put one foot in front of the other. She felt light enough to float as she followed Pilar up steps.
	Pilar pushed open a door. The room was dark and cool after the hot iron smell of the ovens.
	A man sat propped in a chair. His hands were curled up against his chest, almost tucked under his armpits, his feet were twisted inwards. He was dribbling.
	"Nuh."
	Ariel could not move.
	At dusk, Ariel met Send on the eastern cliff. He was carrying a lantern. She knew now why Isabel had died.
	"Did you know," she said conversationally, "that if carenna isn't washed properly it's addictive? In small quantities. If you put bad carenna in olla, then the olla becomes addictive. Start off selling it more cheaply than uncontaminated olla, which isn't addictive, and almost all olla users will buy the contaminated kind: they don't know it's dangerous." She stared out across the darkening sea. "Then when the price starts to climb, they have to keep buying whether they like it or not. The contaminators get very rich, theMagrittans get very rich. The only thing they didn't think of, Send" - the muscles in her neck were hard as pebbles but her voice was quiet - "the only thing they didn't think of was that some people in this world are greedy." She threw a clump of grass down towards the sea. A breeze caught it, pulling it away from the rock. It hit the water and floated. "Most of their customers will die before they spend enough money to make it worthwhile for the Magrittans. They made a mistake."
	"Yes. In some ways."
	Ariel stared at him. He knew. He had known all along.
	"I doubt revenue was the only purpose," he continued. "Escribano likes to kill people, especially people who attend rituals dedicated to Slaanesh. Hence the olla. Khorne has... special enmity for Slaanesh."
	Ariel heard the odd combination of bitterness and respect in his voice. She was too tired to care. She felt empty. "I wonder if he even knows she's dead," she murmured.
	"I doubt it." He knelt on the grass and took tinder and flint from his pouch. He opened his lantern.
	At that moment, Ariel hated him. "Do you care about anything?"
	"I care about my life. Which may be threatened if I don't get this lantern lit. The Magrittan militia are looking for me. We have to leave."
	"Without finding out your important information?"
	"But I did." He struck the flint, tried again. "They've laid the keels for thirty new ships. Thirty. And they floated twelve others less than a month ago. That's why they know I'm here: they saw me in the boatyards."
	Ariel did not listen. She found the path down the cliff and scrambled along it.
	The path ended in the sea: the tide was coming in. She sat and listened to the waves slapping up against the rock. She knew how Bel had died and why; there was nothing more for her to do. But Bel was still dead and she was... angry. Angry at Send, angry at herself for having begun to trust him, angry at the Magrittans.
	And angry with Bel.
	She pulled air, cool and salt, through her teeth. Bel had died and left her alone. They had always laughed in the face of the future - marriage, motherhood, loss of freedom - secure in the knowledge that each would have the other to depend on, that they would be together. And now Bel had deserted her.
	"How can I face all that on my own?" she whispered to the sea. "Why did you leave me? Why?" She punched the rock. "Why why why?"
	She sucked the blood from her knuckles and spat the metallic taste into the sea. Where did she go from here? Not Quenelles. More blood dripped onto the dust by her feet. She ignored it. She felt old and tired. She would go wherever Send was going, then buy passage back to Brionne. There was always the Rosamund.
	A light winked out from the top of the cliff. Send had lit his signal lantern. What ship would it be this time? She started back up the path.
	Through her feet she felt the rhythmic step of many people. The militia. She flattened herself against the rock. Send was still holding his lantern out to sea. He had not seen them; they could be on him before he had time to do whatever it was he had done to those soldiers in Bilbali.
	If she called out they would catch her too. She looked up the rock face. If she climbed that instead of using the path, she might not be seen. She felt along the rock until she found a crevice; she pushed her hand in, made a fist and hauled herself up, scrabbled until she found a foothold. With her right fist still anchoring her to the rock, she felt above and to her left. She found another handhold almost immediately. If she imagined she was pulling herself up the mainmast of the Rosamund it would not be too hard.
	The cliff was not high. She hauled herself up onto the grassy clifftop and lay for a moment on her stomach, listening and watching. Send was still signalling; the militia were creeping closer. He was an easy target for a bow; they must want him alive. From the water, a light winked back. It was what she had been waiting for.
	She hit him squarely from behind, wrapping one arm around his arms and a hand over his nose and mouth. Sweeping his legs out from under him, she kicked them both over the cliff and into the water. It was cold and her money pouch was heavy. Although he struggled, she kept her hand clamped over his face until they surfaced. Her knuckles stung.
	"Listen!" she hissed.
	Shouts of frustration echoed over the water and a torch flickered. Send nodded his understanding, and Ariel let go. She held her finger to her lips and pointed out to sea in the direction of the light that had blinked earlier. He nodded again: with the torchlight dazzling the militia, they would be able to escape if they moved quickly and quietly. They began to swim.
	After half a mile, Ariel judged it safe enough to call out. "Hoy!"
	No reply. They swam some more. She thought she saw a smudge of deeper darkness ahead. It could be a ship.
	"Hoy!" Water slapped into her mouth and she coughed. She was getting tired. Briefly, she considered cutting loose her pouch. Only if she had to. They trod water for a while.
	Send called. "Hoy theAramam!"
	Ariel heard the distinctive rolling thump of a ladder dropping down the side of a ship. A light flared.
	"Aramam ?"
	"Who else?" The voice was young, laughing. "If you hurry, you'll be in time for dinner. Who is your companion?"
	"We'll make the introductions on board, Djellah."
	They reached the ladder. Ariel clung to it, too tired to pull herself up immediately.
	"Can you manage?" the voice called.
	"Yes," Send said, so Ariel did, climbing dripping and exhausted onto the deck of the Arabian dhow.
	"Thrice welcome." The twelve-year-old bowed, then grinned. "You look half drowned."
	"Thank you," said Ariel.
	Send hauled himself aboard. "Where's your father? The Magrittans know I'm here. We need to move quickly."
	A figure stepped from the shadow and bowed formally. "Please excuse my sister. All is in hand." She gestured to their growing wake.
	"Ariel, this is Cendenai."
	Cendenai was her own height, slim and dark. Her hair was as short as Ariel's.
	"If you wish, you may exchange your clothes for dry garments before eating. Please follow me." She led them to a cabin door. "Inside you will find a selection of robes. Please join us in the mid cabin for dinner when you are rested." She withdrew.
	The cabin was big and the walls tapestried. Brightly coloured robes hung from a rail in one corner. Ariel fingered one. The material was cool and sleek; it smelled spicy, unfamiliar. She let it drop, sat down on a plain wooden stool.
	"Where are we going?"
	Send stood with his back to her, his hands clasped stiffly behind him. "We're aboard theRose of Aramam," he said tightly, "the private pleasure vessel and sometime trader of an Araby merchant called Hamqa. He has other titles. We are sailing for his port of Meknes."
	"What's wrong?"
	He turned round. "I owe you my life."
	"I needed you to get me away from Magritta," she said coolly. "There was no altruism involved." She watched him absorb that. "Now, why are we heading for Meknes?"
	Young Djellah stood up from behind the ottoman. "But we're not!" Ariel looked at her, startled.
	Send reached to lay a hand on the girl's shoulder. "We're not sailing for Meknes?"
	Djellah said nothing.
	"Let her go, Send, you're frightening her." He moved away as she got up from her stool. She took the girl's hand. "Where are we going, Djellah? Do you know?"
	Djellah shook her head. "They never tell me anything. But I heard my father talking about it to his steward when they thought I was on deck."
	"What did he say?"
	Her smooth, olive brow wrinkled. "He said 'We haven't time to make it to Meknes now.' And then something about sending messages to someone about a change of plan."
	"When was this?"
	"Days and days ago. Weeks."
	Send cursed and wrenched open the door, slammed it behind him. Djellah looked up at Ariel.
	"You should get changed, you're still all wet." Ariel could not argue with that. Djellah pulled a blue robe off its hook. "This one. It goes with your eyes. I'll show you how to wear it. It's Cendenai's favourite, but she won't mind."
	So this was Cendenai's cabin.
	The mid cabin was even larger. Silver and glassware on a table set for six glittered in the light of oil lamps. They all looked up as she entered: Cendenai, and Send, and three other men. Send was no longer angry. A large chart lay over the settings. The lamps made it very hot.
	"Ah." One of the men stood. He was stocky but not fat, with a wide pink mouth. Hamqa, she guessed. "Welcome to my humble vessel." He smiled and gestured for her to sit. "We are in the middle of explaining to your companion why we are not sailing to Meknes to collect the rest of the fleet."
	Ariel sat opposite Cendenai, who smiled slightly.
	"Father."
	"My sweet?"
	"Our guest might feel easier if she knew everyone."
	"Ah. Introductions, then. Mademoiselle de Courtivron, allow me to introduce myself and my companions. My beloved daughter, Cendenai, captain of theAramam." He pointed down the table to his left. "Next to her, Mousaou Salah, captain of my fleet. On my right is Adiffrah el Deheb, second steward."
	Cendenai poured Ariel a glass of water and handed it to her. "The first steward stays at home to manage the affairs of my father who is prevented by modesty from introducing himself. Allow me: my father, Hamqa the Divine, Sultan of Aiir, Suzerain of Sadiz and Regal of all Kust."
	Hamqa smiled complacently. "She looks well in your robe, daughter."
	Cendenai tensed; it was slight but Ariel noticed. She cleared her throat, wondered what the correct form of address was.
	"Perhaps, sir, you would grant me the favour of continuing your discussion regarding the course of this ship."
	In answer, he gestured at his daughter.
	"His Exalted Magnificence," Cendenai said - Ariel smiled her thanks - "anticipated the late arrival of Senduiuiel Cortengren and, fearing the news he would carry, determined to bring forward by a few weeks the plans laid many months ago. Thus, instead of sailing now for Meknes in order to meet with our fleet and send messages both north and west to the fleets of elven and other vessels, we sail south to meet these fleets."
	Send pulled the chart round to face them, pointed to the bow shape of the south sea. Ariel was reminded of the dirt under Marya's fingernail. It all seemed so long ago.
	"Here to the west, between the Horn of Araby and the southern tip of Estalia, the sea flows into the Great Western Ocean. That should now be blocked off by ships from Marienburg, Lustria and even from Brionne or Bordelaux. They will be sailing west to meet us and the fleet out of Meknes."
	"What about the Magrittan ships in Bilbali?"
	"They should already have been dealt with."
	"I see."
	The conversation continued but Ariel sat apart from it. There were strange tensions in the cabin, things she was not being told. She felt alien and unwelcome, Cendenai must have sensed it: she caught Ariel's attention and looked pointedly at the door, raising her eyebrows. Ariel nodded.
	"Father, our guest is tired. If you will excuse us, I will take her to eat in my cabin where she can rest."
	They met Djellah on the way. "Were they mad that I told?"
	Cendenai appeared to consider that seriously. "Not very cross. But you would be wise not to do it again. And now, little one" - Djellah made a face - "make amends by telling Marrokh that we wish to eat in my cabin."
	"Can I eat with you?"
	"Not today. We have things to discuss." Djellah opened her mouth to protest. "Things arising from your indiscretion." Djellah went to find the cook.
	Without the lamps, Cendenai's cabin was dark and cool. The food arrived on their heels: an enormous tray of spiced vegetables, fish in delicate rolls, fluffed rice and flat bread. Cendenai lit a thick yellow candle which she covered with a multi-faceted glass. The walls glowed with refracted colour that drifted with the candle flame.
	"You have questions," Cendenai said, heaping a platter with rice and vegetables. She handed it to Ariel, began loading a second for herself.
	"Several. First," she hesitated, "why did your father's remark about the robe I'm wearing make you so angry?"
	Cendenai's skin was dark and the room not well lit but Ariel thought she blushed.
	"It has been a custom amongst the male line of the suzerains of Sadiz that the woman from their harem who last had sexual congress with the husband wears an item of the husband's clothing to show her status as favourite. My father's remark is his way of reminding me I'm a woman and should stick to... women's ways."
	Ariel thought about that for a while, then it was her turn to blush. "You captain his flagship," she pointed out.
	"Only for as long as he allows it. He can take it away from me any time. He likes to remind me of that."
	"Will he?"
	"No. I'm one of the best he has" - Ariel could imagine that - "and in his way, he is proud of me."
	They ate in silence for a while. Ariel thought about her own future as the unmarried daughter of Bretonnian merchant aristocracy. Her money pouch lay heavy against her skin underneath her robe. Cendenai's robe.
	Djellah burst in. "Send and Mousaou Salah are shouting at each other!"
	"How many times have I told you not to run in here without knocking?" Ariel recognized Cendenai's response as automatic. She was reminded of Bel. "And don't steal food from a guest's plate." Djellah stuffed a piece of fish in her mouth and grinned at Ariel, who smiled back. "What are they arguing about this time?"
	"Something to do with magic and corn."
	Khorne. Ariel felt her nostrils flare. She touched her knife.
	"… and they're not really shouting. But Send's angry, you can tell. I think Mousaou Salah's scared of him," she finished doubtfully.
	Ariel nodded. She remembered Send's soft voice when she had caught him with her knife. Angry, the elf would be terrifying.
	Djellah recovered her exuberance. She cocked her head, looked Ariel up and down. "I said it would suit you," she said slyly and disappeared through the door.
	"Do you have sisters?" Cendenai said as she closed and bolted the door.
	Ariel nodded, unsure of her voice. "She was called Isabel."
	And there, for the first time, sitting in the rich colours of the candlelight and wearing another woman's clothes, Ariel was able to talk about Bel.
	Behind theRose of Aramam the setting sun stained tattered cloud bloody. The evening breeze was cool and strong, canvas bellied. Hamqa and Djellah were safe below; on the foredeck, Cendenai talked quietly to the two women loading the arbalest with arrows. Ariel stood aft, watching the fleet. Here and there among the graceful elven ships and the lateen-rigged Arabians, she was able to pick out the sails of an Empire or Bretonnian craft. She wondered if theRosamund was among them. In the middle of the fleet floated fourteen ships crewed by cloth dummies and a handful of sailors. Fireships, Cendenai had told her.
	They hung five miles outside the Magrittan harbour. The Magrittans were nowhere to be seen.
	Mousaou Salah raised his eye-glass and scanned the water. "What are they up to?"
	"Escribano is not... predictable," Send said. Ariel noticed that he was wearing multi-coloured studs in his ears. It was the first time she had seen him wear ornament of any kind.
	"I don't want to hear any more talk of mysterious Powers and magic," Salah murmured, still scanning. "This is plain naval warfare."
	Send said nothing. Ariel remembered his talk of Khorne and Slaanesh, the soldiers in Bilbali.
	"Sweet god!" Salah jerked the glass from his eye, then lifted it again. "I don't believe it." He passed the glass to Send. "They're still in the harbour. The whole fleet. Like sitting ducks." He offered the glass to Send. "Has Escribano gone mad?"
	"No," Send said without bothering to look through the glass. "He wants something other than 'plain naval warfare'."
	To Ariel, it seemed that something in him tightened, like a rope going taut under the strain of a sail in a full wind. Cendenai noticed the disturbance. She came over.
	"It's as you feared?" she asked. Send nodded.
	Mousaou Salah looked from one to the other. "I can do nothing?"
	"Do as you see fit," Send said. "I'm no strategist. But the real battle will not be won with ships." He walked back a few paces, looked directly at Ariel. "Please ensure that no one approaches me until this is all over." He sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes.
	"I can't believe that what we do isn't important," Salah said to Cendenai. He reached a decision. "Captain, I want you to prepare your crew for an assault on the harbour. And send me someone who knows mirror code."
	Messages flashed to and fro and on every deck, people scurried about like ants whose nest has been poked by a stick. Ariel seemed to be the only one doing nothing. She found a bucket and drew seawater. At least she could damp everything down.
	Meanwhile, the fleet altered its configuration: those possessing balisters and mangonels came to the fore; those like theAramam, with only arbalests, were to stay behind the others and discharge their bundles of arrows from behind the protective hail of stones and burning naphtha offered by the others. The fire ships lay behind them all, hidden. The fleet put on more sail.
	Ariel had nothing to do now but watch. The massive cliffs of the Magrittan harbour loomed and she questioned the wisdom of approaching so closely: surely the Magrittans would have those high overhangs fortified. But the cliffs appeared deserted. At the wheel, Cendenai looked calm. Send still sat with his eyes closed, breathing deeply. Ariel began to sweat.
	The front ships lay within the jaws of the cliffs and still the Magrittans made no move. Ariel could see the anchor chains of one vessel glinting in the last of the red sun. Others had no sail set at all. Instead of being reassured, fear dried her tongue and swallowed the air in her lungs. Her hands hurt: she was gripping the rope handle of the bucket like a life line. She bent and put it on the deck, then took position near Send.
	Mousaou Salah called something, but her hearing was muffled by fear. A mirror winked. All across the fleet tiny points of light bloomed as torches were lit. For the naphtha. They continued forward.
	In the harbour, there was frenzied activity aboard some ships. Nothing aboard others. Mousaou Salah grinned, a fierce, tight grin.
	"Some of them at least are beginning to realize that there'll be more to this engagement than the muttering of spells."
	"They seem confused," Cendenai observed. The ships which had dropped anchor and set sail were moving off in different directions.
	Salah lifted his glass and watched for a long moment. "Some of them have decided that Escribano and his Power friend might need some more, ah, material help and are following orders of their own. Let's add to their confusion. How fast is this ship?"
	"One of the fastest."
	"And the other arbalest carriers?"
	"Most are the faster, lighter vessels."
	"Good. How do you fancy risking a pass alongside one of those?" He pointed at one of the vessels raising anchor.
	"What does it carry?"
	Salah raised his glass again. "Naphtha. But I doubt it's been heated ready, and if we pass at right angles and at sufficient speed their chances are small."
	Cendenai watched the vessel creeping away from the harbour under half sail. "It should be safe." She turned the wheel several degrees to port, then called her second mate to take it. Standing amidships, she began calling out orders.
	Salah conferred with the signaller. The mirror winked again. Several ships nosed ahead of the rest. Ariel loosened her knife in its sheath and hoped Cendenai would move to a more sheltered position before they came within range of the Magrittan.
	Everything came into sharp focus for Ariel. Ahead of her, the hardwood mast glowed in the deep red polish of the sun; the air was clean and sharp with land-meets-sea smell, over that lay the heavy, oily naphtha; she could feel the grain of the wood beneath her feet. Her blood beat in her ears. She could die out here.
	Like a bird of prey, they stooped toward their victim. Cendenai chopped her hand down, and the arbalest rattled its load of death up at the sky. She barked a command at the steersman, and theAramam heeled over in a vicious turn. Ariel heard the water hissing against their hull.
	The Magrittan had her naphtha lit and two figures on deck were manoeuvring the balister into position. One of them dropped to the deck with an arrow in his thigh.
	The women by the arbalest had two more bundles of arrows in place. Cendenai chopped again. In reply, the Magrittan loosed her balister.
	A ball of black and flame arced from their deck. Ariel watched it. It was going to overshoot. Cendenai shouted for the steersman to pull theAramam into an even tighter curve, out of the Magrittan's line of sight. Another ball of fire streaked into the air, flame streaming behind it like a comet's tail as it fell towards them out of the sky. They almost made it; the comet's tail caught the taffrail behind Send. Ariel threw one bucket of water onto the planking around him and ran with the other to the burning taffrail. The water hit the naphtha with a cracking, steaming hiss and the rail bubbled. The fire seemed out but Ariel drew another bucket of water to be sure and dumped it over the mess. The residue would have to be scraped off.
	Send sat with his eyes closed, water pooling by his feet. He did not move.
	TheAramam was well out of range now and the Magrittan lay dead in the water, over half her crew injured or killed by their rain of arrows. The crew of theAramam laughed and clapped each other on the back. Ariel stood there, the bucket still in her hand. She was glad she was not dead. Cendenai smiled up at her, then shrugged and looked around theAramam.Ariel understood: the ship was Cendenai's responsibility; she could not come to Ariel yet.
	"We only lost one," Salah crowed, pointing to where orange flame licked and sucked at a lateen-rigged vessel to starboard. "Pull back. We'll blockade the rest and send the fireships in."
	The skeleton crews on the fireships set full sail and tied the wheels in position. They opened stopcocks on barrels of oil in the hold and doused the decks with it. Then they dived off and swam to the nearest ships where they were hauled aboard, leaving the floating bombs to their crews of stuffed dummies. One passed so close that Ariel could see the smile a sailor had painted on a white face. Elven archers lit the cloth-wrapped tips of their arrows and waited for the signal.
	One of the Magrittans hurled a huge stone from its mangonel in a desperate attempt to sink the deserted ship coming directly toward it. Salah smiled. They had left it too late. He murmured to his signaller and the mirror caught the last bit of light from the sun. A triple handful of arrows soared towards the fireships. The first ship lit with a softwhump.
	Ariel turned her face away from the heat and the rattle of arrows as they rained onto the escaping vessels. She no longer cared that the man who sold the olla which had killed Bel was somewhere on one of those ships that roared and crackled and fell into the water. She wished it was all over. A buzzing in her ears muffled the shrieks of sailors burning to death.
	The buzzing became more insistent. She shook her head to clear it. It got louder, like bees swarming somewhere nearby.
	Send stood up. "Stop," he said. The buzzing faltered then resumed. He looked at Ariel. "Tell Cendenai to stop."
	TheAramam hove to. Send turned to face the harbour over the starboard rail. The ship fires were dying but the red glow over Magritta grew. TheRose of Aramam lay alone, unprotected. The buzzing grew to an angry hum. Djellah came up on deck, her hands to her ears. Hamqa followed.
	"In the name of the gods, Senduiuiel," he cried running across the deck to where the elf stood as if he had not heard, "stop this!"
	Ariel stepped in front of him. "Your Magnificence."
	"Get out of my way."
	"He requested that none approach him until it was all over."
	He tried to push past but she barred his way. "Out of my way, woman."
	"Your Exalted Magnificence, I cannot."
	He pulled his dagger free from its jewelled sheath. "I haven't time to argue."
	"Nor I." She slid her own knife free. For a moment she thought he would attack her, then he threw his knife to the deck.
	"I'll have you whipped when this is over."
	Ariel ignored him and sheathed her knife. She did not know what else to do. Cendenai, holding Djellah who had her face buried against her older sister's chest, caught Ariel's eye and nodded. She had done the right thing.
	Send raised his arms and breathed out, slow and strong. The abrupt silence was shocking. He brought his hands together before him and cupped them. The air around him began to shimmer like a heat haze; Ariel saw it flicker with rainbow colours. The buzzing was replaced by a gentle ringing. The air changed: colour poured onto Send's hands. It seemed to Ariel that he hesitated a fraction, then accepted streamers of mauve and lilac, pink and violet, turning the rest away.
	Send raised hands full of amethyst fire and threw his magic free. It skimmed the waves, then soared. The sunset turned lavender. Over Magritta, the red glow deepened to hot ruby. A wind slammed out from the mouth of the harbour and tore over their ships like crazy laughter. Ariel shivered, even though she knew she was not its target. The edges of the sunset turned back to red.
	Send shuddered. Sweat ran from his chin and down his neck. He closed his eyes and began to chant something in Elvish. The sunset shone lavender again, crept across the sky toward Magritta.
	In the harbour the water frothed and jumped as though someone in a rage beat at it with a paddle. Ariel thought she could make out a huge figure that reached down and picked up the Magrittan ships like toys, crushing them, dropping the pieces back into the water. It slashed at the remains in a frenzy, then turned its attention outward, and howled.
	Send fell to his knees. The surge passed over him, over the Aramam.
	"Help me up."
	Ariel was afraid to touch him. Send gave her a weary, bitter smile. She felt ashamed, but her fear outweighed her shame. He pulled himself to his feet.
	"It's done. Look."
	Above them, the amethyst deepened and solidified, took on substance. It laughed, and Ariel was reminded of the statue in the clearing on the night of Bel's death. The two figures filled the sky.
	"The Greater Daemons of Slaanesh and Khorne will finish this fight without us."
	Ariel had travelled with this sorcerous elf, shared food with him. She backed away.
	Overhead, the colours clashed. The sea heaved; an enormous wave rolled outward.
	Cendenai had seen the danger. TheAramam came about to face the wave head on. It slid under her bow, gentle as a hand under a lover's back. Then dropped them. For one heart-stopping moment as they plunged nose down, Ariel thought they would fall until they reached the sea bed, but the bow strained up, up and theAramam righted herself. The wave raced away southwest.
	"It might catch the Horn of Araby," Cendenai remarked. She looked over at Mousaou Salah who was pale with shock, then at her father, and beckoned the signaller. "I'm ordering the fleet away."
	They would have to use flags this time, Ariel thought irrelevantly. She craned her neck to look at the sky. The two figures were high above them and moving higher. Red flashed, then mauve.
	Djellah ran over, but even she stopped several paces from Ariel and Send. "Who'll win?"
	"Neither," Send said. He was pale, and still shaking slightly. "Neither is stronger than the other. They rely on us mortals to fight most of their battles."
	"Why did he" - she pointed upwards - "destroy his own ships?"
	"To Rhug'guari'ihlulan, the Bloodthirster of Khorne, it doesn't matter who dies. Blood and death are like... food." His voice was harsh with fatigue and the knowledge that those who might have counted themselves friends now feared him as much as, more than, they feared the Magrittans.
	Djellah looked back to the Magrittan harbour where nothing floated but a few scraps of wood and pieces of sail. "Not a good ally."
	Ariel spread honey on her breakfast bread, and took a bite. She was wearing Cendenai's blue robe. Cendenai poured spiced fruit tea for them both.
	Djellah burst in. "He's leaving." 
	Ariel knew she meant Send. "He's not waiting until we reach Meknes?"
	"No. He's taking a boat and just... going. Can I have a piece of bread?"
	"Um? Surely." She handed her a piece. "I wish he'd come to say goodbye." Then she wondered if that was true.
	"But he did," Send said from the doorway. "May I join you?"
	Cendenai leaped out of her chair and Ariel reached for the knife she no longer wore at her hip. Send watched. Ariel took a deep breath, forced herself to be calm. Cendenai reseated herself.
	He was not wearing his multi-coloured studs, and the lines by his mouth were deep. His eyes were dark-shadowed.
	"I'm sorry," Ariel said, and hoped he understood.
	"I think," he said slowly, "that there are times when I don't like being a wizard." He looked at them steadily.
	Ariel wondered if he was thinking of the fact that now he had publicly summoned a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh he was outcast, shunned by elven society. He would never be able to sit at breakfast like this, with family and friends.
	"Why did you do it?"
	Send must have heard the question behind her question. "The way of Chaos is like a snowball rolling down a mountainside. After a while, what began as a piece of fun started in boredom has become a juggernaut too huge to stop. It rolls until it breaks up against rocks, or smashes the village below." He touched one long finger to his breastbone. "Now my juggernaut is too great to stop. I try only to steer it to where it may do the least harm, and perhaps some good."
	Ariel glanced at Cendenai.
	"I came here," he said, "to say goodbye, and to tell you... I'm sorry your sister died."
	Ariel bowed her head, then lifted it again. "What will you do?"
	"Travel."
	For a moment, Ariel caught a glimpse of that alienness she had first noticed aboard theRosamund. Suddenly she understood what his life must be like, moving from one place to another, pitting his strength against Chaos. One day, his strength would falter. She looked at Cendenai again, then back to him.
	"We intend to travel too." She wanted to share something of her life, if only her plans, with him. "Cendenai and I intend to start a trading line, independent of our families."
	He smiled. It was the first time they had seem him smile. "River and coastal trading?"
	Cendenai shook her head. "Cathay, the Southlands and the New World."
	"I wish you both much luck." He stood and bowed. "My boat will be ready. It has been an honour meeting you."
	After he had gone, they were quiet for a while.
	"You didn't mention Helseher," Ariel said. Djellah was eying the bread. She gave her a piece.
	"No. We're not sure he'll agree."
	"He will. He and Marya are hungry for the ocean again."
	And he knows that two ships offer more security in a harsh world, Ariel thought to herself. She remembered she and Bel swearing always to take the other's side, no matter what. She looked over her cup at Cendenai. Nothing seemed so bad when there were two of you.
	"Can I come too?"
	"When you're older, Djellah, when you're older."