Kira's temper went off again, giving her strength she hadn't imagined she still had. "Don't you want to live? Get working! I want two lines, one for each pump. Work it as hard as you can for the count of twenty, then let the next in line take over and go to the end of the line. Move it!"

They jumped in response to her words, doing exactly as she said.

"I told you so," Jason gasped as he stood next to her, holding on to a fitting as the ship lurched wildly.

She had no idea what he was talking about and no time or energy to pursue it. Kira kept the crew going, alternately encouraging, berating, and threatening them, finding herself using a lot of the words she had heard the sailors use, words that she would get in a whole lot of trouble for if she was ever foolish enough to use them in the hearing of her parents.

The pumps were all of the agony she had expected. When it was her turn she forced the pump handle through twenty up and down yanks, then reeled back so the next sailor could take over, staggering to the end of the line, her arms feeling like useless weights as the motion of the ship threw her against objects to either side. The water inside the ship sloshed below them and more came trickling down from above or along the planks of the hull. But they kept pumping, trying by hand to overcome the efforts of the sea to sink the ship by slow measures if it couldn't destroy it quickly with the fury of wind and wave.

This, surely, was the eternal punishment some people spoke of, Kira thought. The darkness would never end, the world would never stop pitching and heeling, and the work would go on and on while her muscles burned in the cold, wet place of her torment. But she kept going, and if anyone faltered she got them going again. Because that was what needed to be done, and she would do it if no one else could.

* * *

The endless dark night finally gave way to a dreary day. Kira sat, more exhausted than she ever would've believed possible, her back to the gunwale, looking up at the gray clouds scudding by low overhead. The wind was chill on her soaking-wet clothing, but she was only vaguely aware of it. Her body hurt with one big, dull ache and her hands felt numb and swollen. The sea salt that coated almost everything stung the rips and cuts in her hands. Occasionally a rent would appear in the clouds, showing blue sky beyond like a promise of deliverance. The wind, still strong but no longer dangerous, propelled The Son of Taris through seas which had subsided to merely rolling and choppy. Whitecaps sprinkled the water like an endless field of dark horses with bright manes and tails.