“Kill you!” she snarled. “Kill you for what you did to him!”

“Holy crap!” Thomas yelled.

“Ack!” I agreed.

Most of those deadly strands of her hair were thrust into the stone reef below, holding her down, but a few that were free whipped wildly at Thomas. He ducked aside with a yell, barely managing to hold on to the line.

It felt like she was going to pull my legs off at the ankles. I screamed and kicked at her as best I could, but my legs were so numb that I could barely move them, much less shake her off. Thomas had all that he could do to simply hold on to the line and prevent those bladed strands from severing it.

“Karrin!” he screamed.

Murphy swung her legs up over the railing of the ship, still attached to it by the line fastened to her harness. Then she swung herself out into empty air above the water until she hung alongside me.

Then she aimed the P-90 down at Deirdre and flicked the selector to full automatic.

But before she could pull the trigger, Deirdre hissed, and a flickering blade swept up and struck Murphy across the face. She screamed and recoiled as the blade continued, an S-shaped cut that missed Murphy’s throat by a finger’s breadth and sliced through the strap that held the P-90 on her body. The weapon tumbled into the water.

“Bitch!” Murphy snarled, one side of her face a sheet of blood. She tried to reach for her pistol—in its shoulder holster, beneath her harness, beneath her coat. It might as well have been on the surface of the moon.

“Murph!” I said. I twisted my shoulders and thrust the end of Fidelacchius to within reach of her hand.

Murphy’s fingers closed on the hilt of the holy blade.

She drew it maybe an inch from the scabbard.

White light blinded me. Blinded Deirdre. Blinded Murphy. Blinded Thomas. Blinded everyone.

“No!” Deirdre screamed, utter despair and terror in her voice. “No, no, no!”

The pressure on my ankles vanished, and I heard the Denarian splash into the water.

Murphy released the hilt of the sword. The light died. It took maybe half a minute before I could see anything else. Thomas recovered faster, of course, and by that time he had us both back onto the deck of the Water Beetle. There was no evidence of Deirdre anywhere, and the two boatloads of soldier boys were hightailing it away as fast as they could go.

Murphy, bleeding from a cut running parallel to her right eyebrow all the way into her hairline, was staring in shock at me and at the sword. “What the fuck was that?”

I slipped the sword off my shoulder. I felt really tired. I hurt everywhere. “Offhand,” I mumbled, “I’d say it was a job offer.”

“We’ve got to move before we get carried onto the reef,” Thomas muttered. He hurried off, pirate style. He looked good doing it. Of course. He doesn’t even moisturize.