A pained, garbled sound came from the guard captain, who was also clinging to the mast with his good arm. Ubel kept his face averted. The captain had been splashed in the face with liquid fire. The area around his right eye had been spared, but that normal eye, dulled with shock and exhaustion, made the rest of the ruined face look more obscene.

He didn’t know how long he’d been in the water when he saw the line of ships slowly sailing through the debris, looking for survivors. He didn’t know how long he watched them before he noticed all the seals swimming ahead of the ships, before he heard their odd barks that guided the ships’ crews toward the living.

He waited. When a sleek brown head rose from the water and the creature stared at him, he shuddered. Not seals. Not here. Selkies. An animal body with a man’s brain.

Seconds passed, stretched, turned into agonizing years before the selkie made that odd barking sound. Then it sank beneath the water.

Finally a ship approached. Beyond throwing out two loops of canvas attached to ropes, the crew offered no help. Since the ship continued moving past him, his choices were to abandon the mast and swim as best as he could to reach the canvas loop or to remain in the sea until his strength gave out.

He splashed and floundered, came close to sinking when his foot almost tangled in one of the lines from the sails, but he managed to reach the canvas loop and slip his arms through it. They pulled him toward the ship, used the rope to steady him as he climbed the rope netting attached to the side of the ship. He glanced back once. There was no one clinging to the mast now, and the other canvas loop being hauled up was empty.

He barely had time to collapse on the deck when he was lifted to his feet and dragged to the stern. In the bow, people were wrapped in blankets. Some were sipping from mugs. Others were having wounds tended. He caught no more than a glimpse of them before he was shoved to his knees, and his hands were tightly bound to the stern railing. The first mate was there, but not his ship’s captain. A few guards, a few sailors. Almost all of them were wounded in one way or another.

“Water,” Ubel croaked. “We need water.”

The man with a face that wasn’t human just stared at him.

Curse these Fae, Ubel thought. “We need water. The wounded need tending.”

“When we reach the harbor, we’ll turn you over to the barons who rule that part of the coast. If they want to give you water and tend the wounded, that’s their choice.” The Fae Lord turned away.

“Have you no mercy?” Ubel cried.