As soon as they were out of earshot, the General told the Captain and the Commander, “Be wary of that man.” Gusts stung his cheeks, then scurried away. “He is Father Skurn, a priest of the Great God Rile. He claims that he has come merely to watch and serve, but he has crimes on his conscience. If he has a conscience. Put him to work like any other servant. Let him preach if he finds anyone to hear him. But do not let him anywhere near the guns, the gunpowder, or the fuses. Do not. I allowed him to come because I want to learn the truth about him.”

Flisk flinched at these orders as if they were one worry too many. But Forguile met them with a reckless grin. Instead of answering Klamath, he summoned some of the nearby riflemen. To them, he repeated the General’s instructions. Sure that he would be obeyed, he sounded both grim and cheerful.

That was enough for Klamath. He put the priest out of his mind.

“Now,” he said more calmly. “Show me the fortifications. Tell me your concerns. We have decisions to make.”

Forguile grinned again. Flisk straightened his back. Together, they took General Klamath up the slope to the crest of the hill, the rim of the cliff, and the steep road down to the jumble of boulders that blocked the surging seas.

Here the winds were ferocious. They tore against each other and rebounded as if they mirrored the waves below them, lashing at Klamath’s eyes until he could barely see. Out there, he knew, beyond the reach of the long guns, stood the reef which had once sealed the whole bay. Now it had a gap among its teeth, a breach made by sorcery. The gap was only wide enough to admit one of the enemy’s black ships at a time, but it proved that those ships had the power to enter the bay.

The reef was not the only obstacle that the enemy would have to clear away. Within the reef’s wide curve, the whole floor of the bay was thick with massive boulders, mounds of stone, granite fangs. They ripped apart every heave and sigh of the sea’s hunger for the strand, sent the waters piling against each other to form treacherous cross-currents, eddies, vicious whirlpools. The enemy would not be able to approach the shore until the whole bay had been made safe for ships.

When he had cleared his sight, Klamath looked downward.

In a distant age, some strange convulsion had broken open the former cliff-face. It was no longer sheer. Instead, it sloped away in five levels like nature’s ramparts against the sea. During the past decade, those levels had been worked into walled terraces extending on both sides of the road. Then emplacements for Queen Estie’s cannon had been set into the terraces. Only the road made them accessible from above or below.