Stab and swat, fade and recover. Each waking moment was slower to mature than the last. The haze of pain and exhaustion closed over him, like a drowning man sinking ever deeper beneath the breathing world’s shimmering surface. Jean-Claude could not say whether he’d dangled for hours or years, only that he could find no way off this gibbet that didn’t involve an endless drop … but that was preferable to being eaten alive by gulls.

Shouts reached his fading hearing. The shouts of men. He opened his working eye and turned his head. A shadow moved down there. The branch creaked, and he slipped a handspan closer to Torment.

“Get the boat under him,” someone commanded, and there was much cursing and thumping about.

“He’s dead,” somebody said.

“Doesn’t matter as long as he’s got the quaestor’s relic,” said another voice.

“He’s not dead yet,” said another voice deep and rumbling like a millstone. “He’s coming down on your side, Jake. Now.”

The last spiny finger of the twistthorn lost its grip. Jean-Claude fell, croaking in dismay. He landed on or was caught by several strong men who dragged him aboard a launch and laid him out on the bottom bit.

The pain of even this controlled impact blotted out his mind again, and when he once more dragged himself to the surface he found his lopsided vision filled with a grinning visage of a man with one blazing blue eye and a bristling blond beard that looked like a colony of hedgehogs had taken up residence under his chin. Around him flickered a dozen other images of himself, like refractions seen in bits of spinning crystal, there and gone again. As addled as he was, Jean-Claude recognized the man, a phantasm from his distant past: pirate, gambler, sorcerer, and adversary.

“Ivar Thirdeye,” Jean-Claude mumbled.

Ivar gave a booming laugh. “Look what the sky serves us up today. If it isn’t the mighty Jean-Claude, and he still remembers his old mates.”

At least Fortune and Fate were being prompt with their judgments today.

“You’re too late. Relic’s gone overboard,” he said, flopping his hand toward the side of the boat. Isabelle had charged him to keep the key safe. But the other pirate had called it the quaestor’s relic. Has Czensos hired Thirdeye?

“We’ll see about that,” said Ivar. “And afterward, you’ve a debt to pay.”

Someone tipped a shot of liquid into Jean-Claude’s mouth. Parched, he swallowed it before even realizing it was poppy milk. The pain dissolved like honey in hot tea and flowed away, taking consciousness with it.