“That’s fish shit.”

“Oh?” Lune pointed her shackled wrists to Cheetah’s sinking hulk. “Do you know any ship on the sea with enough cannon to do that? No? I thought not.”

Yawa came up on Baru’s left. “Ah,” she said, studying the carnage. “I see something’s killing ships. I’m going to go sit in a whaleboat with Iscend and a cask of water.”

Water. Shit. That reminded Baru of her accounts.

“Apparitor.” She drew him aside to mutter, “Are you planning to take all the Oriati aboard?”

“Of course I am.”

“Must we? It’s a risk…”

“Law of the sea. I don’t care what you say. I’m going to help them.”

“The world doesn’t reward goodness with goodness, Svir.”

“No. But people do.”

“Fine.” She did quick mental arithmetic. “Then we need to put a prize party on Cheetah and salvage as much as we can.”

“We haven’t any time—there’s a storm—”

“If we don’t do it, we’ll die on Helbride before we make Kyprananoke.”

“Oh, damn it. Damn, damn, pepper shit!” Apparitor beat his forehead with the meat of his hand. “The water. We have to rescue the water.”

“As many casks as we can get.” They would need enough to sustain the new passengers, at least. Enough to keep them from the thirsty death: a ship of mummies adrift beneath banqueting gulls—like the one that was now pacing on the yardarm above, furious that no one had paid any attention to its dance.

“There’s only one way to play this,” Baru decided. “We have to send hostages over to guarantee our good conduct. Or they’re going to expect us to seize the Prince and sail off.”

He nodded. “You’re volunteering?”

“I am.”

“Are you on good terms with this Prince?”

Last time they’d met, Tau had said, I’ll have nothing to do with you.

“Of course!” Baru said. “We share a good rapport, I think.”

The gull on the yardarm squawked in indignation and tried to shit on her.

*   *   *

SUNSET raked the sky like fingers in a child’s hair. The two clippers settled flank to flank. Helbride silver-white and sleek, arrogant in its grace. Cheetah cruelly macerated, leaking oils and bilge into the waves, sinking inch by drooling inch into a great raft of kelp. The air was too calm: the sailors fidgeted, waiting for the storm front.

Helbride’s crew put down a bridge over to Cheetah. An Oriati soldier leapt up onto the far end.

She was a brick-shaped bald woman with her fists wrapped up in rope, pleasantly open-faced, someone you might approach when you needed help with your luggage dockside. She called out in unaccented Aphalone, which meant a Falcrest accent: