Increasingly, the Known World seemed far, far away, not just in leagues but in its hold on his thoughts. Sitting and talking with Tunnel and Skylene and some of the others, caught up in the horror and largeness that was Ushen Brae, Dariel had to wrest his focus back to his homeland again and again. It was in danger, he knew, of attack from the Auldek. He remained vague on how great that threat was, but he tried to remember it and to think of Corinn and Mena and Wren and all his companions from his raiding days and the common people he had come to know and care for while working on his rebuilding projects. They mattered. And he had to get back to them.

“It will be your temporary pass,” Mór said, “although the mark itself will not be temporary. You may still fail us, Prince Dariel, but I’ve been told to give you the time and freedom to be among us. It’s a chance not to fail.” After a pause, she added, “I hope you don’t.”

Dariel nodded. Never a skilled liar, it was the best he could do to express his resolve. In truth, he had accepted the mission Mór offered him for reasons of his own. Yes, he would be part of a small team sent to steal a Lothan Aklun boat, a soul vessel. One had been found tied up at the southern end of the warehouse district. The league had not yet noticed it, probably because a series of skerries—small, rocky islands—blocked the area from the open ocean. Dariel would prove he was the raider he claimed to have been. He would captain the vessel. He would pilot it south to a marsh area called Sumerled, where they would ground the boat and set fire to it, thereby denying it to the league and—even more important—freeing the souls that had been bound to power it.

Dariel had agreed to all of this readily enough. To himself, he swore that if he got the chance, he would flee in the cutter. He had no idea if he could really make the Lothan Aklun ship work, and he realized the People themselves knew so little about the sea that they assumed things about his knowledge that they shouldn’t have. But so be it. He would try. He would pilot across the Gray Slopes in it if he had to or follow the coastline north and pick his way through the Ice Fields. He would work out the details later, but this might be his best chance at getting home. He had to grasp it if he could.

“What totem would you take?” Mór asked, sorting through the instruments on a small table.

“I will take what you feel I deserve,” he said.

“I don’t know what you deserve.”

“If it was my choice I would wear the face of the Shivith. Spots, like yours.”

“You jest,” she said, glancing up at him.