know, Roel, I know. Just as I do love you.” And she took his face in her hands and kissed him, even as tears of relief slid down her cheeks.
Laval wiped a shaky hand across his sweating brow and said, “I thought we were deaders for certain.”
“Nevertheless you stood fast and ready, Ensign,” said Roel. He looked past Celeste and in the direction of the racing heave, and said, “Hmm. .”
Celeste disengaged herself and turned to see what had caught Roel’s attention. The wake of the serpent boiled toward the corsair.
Aboard that ship, pirates pointed and shouted, and then some began haling the sails about to catch the wind abeam and add haste to the vessel.
But then, without losing speed, the serpent lunged up and hurtled across the deck of the corsair, the creature’s massive weight plunging the ship down. Across the craft and down and under and then back up and ’round the serpent coiled, the vessel now in its grasp. Wood splintered, the hull burst, masts shattered, and sails and rigging fell to ruin. Pirates leapt into the sea, and the water about them roiled and turned red, and fins sped to and fro as men screamed and screamed, their cries cut short in a froth of scarlet.
And then the ship was gone, masts and sails and rigging and hull dragged down into the depths below, the sea serpent vanishing as well. And all that was left behind was a frenzy of shark fins racing through a crimson swirl of water, and then that was gone, too.
“Well,” said Chevell, taking a sip of wine, “if the map was somehow hidden beyond our search of that vessel, it’s now lost.”
Lieutenant Florien-a tall, long-faced man-
shrugged and said, “My Lord Captain, well did we search, and no map was found.”
Armond nodded his agreement. “Sir, the men did a thorough job. I truly believe the map was not there.” Celeste broke off a piece of fresh-baked biscuit and dipped it in among the beans on her plate. She peered at it a moment and sighed and looked across the table at Roel. “We can only hope it is on the last of the corsairs.” Roel nodded and cut another bite from his slice of smoke-cured ham and said, “Yet if it is hidden on the first ship captured, then we are sailing in the wrong direction.”
“And if on the second ship, it’s gone,” said Officer Burcet, ship’s chirurgeon-short and rather foxlike of feature, with reddish hair and pale brown eyes.
They sat ’round a table in the captain’s quarters: Chevell, Armond, Laval, Roel, and Celeste, along with Florien and Burcet.
“Me,” said Armond, “I believe the rover captain was telling the truth, and the map is on the last of the three raiders.”
“Who can trust the word of a corsair?” said Chevell.
Celeste looked at the captain and smiled. “Did I not hear you mention you were once a freebooter?” Chevell laughed. “That was long past, Princess. I’ve since become a king’s man, and now my word is my bond. Your sire, Valeray, helped me to understand that.”
“My sire?”
“Oui.”
“When was this?”
Chevell glanced ’round the table and raised his left eyebrow and said, “This goes no further.” All the men nodded, including Roel, and Princess Celeste canted her head in assent.
Chevell lifted his glass of wine and held it up and looked at the ruby liquid, glowing with lantern light shining through. Then he took a deep breath and said,
“Many, many summers now long gone, Valeray and I were partners. We were on a, um, a bit of a task, one requiring lock-picking skills. We had just managed to liberate what we had come for, when we were discovered.
It was as we were escaping over the rooftops that I fell and broke my leg. The watch was hard on our heels, and I could not go on. Valeray, who had the. . hmm. . the items, dragged me into hiding and said if they found me, he would make certain to set me free. Then he fled on.
“Well, they found me, and threw me in gaol. A chirurgeon came to set my leg so that I would be fit when hanged. To my surprise, the ‘chirurgeon’ was Valeray.
He did set my leg, and then, with a cosh, he stunned the jailor and managed to get me free. He had a horse-drawn wagon waiting, grunting pigs in the stake-sided wain. He slipped me under the floorboards, where I lay in a slurry of pig sewage, and drove right through the warded gate.” Chevell burst into laughter. “The guards, you see, only glanced at the wain and backed away holding their noses and waved the pig farmer on. And even though I was retching as we went out the portal, my heaves were lost among the grunts of the swine.” Celeste broke into giggles, and the men at the table roared in laughter.
When it subsided, Chevell said, “We got quit of that city, and I asked Valeray why he had risked all to come back for nought but me. ‘My word is my bond,’ he replied.” Chevell took a sip of his wine. “Later, we parted our ways, and soon I became a freebooter-rose to captain my own vessel. But always Valeray’s words echoed in my mind: ‘My word is my bond.’
“Up until then I had not had much experience with honorable men. Yet that set me on my course. I gave up freebooting and took my ship and a good-hearted crew-one I had been culling from among the corsairs-and joined the king’s fleet. It was only long afterward I discovered Valeray himself had been a king’s thief, working for a distant realm.
“Some time after that, there was that dreadful business with Orbane, and I hear that Valeray was key to that wizard’s defeat.” Chevell looked at Celeste. “Sometime, Princess, you will have to tell me how ’twas done.” There came a tap on the door. “Come!” called Chevell.
The door opened and a skinny, towheaded cabin boy said, “Beggin’ your pardon, My Lord Captain, but the sailmaker says all is ready.”
“Thank you, Hewitt. Tell the watch commander I’ll be out at the mark of eight bells. Have the crew assemble then.”
Roel looked at Chevell. “The funerals of those lost in the battle?”
“Aye,” replied Chevell.
They ate in silence a moment, and then Officer Burcet said, “Damn the corsairs. I spent a goodly time sewing up gashes and bandaging heads. Two died under my care. Would that I could have done something to keep them alive.”
“The duties of a chirurgeon must be dreadful,” said Celeste, “dealing with the aftermath of violence as you do.”
“Oui. Even so, there are rewards as well.”
“That’s what Gilles says, too.”
“Gilles?”
“One of the healers at Springwood Manor.” Suddenly Celeste’s face fell. “Oh, I hope he is all right.” When the officers at the table looked at Celeste, questions in their eyes, Roel said, “Gilles was one of those with us when the Goblins and Ogres and Trolls attacked.”
“Ah, I see,” said Chevell. “We can only hope if the men in your band did cross the twilight border, they did so at a place other than where you crossed.” A pall fell upon the table, and from the deck a bell rang six times, the sound muted by the cabin walls.
Finally, Roel said, “How does one cross an unknown border?”
“Very carefully,” said Chevell.
Celeste looked up from her plate. “In the Springwood, in fact in all of the Forests of the Seasons-even the Winterwood-we ask the Sprites to help us. They fly across and back, and report what is on the other side.”
“Why did you single out the Winterwood, cherie?” asked Roel.
Celeste smiled and said, “Sprites do not like cold weather, for they wear no clothing. And in Borel’s realm it is always winter. Even so, we don special garments, with places within where the Sprites can stay warm.
Then we bear Sprites ’round the bound and they help us note what is on the far sides. In the other three realms, no special garb is needed.”
“Ah, I see,” said Roel. “But doesn’t that take a long while to map out a bound?”
Celeste nodded and said, “It is a long and tedious process, and we place markers signifying the safe routes,
