'Lady, I would never have anything unsaid between us.'
'But there is something?'
He couldn't answer.
'I told you before, when we first met on Breezerunner, that I could be very forward,' Sabyna said. 'Most men feel uncomfortable around a woman who knows her own mind. Sailors especially. They're not used to it.'
'Aye, but that is not true of me. Sometimes,' Jherek said quietly to give his words weight, 'no matter how hard you struggle for something, it's not meant to be yours.'
'Is that a threat?' Sabyna's voice hardened, but it was only a brittle shell over uncertainty.
The young sailor laughed when he wanted to cry. 'No, lady. May Umberlee take me into her deep, dark embrace this very moment if ever there was a time I would intentionally hurt you.'
'Back in the diviner's cave, she asked you what you believed in. You told her that you believed in love.' Sabyna gazed deep into his eyes. 'Did you mean that?'
Jherek hesitated, but in the end he knew she would know if he lied. 'Aye,' he said, 'I believe in love. Perhaps, lady, it's the last thing I do believe in.'
'So many things, evil as well as good, have been done in the name of love.'
'There is no evil when the love is true,' Jherek stated.
'How much do you believe that, Jherek?'
He shook his head. 'Lady, with all that I am.'
'Then how can you be so far from me? Surely you must know how I feel.'
The question hammered Jherek like a fisherman's bully.
Tears trickled down Sabyna's face. 'Never have I met a man,' she said hoarsely, 'that I've wanted as much as I want you. From the moment I saw you hanging onto Breezerunner's side scraping barnacles, to the time we sit here together. Yet you don't acknowledge it.'
Helplessly, Jherek watched her cry, not knowing what to do or what to say except, 'I didn't know.'
Her eyes remained steady on him and dark sadness clouded them, took away the merriment he always saw there.
'I know,' she said finally, 'and I think it's that bit of naivete that endears you to me even more. I look at you, Jherek, and I see a kind of man I've never known before. The puzzle of it all is that I don't know you.'
'You know what you need to know, lady,' Jherek told her.
'Do I?'
Jherek forced himself to speak, choosing his words carefully. 'The other things you don't know, they are of no consequence.'
'Then how is it we are apart? Unless I am wrong in your feelings about me.'
Jherek tried to speak but couldn't. He dropped his gaze from hers, looking down into the deep waters below. How could his life be so twisted and so painful? What could he have ever done to deserve this?
'Tell me I'm wrong, Jherek,' Sabyna said in a voice ragged with emotion. 'Tell me I'm a fool.'
'I would never call you a fool, lady,' he told her.
'Tell me again how you believe in love, Jherek. Gods above, when I heard that timbre in your voice in the diviner's cave, I felt more confused than ever. The anger I'd been harboring toward you left me, and with it all of my defenses against these feelings. Tell me.'
He raised his eyes to meet hers, seated across from her in the rigging. 'As you wish, lady.'
She gazed at him expectantly.
'I believe in love,' Jherek said, 'but I don't believe in myself. If I've learned anything at all in my life, it's that a belief in himself is what makes a man. I haven't yet become one.'
Sabyna shook her head. More tears cascaded down her face. 'Mystra's wisdom, I wish I knew some way to let you see yourself as I see you, and as others see you.'
'It wouldn't matter, lady,' Jherek said gently. 'It's how I see myself.'
'Why?'
'Because I know the true me that no one sees,' Jherek stated. 'Even now, you're in danger here on these seas because of a mistake I made. That weakness of pride I felt in accepting Lathander's disk at the Rose Portal has brought us all here.'
'And what if that was no mistake?' Sabyna asked. 'What if that disk is truly supposed to be here?'
'It's in evil's hands, lady There's no way to make that right.'
'You are so stubborn, Jherek,' the ship's mage said in a harsh voice. 'I would change that if I could.'
'I know of no other way to be,' Jherek told her.
'I know, and changing you would be so dangerous. Everything in you builds on everything else. Were one small part removed, I think the whole would somehow be changed as well. You are one of the most complete men I have ever known.' Sadness carved deep lines into her face, draining her of the vitality he loved about her. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pressed you like this, but I couldn't go any further without letting you know how I felt. Forgive me.'
'Lady, there is nothing to forgive.'
'There is. I should have handled my own emotions better. I am a ship's mage, trained to handle battle, dying men, and the ravages of an uncaring sea and a fickle wind. I am no young girl to have her head turned so prettily. I have a heart, though, Jherek, and I've learned to listen to it. Selune forgive my weakness.'
Sabyna stood in the rigging and turned to go.
'Lady.' Jherek stood too, catching her hand in his. It felt so slim and warm, so right in his. 'It is not you.'
Tears sparkled like diamonds on her wind-burned cheeks. 'I know. I only wish I could be brave enough and strong enough for both of us. I wish I could help you trust me.'
Without warning she leaned in, too quickly for Jherek to move away. Her lips met his, and he felt the brand of her flesh, tasted the sweetness of her tears. His pulse roared, taking the strength from his knees. In all his life Jherek had never known such a feeling, so strong and so true. For the moment, all his fears and self doubts were nothing. He felt whole.
She pulled back, breathing rapidly. The wind swept her tears away, sipping them in quick gusts.
'I do trust you, lady,' Jherek said in a thick voice. He still held her hand, pulling it to him and placing it against his chest. The heat of her flesh almost seared him. 'I swear to you, if it came to it, I would give my life to save yours, and you would never have to ask.'
'I don't doubt you,' she replied. She clenched her hand against his chest, knotting up his shirt and pulling him toward her with surprising strength. 'You would give me your life, but can you give me your heart?'
VIII
10 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet
At Iakhovas's bidding, Laaqueel stepped through the wall of Tarjana and out into the ocean. She only felt a moment's sensation of passing through the wood. Though it was not uncomfortable, she noticed immediately that the water on the other side was cold. The depth also blocked the penetrating light from the sea, turning the craggy ledges and canyons of the ocean floor black. She floated easily, adjusting the pressure in her air bladder to make herself weightless.
'Where are we?' she asked Iakhovas.
Silently, Iakhovas replied, through the connection made between them by the quill near her heart. There are others here.
Picking up on the tension in Iakhovas's words, Laaqueel grasped her trident more tightly and peered into the shadows around them. Her lateral lines picked up the small movement of fish nearby, and the coil of an eel shifting in its hiding place.
Who are we meeting? she asked.
Allies, Iakhovas replied. That is all you need trouble yourself to know, little malenti.
Unease swept through Laaqueel. Over the last four days, she'd seen little of Iakhovas. He'd remained within
