'And you think I will?'
Glawinn's eyes turned sorrowful and he said, 'Lady, you have no idea what that boy is going through.'
'If he would talk to me, I might.'
'He doesn't know himself,' Glawinn explained. 'Even if he did, he can't explain.'
'Does he think I'm dense?'
'In his eyes he feels he isn't worthy of you.'
'Because he is wanted somewhere for something?' she asked. 'I told him that didn't matter.'
'Maybe not to you, lady, but it does to him. In his own way, though, I don't think he quite fully understands it. He strives for perfection.'
'I've never met a man who didn't have his faults,' Sabyna said. 'Though, I admit you've come closer than anyone.'
'My faults?'
'You're a busybody,' Sabyna told him. 'I thought paladins knew enough to keep to their own affairs.'
The knight blushed. 'I beg your forgiveness. I struggled with this decision, and I'd hoped I'd made the right choice.'
'You have,' she conceded. 'If I'd spent another day like this, with no one to talk to, I think I'd have gone out of my mind.'
'I thought you talked to Azla.'
'She doesn't understand Jherek any more than I do.'
Glawinn smiled gently and said, 'Probably not.'
Sabyna looked away from the paladin. 'It's never been like this for me. I've seen handsome men and wealthy men, and men who could turn a woman's head with only a handful of pretty words, but I've never met anyone like Jherek.'
'Nor have I.'
Tears stung Sabyna's eyes. 'I've never pursued a man before. Climbing that rigging to tell him my feelings was one of the hardest things I've ever done.'
'But, I wager, not as hard as the climb back down.'
'No,' she said. 'Do you know what he told me?'
Glawinn shook his head. 'I can only guess that it was as little as possible.'
'Aye…' Sabyna didn't trust her voice to speak any further.
'If it helps at all,' the paladin stated gently, 'I believe he tells you everything he knows.'
'There's a lot he won't tell me.'
'Can't tell you, lady, not won't. There is a difference.'
'You defend him very well.'
'I didn't come here to help him, lady. I came to help you.'
'Me?'
Glawinn nodded in resignation and said, 'The Morning-lord knows, I can't help him. He won't let me, and his course has already been charted.''
'What course?'
'To becoming the kind of man he wants to be,' Glawinn said. The kind of man he has to be.'
'Will he be that man?'
Hesitation furrowed Glawinn's brow. 'I know not, lady. I've never seen someone come so far, yet have so far to go. I can tell you this: his path will heal him-or it will kill him.'
The solemn way the paladin spoke pushed Sabyna's pain away and replaced it with fear.
'And what are we to do?' she asked. 'What am I to do?'
'The only thing we can, lady. Give him the freedom to make the decisions he needs must make'
'What if it kills him?' Sabyna asked.
'Then we will bury him, lady, say prayers over him if that is possible, and be grateful for ever having known him.'
Jherek strode barefoot across one of the broken beams still above water. Black Champion lay mostly under the sea now, her black bulk stretched like a shadow against the green water. Seagulls sat on the spars that made up her ribs and gave plaintive cries.
Rigging on the slave ship popped against the masts where she lay at anchor, heeled over hard to port as she supported Black Champions corpse. Six others worked the ship with him, seeking more timber to salvage before the sea took her to the bottom.
'Looks like she's been picked clean,' Meelat called out.
Meelat was one of the prisoners rescued from the slaver's hold. Though he was scrawny, his narrow shoulders and thin arms were corded with muscle. Scabs showed at his bare ankles and wrists where the iron cuffs had been.
'Aye,' Jherek agreed.
He mopped sweat from his face with his forearm, succeeding only in spreading it around. Nothing on him remained dry. He glanced up at the nets the ship's crew used to haul up the last load of timber.
'Comes a time when you gotta let her go,' Meelat stated. 'She's given up as much for the future of that other ship as she can. Spend much time aboard her?'
'No, but it was a time I'll not easily forget,' Jherek replied.
Memory of his conversation with Sabyna in the rigging and of that kiss wouldn't fade no matter how hard he tried to push it to the back of his mind.
Meelat scratched at the scabs on one wrist, pulling them away so that blood flowed. He rinsed the wrist off in the water.
'If there are sharks around,' Jherek cautioned, 'that might be a foolhardy thing to do. They can smell blood in the water for miles.'
Meelat grinned. 'If there'd been sharks here, all that noise we been making in the water for days would have already drawn them. Besides, that comely young ship's mage has been keeping a potion in the water to drive away any sharks. Or haven't you noticed?'
Jherek shook his head.
'A pretty girl like that,' the grizzled old sailor said, 'I was your age, I'd be looking.'
'She's a lady,' Jherek warned quietly, 'and shouldn't be talked about in a cavalier manner.'
'Oh, I'm offering no offense, mate.' Meelat shrugged. 'My manners, maybe they need some brushing up, but a man at sea most of his life, he don't have much chance of that. Does he?'
Turning his attention back to the water, Jherek spotted a conflicting wave below and thought he detected movement.
'That's what I find confusing about you,' Meelat continued. 'You say you're a sailing man, but your manners put on like you been proper raised.'
Studying the water around the bobbing remnant of Black Champion, Jherek tried to discern the movement again. Sahuagin prowled the Inner Sea now. Three passing merchanters two days ago had swapped supplies with Azla and offered up warnings concerning staying in one place or alone too long. Reports of attacks on harbors around the Sea of Fallen Stars-from Procampur to Cimbar-were becoming commonplace.
'I was a suspicious man,' Meelat said, 'I'd be wondering about you. Wondering what a man like you was doing running with pirates.'
Jherek gazed at the man silently.
Meelat dropped his eyes. 'Not that there's anything wrong with pirates. Been one myself a time or two, but you don't seem the type cut out for it.'
'Thank you.'
A puzzled expression filled the man's face, but it was quickly replaced by sudden and total fear.
Ripping his knife from its sheath on his thigh, Jherek turned and braced himself, aware that startled shouts had broken out on the slave ship's decks as well.
Less than twenty feet away, a creature broke from the sea and gazed at them. The triangular snake's face twisted slightly in the breeze, bringing one bright orange eye to bear on Jherek, then the other. Fins stuck out on
