'We gonna get out of here?' Clef asked him pragmatically.
Brashen looked down at the boy by his side. 'Don't know,' Brashen answered him shortly. 'We're going to try.'
The boy surveyed the enemy ships critically. 'Whyer they holdin' back?'
'I suspect they fear the liveships. Why risk lives when rocks will work?'
The Jamaillian ship was going down. A few desperate souls had fled to her rigging, for the white serpent had shown them that their ship's boats would provide no escape for them. Kennit's other two ships had engaged adjacent Jamaillian vessels and were trying to force a gap in the ring of vessels that surrounded them. Another missile landed uncomfortably close. Paragon rocked slightly with it. No doubt, as soon as they were clear of the Jamaillian ship, the rest of the fleet would be bolder with their rock throwing. 'If we could get the white serpent to help those two pirate vessels, we might be able to break out. But then we'd have to outrun the fleet, too.'
'It doesn't look good,' Clef decided.
'No,' Brashen agreed grimly. Then he smiled. 'But we aren't dead yet, either.'
A strange woman was stepping down onto the railing from Paragon's hands. She did not even glance at Brashen, but settled herself silently beside the fallen pirate. An inexpressible grief dulled her black eyes. She lifted Kennit's hand and held it to her cheek. Mother reached across Kennit to rest a wrinkled hand on her shoulder. The women's eyes met across his body. For a moment, the dark-haired woman studied Mother's face. Then she spoke quietly.
'I loved him. I believe he loved me. I carry his child.'
The woman smoothed Kennit's curls back from his still face. Brashen, feeling an intruder, looked away from them to the retreating Vivacia. Wintrow and Althea stood together on the foredeck, conferring about something. Brashen's heart leapt at the sight of her. Cursing himself for a fool, he sprang suddenly to the rail. If one woman could cross, so could another. 'Althea!' he bellowed, but the two ships had already drifted apart. Nevertheless, at his call, she spun. She sprinted wildly toward the bow. His heart choked him as he saw her spring wildly to the figurehead's shoulder. There was no mistaking the shock on Vivacia's face. She caught Althea in her headlong flight.
Her words to her ship carried clearly across the water to him. His heart flew on them. 'Please, Vivacia. You don't need me. I want to go to him.'
Vivacia glanced over at Paragon. Then her voice rang clear across the water. 'Paragon! This one I give to you as well!'
As a parent might playfully loft a child, Vivacia swung Althea high, low, and then high again, letting her fly toward the blind ship. Her body arced through the air.
'No!' Brashen roared in terror, clutching the rail.
'I've got her!' Paragon cried reassuringly, and then, miraculously, he did.
He caught her and swung her with her momentum, whirling her around before handing her off suddenly into Brashen's reaching arms. She stumbled off the railing and slid down into his embrace. He clasped her to him, folding her into his arms. He didn't even try to speak. He had no breath left. When he looked up at Paragon, the ship looked back. His pale blue eyes crinkled in a grin. Brashen was transfixed.
'Welcome aboard and le's get out of here ef we can!' Clef greeted her.
'Oh, Brashen,' Althea said shudderingly into his chest. Her voice jolted Brashen from his shock. She lifted her face to look up at him but held him as closely as ever. She took a deep breath. 'Wintrow's plan. If we can break free, run north for Divvytown. That harbor's defensible now. We can hold out there as long as we need to, until birds can bring Kennit's other ships to help us.'
She broke her flow of words suddenly. She stared at Kennit's still body. The old woman and Etta on either side of him seemed unaware of anyone else. 'He's dead,' Brashen whispered into her hair. 'He died in Paragon's arms.' Althea clung to him as she never had before. He held her, wishing there were time for them. But there was not. Death threatened all around them. 'Break free,' he muttered skeptically. 'How?'
Paragon spoke suddenly. He looked at Brashen over Althea's bowed head and spoke as if they were completely alone. 'Once I promised not to kill you. I was mad, and you knew it, and still you believed in me.' The ship looked around, scanning their situation with cold blue eyes. 'I'm whole now. Now I make you both a new promise. I'll do all I can to keep you alive.'
'TAKE THEM UP!'
The command came from behind them. Malta, Reyn and the Satrap turned to it. Wintrow, his shirt crimson with Kennit's blood, pointed at the desperate nobles on the foundering ship. Jola hastened to his side. 'Launch a boat?' he asked incredulously.
'No. I won't risk any of mine for them.' He raised his voice to the Jamaillian nobles. 'We'll throw you a line! Those brave enough to cross may survive. It's your choice. Your fleet isn't giving us time to rescue you. Jola, see to it.' He strode off to the foredeck again.
Chaos broke out among the nobles. They crowded the side of the listing ship. One old man lifted his hands and begged Sa to be merciful. A dapper young man, more pragmatic, ran to the other side of the ship, where he waved his cloak and cried to their ships to cease their attack. No one heeded him. The waves lapped over the top of the railings now. Jola prepared a heavingline and threw it. All the men snatched at it, and one immediately tried to swarm up it.
'Not like that, you fool!' the mate roared down at them. 'Secure the end to something, and come up it hand over hand.'
But some were graybeards and others gentlemen of leisure. Few could make the climb unassisted. In the end, it took several lines and some diligent but rapid hoisting to bring them aboard. By the time they arrived what remained of their finery was in tatters. 'Be grateful she's a liveship,' Jola informed them callously. 'They don't hold barnacles like regular wood. A smoother keelhauling than most is what you got.'
They stood before the Satrap, a dozen men that he knew by name, men he had dined with, men he had trusted. Malta gave him credit for a small courage. He stood face-to-face with them. Some met his gaze steadily, but most stared at their feet or off to the horizon. When he spoke, it was the last word Malta had expected to hear from him.
'Why?' he asked. He looked at each in turn. Malta, still holding the rag to his belly, could feel that he trembled slightly. She glanced up at his face and saw a truth that perhaps no one else did. He was hurt by their betrayal. 'Did you hate me that much, to seek my death by treachery?'
The one he had called Lord Criath lifted gray eyes to stare at him. 'Look at you,' he growled. 'You're weak and foolish. You think of nothing except yourself. You've plundered the treasury and let the city go to ruin. What else could we do but kill you? You were never a true Satrap.'
Satrap Cosgo met the man's eyes squarely. 'You have been my trusted advisor since I was fifteen years old,' he returned gravely. 'I listened to you, Criath. Ferdio, you were Minister of the Treasury. Peaton, Kreio, did not you offer me counsels as well? Counsels I always heeded, despite what some of my Companions said, for I wanted you to think well of me.' His eyes moved over them. 'That was my mistake, I see. I measured myself by how sweetly you complimented me. I am what you taught me to be, gentlemen. Or I was.' He stuck out his jaw. 'A time out in the world among true men has been very enlightening. I am no longer the boy you manipulated and betrayed, my lords. As you will come to discover.' As if he had the authority, he instructed Jola, 'Secure them below. They need not be too comfortable.'
'No.' Wintrow had returned. He countermanded the order without apology. 'Fasten them about the ship's house, Jola. I want them visible to their fleet. They may discourage some of the arrows and boulders that will come our way when we break free of this.' He spared a look for his sister, but she scarcely recognized him. Grief had set lines in his face and chilled his eyes. He tried to soften his voice, but his words still sounded like a command. 'Malta, you are safer inside the captain's stateroom. Reyn, will you take her there? And the Satrap, of course.'
She gave a final glance to the sinking Jamaillian ship. She did not linger to watch the nobles tied up as a living shield. This was war, she told herself harshly. He did what he did to try to save them all. If the nobles died, it would be because their own men fired on them. Death was a risk they had chosen when they plotted against the Satrap.
That did not mean she took any satisfaction in it. Bitterly she reflected that scores of Bingtown folk,
