Corsair

turned to pace the quarterdeck, eyes narrowed as he stared at Kraken Queen lying amid the Talons.

“Aye, Captain,” Sorsil answered. She turned and snarled at every hand who happened to be on deck at the moment. “You heard the captain, you miserable dogs! Quickly now, or I’ll peel the hide off the lot of you!”

Geran moved over to the ship’s boat stowed across her mid-section on a raised deck. He wasn’t particularly worried about Sorsil’s threats, but if Narsk wanted to go over to Kraken Queen, he wanted to go too. There was a chance that someone from the other pirate ship might recognize him from the skirmish on the beach, but the last time they’d seen him it was by firelight, and he hadn’t been dressed like a common seaman with a thickly stubbled chin. And he sincerely doubted that any of the deckhands on the other ship would be expecting to see him again in the crew of another Black Moon ship. Several other crewmen joined him by the boat, and together they lifted it from its frame, turned it right-side up, and maneuvered it to the rail to fix hoisting lines at its bow and stern. They lowered the boat to the water under Sorsil’s watchful eye.

“All right, I need oarsmen,” the mate said. Geran made sure he was standing in plain sight, and a moment later Sorsil singled him out. “You there!”

The swordmage feigned a grimace of annoyance, but swung his leg over the rail and dropped down the shallow rungs bolted to the ship’s side to take up one of the oars. More of his shipmates followed. He glanced up at the rail, now rocking over his head, and caught Hamil looking at him. Good thinking, Geran, the halfling told him. But pull down your hood, you look like you’re up to something.

Geran reluctantly pulled his hood back down to his shoulders and waited by his oar. A moment later Narsk clambered down the ladder and took the steersman’s seat himself. He was wearing a heavy black coat and a large, wide-brimmed hat that seemed oddly out of place atop his bestial features. “Push off and let’s go,” the gnoll ordered. The boat crew cast off the lines, pushed away from Moonshark, then fell into a strong rowing rhythm as Narsk steered them toward the other ship. The Talons seemed to catch the light chop of the surrounding waters and reflect them in confused eddies; Geran decided that he wouldn’t want to bring a ship too close to the towering rocks.

They reached Kraken Queen and caught a line tossed down from the rail; the crew of the other ship crowded around the rail, calling down offers to trade or good-natured jibes at Moonshark’s expense. As they bumped alongside the larger ship’s hull, Narsk growled, “Wait for me,” and scrambled up the side.

“Ho there, Narsk! You’re the first to arrive!”

I know that voice! Geran realized. He twisted around on his bench and peered up at the quarterdeck of Kraken Queen. There stood the captain of the other ship, a lean man of middle years with a gray-streaked beard of black around his craggy face and a big scarlet cloak bedecked with gold braid.

“Kamoth,” he whispered. “I don’t believe it.” Kamoth Kastelmar was supposed to be dead. The last Geran had heard, he’d gone down with a pirate galley cornered and sunk by Mulman warships years ago. But there was no doubt of it; the captain of Kraken Queen was the same man who’d married Geran’s aunt, Terena, fifteen years ago and brought his son Sergen to live in Griffonwatch with the Hulmasters. A “gentleman of fortune,” as he’d called himself then, Kamoth was the scion of minor nobility in the city of Hillsfar, a reasonable match for the sister of the harmach. But only two years later Geran’s father discovered Kamoth engaged in all manner of foul plotting against Harmach Grigor and drove the traitor into exile. Kamoth had left his teenage son Sergen behind-by chance or design, Geran had never determined-but Harmach Grigor had decided that the boy was not to be held responsible for the crimes of his father and raised Sergen as a member of his own family.

“What’s the matter with ye?” Murkelmor growled at Geran. The dwarf had the seat next to Geran’s. “That one’s as mad as Manshoon. He’d just as soon kill ye as look at ye. Meet his eye, and he’s like t’ think ye mean to challenge him.”

Geran shook his head and turned his face away. He doubted that Kamoth would recognize him; he’d been a lad of seventeen years the last time Kamoth had seen him. The strangest part of it was that he’d always liked Kamoth. During the brief time he’d spent in Hulburg, Geran hadn’t seen anything other than the man’s bluff good cheer and roguish charm. It was only much later that he’d discovered how thoroughly he and the rest of his family had been taken in. “Who is he?” he asked the dwarf.

“That’s the High Captain o’ the Black Moon,” Murkelmor answered. “All the other captains-including our own Narsk-sail at his word. Kamoth, his name is. Kraken Queen is his.”

Geran risked another look. Narsk and Kamoth were deep in conversation, the gnoll towering over the pirate lord but bobbing and nodding his head in response to Kamoth’s words. Kamoth turned aside, calling for someone near him … and Sergen Hulmaster stepped into view, a leather lettercase in his hands, and handed the packet to Kamoth to give to the gnoll. Sergen glanced out toward Moonshark and down to the longboat bobbing at the side of the pirate lord’s ship. At the last moment Geran averted his eyes and turned his back to the quarterdeck. Kamoth was unlikely to recognize him, but Sergen knew him very well indeed. A momentary hint of recognition, a single suspicion, could set a hundred blades at Geran’s throat. Not knowing what else to do, Geran kept his face turned toward Moonshark, looking away from the quarterdeck, and imagined Sergen’s eyes boring into his back, a black smile of satisfaction twisting Sergen’s haughty expression, the first snort of derisive laughter.

Well, now I know why the Black Moon pirates have been seeking out Hulburg’s shipping, he thought furiously. Sergen enlisted his father’s pirate fleet to continue his effort to unseat the Hulmasters. Or was it the other way around? Had Kamoth directed Sergen’s plots and betrayals all along?

A sudden clatter on the ladder steps climbing the ship’s side caught Geran’s attention. He glanced up, expecting to see pirates scrambling down to seize him where he sat-but instead it was simply Narsk returning to the longboat. The gnoll tucked the mysterious lettercase into his coat pocket and seated himself by the rudder. Sergen was nowhere in sight, but Kamoth still leaned over the rail. “Seven nights, Narsk!” he called. “Don’t get caught up in any other sport between now and then.”

“Moonshark will not be late, High Captain,” the gnoll answered. He waved at the oarsmen, and Geran started pulling with the rest, keeping his eyes in the longboat’s bottom.

Geran didn’t look up again until Kraken Queen was a good hundred yards astern. He could still make out Kamoth’s scarlet cloak on the quarterdeck and thought he saw Sergen’s black coat close by. He heaved a breath of relief and put his back into the sweeps. For the moment it seemed that he was safe, and neither of the two traitors suspected that a Hulmaster had been bobbing up and down in a small boat not twenty- five feet from their quarterdeck. He’d hoped to find a way to eavesdrop on Narsk and Kamoth, but for the moment he was glad to have avoided discovery.

“Pull, you dogs,” Narsk snapped. “I mean to be underway in half an hour, and I’ll flog the first ten men I see if we aren’t!”

Geran joined the other oarsmen as they threw themselves into their work. His hands throbbed and his shoulders ached, but he smiled to himself when his eye fell on the leather letter-case sitting in Narsk’s coat pocket. He might not have missed his opportunity to eavesdrop after all, if he could only examine Narsk’s letter. All he had to do was find a chance to break into the gnoll’s cabin and steal it without getting caught.

NINE

30 Eleint, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Evening was descending over Hulburg as Mirya locked up Erstenwold’s Provisioners and prepared to go home for the evening. It had been a slow day, but right before closing time a farmer from the Winterspear Vale had shown up with a whole wagonload of cheese, bacon, smoked hams, and other foodstuffs to sell. By the time she’d finished with their business and had overseen the unloading of the wagon, it was an hour past the time that she normally locked up. Most of Hulburg’s shopkeepers lived above or behind their places of business, but the Erstenwolds were a family that had been in Hulburg for a long time, and Mirya’s house was a comfortable cottage surrounded by a small apple orchard on the river’s west bank, a little less than a mile distant. Anxious to start for home, she went to the store’s back door, the one that let out into the alleyway behind Plank Street, and looked up and down the