her grasp.
“You see?” she gasped, shame in her voice.
“I see the hound slipped the leash for a second, but then you regained control. Let’s try some more.”
For a few slow exchanges, everything was all right. Then, when they sped up a little, the greatsword spun downward, trying to sever his foot at the ankle. This time, though, the muscles in her bare, tattooed arms bunching, Shandri stopped it in mid-stroke.
“No!” she screamed. She wrenched herself around, marched to the mast, and hammered the flat of the sword against the wood. “Bad dog! Bad dog!”
In response to its punishment, evidently, the blade turned pitch black. When she finished beating it, the pirate glared at the weapon. Anton surmised that she and the sword were speaking mind to mind.
After a minute, she turned back around. “Once more,” she said.
From that point forward, the greatsword refrained from trying to kill him, even when sparring at full speed. At the end, eyes shining, face exultant, Shandri set the weapon aside and gripped his forearms. It was almost a hug, the implication of an embrace from a woman who wasn’t certain he’d welcome the familiarity.
She needn’t have held back. He was now sure they’d be lovers by the end of the evening. But with that certainty came a sudden, unexpected spasm of self-disgust.
Maybe it was because, in a vague way, her lack of self-worth reminded him of the boy he’d been, hating himself when the other novices prattled of mystical communion with Torm and he had nothing to say, when they started conjuring wisps of light or healing sores and scratches with a glowing touch while he tried repeatedly and failed. Or maybe it was because he’d seduced too many trusting women over the years. Whatever the reason, he didn’t want to use and ultimately betray Shandri in the same way.
But it was his work, and if the means were shabby, the ends were important, or so he had always striven to believe. He smiled back at her and brushed a lock of sweaty bronze hair away from her eye.
A slender, gleaming shadow in the moonlight, coral tunic glinting, Tu’ala’keth picked at her plate of raw, spiced shrimp and perch. Born in a world without fire, she had no taste for cooked food and preferred a seat without a back so as to avoid compressing the sweeping fin running down her spine. Vurgrom had learned these details and dozens of others over the course of the past few days, yet in the ways that mattered most, she remained a mystery. Maybe that was why she fascinated him.
It wasn’t an entirely comfortable fascination. He wasn’t used to lying sleepless, imagining the pleasures a wench had withheld in actuality. He’d always taken what he wanted when he wanted it.
But Tu’ala’keth was different: a shalarin waveservant, the partner he needed to topple Teldar at last. He had to treat to her with circumspection.
Or so it had seemed at first. But she’d made it plain she was judging him, assessing his fitness to champion her savage, relentless goddess, and in the middle of a tossing, feverish night, it had finally dawned on him just what sort of test it might actually be.
Still, when her long, dark fingers reached for a certain dark green morsel, he almost stopped her. Because what if his understanding was deficient? He took a drink of brandy to drown his doubts, and as he swallowed, she did, too. Now it was too late for second thoughts.
“Did you like that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, black eyes reflecting the teardrop glow of the candle in the center of the table. “We pickle seaweed in As’arem, also. Tell me more of the smugglers on Kelthann. Do they dispose of all the plundered goods our faction seizes?”
Vurgrom snorted. “Don’t you ever get bored, talking about raiding and the like? It’s a beautiful night.” Perched on a balcony at the top of the house, they had a fine view of bright Selune and her tears shining in a cloudless sky, the wavering yellow lights of Immurk’s Hold running down to the harbor, the dark, heaving vastness of the sea, and the waves crumbling to pearly froth near the shore. Far out on the water, a ship’s lanterns glowed at the bow and stern. “Too beautiful for my list of gripes about greedy, thieving, gutless go-betweens.” He covered her cool, silken hand with his own, and experienced the usual pang of excitement.
She must feel it, too, for her flesh quivered. But her voice remained steady and cool: “I wish to know about your dealings so I can give you whatever help you require.”
“If you and Umberlee deem me worthy,” he said dryly. “Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell me again what the goddess expects, so I’ll know what to do to measure up.”
She eyed him quizzically, but he was sure she’d accede to his request. She never tired of talking about Umberlee. Even he, who doted on hermuch as he’d struggled against such a needy, mawkish emotion-grew weary of it sometimes.
Sure enough, she rose, and clasping his hand, drew him to the balustrade. “Behold the sea,” she said.
“All right.”
“On the” She hesitated then frowned. He had to suppress a smirk of anticipation. “Are you all right?”
“Perhaps your cook has not yet learned how to prepare food that agrees with me. My stomach… never mind. I am well. On the surface of the waves and beneath them, every moment, a thousand thousand predators kill and devour their victims. Most people understand this, even if they rarely bother to think about it.”
“I follow you.”
“Now recognize… recognize” she paused to massage the round mark on her forehead”recognize all those separate deaths as aspects of a higher unity. Comprehend that the sea itself, acting through its creatures, is the killer. Per… perceive it for what it is, a gigantic set of eternally gnashing, tearing jaws.” “Umberlee’s jaws,” he said.
“Yes, and to find favor in her sight, you must embody the same qualities. You must be fearless and ruthless. You must take” She swayed and grabbed the balustrade to keep from falling. “Something is wrong with me.”
Vurgrom let the leer stretch across his face. No need to hold it in anymore. “I drugged you, dear one. It will wear off by morning.”
Or at least it would if she were human. The apothecary couldn’t guarantee it would affect a shalarin in precisely the same way. But Vurgrom had decided it was worth the risk to bring an end to his frustrations. As it would, one way or another.
To his surprise, Tu’ala’keth still had the strength to tear her hand from his and stumble a couple of paces backward. Of course, she had nowhere to run in the confined space of the balcony. “You… are a blasphemer.”
“How do you figure?” Vurgrom replied. “Weren’t you just now telling me the Bitch Queen wants me to be bold and merciless and take what I want? All right, then, I’m taking you. That’s the test, isn’t it, to see if I dare. Well, watch me.”
Tottering, she gripped the skeletal hand dangling on her breast and gasped the opening words of an incantation.
He lunged and punched her in the jaw, snapping her head to the side and spoiling the cadence of the spell. He wrested the sacred pendant out of her fingers then yanked it from around her neck.
“No magic,” he told her and hit her again. Her legs buckled, and her arms flopped to her sides. He grabbed her before she could collapse and hauled her to the table. He swept the dirty dishes crashing to the floor to make a space then thrust her down.
The coral tunicsilverweave, she called itshould have come off easily. She wasn’t fighting anymore, and the armor was split all the way down the back to accommodate her fin. But it clung to her somehow, perhaps by virtue of an enchantment.
The more he struggled with it, the angrier he became, while desire burned hotter and hotter inside him. For an instant, he felt like a stranger to himself, as if his urgency was unnatural, or some sort of malady, but he pushed the reflection aside. If his need was a sickness, then satisfaction would provide the cure.
Finally, with a soft clinking, the silverweave pulled apart. In his frantic yanking and fumbling, he’d evidently released some sort of hidden catch. He didn’t know how or where, but neither did he care. He only had eyes for Tu’ala’keth’s narrow torso with its subtly inhuman contours and gill slits on the collar bones and ribs. In that moment, it seemed both the strangest and most desirable thing he’d ever seen, and he stretched out a trembling hand to caress it. As if his excitement had kindled a comparable ardor in her, she shuddered violently.
Tu’ala’keth and Anton stood arguing in the narrow side street. He offered his objections to her scheme, and
