she refuted them. Yet when he finished, she felt obscurely disappointed.
“You didn’t,” she said, “make the one point that might almost have deterred me.” She’d thought that by now, he understood her well enough to think of it.
“What point is that?” he asked.
“I intend to cloud Vurgrom’s mind, not my own, and to beguile him properly, I must allow him to touch me from time to time. It will be repulsive and unnatural for me.”
“Can you bear it?” Anton asked. “Act as if you enjoy it?”
“Yes.” Within limits, she thought. “As I told Shandri Clayhill, I will be a hunter stalking her prey, and that is a sacred act.”
“Good,” said Anton, except that he wasn’t Anton anymore. Somehow, between one heartbeat and next, he’d swelled into hulking, blubbery, leering Vurgrom. The pirate chieftain flung his arms wide, pulled her into a crushing embrace, and planted his lips on hers.
His mouth stankand tastedof wine and gluttony. Viler still were the mustache and whiskers, the bristling hairs jabbing into her skin. She suffered it while she silently counted to three then squirmed be free of him.
He lumbered after her, and the chase was like a dance, flickering from one day and location to the next. On the verandah, in the solar, in his suite and aboard the small sailboat he kept as a toy, she lured him in and pushed him back again.
“It’s a matter of balance,” she told him, “of pitting one emotion against another. As long as you fear to offend me as much as you yearn for my touch, you won’t demand too much, and I can tolerate you.”
“Can you tolerate this?” He was Kassur now, complete with eye patch, and he thrust out his hands at her. Yellow flame leaped from his fingertips, inspiring a jolt of terror that shocked her from her delirium.
Unfortunately, reality was equally nightmarish. Confused, for the first moment she understood only that the “balance” she intended to keep her safe had somehow tilted precipitously. She was on her back with Vurgrom leaning over her, mauling her. His ruddy face with its broken capillaries was contorted with passion, and it was plain he meant to use her as brutally as he’d treat a slave.
When she tried to clench her fists and pummel him, her limbs flailed uselessly, and she felt a burning throughout her frame. For a moment, she imagined the fire from her delirium had somehow accompanied her into the waking world to sear her in truth. Then, however, she realized the feeling wasn’t really heat but rather a kind of starved frenzythe panic of a body no longer able to breathe.
Vurgrom had divested her of her silverweave. Most likely he didn’t understand she needed it to survive out of water, for she naturally hadn’t told him of her vulnerability. Now if she couldn’t recover the coral mesh quickly, that sensible reticence would be the death of her.
“Armor,” she croaked. “Dying.”
He slapped her and resumed his pawing, as if he had no more comprehension than a beast. Perhaps he didn’t. Maybe that was what her magic had made of him.
It was certain only magic could save her now. She struggled to compose her thoughts for conjuring. It was difficult when her body hurt so badly, Vurgrom’s caresses were so loathsome, and she could feel life itself withering inside her. She reached out to Umberlee, and the goddess granted her a wave of frigid anger, sweeping through her mind to scour weaker, useless emotions away.
Tu’ala’keth wheezed the opening words of the invocation. Straining to control her spastic hand, she attempted a mystic pass. Vurgrom realized what was happening and reached for her throat to silence her.
She flailed her other arm across her body, blocking the human’s clutching hands. It gave her time to complete the spell. Despite the fumbling execution, power seethed through the air. Vurgrom shrieked, scrambled off her, and floundered backward, fetching up against the door that led to his apartments. Shaking and whimpering, he gawked at her.
The magically induced terror would only last a few heartbeats. She had that much time to save herself from asphyxiation. She heaved herself up off the tabletop, tried to catch her balance, but her legs gave way beneath her. She collapsed to her knees, banging the left one hard, a sharp stab of pain to punctuate the ongoing, all- encompassing excruciation.
She cast about for the silverweave, and failed to discern it or much of anything else. Even when its dazzling sun forsook the sky, the world above the waves had always been bright by her standards, but now darkness seethed and swam through the air, obscuring everything. A fresh cramp in her guts suggested the cause might be the poison Vurgrom had fed her.
Still the armor had to be here, didn’t it? Well, no, actually, it didn’t. Not if, wild with passion, Vurgrom had flung it off the balcony.
But if that were true, she was as good as dead, and Umberlee’s cause, as good as lost, and so she refused to believe it. Instead, she crawled, praying that, her near blindness notwithstanding, she’d spot the tunic when she dragged herself close enough.
She didn’t. But eventually, when she set her hand down, something clinked beneath her palm, and she felt the familiar mesh of sculpted coral. She scooped up the silverweave and examined it by touch as much as sight, searching for the sleeves. She located one and fumbled an arm in, and Vurgrom bellowed, a roar of rage, not panic. His footsteps shook the balcony as he charged.
Until she had the silverweave on properly, she couldn’t fully benefit from its enchantments. She was like a beached fish with the edge of the surf washing and receding over its body. Her gills worked one moment and not the next. It wasn’t enough to quell her spasms or restore her depleted strength, but she had no time for anything more.
She groped aboutshe still could only barely see-found the heavy golden goblet from which he’d swilled his brandy lying within reach, and grabbed it. As he bent over her kneeling body and poised his thumbs to gouge her eyes, she rammed the cup into his groin.
It was a puny blow, but it caught him where he was sensitive. His mouth fell open, and he groaned. She bashed him in the knee, and he fell beside her, which enabled her to pummel him about the head.
He howled and tried to shield himself with his arms. She rolled away beyond his reach and back onto her knees then hastily drew the silverweave on as it was meant to be worn.
At last she could breathe as easily as if she were under water. It didn’t end her spasms or restore more than a frail shadow of her former strengthno hope of that with the drug still ripping at her gutsbut it helped.
Vurgrom scrambled to his feet and charged. “Trip!” she gasped. He caught one foot behind the other and fell headlong, bashing his face against the floor. She reared over him and pounded his skull with the goblet, which bonged and crumpled under the force of the blows. Blood streamed from his split scalp to stain his coppery hair a darker hue, and he stopped moving.
Tu’ala’keth yearned to keep hitting him until she was certain he’d never stir again, but that would preclude him serving Umberlee’s purpose. Besides, she was nearly as avid to end her own distress.
She set the cup aside and retrieved the drowned man’s hand from the floor of the balcony where Vurgrom had tossed it. She cast restorative charms on herself and, clasping the hand, she purged the poison from her system. The clenching pains in her belly eased, and the veils of darkness shrouding the world dropped away.
Next, she prayed for enhanced vitality. The magic flowed through her in a cool tide, easing her aches and replenishing her strength. She then found one of the sharp knives she and Vurgrom had used to slice their food, crouched over him, and chanted a healing prayer.
It was only a minor one. She didn’t want him fit enough for further fighting. He moaned, and his bloodshot eyes fluttered open. She set the knife against the throbbing artery at the side of his neck.
“Struggle or cry out,” she said, “and I will kill you.”
“Bitch,” he said, his voice low. “If you were a proper woman and not some ugly fish, the drug would have kept you helpless.”
“I perceive,” she said, “you have shaken off the glamour I cast upon you. No matter. Your attempt at molestation has taken us beyond such tricks. Now I will ask questions. You will answer truthfully or die.”
He stared at her. “‘Questions?’ You bewitched me just to get some sort of information?”
“Yes.”
He snorted. “All right. I’ll tell you anything. But you have to swear by your goddess to let me live if I give you what you want.”
Tu’ala’keth scowled. “Very well. I swear it on the wrath of Umberlee. Now what do you know of the Cult of
