“We could just lie out here.” She spoke softly, but her voice carried oddly in the fog. “Wait for another ship to go in or come out.”

Brashen shook his head slowly. “I don’t want to be challenged or boarded. That may happen to us anyway when we reach Divvytown, but I don’t want to look like I’m blundering about out here. We’ll go in cocky and knowing, sail up there and drop anchor in Divvytown as if we’re sure of a welcome. If I seem a bit of a braggart and a fool to them, their guards will drop faster.” He grinned at her crookedly in the gathering darkness. “It shouldn’t take much effort for me to give them that impression.”

They were anchored off a coastline of swamp and trees. The rains of winter had filled the rivers and streams of this region to overflowing. At high tide, salt water and river water mingled in the brackish bogs. In the gathering darkness, trees both living and dead loomed out of the gently drifting mists. Breaks in the fog occasionally revealed dense walls of trees laced with dangling creepers and curtained with draping moss. The rain forest came right down to the waterline. By painstaking observation, Brashen and Althea had spotted several possible openings, any of which might be the narrow mouth of the winding river leading to the sluggish lagoon that fronted Divvytown.

Brashen once more squinted at the tattered scrap of canvas in his hand. It was his original sketch, a hasty rendering done while he was mate on the Springeve. “I think this was meant to indicate a kelp bed exposed at low tide.” He glanced around at his surroundings again. “I just don’t know,” he confessed quietly.

“Pick one,” Althea suggested. “The worst we can do is waste time.”

“The best we can do is waste time,” Brashen corrected her. “The worst is considerably worse. We could get lodged in some silty-bottomed inlet and have the tide strand us there.” He took a deep breath. “But I guess I choose and we take a chance.”

The ship was very quiet. By Brashen’s order, the crew walked softly and conversed only in whispers. No lights had been hung. Even the ship was trying to mute the small noises of his planked body. All canvas had been lowered and secured. Sound carried too well in this fog. He wished to be able to hear if another ship approached in the mist. Amber ghosted up to stand silently beside them.

“If we’re lucky, some of this fog may burn off in the morning,” Althea observed hopefully.

“We’re as like to be shrouded more thickly than ever,” Brashen returned. “But we’ll wait for what light day offers us before we try it. Over there.” He pointed and Althea followed the line of his arm. “I think that’s the opening. We’ll try it at dawn.”

“You’re not sure?” Amber whispered in quiet dismay.

“If Divvytown were easy to find, it would not have survived as a pirate stronghold all these years,” Brashen pointed out. “The whole trick of the place is that unless you know it’s there, you’d never think to look for it.”

“Perhaps,” Amber began hesitantly. “Perhaps one of the former slaves could help. They came from the Pirate Isles….”

Brashen shook his head. “I’ve asked. They’ve all professed complete ignorance of Divvytown, denied they ever pirated. Ask any of them. They were the sons of runaway slaves who settled in the Pirate Isles to begin new lives. Chalcedean or Jamaillian slave raiders captured them, and they were tattooed and sold in Jamaillia. From thence they were brought to Bingtown.”

“Is it so hard to believe?” Amber asked him.

“Not at all,” Brashen replied easily. “But a boy almost always picks up a generalized knowledge of the town he grows up in. These fellows profess too much ignorance of everything for me to be comfortable with their stories.”

“They’re good sailors,” Althea added. “I expected trouble when they were shifted onto my watch, but they haven’t been. They’d prefer to stay to themselves, but I haven’t allowed that, and they haven’t objected. They turn to with a will, just as they did when they first came aboard to work in secret. Harg, I think, resents losing some of his authority over the others; on my watch, they are all just sailors, on an equal footing with the rest. But they are good sailors… a bit too good for this to be their first voyage.”

Amber sighed. “I confess, when I first proposed bringing them aboard and allowing them to trade their labor for a chance to return to their homes, I never considered that they might have conflicting loyalties. Now, it seems obvious.”