His words moved her as if he had spoken a prophecy. She glowed. “I cannot wait to see Kennit’s face when I tell him.”

Wintrow took a deep breath. Sureness filled him, and if Sa inspired him to speak, he knew it was then. “I counsel you to keep these tidings secret for a time yet. His mind is so full of concerns just now. Wait for a time when he truly needs to hear it.”

“Perhaps you are right in this,” she said regretfully.

Wintrow doubted she would heed him.

THE SQUALL THAT HAD THREATENED ALL DAY HAD FOUND THEM. PARAGON turned his face up, and tasted the last rain he would ever know. The chop of the waves jolted against him, but could do little to rock him as his heavy bulk settled ever deeper. The pounding on the hatch cover had weakened. The oil-fed fires that Kennit had kindled smoked and stank in the rain, but burned still. Occasionally there was a crash as scorched rigging gave way and fell to his deck. He ignored it all. He was sinking inside himself to a place deeper than any ocean floor.

Inside him, Amber wept. That was hard to bear. He had not realized how much he had come to cherish her. And Clef. And Brashen, so proud to be his captain. Resolutely, he forced such thoughts away. He must not give in to them now. The carpenter had crawled as far forward in his bow as she could get under the deck. Despite the pain of her scalds, she had dragged herself through the cold water flooding his holds. He wished she had succumbed to the numbing water; it would be a kinder end. But she lived, and clung to his mainstem and spoke faintly. He held himself back from her.

A serpent butted against him. “Hey. Stupid. Are you just going to let them do this to you?” The creature’s tone was disdainful. “Wake up. You’ve as much a right to live as she does.”

“I’ve as much a right to die, also,” Paragon retorted. Then he wished he had not roused himself to speak, for now he was aware of Amber’s agonized words as well.

“Paragon. Paragon, I don’t want to die. Not like this. Not with all my work unfinished. Please, ship. Please don’t do this.” She was weeping, and her tears scalded him as sharply as serpent venom.

“No one has the right to die uselessly,” the serpent proclaimed. Paragon recognized his voice now. He was the one who had shouted mockingly at the other serpents as they attacked him. He butted Paragon again. It was annoying.

“Dying is the most useful thing I can do for Kennit,” Paragon reminded himself. He struggled to compose himself once more.

The serpent pressed his head against Paragon’s listing hull and pushed hard. “I do not speak of ‘kennit.’ I speak of being useful to your own kind. Bolt brags that she alone can lead us home and protect us. I don’t believe her. The memories I have recall many guides and protectors. Surely what one can do well, two can do better. Why is she so eager to kill you to please this ‘kennit’? Why do either of you care about him at all?”

“She wishes me to be dead, to please Kennit?” The words came slowly to Paragon. He could not attach sense to them. Surely, this was Kennit’s sorrowful will for him. It had nothing to do with Vivacia, or Bolt as she now styled herself.

Unless she wanted Kennit for herself. Unless she wished to do away with Paragon so she would have no rivals. Perhaps Kennit had deceived him. Perhaps Kennit wished him dead so he could be with Vivacia.

The traitor thought shocked him. “Go away! This is my decision.”

“And who are you to decide?” the serpent pressed him.

“Paragon. I am Paragon of the Ludlucks!” The name was a talisman to hold other identities at bay.

The serpent rubbed against him, a long caress, skin to hull. “And who else are you?” he demanded.

Inside him, he felt the sudden press of Amber’s bare hands against him. “No!” he screamed at both of them. “No! I am Paragon of the Ludlucks. Only that.”

But within him, from darkness deeper than any human soul, other voices spoke, and Amber listened to them.

ALTHEA OPENED HER EYES AND WAITED FOR THE BAD DREAM TO DISPEL. IT seemed she was on board Vivacia, inside her old stateroom. The look of the room was right, but the feel of it was subtly wrong. A memory from the Reaper stirred. That ship had felt this way. Dead wood. She received no sense of the liveship at all. She reached out, but felt only the motion of the vessel. Had they taken the ship? Was Brashen on the wheel, taking them home?

She sat up too suddenly. A violent fit of coughing shook her. A stray memory surfaced as from a dream: sprawling on Vivacia’s deck, very cold, coughing up sea water. The taste of brine was still in her mouth and stinging her nose. That had been real. The deck under her had been very hard, and not just in the way of wood. She had felt refusal in the planks under her hands. Jek had been with her, but was not here now. Her hair was still damp, so not too much time had passed. The dusk of an early winter evening was in the window, darkened more by a spitting storm. A lantern, wick turned low, hung from a hook.