Wintrow kept still, and he hoped, inconspicuous among the other slaves. A feeling of almost relief welled up in him. These pirates were taking over his ship, but at least they moved competently. She was in the hands of true seamen.

The relief was short lived as, a moment later, bodies began to splash overboard. The white serpent that Wintrow had supposed left far behind in the storm suddenly broke to the surface to gape eagerly for the corpses. Several others, more gaudily colored, lifted their heads at a distance to regard the ship both warily and curiously. One suddenly lifted a great crest around its neck and flourished its head with a challenging bellow.

Vivacia gave an incoherent cry at sight of them. “No! Get them away!” she cried out. Then, “Not Gantry, no! Do not give him to the foul things! Wintrow! Make them stop, make them stop!”

The only response was a terrible laughter.

He glanced at his father. His eyes looked dead. “I have to go to her,” Wintrow apologized. “Stay here.”

His father snorted. “There's no sense in bothering. You've already lost her. You listened to that priest and let the pirates just board her. You just stood here and let the pirates take her. Just as last night you did nothing to warn us when the slaves rose against us.” He shook his head. “For a time, last night, I thought I had misjudged you. But I was right all along.”

“Just as I stood by and did nothing as you changed my ship into a slaver,” Wintrow pointed out bitterly. He looked his father up and down slowly. “I fear I was right, too,” he said. He looped off the wheel and went forward without a glance back. The ship, he told himself. I do it for the ship. He did not leave the man there alone and injured because he hated his father. He did not leave him there half-hoping someone would kill him. He only did it because the ship needed him. He moved towards the foredeck. When he reached the waist, he tried to thread his way inconspicuously through the gathered slaves there.

By daylight, the released slaves were an even more ungodly sight than they had been in the dimness of the holds. Chafed by chains and the movement of the decks beneath them, their rag-draped hides showed scabby and pale. Privation had thinned many to near bones. Some few wore better clothes, stripped from the dead or salvaged from the crew's belongings. The map-faces seemed to have appropriated his father's wardrobe and seemed to be more at ease than some of the others. Many had the blinking, confused gaze of animals caged long in the dark and suddenly released. They had broken into the ship's stores. Barrels of biscuit had been dragged out onto the deck and stove open. Some of the slaves clutched handfuls of ship's biscuit, as if to promise themselves food readily available. Freed of chains, they looked as if they could not yet recall how to move freely or act as they wished. Most shuffled still, and looked at each other only with the dull recognition that cattle have for one another. Humanity had been stolen from them. It would take them time to regain it.

He tried to move as if he were truly one of the slaves, slipping from one huddled knot to another. Sa'Adar and his map-faces stood in the center of the ship's waist, apparently offering a welcome to the pirates. The priest was speaking to three of them. The few words that Wintrow overheard seemed to be a flowery speech of welcome and thanks. None of the three looked particularly impressed. The tall man looked sickened by it. Wintrow shared his feelings.

They were not his concern. Vivacia was. Her futile pleas had died away to small inarticulate sounds. Wintrow caught sight of two map-faces on the lee side of the ship. They were systematically throwing the stacked bodies of slain crewmen and slaves overboard. Their faces were detached, their only comments relating to the gluttony of the white serpent who seized them. Wintrow caught a glimpse of Mild as he went over, and would recall forever the image of bare feet dangling from ragged trousers as the white serpent seized his friend's body in an engulfing maw. “Sa forgive us,” he prayed on a breath. He spun away from the sight and got his hands on die ladder to the foredeck. He had started up it when he heard Sa'Adar order a map-face, “Fetch Captain Haven here.” Wintrow halted an instant, then swarmed up it and raced to the bow. “Vivacia. I'm here, I'm here.” He pitched his voice low.

“Wintrow!” she gasped. She turned to him, reached up a hand. He leaned down to touch it. The face she turned up to him was devastated with both shock and fear. “So many are dead,” she whispered. “So many died last night. And what will become of us now?”

“I don't know,” he told her truthfully. “But I promise that of my own will, I will never leave you again. And I will do all I can to stop any further killing. But you have to help me. You must.”