“Etta!” he croaked to the whore. “Water.”

“It's right here,” she said soothingly.

It was true. Surprising as it was, she was standing right beside him, a cup of water ready in her hand. Her long fingers were cool on the back of his neck as she helped him raise himself to drink. Afterward, she deftly turned his pillow before she lowered his head again. With a cool cloth she patted the perspiration from his face and then wiped his hands with a moist cloth. He lay still and silent under her touch, limply grateful for the comfort she gave. He knew a moment of purest peace.

It did not last. His awareness of his swollen leg rose swiftly to recognition of pain. He tried to ignore it. It became a pulsing heat that rose in intensity with every breath he took. Beside his bed, his whore sat in a chair, sewing something. His eyes moved listlessly over her. She looked older than he recalled her. The lines were deeper by her mouth and in her brow. Her face looked thinner under the brush of her short black hair. It made her dark eyes even more immense.

“You look terrible,” he rebuked her.

She set her sewing aside immediately and smiled as if he had complimented her. “It's hard for me to see you like this. When you are ill ... I can't sleep, I can't eat. . . .”

Selfish woman. She'd fed his leg to a sea serpent, and now tried to make it out that it was her problem. Was he supposed to feel sorry for her? He pushed the thought aside. “Where's that boy? Wintrow?”

She stood right away. “Do you want him?”

Stupid question. “Of course I want him. He's supposed to make my leg better. Why hasn't he done so?”

She leaned over his bed and smiled down at him tenderly. He wanted to push her away but he had not the strength. “I think he wants to wait until we make port in Bull Creek. There are a number of things he wants to have on hand before he ... heals you.” She turned away from his sickbed abruptly, but not before he had seen the tears glinting in her eyes. Her wide shoulders were bowed and she no longer stood tall and proud. She did not expect him to survive. To know that so suddenly both scared and angered him. It was as if she had wished his death on him.

“Go find that boy!” he commanded her roughly, mostly to get her out of his sight. “Remind him. Remind him well that if I die, so does he and his father. Tell him that!”

“I'll have someone fetch him,” she said in a quavering voice and started for the door.

“No. You go yourself, right now, and get him. Now.”

She turned back and annoyed him by lightly touching his face. “If that's what you want,” she said soothingly. “I'll go right now.”

He did not watch her go but listened instead to the sound of her boots on the deck. She hurried, and when she went out, the door shut quietly but completely behind her. He heard her voice lifted to someone, irritably. “No. Go away. I won't have him bothered with such things right now.” Then, in a lower, threatening voice, “Touch that door and I'll kill you right here.” Whoever it was heeded her, for no knock came at the door.

He half closed his eyes and drifted on the tide of his pain. The fever razored bright edges and sharp colors to the world. The cozy room seemed to crowd closer around him, threatening to fall in on him. He pushed the sheet away and tried to find a breath of cooler air.

“So, Kennit. What will you do with your 'likely urchin' when he comes?”

The pirate squeezed his eyes tight shut. He tried to will the voice away.

“That's amusing. Do you think I cannot see you with your eyes closed?” The charm was relentless.

“Shut up. Leave me alone. I wish I had never had you made.”

“Oh, now you have wounded my feelings! Such words to bandy about, after all we have endured together.”

Kennit opened his eyes. He lifted his wrist and stared at the bracelet. The tiny wizardwood charm, carved in a likeness of his own saturnine face, looked up at him with a friendly grin. Leather thongs secured it firmly over his pulse point. His fever brought the face looming closer. He closed his eyes.

“Do you truly believe that boy can heal you? No. You could not be so foolish. Of course, you are desperate enough that you will insist he try. Do you know what amazes me? That you fear death so much that it makes you brave enough to face the surgeon's knife. Think of that swollen flesh, so tender you scarce can bear the brush of a sheet upon it. You will let him set a knife to that, a bright sharp blade, gleaming silver before the blood encarmines it. . . .”

“Charm.” Kennit opened his eyes to slits. “Why do you torment me?”