“The circle is closing.”

He glanced down at the charm on his wrist. The be-damned thing was more nuisance than luck-piece anymore. It spoke only when it suited it, and then it mouthed nothing but threats, warnings and bleak prophecies. He wished he had never had it created but he could scarcely get rid of it. There was far too much of himself in it to trust it if it fell into other hands. Likewise, to destroy a living sculpture of one's own face must invite a like destruction to oneself. So he continued to tolerate the little wizardwood charm. Someday, perhaps, it might be useful. Perhaps.

“I said, the circle closes. Do you not take my meaning? Or are you growing deaf?”

“I was ignoring you,” Kennit said pleasantly. He glanced out the window of his stateroom. The Divvytown harbor was coming into sight. Several masts stuck up from the water. Beyond them, the town had burned. The jungly forest beyond the town showed signs of scorching. Divvytown's docks had survived as freestanding platforms that pointed at the shore with charred-off beams. Kennit felt a pang of regret. He had come back here, bringing his richest trove ever, in the expectation that Sincure Faldin could dispose of it at a tidy profit. No doubt, he had had his throat slit and his daughters and wife were dragged off for slaves. It was all damnably inconvenient.

“The circle,” the charm went on inexorably, “seems to be composed of several elements. A pirate captain. A liveship for the taking. A burned town. A captive boy, family to the ship. Those were the elements of the first cycle. And now, what do we have here? A pirate captain. A liveship for the taking. A captive boy, family to the ship. And a burned town.”

“Your analogy breaks down, charm. The elements are out of order.” Kennit moved to his mirror, then leaned on his crutch as he made a final adjustment to the curled ends of his mustache.

“I still find the coincidence compelling. What other elements could we add? Ah, how about a father held in chains?”

Kennit twisted his wrist so that the charm faced him. “Or a woman with her tongue cut out? I could arrange one of those, as well.”

The tiny face narrowed its eyes at him. “It goes around, you fool. It goes around. Do you think that, once you have set the grindstone in motion, you can escape your ultimate fate? It was destined for you, years ago, when you chose to follow in Igrot's footsteps. You will die Igrot's death.”

He slammed the charm facedown on his table. “I will not hear that name from you again! Do you understand me?”

He looked at the charm again. It smiled up at him serenely. On the back of his hand, blood spread under the surface of his skin. He tugged on his shirt cuff to conceal both the charm and the bruise with a fall of lace. He left his cabin.

The stench was much stronger on deck. The swampy harbor of Divvytown had always had a stink of its own. Now the smells of burned homes and death joined it. An uncommon silence had fallen over his crew. The Vivacia moved like a ghost ship, pushed slowly by a faint wind over the sluggish water. No one cried out, nor whispered or even moaned. The terrible silence of acceptance weighed the ship down. Even the figurehead was silent. Behind them, in their wake, the Marietta came in a similar pall.

Kennit's eyes went to Wintrow, standing on the foredeck of the Vivacia. He could almost feel the numbness they shared. Etta was beside him, gripping the rail and leaning forward as if she were the ship's figurehead. Her face was frozen in a strange grimace of disbelief.

The destruction was uneven. Three walls of a warehouse stood, like hands cupped around the destruction within. A single wall of Bettel's elegant bagnio still stood. Here and there, isolated hovels had failed to catch well enough to burn. The soggy ground the town was founded on had saved these few places.

“There's no point in tying up here,” Kennit observed to Brig. The young first mate of the Vivacia had drifted up wordlessly to his side. “Bring her about and let's find another port.”

“Wait, sir! Look! There's someone. Look there!” Gankis raised his voice boldly. The scrawny old man had climbed the rigging, the better to look down on the town's destruction.

“I see nothing,” Kennit declared, but an instant later, he did. They came drifting in from the jungle, in ones and twos. The door of one hovel was flung open. A man stood in the open door, holding a sword defiantly. His head was bound in a dirty brown bandage.

They tied up to the skeletal pilings that were the remnants of the main dock. Kennit rode in the bow of the ship's boat as it carried him ashore. Sorcor in the Marietta's boat kept pace with him. Both Etta and the boy had insisted on accompanying him. Grudgingly, he had said that the whole crew might have a brief shore time, provided a skeleton crew always manned the ship. Every man aboard seemed intent on getting ashore, to prove the destruction to himself. Kennit would have been content simply to leave. The burned town unsettled him. He told himself there was no telling what the desperate survivors might do.