He chose wronged righteousness. “Why?” he demanded theatrically. He opened his arms wide to expose the slash down his chest. He half turned, so that he addressed the slaves still clustered amidships as well as Etta. “Why do you choose me to attack? What have I done, except come forward to offer my aid?”

“I want the ship's medicine chest,” Etta responded. “I want it now.”

“I don't have it!” Sa'Adar exclaimed angrily.

The woman moved faster than a clawing cat. Her knife licked out and a second line of blood bisected the first. Sa'Adar set his teeth and did not cry out or step back, but Wintrow saw the effort it cost him.

“Find it,” Etta suggested. “You bragged that you organized the uprising that overthrew the captain. You go among the slaves, exhorting them that you are the true leader they should follow. If that is true, you should know which of your men plundered the mate's cabin. They took the chest. I want it. Now.”

For a breath longer, the tableau held. Did some sort of a sign, a flicker of a glance, pass between Sa'Adar and his men? Wintrow could not be certain. Sa'Adar began talking, but to Wintrow his words seemed oddly staged. “You could have simply asked me, you know. I am a humble man, a priest of Sa. I seek nothing for myself, only the greater good of human' ity. This chest you seek . . . what did it look like?” His querying eyes fell on Wintrow and his mouth stretched in a manufactured smile.

Wintrow forced himself to keep a neutral expression as he answered. “A wooden chest. So by so.” Wintrow measured it in the air. “Locked. Vivacia's image was burned into the top of it. Within were medicines, doctoring tools, needles, bandaging. Anyone who opened it would know instantly what it was.”

Sa'Adar turned to those gathered in the waist of the ship. “Did you hear, my people? Do any of you know of such a chest? If so, please bring it forth now. Not for my sake, of course, but for that of our benefactor, Captain Kennit. Let us show him we know how to be kind to those who are kind to us.”

It was so transparent, Wintrow thought Etta would cut him down where he stood. Instead, an oddly patient look came over her face. By his knee, on the deck, Kennit spoke very softly. “She knows she can wait. She likes to take her time killing, and do it in privacy.”

Wintrow's eyes snapped to the pirate, but he seemed to be nearly unconscious. His lashes lay long on his cheeks; his face was slack. A loose smile twitched over his mouth. Wintrow set two fingers lightly to Kennit's throat. His pulse still beat steady and strong there, but the man's skin was fevered. “Captain Kennit?” Wintrow asked softly.

“Is this it?” A woman's voice rang out. The freed slaves parted, and she came striding forward. Wintrow stood up. She carried the medicine chest. The lid had been splintered, but he recognized its worn wood. He did not move forward but let the woman bring it to Etta instead. Let this be her battle with Sa'Adar. He had enough bad blood with the man already.

She lowered her eyes to gaze down at the opened chest when it was placed before her feet. She did not even stoop to stir the disheveled contents. When she lifted her eyes back to Sa'Adar's face, she gave a small snort of contempt. “I do not enjoy games,” she said very softly. “But if I am forced to play them, I always make sure I win.” Her stare met his. Neither looked aside. The planes of her cheeks tightened, exposing her teeth in a snarling smile. “Now. Take your rabble off this deck. Get belowdecks and close the hatches. I neither wish to see you, nor hear you, nor even smell you while this is going on. If you are very wise, you will never draw my attention to you again. Do you understand?”

Wintrow watched as Sa'Adar made a very serious mistake. He drew himself up to his full height, not quite the match of Etta's. His voice was coolly amused. “Am I to understand that you, and not Brig, are in command here?”

It would have been a deft play, if there had been any rivalry between the two to exploit. Brig only threw his head back in a guffaw of laughter as Etta's knife danced in to add yet another stripe to Sa'Adar's chest. This time he cried out and staggered back a step. She had made the knife bite deeper. As the wandering priest clutched at his blood-slicked chest, she smiled darkly. “I think we understand that I am in command of you.”

One of the map-faces started forward, his face dark with fury. Etta's knife moved in and out of him, and he went down, clutching at his belly. Vivacia gave a muffled cry at this new spillage of blood on her deck, an echo of the cries and gasps of the watching freed folk. Wintrow shared the deep shudder of horror that passed through the ship at this fresh violence, but he could not take his eyes away. Sa'Adar shrank back behind his other bodyguard, but that burly man was also cowering away from the woman with the knife. None of the others sprang forward to defend the priest. Instead, there was a subtle movement away from him as folk distanced themselves.