"The enjoyment," Raithen said with a forced calm because he still wanted to know how bad the wound on his neck was, "was not all mine." He released the dead woman, and she thumped to the floor at his feet.

As captain of some of the most vicious pirates to sail the Great Sea and the Gulf of Westmarch, he had an image to maintain. If any of his crew sensed weakness, someone would try to exploit it. He'd taken his own captaincy of Barracuda at the same time he'd taken his former captain's life.

Pettit grinned and spat into the dented bronze cuspidor in the corner of the room. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then said, "Looks like ye've about had yer fill of that one. Want me to bring another one up?"

"No." Controlling the fear and curiosity that raged within him, Raithen cleaned his bloody knife on the woman's clothes, then crossed the room to the mirror. It was cracked and contained dark gray age spots where the silver-powder backing had worn away. "But she did remind me of something, Pettit."

"What's that, cap'n?"

"That damned priest, Cholik, has been thinking of us as lackeys." Raithen peered into the mirror, surveying the wound on his neck, poking at the edges of it with his fingers. Thank the Light, it wasn't bleeding any more than it had been, and it even appeared to be stopping.

The flesh between the bite marks was raised, swollen, and already turning purple. Bits of skin and even the meat beneath hung in tatters. It would scar, Raithen knew. The thought made him bitter because he was vain about his looks. By most accounts, he was a handsome man and had taken care to remain that way. And it would give him a more colorful and acceptable excuse about how all the bruising had taken place around his neck.

"Aye," Pettit grunted. "Them priests, they get up under a man's skin with them high-and-mighty ways of theirs. Always actin' like they got a snootful of air what's better'n the likes of ye and me. There's been a night or two on watch when I'd think about goin' after one of them and guttin' him, leavin' him out for the others to find. Might put them in a more appreciatin' frame o' mind about what we're a-doin' here."

Satisfied that his life wasn't in danger unless the woman was carrying some kind of disease that hadn't become apparent yet, Raithen took a kerchief from his pocket and tied it around his neck. "That's not a bad idea, Pettit."

"Thank ye, cap'n. I'm always thinkin'. And, why, this here deserted city with all them stories o' demons and the like, it'd be a perfect place to pull something like that. Why, we'd find out who the true believers were among ol' Cholik's bunch fer damn sure." He grinned, revealing only a few straggling, stained teeth remaining in his mouth.

"Some of the men might get worried, too." Raithen surveyed the kerchief around his neck in the mirror. Actually, it didn't look bad on him. In time, when the wound scarred over properly, he'd invent stories about how he'd gotten it in the arms of a lover he'd slain or stolen from, or somecrazed and passionate princess out of Kurast he'd taken for ransom then returned deflowered to her father, the king, after getting his weight in gold.

"Well, we could tell the men what was what, cap'n."

"A secret, Pettit, is kept by one man. Even sharing it between the two of us endangers it. Telling a whole crew?" Raithen shook his head and tried not to wince when his neck pained him. "That would be stupid."

Pettit frowned. "Well, somethin' has to be done. Them priests has discovered a door down there in them warrens. An' if the past behavior of them priests is anythin' to go by, they ain't a-gonna let us look at what's behind it none."

"A door?" Raithen turned to his second-in-command. "What door?"

The big pirate, Lon, attacked Darrick Lang without any pretense at skilled swordplay. He just fetched up that huge sword of his in both hands and brought it crashing down toward Darrick's head, intending to split it like an overripe melon.

Thrusting his cutlass up, knowing there was a chance that the bigger sword might shear his own blade but having no other choice for defense, Darrick caught the descending blade. He didn't try to stop the sword's descent, but he did redirect it to the side, stepping to one side as he did because he expected the sudden reversal the pirate tried. He didn't entirely block the blow, though, and the flat of the blade slammed against his skull, almost knocking him out and leaving him disoriented.

Working on sheer instinct and guided by skilled responses, Darrick managed to lock his opponent's blade with his while he struggled to hold on to his senses. His vision and hearing faded out, as the world sometimes did between slow rollers when Lonesome Star followed wave troughs instead of cutting through them.

Recovering a little, Lon shoved Darrick back but didn't gain much ground.

Moving with skill and the dark savagery that filled himany time he fought, Darrick took a step forward and head-butted the pirate in the face.

Moaning, Lon stumbled back.

Darrick showed no mercy, pushing himself forward again. Obviously employing all the skill he had just to keep himself alive, the pirate kept retreating, stumbling and tripping over the broken terrain as he tried to walk up the incline behind him. Only a moment later, he went too far.

As though from a great distance, Darrick heard the man's boots scrape in the loose dirt, then the man fell, flailing and yelling, in the end wrapping his arms about his head. Ruthless and quick, Darrick knocked the pirate's blade from his hand, sending the big sword spinning through the air to land in the dense brush a dozen yards away.

Lon held his hands up. "I surrender! I surrender! Give me mercy!"

But, dazed as he was from the near miss of the sword, mercy was out of Darrick's reach. He remembered the bodies he'd seen in the flotsam left by the plunderers who had taken the Westmarch ship. Even that was hard to hang on to, because his battered mind slipped even farther back into the past, recalling the beatings his father had given him while he was a child. The man had been a butcher, big and rough, with powerful, callused hands that could split skin over a cheekbone with a single slap.

For a number of years, Darrick had never understood his father's anger or rage at him; he'd always assumed he'd done something wrong, not been a good son. It wasn't until he got older that he understood everything that was at play in their relationship.

"Mercy," the pirate begged.

But the main voice that Darrick listened to was his father's, cursing and swearing at him, threatening to beat him to death or bleed him out like a fresh-butchered hog. Darrick drew back his cutlass and swung, aiming to take the pirate's head off.

Without warning, a sword darted out and deflected Darrick's blow, causing the blade to cut into the earth only inches from the pirate's arm-wrapped head. "No," someone said.

Still lost in the memory of beatings he'd gotten at his father's hands, the present overlapping the past, Darrick spun and lifted his sword. Incredibly, someone caught his arm before he could swing and halted the blow.

"Darrick, it's me. It's me, Darrick. Mat." Thick and hoarse with emotion, Mat's voice was little more than a whisper. "It's me, damn it, leave off. We need this man alive."

Head filled with pain, vision still spotty from the pirate's blow, Darrick squinted his eyes and tried to focus. Forced out as he made his way to the present reality, memory of those past events left with reluctance.

"He's not your father, Darrick," Mat said.

Darrick focused on his friend, feeling the emotion drain from him, leaving him weak and shaking. "I know. I know that." But he knew he hadn't, not really. The pirate's blow had almost taken away his senses. He took in a deep breath and struggled to continue clearing his head.