"Aye," Darrick answered through his constricted throat. "Aye, the demon was there right enough. He caused this. Might as well have killed Mat himself. Him and that priest."

Several of the sailors touched their good luck charms at the mention of the demon. They pulled at their oars in response to Maldrin's shouted orders, but it was primarily to direct the craft. The swollen river propelled the longboat swiftly.

Upriver, lantern lights burned aboard the single cog fighting the mooring tether as the river rushed against it.Captain Raithen's crew waited there, Darrick guessed. They didn't know the captain wasn't coming.

Giving in to the overwhelming emotion and exhaustion that filled him, Darrick stretched out over Mat's body, as if he were going to protect him from the gale winds and the rain, the way Mat used to do for him when he was racked with fever while getting well from one of his father's beatings. Darrick smelled the blood on Mat, and it reminded him of the blood that had been ever present in his father's shop.

Before Darrick knew it, he fell into the waiting blackness, and he never wanted to return.

Darrick lay in his hammock aboard Lonesome Star, his hands folded behind his head, and tried not to think of the dreams that had plagued him the last two nights. In those dreams, Mat was still alive, but Darrick still lived with his parents in the butcher's shop in Hillsfar. Since he had left, Darrick had never gone back.

Over the years since his departure from the town, Mat had gone back to visit with his family on special occasions, arriving there by merchant ship and signing on as a cargo guard while on leave from the Westmarch Navy. Darrick had always suspected that Mat hadn't visited his home or his family as much as he had wanted to. But Mat had believed there would be plenty of time. That was Mat's nature: he never hurried about anything, took each thing in its time and place.

Now, Mat would never go home again.

Darrick seized the pain that filled him before it could escape his control. That control was rock-solid. He'd built it carefully, through beating after beating, through bald cruel things his father had said, till that control was just as strong and as sure as a blacksmith's anvil.

He shifted his head, feeling the ache in his back, neck, and shoulders from all the climbing he'd done the night before last. Turning his head, he gazed out the porthole at the glittering blue-green water of the Gulf of Westmarch. Judging from the way the light hit the ocean, it was noon-almost time.

Lying in the hammock, sipping his breaths, stilling himself and controlling the pain that threatened to overfloweven the boundaries he'd put up, he waited. He tried counting his heartbeats, feeling them echo in his head, but waiting was hard when he measured the time. It was better to go numb and let nothing touch him.

Then the deck pipe played, blasting shrill and somehow sweet over the constant wave splash of the ocean, calling the ship's crew together.

Darrick closed his eyes and worked on imagining nothing, remembering nothing. But the sour scent of the moldy hay in the loft above the pens where his father kept the animals waiting to be slain and bled out filled his nose. Before Darrick knew it, a brief glimpse of Mat Hu-Ring, nine years old in clothing that was too big for him, flipped down from the rooftop and landed inside the loft. Mat had climbed the chimney of the smokehouse attached to the barn behind the butcher's shop and made his way across the roof until he was able to enter the loft.

Hey, Mat said, digging in the pockets of the loose shirt he wore and producing cheese and apples. I didn't see you around yesterday. I thought I'd find you up here.

In his shame, his body covered with bruises, Darrick had tried to act mad at Mat and make him go away. But it was hard to be convincing when he had to be so quiet. Getting loud enough to attract his father's attention-and let his father know someone else was aware of his punishment-was out of the question. After Mat had spread the apples and cheese out, adding a wilted flower to make it more of a feast and a joke, Darrick hadn't been able to keep up the pretense, and even embarrassment hadn't curbed his hunger.

If his father had ever once found out about Mat's visits during those times, Darrick knew he would never have seen Mat again.

Darrick opened his eyes and stared up at the unmarked ceiling. Just as he would never see him again now. Darrick reached for the cold numbness that he used to cover himself when things became too much. It slipped on like armor, each piece fitting the others perfectly. No weakness remained within him.

The shrill pipe played again.

Without warning, the door to the officers' quarters opened.

Darrick didn't look. Whoever it was could go away, and would if he knew what was good for him.

"Mr. Lang," a strong, imperious voice spoke.

Hurriedly, reflexes overcoming even the pain of loss and the walls he'd erected, Darrick twisted in the hammock, fell out of it expertly even though the ship broke through oncoming waves at the moment, and landed on his feet at attention. "Aye, sir," Darrick answered quickly.

Captain Tollifer stood at the entranceway. He was a tall, solid man in his late forties. Gray touched the lamb-chop whiskers he wore surrounding a painfully clean-shaven face. The captain had his hair pulled back in a proper queue and wore his best Westmarch Navy uniform, green with gold piping. He carried a tricorn hat in his hand. His boots shone like fresh-polished ebony.

"Mr. Lang," the captain said, "have you had occasion to have your hearing checked of late?"

"It's been a while, sir," Darrick said, standing stiffly at attention.

"Then may I suggest that when we reach port in Westmarch the day after tomorrow, the Light willing, you report to a doctor of such things and find out."

"Of course, sir," Darrick said. "I will, sir."

"I only mention this, Mr. Lang," Captain Tollifer said, "because I clearly heard the pipe blow all hands on deck."

"Aye, sir. As did I."

Tollifer raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"I thought I might be excused from this, sir," Darrick said.

"It's a funeral for one of the men in my command," Tollifer said. "A man who died bravely in the performance of his duties. No one is excused from one of those."

"Begging the captain's pardon," Darrick said, "I thought I might be excused because Mat Hu-Ring was my friend." I was the one who got him killed.

"A friend's place is beside his friend."

Darrick kept his voice cold and detached, glad that he felt the same way inside. "There's nothing left that I can do for him. That body out there isn't Mat Hu-Ring."

"You can stand for him, Mr. Lang," the captain said, "in front of his peers and his friends. I think Mr. Hu-Ring would expect that of you. Just as he would expect me to have this talk with you."

"Aye, sir."

"Then I'll expect you to clean yourself up properly," Captain Tollifer said, "and get yourself topside in relatively short order."

"Aye, sir." Even with all his respect for the captain and fear of his position, Darrick barely restrained the scathing rebuttal that came to mind. His grief for Mat was his own, not property of the Westmarch Navy.

The captain turned to go, then stopped at the door and spoke, looking at Darrick earnestly. "I've lost friends before, Mr. Lang. It's never easy. We perform the funerals so that we may begin letting go in a proper fashion. It isn't to forget them but only to remind ourselves that some closure is given in death and to help us mark an eternal place for them in our hearts. A few good men are born into this world who should never be forgotten. Mr. Hu-Ring was one of those, and I feel privileged to have served with him and known him. I won't be saying that in the address topside because you know I stand on policy and procedure aboard my ship, but I wanted you to know that."