She told Whistledove, "Carry on. We don't have time for new worries."

The ragged Conch of Corns no longer climbed and dipped but bucked and juttered through the water like a three-legged horse. With the sails set crossways to the rudder, the two helmsmen tried to force the ship to windward with the tiller alone. Simone and the sailing master had clambered aloft to direct the topmen. Old salts fished together mismatched lines and bypassed missing deadeyes. Acting on Adira's orders, her Seven lubbers and sailors jettisoned smashed boats and other furniture across the tilted deck and out the gap in the gunwale. Losing the junk both lightened the ship and made it safer, since fewer obstacles clattered and skidded underfoot.

Rain pattered. Whitecaps burst over the weather railing. Adira noted spume blew sideways past her nose. Oily clouds like black smoke boiled overhead, seemingly close enough to pierce with an arrow. Adira and her Circle had seized command, and it showed the baymen's agitation that no one objected. Master Edsen, lame from Adira's belly blows, had crawled below to his tiny cabin. Yet Adira couldn't relax for a second, for the oncoming storm still shoved them hard toward granite-studded waters not a mile distant.

Dashing everywhere at once, Adira helped rove new rope through a block, so the crew might hoist the mizzenmast main yard.

"It's bad, ain't it?" asked Virgil, worried but calm.

"Afraid to take your annual bath early?" Adira kept her voice light, refusing to concede the ship was doomed, nor to let the crew fret with idle hands. In her mind's eye their bodies washed up on foreign shores: stark naked, bloated and white, hair straggling like seaweed, skin nibbled by fish and crabs. In this moment, with them gathered round, so loyal and brave and willing, she loved her Circle of Seven as fiercely as if her children, and tears escaped her eyes. She snuffled to mask her emotion.

"Jasmine, if you've any weather-magic in your bag of tricks, now's the time to let it slip."

"I don't ply tricks!" corrected the druid.

Murdoch snorted. In rain with wet heads, Adira's pirates looked much alike, for they all wore the long gray sweaters and oiled leather jerkins. Belts were stuffed with cutlasses, short swords, daggers, and axes, though the only enemy was the awesome sea.

Murdoch said, "Hey, Adira. What happened to prize money? You let Drumfish slip through our fingers. Where's the profit?"

"Think of a lesson learned, landlubber," countered his captain.

"I wish I were on land. I wish I could swim." Peregrine joked, but her voice shivered. "We don't see waves like these in the Sukurvia."

"Nor the jungle," added Jedit. He told the frightened lieutenant, "You'll gain shore safely, if not dryshod. I promise."

Despite the damp and cold, Adira's temper flickered like a coal. Dare Jedit allude to taking command after she'd blistered his hide earlier? Then she let it go, too busy to be petty.

With a heave ho, the riggers hauled up the yard on wobbly blocks. Adira's Circle gave a hoarse cheer at a small victory. Their captain turned away, a lump in her throat.

Prowling the ship, Adira Strongheart watched sky and shore, gauging their chances. Clawing seaward might let them ride out a squall, but a sustained storm would drive them on the rocks. Adira ordered Murdoch, who was handy, to help the ship's carpenter and sailing master fashion a sea anchor from a broken spar and spare sail. Glumsy on the slippery deck, they managed to shove it overside. As the hoop of canvas sank and bellied, it dragged like a wagon brake to slow Conch's speed. Virgil and Peregrine muscled and hoisted spars. Jedit carried lines as he climbed like a spider. Heath and Wilemina, with clever hands, wove new rigging from dangling ropes.

Indeed, everyone was so busy only Adira saw the monster strike.

As sudden as winter lightning, alongside the ship reared a green-black scaly head and neck high as the mainyard. The skull was elongated like a pike's, the neck sinuous as a snake's, and the mouth lined with white daggers. Fast as Adira could blink, the sea serpent hooked its impossible neck at a man slaving to hold the tiller. The helmsman barely shrieked. Adira was reminded of a bird pecking a worm as the serpent bobbed and bit. Its horny muzzle rapped the deck as razor teeth engulfed the man, snapping so hard one foot sheared off to bounce on pine planks. The serpent flicked its chin high, gnashing and crushing, then gulped and swallowed the broken man whole.

Consternation swept the ship. Howls and screams rang even over the ear-piercing wind.

In the tiny pause while the serpent devoured its victim, the Conch raced on. The fearful beast was left a cable's length behind. Yet the ship lost headway as the remaining tillerman deserted her post. Rudderless, pushed by the wind, with sails haphazardly trimmed, the bow came around, so the stern broached the half-gale. Immediately the ship's quivering roll degenerated into a slamming gait like a crippled horse. Men and women slid along wet decks to bang painfully into masts and rails and furniture. From long years of practice, Adira's pirates gripped something, but Jasmine, Peregrine, and Murdoch tumbled headlong until seasoned sailors nabbed them. Instinctively all scuttled toward their captain. Jedit Ojanen hunched as if ready to spring, snuffling the salt air with black nostrils.

Virgil fumbled his axe from his belt and held it up helplessly. "How do we fight that beastie?"

"Don't they coil around ships and crush 'em?" asked Murdoch, totally out of his element.

"Hush! Heath, Wil, nock your bows!"

Adira's keen mind sifted standard defenses but came up short. She'd barely believed sea serpents existed. Squinting into eye-stinging rain, she said, "If we batten the lubbers below-"

"It's back!" screamed Sister Wilemina and loosed a wild arrow into the sky.

Unexpectedly, the sea serpent flung its head above the port side, having swum or slithered under the ship like an eel. Water sluiced from its long green head in buckets. The mouth, a full six feet long, cracked to reveal rows of needle teeth. This time Adira saw the comb of tall spines that jutted from its head and stippled its spine. Shaking its head, perhaps to fling water from its eyes, the creature stabbed at the largest target-Adira's Circle of Seven.

"Back!" Adira slapped one arm wide to brush her crew out of harm's way. In her other fist sprouted her cutlass, though she didn't remember drawing it. Lurching against the unfamiliar lunging of the ship, she stabbed upward as the serpent drove down. A scaly head big as a coffin banged Adira's thigh as her cutlass pierced the thing's chin from underneath. The pirate queen felt the blade split skin like thin leather, then the point jammed in springy fish bone. The serpent waggled its head at the pinprick, ripping the cutlass from Adira's hand and almost breaking her fingers.

In that instant, Jedit Ojanen struck.

Unlike humans, the "ship's cat" kept his footing on careening wet deck by digging claws into pine planks. As the tiger's comrades spilled and skidded and dived to avoid the onrushing serpent, Jedit was free to act. Slinging a long arm behind, he swiped a huge circle. Black claws struck the serpent's head. Four long weals of skin were peeled from the monster's muzzle to hang in shreds flapping in the wind. Surprised and hurt, the serpent whipped its head back and paused, so it was left behind as the Conch of Corn's raced on directly for surf-drenched rocks a half-mile distant.

"Bastards!" cursed Adira Strongheart at no one in particular. Her ample breasts heaved as she panted. "Damnation and hellfire! Jedit, Heath, the rest, fight that thing! Simone, Virgil, come! We've got to claw off the rocks!"

Used to obeying blindly in crises, pirates fell to. Murdoch, Jasmine, and Peregrine crabbed to a mast and unlashed eight-foot boarding pikes. Heath and Wilemina nocked their favored weapons, bumped rump to rump, and tried to watch all sides at once.