“If you fell on barnacles, likely you are poisoned,” Paragon observed in a booming voice. “Likely it will swell and fester. He's lined you up for at least a week of pain.”

“Be quiet!” Mingsley hissed.

“Why should I?” Paragon mocked him. “Are you that nervous about being caught out here, tinkering with what doesn't concern you? Talking about what you can never possess?”

“I know why you won't!” Mingsley suddenly declared. “You don't want him to know, do you? The precious secret of wizardwood, you don't want that shared, do you? Because then the whole stack of blocks comes tumbling down for the Bingtown Traders. Think about it, Firth. What is the whole of Bingtown founded on, really? Not some ancient grant from the Satrap. But the goods that come down the Rain Wild River, the really strange and wondrous stuff from the Rain Wild themselves.”

“He's getting you in deeper than you can imagine,” Paragon warned Firth loudly. “Some secrets aren't worth sharing. Some secrets have prices higher than you'll want to pay.”

“The Rain Wild River, whose waters run cold and then hot, brown and then white. Where does it really come from, that water? You've heard the same legends I have, of a vast smoking lake of hot water, the nesting grounds of the firebirds. They say the ground there trembles constantly and that mist veils the land and water. That is the source of the Rain Wild River… and when the ground shakes savagely, then the river runs hot and white. That white water can eat through the hull of any ship almost as swiftly as it eats through the flesh and bones of a man. So no one can go up the Rain Wild River to trade. You can't trek up the banks either. The shores of the river are treacherous bogs, the hanging vines drip scalding acid, the sap of the plants that grow there can raise welts on a man's flesh that burn and ooze for days.”

“Get to the point,” Firth urged Mingsley angrily, even as Paragon shouted, “Shut up! Close your foul mouth! And get away from my beach. Get away from me. Or come close enough to be killed by me. Yes. Come here, little man. Come to me!” He reached out blindly, swinging his arms wide, his hands open to grasp.

“Unless you have a liveship.” Mingsley revealed. “Unless you have a liveship, hulled with wizardwood, impervious to the hot white water of the river. Unless you have a liveship, who knows from the moment it is quickened the one channel up the river. That is the true source of the Bingtown monopoly on the trade. You have to have a liveship to get in the game.” He paused dramatically. “And I'm offering you the chance to get one.”

“He's lying,” Paragon shouted desperately. “Lying! There's more to it, so much more to it. And even if you owned me, I wouldn't sail for you. I'd roll and kill you all! I've done it before, you've heard the tales. And if you haven't, ask in any tavern. Ask about the Paragon, the Pariah, the death ship! Go ahead, ask, they'll tell you. They'll tell you I'll kill you!”

“He can be forced,” Mingsley said with quiet confidence. “Or removed. The hull is what is most important, a good riverman could sound us out a channel. Think what we could do with a wizardwood ship. There's some tribe up there that the Bingtown Traders traffic with. One trip would be all it would take. Firth, we could pay them double what the Old Traders pay them, and still make a profit. This is our chance to get in on a trade that's been closed to outsiders since Bingtown was founded. I've got the contacts, the owners are listening for the right cash offer. All I need is the backing. And you've got that.”

“He's lying to you,” Paragon bellowed out into the night. “He's going to get you killed. And worse! Much worse. There are worse tilings than dying, you Chalcedean scum. But only a Bingtown Trader would know that. Only a Bingtown Trader could tell you that.”

“I think I'm interested,” Firth said quietly. “But there are better places to discuss this.”

“No!” howled Paragon. “You don't know what he's selling you, you don't know what grief you'd be buying. You've no idea, no idea at all!” His voice broke suddenly. “I won't go with you, I won't, I won't. I don't want to, and you can't make me, you can't, I'll kill you, I'll kill you all!”

Again he flailed out wildly. If he had been able to reach the beach, he would have thrown sand, rocks, seaweed, anything. But his hands found nothing. He halted suddenly, listening. The footsteps were receding.

“…tell anyone?”

“Not a concern, really,” he heard Mingsley reply confidently. “You heard him. He's mad, completely insane. No one listens to him. No one even comes out here. Even if he had someone to tell, they'd never believe him. That's the beauty of this, my friend. It's so far outside of any one else's imagining. That ship has rested there for years. Years! And no one ever thought of this before…”

His voice dwindled, and was damped away by the muffling fog and the shush of the waves.

“NO!” Paragon shrieked out into the night. He reached back with his fists to drum and batter on his own planking. “No!” he cried again. Denial and defiance. And hopelessness. They weren't listening to him. No one ever listened to him. That had always been the problem. They'd ignore everything he told them. They'd take him out and he'd have to kill them all. Again.

“Serpent!”

Althea's voice rang out clear and cold as the night that surrounded them. She clung with near-numbed fingers, her feet braced against the lookout's platform. Her eyes strained through the darkness to track the creature even as she heard the thundering of the crew's feet on the deck below, heard her cry passed on. Hatches were flung open as all hands hit the decks to do whatever they could do to withstand this latest attack.

“Where?”

“Three points off the starboard bow, sir! A big one.”

They were all big, she reflected bitterly as she strove to tighten her weary grip. She was cold and wet and tired, and the healing injury on her scalp still throbbed all the time. In the cold of a night like this, the throbbing became a dull agony as the chill tightened her skin. The fever had passed days ago, and Reller had snipped and tugged the stitches out when the itching had become unbearable. Reller's clumsiness and coarse jokes about her pain were infinitely preferable to the guarded tenderness she saw in Brashen's eyes whenever she chanced to be near him. Damn him. And damn him again, for here she was thinking of him when her very life depended on her focusing her mind on her task. Where had the serpent gone? One moment she had seen it, and now it was gone.

In answer to her question, the ship gave a sudden starboard lurch. Her feet slid on her ice-rimed perch, and she found her life depending on the clutch of her numbed fingers. Without even thinking, she wrapped her arm about a line and held on. On the deck below she could hear Captain Sichel cursing and demanding that the hunters do something, shoot the damned thing before it took them all to the bottom! But even as the hunters with bows drawn ran to one side of the ship, the serpent had doubled back and nudged them from the other side. It was not a sharp impact like being rammed. It was a strong upward push, like a shark nosing a dead carcass floating on the water. The ship heeled over and men scrabbled across the decks.

“Where is it?” the captain demanded furiously as Althea and the other lookouts strained their eyes into the darkness. The cold wind streamed past her, the waves heaved and she saw serpents in the curve of every swell. They dissolved into fear and imagination when she tried to focus on them.

“He's gone!” one of the other lookouts cried, and Althea prayed he was right. This had gone on too long, too many days and nights of sudden random attacks followed by anxious hours of ominous cessation. Sometimes the serpents crested and writhed alongside the ship, always just out of reach of a bowshot. Sometimes there were half a dozen, hides scintillating in the winter sun, reflecting blue and scarlet and gold and green. And sometimes, like tonight, there would be but one monstrous creature, coming to mock them by effortlessly toying with their lives. Sighting serpents was nothing new to Althea. Once, they had been so rare as to be legendary; now they infested certain areas on the Outside, and followed slave ships through the Inside Passage. She'd seen a few in her time aboard the Vivacia, but always at a distance and never threatening. This proximity to their savagery made them seem new creatures.