Before Leesil spit out his rejection, Chap snarled and rose on all fours. Head low, he growled at Sgaile, and clacked his jaws sharply as he barked twice for "no."

"Stop it!" Wynn said.

Chap ignored her, closing on Sgaile, who froze at the dog's rage.

"Don't bother," Leesil added. "I prefer my own weapons."

Sgaile stared at Leesil in bewilderment, as if he'd been insulted for no reason. He turned his eyes back on Chap and asked, "Why?"

"Because those are Brot'an's doing," Wynn said tiredly.

"Shut up, Wynn!" Leesil growled.

Magiere grabbed his arm, and Leesil turned his angry gaze on her.

"Brot'an's the one who tricked Leesil," Magiere explained, "into finishing his mission to kill Darmouth. And Leesil… doesn't want anything to do with him. Neither does Chap."

"Do you not understand?" Sgaile said and held up one silvery winged blade, turning it slowly in the air. "No such thing has ever been made by the Burning Ones… only anmaglahk blades and rare items for elders and other honored ones. Brot'an'duive may have requested Leshil's new blades- but that is all! No one tells the Chein'as what to make."

Magiere wasn't sure she believed that, no matter that Sgaile did. But weapons were only tools, and these new blades looked better than Leesil's own.

"They're just weapons," she said to him. "You choose how to use them… nobody is going to make you do anything."

"Ah, so you're perfectly comfortable with your 'gifts, are you?" he returned.

Magiere clenched her teeth. She wanted to smack him for turning things back on her-and because she couldn't think of a way around his counter.

She twisted about, looking to the hiltless dagger and that thing Wynn called a torc.

"The dagger needs a hilt," she said suddenly.

Sgaile looked down at the blade and then to Chap, waiting.

Chap shook himself all over. With one last snarl, he circled away around Wynn.

Sgaile let out a deep breath as he set down Leesil's new blade. He picked up the long dagger and, with a nod to Magiere, turned and left.

"Happy now?" Magiere asked Leesil.

He glared back at her. "Oh, I'm overjoyed."

"But what about this?" Wynn said. "Sgaile brought something more for Leesil."

Magiere glanced back to find Wynn had retrieved the wooden cylinder that Sgaile had left with the other items. The sage popped the pewter cap and peered into the narrow tube, then she frowned, glancing nervously at Leesil.

"Well?" Magiere asked.

With a sigh, Wynn tilted the tube, and out slid a narrow shaft of wood-a bare length of branch. And Magiere recognized it immediately- the branch of Roise Charmune.

When Leesil had gone with Sgaile to the burial place of the an'Croan ancestors, he'd been given more than a new name. Leafless and barkless-yet somehow alive-the slick, fine-grained slip of branch had been needed to prove Magiere's innocence in the face of Most Aged Father's claims against her. And here it was again.

Magiere heard Leesil's groan even before she looked back to find him with his face buried in his hands.

Sgaile closed the cabin door and paused in the hallway. Between Leshil and Chap's deep hatred of Brot'an'duive and the rejection of gifts he himself could not fathom, he felt at a loss. Magiere's contentious nature had broken the stalemate, but the whole exchange had left him exhausted.

He stepped down the passage to the hatch stairs, and when he reached the deck, he headed for the aftcastle stairwell. As he passed under the lanterns hanging there, his gaze caught on the dagger glinting in the light. He noticed a crack down the blade's center.

No, a seam.

It ran perfectly straight, ending well short of the tip and the cross-guard. Sgaile studied it more closely.

The black-filled seam was so thin he could barely run a fingernail along it, and the char-colored material that filled it was as hard as the blade itself. He lifted it closer to his face and caught a whiff of cinders-or perhaps it was just the lingering smell of the heated cavern.

Sgaile headed onward for the one place a proper hilt could be made. When he reached the center of three doors in the ship's aft, he knocked gently upon it.

"Enter… Sgailsheilleache," a deep voice answered from within.

Sgaile had not met the ship's hkoeda, yet the man called him by name. He grasped the latch, peering around the door's edge.

Inside the ship's heart-room chamber was a tall elf dressed in plain canvas tunic and breeches. His feet were bare, and he stood beside the large bulge in the floor that was the root-tail of the vessel, this living Pairvanean.

By the lantern's light, he appeared gaunt but young. With his own hands, he massaged the root-tail's base with fresh seawater. Sgaile smelled the strong aroma of herbal oil permeating the chamber.

"What do you need?" the hkoeda asked.

But Sgaile was looking beyond him.

Below the side walls' higher ledges, two long tanks stretched the full length of the heart-room. From forewall to the stern, their shorter walls flowed out of the floor, and each was filled with seawater. Within those two containers, something moved beneath the water's surface.

Like the ship's own tawny root, yet ending in roundly pointed heads, their tails undulated and flexed, making the tanks' waters ripple gently.

"You have 'swimmers'?" Sgaile asked, distracted from his purpose.

"Yes." The hkoeda's soft smile faded. "I once served on a military Pairvanean and grew accustomed to their company."

Sgaile hesitated. Hkoeda lived out their lives on the Pairvanean with which they bonded. If this one had once served another vessel, then he had suffered a great loss-no less than one suffered in the loss of a life-mate, and not all survived such a loss. But Sgaile had never seen "swimmers" except on vessels guarding the open waters of his people.

Perhaps they were an added blessing, but he hoped there would be no need of such on this journey.

"I would ask you to grow wood for a hilt," he said, and held up the long dagger.

The hkoeda's melancholy faded. He stepped closer, bare feet slapping wetly across the floor, and took the blade, raising one eyebrow slyly at Sgaile.

"Well… this is unusual." His smirk only rankled Sgaile more. "Not a typical blade for an anmaglahk."

Sgaile had never cared for the inappropriate joviality of hkoeda.

"Just the same," he said shortly, "please treat it as such in preparation. And when the wood is fitted, wrap it thoroughly in gut-hide, so the wood is not exposed."

The hkoeda nodded and turned away. He placed a hand on the bulge in the floor, still shimmering wet with seawater, and laid the blade atop the root-tail's center.

"We have something new to do," he whispered to it, and then, seeing Sgaile still in the doorway, he flipped a hand in dismissal. "Off with you. We will let you know when your new toy is ready."

Sgaile shook his head as he left. And perhaps he closed the door a little too hard.

This had been a very, very long day.