“I can’t,” said Legs.

No, he couldn’t. His bare feet were already bloody in three places.

“Too bad you really can’t call that monster,” Talen said and unstrung his bow. He put the string in an oiled leather pouch that hung from his quiver and told Legs to hold the bow staff. “Raise your arm, brother Sleth. You’re going across my shoulders.”

Legs raised one arm.

Talen took it by the wrist, bent low, grabbed Leg’s ankle with his other hand, and stood up straight.

“Right,” he said. It was like lugging a sack of beets. That’s all this was. He adjusted Legs to more evenly distribute his weight. Then he plodded forward, around the clump of ivy, over a flat of rock, and then on to a game trail no wider than his foot.

Argoth ate at the Shark’s Tooth like a starved man. Eggs, sausage, thick cream on cherry biscuits. He stopped a serving maid as she walked by. “A bit of salted lard,” he said.

She bowed and hurried away. Lard, suet, butter, or cream-it didn’t matter. What Argoth needed was great quantities of bread and fat, for that was what softened the hunger that would come when he multiplied himself.

The sun had not yet risen, but the Skir Master wanted an early start. “Is the Captain easy at sea?” asked Uram.

“I regularly run the dreadman’s course, including the two-mile swim,” said Argoth. “And these are not tropical waters.” He bit into a juicy link of sausage.

“An admirable habit,” said Uram.

“Indeed,” said Argoth. “One can do worse than modeling the diet and activity of dreadmen like yourself.”

“But what about the captain’s stomach? Fatty foods on a rolling ship has laid low the strongest of men.”

A man spoke from behind in a dry voice. “There’s no need to worry, Zu. Lord Iron Guts will not lose his breakfast.”

Shim stood holding a mug of ale, a wide grin cracking his leather face.

Argoth considered Shim for a moment, but he saw no sign that the man had come to betray him.

“Some lords prove their stamina by drinking the hardiest of men under the table. Not Lord Porkslop, he buries them with a mountain of food.”

“Blighter,” said Argoth with a mouthful of eggs. “I didn’t see you arrive.”

“Of course, not,” said Shim. “Not with a plate of sizzling hog-tail sausages calling you like a lover.”

Argoth grunted, then patted the stool next to him.

Shim sat with his mug. “Captain,” he said to Uram. “Have you ever seen the like?”

“He does have a prodigious appetite.”

“Prodigious? I dare say Argoth’s stomach is by itself a force of nature. It is wise to keep all fingers outside the range of his fork.”

Argoth reached over and grabbed Shim’s mug. “If you don’t mind?”

“I do.”

But Argoth slipped it away, quaffed three gulps, then set it back down in front of Shim. “Nothing like a bit of ale with your eggs, eh?”

Shim looked into his mug. “Or a bit of eggs in the ale.”

It was like it had been; this was the man he loved, and Argoth laughed. In front of Uram, they discussed the defenses of the land, who would take Argoth’s place. But when they stepped out of the Shark’s Tooth onto High Street and began to walk down the cobblestone street to the wharves, Shim turned serious.

“I received a love letter,” he said.

“Oh?” asked Argoth.

“Yes, they always want some proclamation, some proof. I daresay I don’t know whether to write a stinging rebuke or show the sender some of my family history.”

Shim reached into his coat. He retrieved an object, and then grasped Argoth’s hand and placed it in it. “My great-great-grandfather made that.”

Argoth glanced down at it and closed his hand again. It was a weave, an ancient dead thing that looked like it should hang from a necklace, but a weave nevertheless.

Shim put his arm around Argoth like a friend. “Have I proven my love?”

Shim was not a dreadman. That meant this weave was his or one loaned from another. In either case, it meant he had placed himself in grave danger because possessing such a thing was a crime punishable by death. Unless, of course, he was part of this Skir Master’s plot.

Argoth looked into his friend’s face, but found no deception. It was a risk to trust him. He hadn’t been proven properly. But then this wasn’t a proper situation either. Besides, Shim had revealed his character through years of friendship.

Argoth sucked his teeth to get the last morsels out; a cart with a load of fish passed them going up the hill. Argoth turned to see the dreadman following them and passed the weave back.

“You don’t need it?”

“No,” said Argoth. “But you will. What else did Grandfather pass down?”

“Almost nothing.”

“Then you and I are going to have a long talk when I get back.”

“You’re making me nervous,” said Shim. “The streets are choking with the Crab’s men. I don’t think we have that kind of time.”

“Such little faith,” said Argoth. “You worry about the tactics. I’ll worry about the strategy.”

Shim rolled his eyes. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Oh?”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but now’s not a time to protect your friends by keeping them in the dark.”

“Yes, it is. Especially if I don’t return.”

“Well, then let’s hope our blueberry Divine is as ineffectual as he seems.”

“Ineffectual?”

“You haven’t heard?”

Argoth shrugged.

Shim pointed at the Skir Master’s chaser. “Look.”

The chaser stood out from the other merchant ships and galleys like a doe amid a herd of goats. The Ardent was a special ship; she stretched twice as long as she was wide, fine-lined, and able to set an amazing amount of sail. Half a dozen sailors scrambled up the rigging of the two masts. And then Argoth saw it. “Why isn’t she rigged with square sails?” A Skir Master’s ship didn’t need fore and aft rigging to sail close to the wind. You didn’t tack in a skir ship. You ran on an acre of square canvas, rigged with wide studding sails on booms to both sides of each of the main sails. You ran like a dolphin in the wake of the creature’s wind.

“The old skir died on the voyage over.”

“Died?”

“That’s what’s been noising about. Took them two weeks longer than planned to get here.”

“Died,” said Argoth. That was good news indeed.

“And he couldn’t catch another,” said Shim. “Mokad has grown weak.”

They reached the bottom of the street and proceeded along the docks. Two porters rolled a fat barrel onto a loading pallet next to a merchant ship. Another tried to steady a nervous mule that powered the boom to move that pallet. In front of the next ship, an officer inspected a handcart loaded with wicker cages full of russet chickens. A whistle sounded, and a group of boys, young sailors who had been standing in a cluster on the wharf, strode to the gangplank. One of them lingered, letting a girl with dark hair tie a bright blue scarf about his neck. A gull standing on a post next to them squawked, then launched itself just over the tops of the crowds and wheeled past the Ardent.

Argoth pushed through the crowd and stood before the gangplank, the water slapping at the wood posts and the ship’s hull. The hull gleamed. It was said that the Skir Master had his slaves scrape and wax the hull between every voyage to keep her fast.

She was painted in a dull gray. There were no striped sails. A stealthy ship. The only bright colors were the blue, yellow, and red eyes painted on the prow and each of the oar paddles.

Such eyes, it was believed by sailors, helped a ship avoid shoals and sandbars. But they were also a sign of the Glory of Mokad. I can see you, those eyes said, I am with you, via my servants, even upon the waters and in far lands. To some this gave comfort. To others it was a warning.