The obvious thing to do about Cayla was to kill her. Blade thought about that all during the four weeks it took the squadron to beat its way back to Neral. It was a tedious and grueling trip, the last week spent fighting against almost continuous westerly gales which several times blew them out of sight of the island. When the squadron finally landed, too sea-tossed and weary to properly appreciate the welcome laid on for them, Blade was no nearer a solution than he had been the night the squadron sailed from its refuge.

The problems were mostly caused by Cayla's own sharp wits. She had noticed more of Blade's reaction to the duel than he would have had her notice. The night afterwards she calmly informed him that of course he could kill her any time he wished; and perhaps he would get away with it. She was not so popular among the Captains that they would really exert themselves to catch her murderer, particularly if the circumstances were uncertain. But she did have a respectable number of friends and allies, and these would ensure that Alixa and Brora both died soon and unpleasantly, whatever happened to her. And she might challenge Alixa and put her down in a way that would make Dynera's death look pleasurable by comparison, if she judged Blade was plotting against her.

If Blade had only had himself to worry about, he would probably have run Cayla through on the spot and taken his chances. But he could not and would not throw away his companions' lives along with his own, so he held his hand and his peace. But he made no pretense of being able to share Cayla's bed after the duel. He would much rather have slept in a nest of cobras.

When they finally reached Neral the situation worsened. Perhaps Cayla had not been popular before, but now that she had conceived and carried out the most daring and profitable raid the Brotherhood had to its credit for the past three years, her stock soared. So did Blade's, fortunately. He had, after all, fought heroically and led the counterattack on the Tramian infantry that had saved the whole expedition. But the lion's share of the glory was Cayla's, and Blade saw far too many of those who had previously avoided her begin to cluster around what they saw to be a rising star in the Brotherhood. She was now much closer to being unassailable.

Blade had ample leisure to contemplate this fact, because winter gales were closing the seas to honest commerce and pirate raiding alike. It had been more than two generations since the half-legendary Dystronos of Cral led five ships across the winter seas in the teeth of wind and snow to plunder shipping in the very High Port of Royth itself. On the occasional calm and clear day, ships would indeed make their way out through the passage to exercise their men at the oars and help them keep their sea legs, but none went out of sight of Neral. Even with this precaution, two galleys attempting a night passage of the reefs to avoid being caught at sea by a gale took the ground and were pounded to pieces, drowning better than a hundred and fifty men.

Many of the pirates spent their winters in debauchery, spending whatever gains they had made during the season of raiding and inevitably ending up the next spring penniless, if not in fact many silver bits in debt to the brothels and shopkeepers. Blade, however, spent his enforced leisure maintaining his proficiency in arms, memorizing charts and sailing instructions for all parts of the Ocean, and, very rarely, roaming about the northern end of the island. He had to face the fact that the only way to safety for him and his companions lay in escaping from Neral entirely. By the time spring came, he meant to be ready.

And it was important for more than the three of them to make their escape in spring. All the evidence he had gathered and put down in a secret set of ciphered notes told him that Indhios' plots were going to come to fruition next spring or summer as well, and he had to reach Royth and carry the warning, somehow.

Seeing that sharing her bed revolted him, and recognizing that sex had never given her much influence over him in any case, Cayla consented to his taking quarters of his own. He was not yet ranked as a Captain (although she planned to have him promoted in time for the spring voyages), so Blade took a three-room apartment in one of the more expensive boarding houses on the terrace below. Cayla visited him occasionally to take a cup of hot wine and enlarge on her plans for the future.

At other times, Alixa came to him. It had come hard for this sensual young noblewoman to sleep alone when Cayla had dragged Blade off for her own purposes and pleasures. Now, wasting no further time in jealousy after her initial flare of rage, she returned to him, visiting his quarters as often as she could find Brora, Tuabir or some trustworthy sailor chosen by them to escort her through the dark streets of the pirate city. She never stayed more than an hour or two, for Blade was by no means certain that Cayla was not in fact giving both him and Alixa enough rope to hang themselves. Their lovemaking was intense and sometimes exultant, but always crammed into too short a time for either of them. Gradually, Blade came to wonder whether Cayla had in fact abandoned her claims to him as her Companion.

Then came a night in the dead of winter. «Dead» indeed-as Blade stood at the window and stared out into the darkness, it seemed that the whole world was in fact dead. No moon, no stars, no wind or snow, nothing moving below in the street. Only a single yellow puddle of light from a lamp hanging from someone's front door. It would be easy for Alixa to reach the house, and once she was there they would finally have the whole night ahead of them. Blade was much too lusty a man to tolerate having his pleasures in rationed installments.

He was so busy anticipating his pleasures that he almost ignored the knock on the door. Even then, he had to move down the stairs cat-footed to avoid waking the other mates and factors and shopkeepers who shared the house. Opening the door, he saw Alixa's face grinning into his from her blue hood, and behind her Brora, his face strained, his eyes roving watchfully, frost on his brown beard and hair. He took Alixa's outstretched hand and led her up the stairs, Brora following at a discreet distance, his hand never far from the hilt of his cutlass.

She was urgent and tumultuous in her love-making that night, more than ever before, gasping and crying out with each climax, and so stimulating Blade every time she felt him flagging that he reached new heights of his own. In time, it was sheer exhaustion that led them to collapse, limp and sweat-glazed, amid the tangled sheets.

Sleep was just beginning to drift over Blade when he heard a rattle and a bang from above. Somebody or something was climbing down through the roof hatch. He reached out of bed to pluck his sword from the floor and his dagger from its boot sheath, but did not light the lantern, murmuring to Alixa, «Don't move.»

Feet sounded on the attic stair. He heard Brora draw his sword and step in front of the door; then the attic door burst open with a crash. A moment later the door into his own rooms flew inward off its hinges. Before it had hit the floor, Blade had rolled out of the bed on the far side, so that he was invisible from the doorway.

Cayla charged into the room with a cutlass flashing in one hand and her whip cracking in the other. «Whore!» she shouted, with a note of indignation in her voice that sounded grotesquely false to Blade. «Bed with my Companion, will you? Accept my Challenge, or die here in your foul bed!» Alixa played her part well, moaning and shivering wordlessly as she clasped the bedclothes about her. Cayla darted across the room, raising her whip, and as she did so Blade sprang to his feet and slashed at her in a deadly overhand stroke that should have split her like a salted fish.