Things did not get too much worse immediately. After a night spent huddled in an empty warehouse at the local army camp, where they were fed, the prisoners began the march across the island. That took the better part of two days. After the wild crossing to the mainland, there followed seven more days of continuous marching before they reached High Royth, the capital.

It was on this march that things became grim. Some of the pirates died of exhaustion or exposure or collapsed and were finished off by the soldiers. Blade, however, kept stubbornly on, putting one foot in front of another with dogged determination. He also kept eyes and ears open, and as a result learned much.

Indhios' influence was still on the increase. He had been awarded the lordship of the Ayesh Islands (including the job of protecting them from pirate raids) barely three months ago. This latest plum was for divers and sundry services in increasing and ordering the revenues of the Kingdom. Judging from the state of the villages along the road, Blade suspected that Indhios' methods involved mainly bleeding the peasants and tradesmen white. Moreover, judging from the size of the escort and of the camps on Grand Ayesh, the money Indhios was bleeding off was going more to build his private army than to increase the royal revenue. The Chancellor was already far too strong for comfort and getting stronger every day.

In an odd way, the fact that Indhios' soldiers had arrested them as pirates was slightly reassuring. If they had simply been turned loose; it would have suggested that Indhios now felt himself able to openly befriend the pirates. The Chancellor apparently did not yet feel strong enough to abandon all pretense of being a loyal servant of the Crown. Blade wondered, however, whether after the pirates marched into High Royth, the next thing to happen might be an invitation for him to visit the Chancellor. From his extensive, if reluctantly acquired experience of intrigue, he wouldn't have been surprised.

However, nothing like that happened. On a gray, snowy day, the thirty-five ragged and bloody-footed survivors of Thunderbolt's crew limped in through the West Gate of High Royth, across the Central Bridge, and into the citadel. There Blade and Brora were separated from the rest of the crew and given the dubious privilege of a cell of their own.

Blade was now becoming something of a connoisseur of odd places of confinement, and except for the Official Secrets Act might have written a book called Strange Prisons I Have Known. The dungeon in Royth had nothing unusual about it, being dark, damp, miserably cold, and moderately infested with assorted insects. However, neither he nor Brora were chained, and the food, if barely edible, was at least regular.

Apart from the twice-daily food and water, the two men were left alone with the vermin and the dampness for nearly two weeks. The enforced leisure gave Blade ample opportunity to try to make his own plans.

He was settling down to his fifteenth night on the moldy straw when the rattling of keys being turned in the lock and the rusty squeal of the door being opened jerked him out of his doze. «Uh, Cap'n, some'un here to take you w' him,» grunted the guard. Behind the too-familiar figure of the guard, a small, slender figure in dark red was visible. Who was it? Not Alixa-she was much taller than that. Not Indhios-not if the Chancellor was as fat as described. Possibly a messenger, and if so, whose? Had Indhios finally decided to pay some attention to him? If so, he might be on his way to a dangerous interview. If Indhios got one inkling of his plans to carry on Khystros' work, the man would hardly balk at having him killed without delay.

He wrapped his blanket, his only garment since his sailor's clothes had fallen apart, around himself, and stepped through the door. The figure in red beckoned to him without a word. The hand that beckoned was small, but gloved, and gave no clue as to its owner's sex or age.

Whoever the person in red was, they had apparently done a remarkably thorough job of ordering, intimidating, or bribing the guards. None of them turned a hair at seeing the huge Blade striding down the corridors free of all restraints, his bare chest and wildly tangled hair and beard making him look even more formidable than usual.

Blade had no very good idea of the inner layout of the citadel, but he was surprised that his guide did not turn upward along any of the numerous stairways. Instead, they kept on through progressively lower and lower and darker and darker corridors, until Blade realized they must now be well outside the walls of the citadel. He saw racks of old armor lurking in shadowy alcoves, with vast festoons of cobwebs hanging from them, and rats scurrying red-eyed and nimble-footed around them.

The long prowl through underground passages finally ended when they came to what appeared to Blade as a blank wall. But the same small gloved hand now reached out and pushed firmly against the stone. With a faint rumble, an entire section of the wall pivoted around on a central spindle, opening on a narrow flight of stairs leading up into total darkness. Reluctantly, Blade followed his guide. Underground warrens put him in mind of Cayla and her nightmare shrines, and he began to wonder whether the guide might not be another of the Serpent Priestesses. But when they reached the end of the long stairs and stepped out through another pivoted door, it was into a circular room whose narrow slitted windows looked out on the rooftops and streets of High Royth from a height of nearly a hundred feet. This was some castle tower, and the castle of some high person in the Kingdom, judging from the richness of the furnishings. A great bed, with hangings and quilts in the same shade of red as his guide's robes, stood in the middle of the room. The floor was covered by carpets of the same color and the walls by heavy tapestries in which reds, oranges, and yellows dominated the patterns. Even the candles that hung in red copper lanterns from the walls were red and burned with a reddish light.

For a moment Blade was so absorbed in trying to guess the nature of the room's occupant from the clues offered by its furnishings that he paid no attention to the other person with him. In that moment, the small figure in red stepped up to him and deftly whipped the blanket away.

Blade was only startled, for he was twice the size of the other. If it came to a fight, he had nothing to fear, even in his weakened condition. However, he thought it was time to ask a few questions.

«Who are you?»

The laugh that escaped from behind the red veil was unmistakably feminine, and Blade relaxed somewhat. The voice replied with a question of its own. «Can't you think of a more original question, oh great and wise pirate Captain?»

«I can't think of any I want answered as badly,» he replied shortly.

«Ah, well,» she said, and drew her gloves off, then lifted her hands-fine, delicate ones, Blade noted-to the veil and hood and pulled both away.

The face that looked out at him was marvelously beautiful and delicately wrought. Everything seemed sculptured from a material so fragile that to touch it or even breathe on it would make it crumple. The hair that framed the face was glossy and intensely brown, with a reddish tinge that might have been its own, or given it by the light in the room. And the large eyes that were roving over Blade's body held an expression that he knew extremely well. He hoped that nothing more was involved here than simple lust. That he felt perfectly willing and able to gratify. He viewed with much less enthusiasm the idea of involvement in more plots, particularly those of the Serpent Priestesses.

The lady clearly had her mind on other things than answering Blade's questions and at once set out to make sure that his mind would not be on asking any. She knelt before him, her mouth open and her mobile lips already moving in hungry anticipation, and set to work on him. It did not take long to fully arouse him, for it was a skilled mouth as well as a mobile one. With only minor pauses in her work, the lady unfastened the clasp of her cloak, then her robe. Both slipped to the floor. Under them she wore a filmy red gown, and under that Blade could see the outlines of her body. It matched her face in its exquisite delicacy.