'That would certainly get everyone's attention.' Kheda grimaced. 'The trick would be getting them to fight battles for the Chazen islands instead of clamouring for explanations and accusing me of bad faith and each other of sharing in some conspiracy. I'd rather have the savages safely killed before I have to get caught up in all that.'

'You are going to have an awful lot of explaining to do when this is all over,' commented Risala thoughtfully. 'Not least how you managed to find the means to defeat these sorcerers.'

Kheda heaved a shaky sigh. 'That will just have to be our secret, won't it? To save all our skins. Agreed?'

'Absolutely,' said Dev robustly.

'Risala?' Kheda looked at her, beseeching. 'Would you keep such a secret from your master?'

'To save my own skin?' She smiled at him but he could tell she was trembling. 'Don't worry. I saw what happened to Kaeska Shek. I've no wish to suffer her fate. I'll die on the day appointed to me but I've no wish to bring it forward.'

'Come on then!' Dev startled them both with a sudden clap of his hands. 'Let's get aboard the Amigal and find a safe and sheltered anchorage where we can come up with a decent, detailed plan that might have a hope of success.'

'Do you think he'll be there when we get back?' Risala looked across the empty ocean towards the Chazen anchorage where they'd left Dev. 'Five days' sail, he could be anywhere by now.'

'What'll you wager on it?' Relishing the dry warmth in the stone wall at his back after the drenching they'd had overnight, Kheda hugged his knees. 'No, I'll scrub every barnacle off your skiff's hull if he isn't sat just where we left him, peering into his bowl of inky water.'

'You trust him?' Risala sounded wholly sceptical.

'I trust the way the puzzle of these savages intrigues him,' Kheda said candidly. 'What they're seeking and how their mages rule them.'

'I don't see a puzzle.' Risala shivered despite the sun nearly at its zenith. 'Fear and brutality keeps them all toeing the wizards' line.'

'Dev's adamant that's not the way of it in the unbroken lands.' Kheda stretched his legs out in front of him. 'He wants to know what these southern wizards have that his own people don't.'

'So he can set himself up as some tyrant backed by sorcery?' Risala scowled in the direction of the wizard, long since lost over the horizon.

'I'll make sure he can't try anything like that,' Kheda promised fervently.

I swear it by the tower of silence within this wall. I'll kill him before he can do anything of the kind.

'And if I can't, it's up to you to make sure Shek Kul sees him dead, one way or another.'

Kheda smiled reassurance at Risala. She didn't see it, studying the scraps of green-crested, white-rimmed land sparsely dotting the waters to the west, brilliant against the clean-washed sky and the darker blue of the peaceably undulating sea. 'Your people find these islands too far out, do they?'

'It's not so much the distance as lack of decent land for growing anything to eat. If you did manage it, some storm coming in off the ocean would probably blow it out of the ground. Supplies of fresh water are indifferent too, once you're more than halfway through the dry season. There's enough through the pearl harvest but once that's done, few people stay on.' All the same, Kheda scanned the horizon for any other vessels, great or small.

The last thing we want is some Daish pearl diver reconnoitring the reefs. I cant afford to be discovered, have to explain myself, and leave Dev to his own devices.

'Do you think she'll come today?' Risala turned to look at a chain of islets just visible on the horizon, leading away into the heart of the Daish domain.

'If she got my message,' Kheda said lightly.

And what if she didn't?

Risala opened her mouth doubtless to ask that very question so Kheda jumped in with one of his own. 'Did your picture scroll survive last night's wetting?'

'It did.' Risala's smile was relieved as she rested her head back against the white stone wall.

'I'd like to have a proper look at it,' continued Kheda casually. 'It looks a fine work.'

'One of the best Shek Kul's library could supply.' Risala grinned wickedly at him.

Kheda spread rueful hands. 'You can't blame me for finding you as much of a puzzle as Dev.'

'If you want to know something, you could just ask me.' Risala shifted to sit facing him, feet curled up beneath her.

'You'd tell me what I want to know?' challenged Kheda.

'That depends what you ask.' Risala was unperturbed by the prospect.

Kheda thought for a moment. 'Who taught you the poet's arts so well you could apprentice yourself to someone as notoriously choosy as Haytar the Blind?'

'You knew of him?' Now it was Risala's turn to be surprised.

Kheda nodded. 'I saw him perform once, when I was visiting the Tule domain. He was quite splendid.'

'He was, and a pleasure to travel with.' Risala smiled sadly. 'Did you ever hear of a poet called Gedut?' she continued briskly. 'His particular strength was satire.'

'The name means nothing to me.' Kheda shook his head. 'Satire's not the safest of styles to adopt.'

'Which is why he didn't travel over much,' Risala agreed. 'So I'm not surprised you've not heard of him. Anyway, twelve years ago, he composed a scathing attack on Danak Natin, which had the additional insult of being extremely funny. Danak Natin promised the weight of Gedut's head in amethysts to any man who brought it to him.'

Kheda saw a fondness in Risala's face. 'He was your teacher?'

She nodded. 'Shek Kul gave him shelter. Gedut repaid him by teaching some of us children to recite properly'

'That's quite some insult for Shek Kul to offer Danak Natin,' Kheda said frankly. 'I thought Danak and Shek were none too friendly.'

'It's a relationship best described as "complex",' Risala said wryly. 'At the time, Shek Kul was looking to see how far he could push Danak Natin, to see if he could divorce Kaeska that was born Danak.'

'I don't think I've heard a quarter of that story,' said Kheda with open curiosity.

'That's more than complex.' Risala's eyes were shadowed. 'The heart of the tragedy was Kaeska was barren. She couldn't accept it, wouldn't trade for a nameless baby to raise as her own or provide Shek Kul with a chosen bed mate to beget one with her blessing.'

'Didn't she have sisters?' Kheda frowned. 'Most women would look to their family for a baby of common blood.'

'She was obsessed with raising a child of her own bearing.' Risala drew a shapeless squiggle in the dust with one long forefinger. 'Which led her, finally, to seek help from some enchanter from the north. Her brother Danak Mir, who inherited from Danak Natin, he'd been killed and his hold over the windward domains fell away.' She drew a spread of tiny islands in the dust before brushing them away.

'That hold was what made it so important for Shek Kul to protect Kaeska's position as first wife, even though she couldn't give the domain a child?' Kheda guessed.

'Danak Mir would have twisted any loss of her status into an excuse for attack.' Risala grimaced, turning to sit with her back to the stone wall once again. 'None of his allies would have dared ignore his summons. But with him and all his alliances dead with him, Shek Kul set about getting an heir with Mahli Shek. She'd been born Mahli Kaasik and that alliance, with the Kaasik domain, was enough to set other warlords wondering if there might not be an alternative to yielding to Danak might again.'

'How did he die, this Danak Mir?' Kheda was curious.

'Someone got close enough to cut his throat.' Risala shrugged. 'No one's sure if it was a hired assassin or some much-abused islander.'