But it was too late. Even as the crew members freed the main sheet to let the mainsail flap free, the line connecting the boom to the port rail parted with a crack like a giant's whip, With nothing to stop it, the gaff boom swung farther around, out over the starboard rail, and pivoted completely until it pointed almost dead forward.

The mounting bracket, already hideously strained, failed. With a screech of tearing metal, the boom came loose from the mainmast and crashed to the foredeck, striking the glacis of the catapult turret.

As the boom came free and the torque it had produced vanished, the mainmast twanged audibly, its tip flailing wildly. With a piercing scream, Merrienne was snapped out of the crow's nest to land with a sickening thud on the main deck.

"Strike the sails!" the Cloakmaster roared. "All of them! And bring the helm down!" As the crew leaped to obey his orders, Teldin couldn't drag his gaze from the small, huddled figure lying on the planking, her head surrounded by a halo of fine blond hair that had been shaken free from its bun. The ship's two healers knelt beside the woman, blocking the Cloakmaster's view. He turned away.

Then, suddenly, a sickening thought struck him. Julia was on the foredeck, where the boom had landed!

Teldin almost jumped down the ladder and sprinted across the foredeck. He staved off a massive jolt of guilt as he passed Merrienne's huddled body. The healers can do more for her than I can, he told himself. He sprinted up the portside ladder to the forecastle.

Julia was unscathed, he saw immediately, but another crewman hadn't been so lucky. The falling boom had bounced off the metal facing of the turret, shattering the port foredeck rail as if it were kindling. Somewhere along its path it had struck someone with the ill fortune to be standing just aft of the catapult shot hopper. Julia was kneeling beside the fallen man, her ear pressed to his chest, listening for a heartbeat.

Teldin didn't have to come any closer to know it was futile. The man's left shoulder and neck had taken the brunt of the impact, pulping the bones. The side of the man's skull, too, looked soft, like an overripe fruit. Even though the victim's face was distorted, Teldin recognized him easily as Allyn, the gunner's mate. The wind-tanned old man who'd survived a career in space that was longer than Teldin's entire life.

For what? the captain found himself wondering. To come here, to die in the service of Teldin Moore, Cloakmaster?

He looked up into the chaotic "sky" of the phlogiston that now surrounded the ship, tears blurring his view. Why? he silently demanded. Just what in the Abyss is it all for? One more dead-maybe two, if the healers' expressions were any indication. And the voyage had barely begun. How many more would fall before it was all over?

"Ship ahoy!"

The hoarse shout cut through Teldin's dark thoughts. He snapped his head around toward the source of the voice.

It was Dargeth, the half-orc, a member of the catapult crew. He was leaning against the forward rail of the turret, pointing out into the Flow. "Ship ahoy!" he repeated. "High on the port bow."

Teldin's gaze quartered the area of space Dargeth had specified. Nothing…

Yes, there it was, a black shape against the riotous colors of the phlogiston. It was close, too-closer than a ship had any right to be without being spotted… "What's the ship?" Teldin yelled. "And what course?"

The answer came from the afterdeck. Djan stood braced against the mizzenmast, Teldin's brass spyglass to his eye. "Battle dolphin," he called back. "And it's on an intercept course."

"A battle dolphin, confirmed," Djan sang out again a moment later. "It's maneuvering, probably trying to come in below us."

Even without a spyglass, Teldin could see that the half-elf was right. The black shape of the enemy ship was sinking toward the starboard rail. Soon it would be masked from view-and from weapon shot-by the squid ship's own hull.

"Load all weapons!" the Cloakmaster ordered. "Helm up now!"

"It'll take a couple of minutes to warm it up," Julia reminded him.

Teldin cursed under his breath, remembering his own order to bring the helm down. They didn't have a couple of minutes. But, at least, they did have other options.

"Get Beth-Abz up on deck," he told Julia. Then he planted his back against the mainmast and braced his feet. With an effort, he forced his breathing to slow and his muscles to relax.

*****

Berglund lowered his spyglass and snorted in amazement. The mystery man had proven himself right on two counts. Here was the target squid ship, right on time-and, lo and behold, dead in space. Would wonders never cease?

He flashed the other members of his bridge crew a predatory smile. "Bring us in," he ordered quietly. "Below their hull, if you please."

"Yesss, ssir," his first mate, an olive-scaled lizardman, hissed. Surprisingly fast for his heavy build, he hurried down the ladder to the helm compartment directly below, to convey his captain's orders.

"They're not maneuvering," Rejhan, Berglund's second mate, told him. "Their helm must be down."

The pirate captain nodded his agreement. "Continue to bring us in," he ordered. Then his smile broadened. "And… catapults away," he added almost negligently.

The hull of the Shark jarred beneath his feet as the vessel's twin catapults fired.

****

"They're firing! Take cover!" Djan screamed from the sterncastle.

Around him, Teldin heard the scurrying of feet as the crew took Djan's suggestion and found shelter. He wanted to do the same thing himself, wanted to crouch behind the metal glacis of the turret.

But saving his own life wasn't the only thing he had to worry about at the moment. The ship and its entire crew were his responsibility. The helm was down, and the Boundless truly helpless…

Unless he did something about it.

The squid ship jolted hard as a catapult shot struck the low port quarter of the bow. In his peripheral vision the Cloakmaster saw the second shot hurtle by, a couple of yards away.

"They're reloading!" Djan called.

Teldin took a deep breath-so deep that his chest felt as though it would burst-then let all the air spill out of his lungs. A sense of calm came down upon him, stilling the knotting fear in his belly. The sounds around him-the creak of the windlass as the weapon crew wound back the main catapult, the thunder of feet on the deck-seemed suddenly muffled, not as sharp, somehow. And yet he could hear everything, even those noises normally much too quiet for his ears to detect. He felt the presence of the cloak on his back.

The cloak felt warm around his shoulders-not the simple, passive warmth of a garment, more like the vibrant warmth of a living thing. Even though he couldn't see it, he knew it was starting to glow with a pink light. He felt his awareness start to blossom, to expand. I am the ship….

Julia grabbed his arm, and the glow-and the expanded perception associated with it-faded slightly. "Get below," she told him. "You're exposed out here."

He shook his head. "No time. I have to take over the ship now."

She gripped tighter. "You can do that from anywhere!" she shouted at him. "If you get yourself killed up here, what good will that do the rest of us?"

He wanted to argue but had to accept the sense of her words. He let the awareness, the sense of the cloak's power, slip away. Then he turned and followed her down into the forecastle.

*****

The squid ship still hadn't moved, Berglund saw. It still just hung there against the backdrop of the Flow, like a strangely shaped fruit ripe for the picking. He turned to his second mate.