“Beats being annihilated by red lightning or melted into sludge by a cloud of acid, all right. You brought your stone, right?”

“Got it in my pocket. You?”

“Crassus loaned me his,” Max confirmed. “Do you really think that showing up with only two of us will impress the Shuarans?”

“It might,” Tavi said. “Mostly, I feel better knowing that I’m not leaving anyone helpless to Canim sorcery standing around on the dock behind me to be taken prisoner or wounded and used to slow me down.”

Max snorted. “You didn’t say anything about that aboard the ship.”

“Well. No.”

“Just did it to impress the girl, eh, Your Highness?”

Tavi threw a sly glance over his shoulder. “It was a pretty good kiss.”

Max snorted, then they fell silent until they reached the sea-gate of Molvar.

Huge bars of black iron rose from the cold sea, supported on either side by walls made from hand-hewn granite blocks. Even without the use of furycraft, the Canim had been able, somehow, to raise the seabed into something solid enough to support massive walls, built out from the sides of the fjord. Tavi could not imagine how much sheer, brute effort, how much raw sweat and muscle power had gone into their construction, or what techniques must have been used, even with the incredible strength of the Canim laborers, to maneuver the enormous blocks of stone. They made the ruins in Appia look like children’s projects by comparison.

As the two boats approached, the sea-gates groaned and began to move, slowly parting. Phosphorescence flickered up and down the metal bars, and eerie, fluttering waves of light danced over the surface of the water. Metal rattled on metal, an eerie, regular thump-thump-thump as the gates opened, swirling water in their wake.

The boats passed through, and Tavi spotted several Canim on the walls above them, in dark armor and strange, long, slippery-looking cloaks, all but hidden within their garments. Each of them bore one of the steel bolt throwers in his hands, the deadly balests that had claimed the lives of so many Knights and legionares in the wars in the Amaranth Vale, and Tavi’s shoulder blades developed a distinct itch as the boat passed them. A bolt hurled by one of the deadly weapons could slam through his armor’s backplates, his body, and his breastplate in an instant, and still carry enough momentum to kill a second armored man on the other side of him.

Tavi did not allow himself to turn his head or alter his straight-backed, confident stance. Posture and gesture were of enormous significance among the Canim. Someone who looked as if he expected to be attacked quite possibly would be, simply as an outgrowth of unspoken, unintended, but very real statements being made by his body.

A cold trickle of sweat slid along Tavi’s spine. It was no time for bungled communications to spoil an otherwise reasonably fine day. After all-he was about to get off the bloody water for the first time in weeks.

He let out a little breath of laughter at the thought and calmed himself as his boat, along with Varg’s, crossed the harbor of Molvar.

It was huge-half a mile across at the least, large enough to house the whole of his fleet and the Canim’s, too. Indeed, in the failing light he counted at least thirty Canim ships of war, whose designs differed subtly from those designed and built by Varg’s shipwrights. Granite bluffs framed the harbor, except for a long stretch of stone piers, as large as any Tavi had seen in Alera, where warships and other vessels, built more along the lines of merchants, were docked.

One pier was set apart from the others. Torches had been lit at its end and burned scarlet with more intensity than any normal fire. It was crowded with Canim, also in their odd, wet-looking cloaks, but Tavi caught glimpses of midnight blue steel armor beneath their cloaks and similarly tinted weaponry in their hands.

Varg’s longboat headed for that pier, and without being told, Max altered his heading slightly to do the same. The two longboats pulled up on opposite sides of the pier in almost-total silence. The only sound was the rattle of wood and metal fittings as the rowers in Varg’s craft shipped their oars.

From there, Tavi thought, looking up at the pier, it certainly looked like a great many more Canim were present than had been there a moment before. They also looked quite a bit taller. And their weapons looked a great deal sharper. Doubtless, he thought, it was all just a trick of the light.

“No fear,” he muttered to himself. Then he took a long step up to the pier and stepped out of the longboat and onto the Shuaran stone.

Opposite him, Varg was doing the same, albeit having less difficulty with the scale of the construction. He tilted his head slightly toward Tavi, who returned the gesture at precisely the same depth and timing. They turned simultaneously to face the warriors gathered on the pier.

Silence ruled.

Tension mounted.

No one stirred.

Tavi debated saying something to break the ice. His time in the Academy, both in academic studies and in training as a Cursor, had included considerable exposure to diplomacy and protocol. Both fields of knowledge offered several potential courses of fruitful action he might pursue. He mused over it for a moment, then discarded them entirely in favor of a lesson his uncle Bernard had taught him on the steadholt: that hardly a man ever made a fool of himself by keeping his bloody mouth shut.

Tavi held his tongue and waited.

A moment later, footsteps sounded, and a runner approached. He was a young adult Cane, lean and swift, running very nearly as fast as a horse might, his odd cloak flying behind him. His fur was a strange color that Tavi had never seen in the wolf-warriors, a kind of pale golden brown fading to white at the tips of his ears and tail. He loped up to the end of the pier, bared his throat deeply to one of the warriors, and growled, “It is done as agreed,” in Canish.

The warrior in question flicked his ears in acknowledgment and stepped forward. He faced Varg, stopping a few inches outside the range of what Tavi judged would be the reach of Varg’s sword, should he draw it.

“Varg,” growled the strange Cane. “You are not welcome here. Go.”

Varg’s eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared for a few seconds. “Tarsh,” he snarled, pure contempt in his voice. “Did Lararl lose his wits in the snow, that you are pack leader here?”

Tarsh reached up a paw-hand to rip back the hood of his cloak, revealing another golden-furred Cane. This one’s muzzle was heavily scarred, including an odd-looking ridge of scar tissue across the black skin of his nose. He was missing one ear halfway up, and Tavi noted that instead of a sword, he bore at his hip an axe with a long, vicious spike protruding from the back.

“Have a care, Varg,” he spat, harshly. “A word from me will spill your blood into the sea.”

“Only if someone listens,” Varg replied. “I do not bargain with scavenging muzzle-lickers like you, Tarsh. You will order your men to prepare to receive my people. I will give you my pledge of peace. We will debark here and camp outside the walls of your city, so that you will feel safe. You will provide me with a priority courier, that I may send word to Lararl of our presence and our need for the presence of someone with the stature to treat with me.”

Tarsh bared every fang in his head. “This is not Narash, tree-runner. You have no authority here.”

“I am garada to Lararl, Tarsh,” Varg rumbled. “And every warrior in your range knows it. Lararl will have the throat of anyone who denies him the pleasure of spilling my life’s blood.”

Tarsh snarled. “I will send a courier to Lararl, of course. But that is all. You may abide here to await an answer. Your ships will stay where they are.”

“Unacceptable!”