“Thank the gods,” Locke muttered as he ran to the gap in the rail just in time to see the boat plunge bow-first into the water, like an arrowhead, and get immediately swallowed beneath a crashing wave. “Oh, COME ON!”

“Jump,” hollered Jean, ducking a swing from a crewman who came at him with an oar. Jean slammed two punches into the unfortunate sailor’s ribs, and the man did a convincing imitation of a marionette with its strings cut. “Get the hell in the water!”

“The boat sank!” Locke cried, scanning the darkness in vain for a glimpse of it. Whistles were sounding from the quarterdeck and from within the ship. The whole crew would be roused against them presently. “I don’t see it!”

“Can’t hear you. Jump!” Jean dashed across the deck and gave Locke a well-meaning shove through the gap in the railing. There was no time to do anything but gasp in a surprised breath; Locke’s oilcloth fluttered around him as he fell like a wounded bat into the dark water of the Amathel.

The cold hit like a shock. He whirled within the churning blackness, fighting against his cloak and the weight of his ankle manacles. They weren’t dragging him straight down, but they would sharply increase the rate at which he would exhaust himself by kicking to keep his head up.

His face broke the surface; he choked in a breath of air and freshwater spray. The Volantyne’s Resolveloomed over him like a monstrous shadow, lit by the shuddering light of a dozen jumping, bobbing lanterns. A familiar dark shape detached itself from some sort of fight against the near rail, and fell toward the water.

“Jean,” Locke sputtered, “there’s no—”

The lost boat resurfaced like a broaching shark, spat up in a gushing white torrent. Jean landed on it facefirst with a ghastly thump and splashed heavily into the water beside it.

“Jean,” Locke screamed, grabbing hold of one of the jolly boat’s gunwales and desperately scanning the water for any sign of his friend. The bigger man had already sunk beneath the surface. A wave crashed over Locke’s head and tore at his hold on the boat. He spat water and searched desperately … there! A dim shape drifted six or seven feet beneath Locke’s toes, lit from below by an eerie blue-white light. Locke dove just as another breaking wave hammered the boat.

Locke grabbed Jean by the collar and felt cold dismay at the feeble response. For a moment it seemed that the two of them hung suspended in a gray netherworld between lurching wave tops and ghostly light, and Locke suddenly realized the source of the illumination around them. Not lightning or lanterns, but the unknown fires that burned at the very bottom of the Amathel.

Glimpsed underwater, they lost their comforting jewel-like character, and seemed to roil and pulse and blur. They stung Locke’s eyes, and his skin crawled with the unreasonable, instinctive sensation that something utterly hostile was nearby—nearby and drawing closer. He hooked his hands under Jean’s arms and kicked mightily, heaving the two of them back toward the surface and the storm.

He scraped his cheek against the jolly boat as he came up, sucked in a deep breath, and heaved at Jean again to get the larger man’s head above water. The cold was like a physical pressure, numbing Locke’s fingers and slowly turning his limbs to lead.

“Come back to me, Jean,” Locke spat. “I know your brains are jarred, but Crooked Warden, come back!” He yanked at Jean, holding on to the gunwale of the wave-tossed boat with his other hand, and for all his pains succeeded only in nearly capsizing it again. “Shit!”

Locke needed to get in first, but if he let Jean go Jean would probably sink again. He spotted the rowing lock, the u-shaped piece of cast iron set into the gunwale to hold an oar. It had been smashed by the boat’s slides across the deck, but it might serve a new purpose. Locke seized Jean’s oilcloak and twisted one end into a crude knot around the bent rowing lock, so that Jean hung from the boat by his neck and chest. Not a sensible way to leave him, but it would keep him from drifting away while Locke got aboard.

A fresh wave knocked the side of the boat against Locke’s head. Black spots danced before his eyes, but the pain goaded him to furious action. He plunged into the blackness beneath the boat, then clawed his way up to the gunwale on the opposite side. Another wave struck, and out of its froth Locke scrabbled and strained until he was over the edge. He bounced painfully off a rowing bench and flopped into the ankle-deep water sloshing around the bottom.

Locke reached over the side and grabbed Jean. His heaving was desperate, unbalanced, and useless. The little boat bobbled and shook with every effort, rising and falling on the waves like a piston in some nightmarish machine. At last Locke’s wits punched through the walls of his exhaustion and panic. He turned Jean sideways and hauled him in a foot and an arm at a time, using his oilcloak for added leverage. Once he was safely in, the bigger man coughed and mumbled and flopped around.

“Oh, I hate the Eldren, Jean,” Locke gasped as they lay in the bottom of the tossing boat, lashed by waves and rain. “I hate ’em. I hate whatever they did, I hate the shit they left behind, I hate the way none of their mysteries ever turn out to be pleasant and fucking good-neighborly!”

“Pretty lights,” muttered Jean.

“Yeah, pretty lights,” Locke spat. “Friendly sailors, the Amathel has it all.”

Locke nudged Jean aside and sat up. They were bobbing around like a wine cork in a cauldron set to boil, but now that their weight was in the center of the little boat, it seemed better able to bear the tossing. They had drifted astern and inshore of the Volantyne’s Resolve, which was now more than fifty yards away. Confused shouts could be heard, but the ship didn’t seem to be putting about to come after them. Locke could only hope that Jean’s cold-cocking of Volantyne would prevent the rest of the crew from getting things together until it was too late.

“Holy hells,” said Jean, “how’d I geddhere?”

“Never mind that. You see any oars?”

“Uh, I thing I bead the crap out of the guy that had them.” Jean reached up and gingerly prodded his face. “Aw, gods, I thing I broge my node again!”

“You used it to break your fall when you hit the boat.”

“Is thad whad hid me?”

“Yeah, scared me shitless.”

“You saved me!”

“It’s my turn every couple of years,” said Locke with a thin smile.

“Thang you.”

“All I did was save my own ass four or five times down the line,” said Locke. “And cut you in on a hell of a landing. If the waves keep taking us south, we should hit the beach in just a few miles, but without any oars to keep ourselves under control, it might be a hard way to leave the water.”

The waves did their part, bearing their little boat south at a frightful clip, and when the beach finally came into sight their arrival went as hard as Locke had guessed. The Amathel flung them against the black volcanic sand like some monster vomiting up a plaything that had outlasted its interest.

5

THE COASTAL road west of Lashain was called the Darksands Stretch, and it was a lonely place to be traveling this windy autumn morning. A single coach, pulled by a team of eight horses, trundled along the centuries-old stones raising spurts of wet gravel in its wake rather than the clouds of dust more common in drier seasons.

The secure coach service from Salon Corbeau and points farther south was for rich travelers unable to bear the thought of setting foot aboard a ship. With iron-bound doors, shuttered windows, and interior locks, the carriage was a little fortress for passengers afraid of highwaymen.

The driver wore an armored doublet, as did the guard that sat beside him atop the carriage, cradling a crossbow that looked as though it could put a hole the size of a temple window into whatever it was loosed at.