"Zunctweed lied about the ship being out of provisions?"

"Of course." She reached into a small basket beside her feet and tossed me a hunk of cheese. "Eat fast. We're almost there."

As I munched, I looked over the railing. The Dinghy was too far out for me to see the shore clearly… but beyond the narrow sand beach, I could discern open areas (fields), low trees (orchards), and thick forests (wood-lots and windbreaks). Local farmers must be out today, checking which fences needed mending, or gazing at morasses of mud and judging how soon the soil would be dry enough to plow. Perhaps the cattle had been let out to pasture, hoof-deep in muck but glad in their bovine way to be munching on sere yellow grass rather than stale fodder.

Even as I watched, the ship angled toward land. Up ahead, a small harbor housed fishing boats-far fewer than the fleet in Dover-on-Sea, but enough to show the presence of an active port. The Caryatid said, "That's Crystal Bay. We'll put in there. Zunctweed says there's no point going as far as the Niagara River, because it isn't navigable for a ship our size."

"What about the canal?" The Welland Canal had been dug in OldTech times to circumvent the Falls. Back then, the canal's lift-locks were controlled electronically; but locks can function perfectly well without fancy automation, and they'd continued on pure gravity feed long after the electric pumps had become useless. As far as I knew, the canal was still a working part of the Great Lakes seaway.

"The canal isn't open," the Caryatid told me. "They close it every winter once ice shuts down shipping."

"But the ice has melted."

"Doesn't matter. Zunctweed says the schedule was cast in stone years ago by government fiat. The canal won't reopen until it's supposed to."

"But if the ice is gone, we could just sail through."

The Caryatid shook her head. "Every lock is completely shut down. No way past. Zunctweed says Crystal Bay is the closest the Dinghy can get to the Falls."

"And we believe Zunctweed?"

"We believe Zunctweed when Impervia has a firm grip on his throat."

Impervia wasn't actively engaged in strangling the captain, but she stood within arm's reach as Zunctweed chittered orders to prepare for landfall. Pelinor was also close to the action, not to help Impervia, but because the old knight had developed a sudden enthusiasm for seamanship. In the same way that he badgered stablehands about horses, he hung at Zunctweed's side in pursuit of nautical lore. "What does 'belay' mean?" "How do you do something 'handsomely'?" "Which is 'abaft' and 'abeam'?"

Not far away, Oberon clung to the rail looking miserable. He wasn't actually seasick-Lake Erie's waves were minuscule compared to an ocean's, especially on such a pleasant day-but the big lobster clearly had acquired a loathing of surfaces that moved beneath him. Each time the boat dipped down a wave crest, Oberon fought not to slide in the same direction… and after hours of constant exertion, grappling the rail with his pincers, he must have been counting the seconds before we put into port.

The rest of our group was nowhere in sight. The Caryatid told me our missing companions were all in the captain's cabin. "Looking at maps. Arguing about the fastest way to the Falls." She rolled her eyes. "As far as I'm concerned, we should just talk to people in Crystal Bay. They'll know what's best. If we let Gretchen choose our route, we'll gallop ten kilometers up some road, discover a bridge has collapsed during the winter, and have to come all the way back again."

The Caryatid was right: no sense relying on maps when we could get more up-to-date information with a few simple questions. And from what I could see of the town, Crystal Bay looked big enough to justify a stagecoach stop… maybe even a dispatching depot. Better to hop a stage than rent horses and strike off on our own.

Still, I felt a niggling urge to peek at a map, just to get the lay of the land-I'd feel better if I had a picture of where we were going. Accordingly, I headed to the captain's quarters with a blithe and jaunty step, nothing in my brain except cartographic curiosity… but that evaporated instantly when I bounced into the cabin and realized who was there.

Three heads turned my way when I entered. Three pretty faces. Gretchen, Annah, and Myoko: all my complications in one cramped little room.

Gretchen was mostly naked: wearing nothing but a crimson bra like the one I'd seen on the floor of her bedroom, and a pair of matching panties that were surprisingly demure by Gretchen's standards-no lace or frills or cut-outs. She looked up at me as I came through the door, but gave only a distracted smile. If I'd been some other man, she would have felt obliged to do something flirtatious (flash her cleavage, wiggle her hips, pretend she had to cover up to protect her "modesty"), but with me, she didn't bother. I considered that a compliment.

As soon as Gretchen had deigned to recognize my existence, she turned back to Myoko and said, "Well?"

Myoko took longer to collect herself-she looked flustered and even blushed slightly at my arrival. My rough-and-ready "Platonic" friend was betraying a hitherto unsuspected bashfulness… as if I were her husband and had caught her in flagrante delicto with a nearly nude woman. Not that anything salacious was going on; Myoko herself was fully clothed, and from what I could see, she was simply trying to unknot the lacings on the back of a red knit gown. No doubt the gown was Gretchen's, taken from that traveling case she'd packed the night before. Perhaps Myoko was merely embarrassed to be seen playing Gretchen's dressmaid. But it was a small cabin, and Myoko had no room to keep her distance from Gretchen's bare skin. As I watched, she surreptitiously tried to squeeze a little farther away, dropping her gaze to the knots she was trying to untie. "Don't rush me," she mumbled to Gretchen.

The blush burned more brightly in Myoko's cheeks.

Annah was behind the other two, higher than both because she was standing on the captain's bed. Like Gretchen she gave me only a distracted smile; then she went back to arranging Gretchen's hair. In the dim confined quarters, I couldn't see much of what Annah was doing, but I assumed she was making a braid. Annah had a reputation for braids: at the academy, girls sometimes tried to transfer to Annah's floor solely so she'd do their hair. Personally, I've never understood the female fascination with braids-braids always remind me of the ugly leather bumps on a crocodile's back-but I learned long ago to keep quiet on the subject.

Gretchen soon grew bored watching Myoko worry at the gown's knots, so she turned back to me. (Behind her, Annah made an exasperated sigh and tried to hold Gretchen's head still.) "So, Phil, darling," Gretchen said, "aren't you just amazed?"

I almost said, "By what?" The part of my brain devoted to self-preservation vetoed that initial response and frantically searched for some source of amazement I'd overlooked. Gretchen's body? Always delicious, but I couldn't see anything different from last night (except the absence of goose-pimples). The fact that Myoko and Gretchen weren't sniping at each other? Yes, that was amazing, but probably not what Gretchen meant. I looked around the room, knowing I was taking too long to answer, but unable to see anything but the three women… Gretchen in her underwear… the crimson gown…

Crimson? Sorcerer's crimson?

Gretchen's lingerie was the same color. And I'd seen a crimson bra in her bedroom the night before.

I blurted, "You're pretending to be a sorceress?"

Gretchen's eyes flashed. "No, silly billy-I am a sorceress. Do you think I buy all those shine-stones?"