When Xaphira opened her eyes, the gashes in her clothing revealed only fresh pink skin and lots of smeared blood. A second spell closed the wounds in her shin.

When she was done, the mercenary officer noticed Emriana sitting next to her with her knees drawn up. The girl was hugging them tightly and watching intently, her yellow-gold eyes wide with concern. "That's a pretty handy talent to have," she said when she understood that Xaphira was finished.

Xaphira nodded. "Only when no one is trying to take my head off," she replied, "or I'm about to pass out from the pain." For a moment, she thought of what might have been, if her injuries had been worse. "Have you ever had to field dress a wound before?" she asked.

Emriana shook her head.

"Well, if you're going to accompany me tonight, you've got to know more than how to throw a dagger."

Emriana giggled, realizing what her aunt was agreeing to. "Tonight?" she said, her eyes shining with excitement.

Xaphira nodded. "But only if you do what I say, beginning with learning how to stop someone from bleeding to death."

"The way you fight, I won't need to do it very often," the girl said. "It was…" she paused, contemplating. "Amazing," she said, her face filled with wonder. "I don't think I've ever seen you do that before. And against three of them. You're incredible."

Xaphira chuckled as she got to her feet. "Not so much," she replied as she wiped a forearm across her sweat-soaked brow. "Without you there, they would have taken me down. I'm getting old and slow."

"It was one against three!" Emriana protested.

"Sure, and in that instance, the best thing I could have done is take them out quickly, before they tired me out. But those cats were smart. They were toying with me, wearing me down before they prepared to close in for the kill. I was a fumbling buffoon this morning."

Emriana rolled her eyes, refusing to let her aunt's words diminish her appreciation of the display. "Whatever you say. I certainly could not have done any of that."

"Ah, but eventually you can, if you want to learn " Xaphira remarked. "I can teach you."

Emriana smiled, looking genuinely delighted at the prospect. "I would like that."

Xaphira smiled. "Come on, let's get back. Those other two might come back for more, and other things are going to come feast soon, regardless," she said, pointing at the dead dire-jaguar. "I don't want to be around when the quarrels over portions start."

Together the two women began to hike back up the streambed, and it was not long before they found Dancer and Honey, nickering at one another as they feasted on berries.

The ride back to the country estate was less boisterous, and along the way Emriana grew quiet. Xaphira wondered if the morning's attack had unnerved her, but when the girl spoke, her words reminded the mercenary that the impending journey back to Arrabar weighed heavily on her niece's mind.

"Did you learn anything about Junce Roundface last night?"

Xaphira pursed her lips before answering, feeling all her own concerns welling up inside her. "Not exactly, though I might learn something tonight. An old friend of mine promised to do some digging, and if anyone knows someone who can tell us more, he does."

"You mean, we might learn something tonight. Right?"

Xaphira nodded. "Right. But we're only going to sit in a bar and talk with Quill. There won't be any rooftop climbing this trip."

Emriana sniffed, obviously a little less enamored of the expedition than she had been previously. "Well, let's hope we learn something, at the least," she said determinedly. "Every time I think about that assassin still running loose in the city, after everything he's done to our family…" She left the thought hanging there, but Xaphira understood.

"Me, too," she told her niece. "We'll get him, Em. I promise."

"Good," the girl replied. "Because I can't sleep, knowing he's still free."

A kraken!

By Waukeen, where did it come from? Vambran wondered, half in a daze. He shook his head, forcing himself to think. He scrambled to his feet, holding on to a railing for support, and peered all about the ship.

Lady's Favor wasn't long for the surface. She was already sitting much lower in the water than she should have been, and she continued to lean hard to her starboard side, pulled over by the gargantuan squid-thing that clung to her from beneath. Several men were already in the water, including some of the Crescents, though they, at least, had heeded the signal song and were standing atop the waves rather than floundering beneath them. But one unfortunate sailor was high above the waves, held tightly in a barbed tentacle that had coiled around him. As Vambran watched, horrified, the tentacle whipped the screaming man back and forth rapidly, slamming him hard against the waves and choking off his cries.

The creak and groan of the listing ship grew louder, accompanied by several violent pops. Vambran could feel the vibrations of those cracking timbers in the deck beneath his hands and feet. The beast was pulling the ship apart.

Where the hell is Kovrim? He's got to get up here before the whole blasted ship goes down!

Za'hure went stumbling past Vambran's position, shouting orders at the top of his lungs even as he collided with another sailor who had lost his balance and was skidding across the width of the deck toward the railing. The captain grabbed hold of the other man by the arm and swung him around in the other direction, shouting an order that Vambran couldn't make out. Somehow, the sailor stumbled in the direction Za'hure had pointed, pulling a cutlass free of his belt and sliding toward one of the thick, rubbery appendages that held tight to the sinking ship. The sailor took a huge swing at the fleshy arm, gouging a slender hunk out of it. Other men moved to join in, hacking and sawing at the great tentacles holding fast to the ship. Vambran wanted to move in to aid them, but at that moment, one of the huge barbed appendages rose up from the side of the ship. It still held the sailor from before, though the man hung limply in its grasp, his head dangling at an unnatural angle. Using the corpse as a bludgeon, the kraken raked the deck of the ship, knocking its attackers away in violent and sickeningly fleshy collisions.

There was another thunderous roar as the ship, unable to remain all of a piece, splintered violently. Vambran was pitched wildly up into the air as the boards beneath him bent and shattered. The lieutenant twisted around in the air, fearful of landing on the tips of those shards of lumber, but a great gout of black water burst up from below, slamming into Vambran and knocking him sideways. The sting of the cold water took the man's breath away, and he gasped as he tried to reach out and snag something, anything, to arrest his fall.

Vambran's hand got tangled in a length of rope, and he closed his gloved fist around it. He felt a painful jerk in his shoulder as he stopped, swinging from a splintered spar, dangling out over the water. The lieutenant groaned in pain as he reached up with his other hand, trying to pull himself back onto the ship and praying that the broken boom would remain intact.

The mercenary officer was almost to the spar when a splash from below caught his attention. He looked down and spotted a great barbed tentacle slithering up out of the water directly at him. In a panic, he began to haul himself up in earnest, desperate to evade the grasping appendage, but the fat, bloated thing was far too swift. He let out an involuntary cry of panic as the tentacle coiled tightly around his legs, squeezing them together.

Then the tentacle began to pull.