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"What did you see?"

She shook her head. "The rat men," she said. "You, and-"

"What about the other man?"

She struggled to make her mouth work.

"Better you welcome Umberlee's dark caresses than leave yourself in my hands, child," Laaqueel promised.

"I can't tell you," the woman said, "because I've never seen anything like it."

"What?" the malenti demanded. She heard the slap of feet on the cobblestones, coming closer. Whether they were wererats or Waterdhavian Watch, she was almost out of time.

"It was huge. Fearsome. All fins and teeth and-evil of the darkest sort. It hungers?'

Before Laaqueel could ask anything further, a green glow surrounded the woman. In the next instant her body came apart in thousands of flying sparks.

The malenti leaped back, startled and fearful of getting burned. The green sparks held neither fire nor heat, though, swirling into the air and winking out in a matter of heartbeats. Nothing remained of the woman. Laaqueel forced herself to her feet, seeing Iakhovas at the alley's mouth.

He gave her a baleful glare with his single eye.

The creaking wheels of a wagon drew Laaqueel's attention. She shifted to face the alley, spotting the black plague wagon rolling toward her at once. Ebony sheets fluttered in the wind.

No driver held the reins, and no draft animals pulled the wagon. It rolled slowly at Laaqueel, and the malenti knew she was looking at more of the hated surface dweller magic.

IX

12 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet

"Wake up, boy!"

The stern voice scratched Jherek from the comfortable womb of darkness that had settled over him like a shroud. He wanted to tell Malorrie that he was dead, but he knew it wasn't true. The quarrel still burned deeply in his chest.

"Who did this to you?" Malorrie demanded.

Jherek ignored the question as he opened his eyes. "What are you doing here?" His voice carried a whistle with it, and he knew it was caused by his left lung filling up with blood from the puncture wound. It already felt like rocks had been shoved into his chest, making it harder to breathe.

"You were late home to sup, boy," Malorrie said. "Madame litaar sent me to bring you home. She knew when Butterfly put into port and how long she takes to off-load." He made a sour face. "From the looks of things, she's going to be properly vexed that she didn't send me sooner."

"It's been kind of inconvenient for me as well," Jherek told him honestly.

"You'll not die."

Jherek didn't disagree. If anyone knew death, it was Malorrie. The old phantom had never admitted when he'd died, nor given any details on the how of it.

He knelt over the young sailor, concern etched in his translucent eyes, his gaze as always made somewhat confusing because he could be seen through. He was dressed as he always was in warrior's chain mail with a deep scarlet tabard that hung to his ankles. It carried no coat of arms, no insignia of any kind. He carried a broadsword sheathed at his hip, stripped of any ornamental designs that might have offered a clue as to the phantom's background. His face belonged to that of a man in his middle years, and his nature made it hard to tell the color of his skin or hair or the thin mustache that stained his upper lip, but Jherek always felt the phantom's eyes in life had been the blue of the seas.