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the crew, who stared silently at her, and climbed down the narrow gangway to
the deck just above the bilge.
She knew her way to the storeroom; that was, after all, where she and Hasmal
had magically touched the
Reborn. When she thought about the Reborn, her mood lifted a little; that in
itself seemed like a miracle to her. She considered him and found hope within
herself, even in her worst moment.
She should have realized earlier that she hadn t seen Hasmal. Only when she
found him sprawled on the floor of the storeroom, bled white, did she realize
she hadn t seen him since the fog began to build. He d been doing magic. His
implements lay in disarray on the deck beside him; mirror, empty blood-bowl,
tourniquet and bleeding knife, and several objects she hadn t seen before and
thus didn t recognize. At first she thought he was dead. But she saw the faint
rise and fall of his chest, and felt the breath barely moving from his
half-open mouth.
She shook him, but he didn t respond.
 Hasmal! You have to wake up! Hasmal!
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Still he made no sign that he could hear her  no sign that he was anything
but a man one breath away from death.
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Diplomacy of Wolves
She closed her eyes in resignation, gathered his things together in his bag,
and hid them among the bags of yams. If the ship escaped the Wizards Circle,
she would retrieve them for him. She didn t think she would have that
opportunity; nevertheless, she was not so sure of their demise that she would
let anyone else see what he had so carefully kept hidden. Once his magical
tools were out of the way, she rolled him over on his stomach, then worked her
way beneath him so that she could line up his shoulders with hers. She thought
she heard scuffling as she was trying to get to her feet, but when she held
still and kept silent, she could hear nothing but the creak of the ship and
the moaning of the ghost-damned sea.
With Hasmal s head draped over her right shoulder and his arms pulled like a
stole around her neck, she struggled to her feet and, bent double,
half-carried, half-dragged him out of the storeroom and to the gangway. She
called for help, and several crewmen appeared above her.
 I found him in the storeroom. He s breathing, barely, she told them,  but I
don t know what happened to him. He looks pale to me.
Without a word, they lifted Hasmal up and carried him away.
Kait didn t try to follow; she saw no need to attempt to offer an explanation
for what she d found. She knew what had happened to him  at least in part 
but anything she might say would only further incriminate her and cause
problems for him, too. She had no reason to know why he was in the storeroom
or what had happened to him. Let the crew come to their own conclusions.
She returned, instead, to the storeroom, and ate. She gorged on salted pork
and dried fruit and beer. Only when she finally felt full  and so sleepy that
she wondered if she would be able to make the trip to the deck above  did she
pull out the yam sacks to make sure Hasmal s belongings were safe.
She moved bags back and forth; at first she d been sure which one she d hidden
the little bag behind, but her certainty faded as they all began to look
alike. She frowned, and began from one end of the yams, working her way
methodically to the other. And only when she had moved every single bag did
she allow herself to believe the disaster that had befallen her and Hasmal.
Someone had stolen the bag.
* * *
Outside, the wind screamed and rain slashed the ship and the waves tossed it
as if it were a child s toy.
Ry stayed below through the worst of the storm; he discovered, to his dismay,
that he got seasick 
something he had been sure would never happen to him  and that only lying
still in his bunk kept him from feeling his death was imminent. From time to
time either Karyl or Yanth, both of whom proved to be immune to the ship s
heaving, would come in to check on him and Trev and Jaim and Valard, and tell
them how much their course had changed, and offer them food. Ry suspected they
offered food out of some mild impulse toward sadism, since at the very word,
the four men in the makeshift infirmary
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Diplomacy of Wolves turned green. He hoped he would live long enough to repay
the favor. Sometimes. And sometimes he just hoped he would die before the
storm could get any worse.
His one consolation was that his connection to Kait had grown stronger during
the storm. She was in the middle of troubles of her own, and he supposed he
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could be grateful that his ship had been forced to sail north to miss the
worst of the weather. They would have a huge amount of distance to make up,
but they would not end up in the middle of a Wizards Circle.
The wizard who traveled aboard the ship with her  the one whose shields had
made sensing her presence and her location such a difficult proposition  had
dropped his shields to cast some sort of immense spell. Ry didn t know where
he d gotten the power for it, but he seemed to have singlehandedly conjured a
wind that was blowing Kait s ship through the Wizards Circle toward the
safety of the water beyond. Ry had felt the other wizard casting the spell,
and he d been both fascinated and horrified by the amount of personal energy
the stranger had put into it. That amount of energy, drawn from his own body,
should have killed him, but though the stranger had drained himself to the
point that he was near death, Ry could feel that he still lived. He wondered
what coin the other wizard had paid for the spell he d cast.
Something I can discover later, he decided. Not something to lose sleep over
now.
The wizard s secrets were secondary to the artifact Kait hid  the artifact
she was crossing the ocean to find.
That he would have to claim at the same time that he caught up with her; she
was his ultimate prize, but he intended to claim her prize, too. He d paid a
tremendous price to come after her  the price of his Family, his honor, his
own life, and the lives of his friends, which could never afterward be the
same as they had been. His dead brother Cadell whispered in the back of his
mind, in the rare moments when Ry dropped his shields, that the artifact she
sought was worth any amount of effort and any sort of sacrifice. Ry believed
him. Still, he found himself hungering for some proof that he had not chosen a
fool s path, and at that moment, knowing he was declared dead at home, he felt
certain that only a massive prize would repay him for all that he had lost.
Chapter
28
 W
e ve all discussed this, Cap n, and we want something done about her.
Rrru-eeth stood at the head of the small cluster of crewmen, all of whom
stared at Ian Draclas with an intensity he found
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Diplomacy of Wolves disconcerting. Gone was the mild, diffident young Scarred
woman he d known for so long, replaced by someone who resembled a frightened
animal.  We don t have to have one of her kind aboard, and we won t.
He understood the fear. In the moment that Kait had changed, he d felt it
himself. The gods had not intended skinshifters to live in the midst of men,
or they would not have made the creatures so terrifying.
He thought about the nights she d slept beside him, and tried to imagine
waking to find that mad-eyed, long-fanged beast at his throat instead of the
woman he found so compelling. His skin crawled.
Nevertheless, he did not intend to give in to the demands of the crew; they [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]