He found it, coming up swift on their starboard.

Impossibly, it was Paragon, transfigured in death to a youth. A ghostly white serpent gamboled before the ship. More swift than the wind, unnaturally fleet, the liveship drew alongside. Completing the nightmare, his mother stood on the foredeck, her white hair streaming in the wind. She saw him. She reached a beseeching hand toward him. A golden goddess stood beside her, and a dead man commanded the crew. Kennit's tongue clove for an instant to the roof of his mouth. The ghosts of his past came on, impossibly swift, drawing abreast of the Jamaillian ship and then veering toward it. "Kennit!" the voice thundered again. "I come for you!" Paragon put cold fury in his voice. "Yield Kennit to me! I command it! He is mine!"

"Yield!" Vivacia's voice cracked the sky, coming from the port side of the ship. Kennit's view of her was blocked, but he knew she was close. His heart lifted painfully in his chest. She could save him. "Yield, Jamaillian ship, or we take you to the bottom!"

The Jamaillian ship had nowhere to go. Despite her master's frantic commands to spill wind from her sails, he could not slow her fast enough. The Paragon cut recklessly toward her bow. The Jamaillian ship veered, but it was not enough. With a terrible splintering sound followed by the groans of stressed timbers, she caromed at an angle against Paragon. His wizardwood absorbed her impact, but splinters flew from the Jamaillian ship. The Jamaillian ship slewed around, all control lost. Overhead, canvas flapped wildly. Suddenly, there was another grinding impact as the Vivacia pressed up against her other side. It was a reckless maneuver, one that could take all three ships down. The halted momentum of the ships swung them all in a slowly turning circle. Sailors on every deck roared in dismay. Overhead, rigging threatened to tangle. To either side, the Marietta and the Motley swept past, to hold off approaching Jamaillian vessels.

The deck under Kennit was still shuddering from the impacts when grapples from both liveships seized onto it. Boarders from both sides leapt over the railings. The clash of fighting rose around them, supplemented with the wild shouts of the liveships themselves. Even the serpent added his trumpeting. Their captors were suddenly intent on defending their own lives.

"Satrap! We must try to get to the Vivacia." Kennit kept his firm grip on the Satrap's shoulder and shouted by his ear. "I'll guide you there," he asserted, lest his living crutch try to go on his own.

"Kill them!" The Jamaillian captain's roar cut through the sounds of battle. It was the furious cry of a desperate man. "By Lord Criath's order, they must not be taken alive. Kill the Satrap and the pirate king. Don't let them escape!"

BODIES STILL CLUTTERED VIVACIA'S DECK, THE BLOOD BEADING AND RUNNING over the sealed wood. Walking was slippery. The frantically scrambling sailors, the outstretched, pleading hands of the injured and the increased shifting of the deck made Malta's journey to where Reyn had fallen a nightmare. She felt she moved sluggishly, alone, through chaos and insanity, to the end of the world. Pirates darted past her to Wintrow's shouted commands. She did not even hear them. Reyn had come all this way, seeking her, and she had been too cowardly to give him even a word. She had dreaded the pain of his rejection so much that she had not had the courage to thank him. Now she feared she sought for a dead man.

He lay facedown. She had to pull another body off his. The man on top of him was heavy. She tugged at him hopelessly while all around her the world went on a mad quest to save Kennit. No one, not her brother, not her aunt, came to her aid. She sobbed breathlessly, fearfully as she worked. She heard the two liveships shouting to one another. Rushing sailors dodged around her, heedless of her toil. She fell to her knees in the blood, braced a shoulder against the dead man's bulk, and shoved him off Reyn.

The revealed carnage left her gasping. Blood soaked his garments and pooled around his body. He sprawled in it, horribly still. "Oh, Reyn. Oh, my love." She squeezed out the hoarse words that had lived unacknowledged in her heart since their first dream-box sharing. Heedless of the blood, she bent to embrace him. He was still warm. "Never to be," she moaned, rocking. "Never to be." It was like losing her home and her family all over again. In his arms, she suddenly knew, was the only place where she could have been Malta again. With him died her youth, her beauty, her dreams.

Tenderly, as if he could still feel pain, she turned him over. She would see his face one last time, look into his copper eyes even if he did not look back at her. It would be all she would ever have of him.

Her hands were thick with his blood as she untucked the veil from the throat of his shirt. She used both hands to lift it up and away from his face. It peeled away, leaving a latticework of blood inked on his slack face. Tenderly she wiped it away with the hem of her cloak. She bent down and kissed his still mouth, lips to lips, no dream, no veil between them. Dimly she was aware that the shouting world of sail and battle went on around them. She did not care. Her life had stopped here. She traced the scaled line of his brow, the pebbled skin like a finely wrought chain under her fingertip. "Reyn," she said quietly. "Oh, my Reyn."

His eyes opened to slits. Copper glints shone. Transfixed, she stared, as he blinked twice, then opened his eyes. He squinted up at her. He gave a gasp of pain, his right hand going to the wet sleeve on his left arm. "I'm hurt," he said dazedly.

She bent closer over him. Her heart thundered in her ears. She scarcely heard her own words. "Reyn. Lie still. You're bleeding badly. Let me see to you." With a competence she did not feel, she began to undo his shirt. She would not dare to hope, she hoped for nothing, no, she did not even dare to pray, not that he would live, not that he would love her. Such hopes were too big. Her shaking hands could not unfasten the buttons.

She tore the shirt and spread it wide, expecting ruin within. "You're whole!" she exclaimed. "Praise Sa for life!" She ran a wondering hand down his smooth bronze chest. The scaling on it rippled under her hand and glinted in the pale winter sunlight.

"Malta?" He squinted, as if finally able to see who knelt over him. In his bloody right hand he caught both of hers and held her touch away from him as his eyes fixed on her brow. His eyes widened and he dropped her hands. Shame and pain scorched Malta, but she did not look away from him. As if he could not resist the impulse, he lifted a hand. But he did not touch her cheek as she had hoped. Instead, his fingers went straight to her bulging scar and traced it through her hair. Tears burned her eyes.

"Crowned," he murmured. "But how can this be? Crested like the ancient Elderling queen in the old tapestries. The scaling is just beginning to show scarlet. Oh, my beauty, my lady, my queen, Tintaglia was right. You are the only one fit to mother such children as we shall make."

His words made no sense, but she did not care. There was acceptance in his face, and awe. His eyes wandered endlessly over her face, in wonder and delight. "Your brows, too, even your lips. You are beginning to scale. Help me up," he demanded. "I must see all of you. I must hold you to know this is real. I have come so far and dreamed of you so often."

"You are hurt," she protested. "There is so much blood, Reyn…"

"Not much of it mine, I think." He lifted a hand to the side of his head. "I was stunned. And I took a sword thrust up my left arm. However, other than that-" He moved slowly, groaning. "I merely hurt all over."

He drew his feet up, got to his knees and slowly managed to stand. She rose with him, steadying him. He lifted a hand to rub his eyes. "My veil," he exclaimed suddenly. Then he looked down at her. She had not thought such 'joy could shine on a man's face. "You will marry me, then?" he asked in delighted disbelief.