"The boat," the girl completed, straightening and wiping the stiletto on the dead man's bright, shiny shirt.

Captain Deacon was in his fifties, a tall, straight-backed man with neatly trimmed white hair, framing a face of ruddy honesty and good humor. He liked smartness and insisted that his crew all wear scarlet sweaters and black pants while on board the Phoenix. Everything had gone well, with supplies loaded and the water barrels filled on time. The entire crew was aboard and all were sober. The tide was filling, and within the half hour Captain Deacon was ready to give the order to cast off the shore lines and set sail for the whaling grounds of the Lantic.

The outlanders came ghosting up the gangplank, like creatures from a nightmare, armed to the teeth, with blasters that totally outgunned anything he had on his ship.

It was no contest.

Krysty had explained it very simply and very quickly, so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings between them.

"Pyra Quadde's lifted a friend of mine. Two friends. You heard?"

"I heard. One-eyed outlander and the Indian harpooneer as scored ten from ten, casting the iron. Yeah, I heard about it. And I heard about ye five."

"We're taking you and your ship, and we're going after Ryan and Donfil. And we'll get them and chill the woman. You get the ship back after you bring us safe to land here."

"If I don't?" the skipper drawled.

J.B. shook his head and came close to half smiling. "I wasn't raised to waste time on peoplepretendingto be stupid, Captain Deacon," he said. "You know what happens. Everyone knows."

Jak spelled it out for the listening crew. "Too few us to fuck 'round. We chill captain. Next man refuses, we chill him. Keep chilling until someone says 'Yeah'. Won't take long."

Doc stepped closer, his trusty Le Mat .36 in his gnarled fist, its scattergun barrel yawning like a war wag's exhaust. "I trust you will believe me, Captain Deacon, when I tell you that we truly wish you no harm at all. But our dear friend, Ryan, and the Apache wise man, have fallen into the hands of the wicked woman of the seven seas. We wish to rescue them and ensure that she does not live to stain the good name of womanhood for another day. If you assist us in this, then there will be no trouble and no man harmed. If you do not..." Doc shrugged his shoulders expressively.

"Can ye promise to chill the witch queen of the Lantic?"

"Yes," Krysty said.

"Sure an' certain? If I help ye and Pyra Quadde wins out, then I'm dead meat. I'll be walking around, but I'll be deader'n a sharkskin hat."

Krysty didn't dare to look back. It could only be a matter of minutes before someone found the corpses of Rodriguez and the two sec men. Then the hue and cry would begin, and it wouldn't take long for the hunt to lead to the docks.

It would be a bloody firefight.

J.B. was thinking the same. "You got ten seconds, Captain. Set sails and go after the woman now. Or I chill you. Now."

The captain sniffed, glancing at the sky. Stars peeked through the ragged curtain of cold, salt mist. "Never liked the bitch, anyways."

"Loose lines, Mr. Mate! Bow line and hold one stern line. Set t'gallants. Main sails when we reach the channel. Let go forward and aft on my command! Lively, now!"

So the whaling ship Phoenixmoved slowly away from the quay of Claggartville, into the dark waters of the Lantic Ocean — hunting not her usual prey, but going after something far more deadly.

Krysty and the others took over the captain's quarters, making sure that they kept it secure with their blasters. But Deacon didn't seem concerned about the way they had hijacked his vessel, going about his business with a calm, unflustered efficiency.

And the crew took their lead from him.

The weather was kind, and Deacon knew from experience where Pyra Quadde was likely to have gone.

It wasn't many days out from port before they heard the shout from the lookout in the crow's nest, high above the deck. "Sail ho! Sail on the port beam! A ship!"

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Canst thou make her?" Captain Quadde shouted, standing with legs spread against the pitching of the short westerly sea.

"No, ma'am. Dark hull. Can't make her ensign at this distance."

She bellowed him down, glancing around, her eyes falling on Ryan. Her face lightened, her smile showing the hideous false teeth, which were worse than any plas-dents he'd ever seen.

"Outlander Cawdor. Thou hast more seeing in thy one good glim than these offal with their brace. Take the spyglass and get aloft. Tell me what thou seest there."

Ryan slipped off his seaboots, taking the telescope with a muttered word of assent. The ship was rolling in the swell, with an uncomfortable, chopping motion. But he knew well enough what a refusal would mean. As he had no desire to be tied naked to the mast for the woman to use for her pleasure, he climbed as nimbly as he could into the spidery rigging. He drew a deep breath of relief as he reached the relative safety of the crosstrees, swinging across to the narrow barrel of the crow's nest.

"Quickly or I'll have thee flogged for it. What ship is she? What flag does she fly, outlander? I can't hear thee!"

The shout rose almost to a scream. Ryan had heard the crew say that other captains from the region took good care to steer well wide of Pyra Quadde. One or two that didn't had been found floating belly-down among the fish guts of Claggartville harbor. So another ship coming close to them meant something out of the ordinary.

He steadied the glass on the flag that fluttered from the masthead of the approaching ship, trying to make it out, fumbling with the brass focusing screw.

"Fireblast! Can't... Ah, there it is."

From the earliest days, every ship out of New England had her own pennant, so that she could easily be recognized at a distance by any of her fellows. Even now, in the heart of the Deathlands, a hundred years after the skydark, the practice was maintained by everyone.

Even by Pyra Quadde.

Her flag cracked and snapped in the wind, only a few feet from Ryan's head.

It was a circle of crimson upon a rectangle of plain white. But as the wind tugged at the ensign it distorted the circle, elongating the bottom half, so that it sometimes resembled a bloody skull.

The oncoming vessel sported a flag of blue, with two horizontal white stripes on it. Ryan hallooed that information down to the woman on the deck, cupping his hands against the wind.

"Two slant whites on blue, thou sayest?" came the reply.

"Aye, ma'am."

"That be the Bartlebyunder Delano. Old Preaching Biddy hisself. Does she show any signal?"

Ryan could hardly hear the woman's words, but he leaned half out of the iron-hooped barrel and managed to catch them.

"No signal. But she's heading straight for us, ma'am."

Captain Quadde beckoned him back from the masthead, sending up another member of the crew to replace him as lookout. Ryan sat on the deck and gratefully pulled on his seaboots again. Though he had a good enough head for heights, the rolling crow's nest wasn't the best place in the world to be.

The whole of the crew came out to watch the approaching vessel. Ryan recalled again that such an encounter was very rare, particularly as most of the skippers along the New England coast knew Quadde's reputation and kept plenty of sea room between themselves and the ill-starred Salvation,

Slowly, tacking her way against the breeze, the Bartlebydrew closer. As she did, the wind fell away to a mild zephyr, barely breathing enough air to enable the two whaling ships to maintain their forward momentum through the flattened waves.