In the last gloaming of evening, a huge figure burst up from the distant, inky tide. It hung massively in the ribbon of dying light, and then crashed back into the wide sea-a breaching whale.

Orim gripped the rail. Through stout wood, she felt the profound thrumming of the waters across the beast, the compression wave flung from the leviathan's vast bulk, the rumble of tip vortices trailing enormous fins. Her own arms and legs remembered the blissful sensations of swimming and diving and surfacing in the lagoon. Closing her eyes, she could almost imagine stroking toward Cho-Manno…

Another tremor moved through the rail-this one violent and shuddering.

Orim gasped, opening her eyes.

A harpoon sailed out from a deck-mounted gun. Its line uncoiled with a brutal whipping motion. The barbed shaft sank into the swell where the whale had disappeared. There came a muted shriek through the deeps. Rishadan crews cleated off the harpoon line, and it went taut with the agonized thrashing of the beast.

Orim staggered back from the rail, stunned. Gathering her strength, she stalked toward the harpooners, a pair of tall, thin, tan-skinned seamen. "What are you doing?"

One Rishadan flashed a glad smile. "Harpooning!" he said.

She shook her head. "This is a chartered vessel, an ambassadorial voyage-"

The young man shrugged narrow shoulders. The short gray vest across his chest leaped up. "This won't slow us. If we can kill it, we can drag it behind us and work it in the water while we make way. If it gets away, there's nothing lost."

"Nothing lost!" Orim said angrily. "What about the whale? What about its life? Nothing lost?"

The other seaman shouted a warning, pulling in slack rope. "It's coming about! It's heading straight for us. It's going to stave the ship!"

Orim turned back to the rail.

A massive mound of water angled across the billows, heading directly at the ship. Within the water rose a low roar. Fin tips broke the surface, and a massive figure shouldered through the darkness below. The harpoon stuck stupidly from the thing's back, slack rope trailing in the water behind.

"Fire!" the Rishadan cried.

That same shuddering violence moved through the rail.

Orim caught her breath as the second harpoon leaped outward. It met the surging bulk of the whale, embedding itself just behind the leviathan's head. Red streamed in the darkling water behind that jutting shaft. The beast did not slow. It came on, straight for the ship.

More amazing, though-a vast hand rose from the waters ahead of the whale. Huge fingers laid hold of the shaft and ripped it bloodily forth.

"That's no whale!" the harpooner muttered in dread. "It's a Saprazzan warrior beast!"

From the mounding waves rose a huge head, as large and knobby as a boulder. Kelplike hair streamed behind a sloping brow, which overshadowed small, angry, and intelligent eyes. The gray-green muzzle of the thing bristled with fangs that could bite a man in half. One vast hand clutched the gory harpoon above the waves. The other took a final stroke and then surged up to seize the gunwale of Facade. With an almighty rush, the warrior beast hurled itself on deck. "Attack-!" one of the harpooners began. His warning was cut short. The beast rammed the bloody head of the harpoon through the man. His chest cracked open and gushed like an egg. He riled on the shaft, gore making the deck slick beneath him. Orim fell back. More shouts rose.

Crew rushed forward with tridents and spears. The vast beast hauled itself across the deck, clutched the second harpooner, and crushed him in an enormous fist. There was nothing left of the man but meat and bone meal. This was a Saprazzan? Orim wondered numbly, clawing her way to the fo'c'sle. An ominous sight greeted her.

The black sea all around boiled angrily with fins. They converged on Facade. More monsters climbed the gunwales to slide onto the deck.

These were smaller-man-sized creatures. Their faces gleamed like mother-of-pearl, with hooked beaks and vast, staring eyes. Great mantles of seaweed draped the heads of some, while the heads of others were encrusted as with giant barnacles. Their torsos and arms were also very human beneath their conch armor, but from the waist down they had the long, scaly tail fins of fish. Pearlescent tridents were gripped in their webbed hands. As beautiful and otherworldly as these creatures seemed, they killed with an all-too-familiar savagery.

Orim staggered back. It was just like the attack on the Cho-Arrim village, this tide of killing monsters. They slashed and impaled and eviscerated. Dead crew littered the deck. Blood covered everything. Even Facade herself was being ripped apart. Soon, the ship and all hands living would be dragged to their deaths in the destroying sea.

Orim was surrounded. Saprazzans hemmed her in on all sides. She had no weapons. As they converged, rushing in to slay her, she could only hold up her silver-shimmering hands in futile supplication.

Then, the Saprazzan warrior beast surged up from amidships, grasped her in one huge and horrible hand, and dragged her overboard. Down, down into the dark waters of night they sounded.

Twilight waters receded above. Facade was only a black shadow there, only a slender leaf lying on the evening waves. The darkling sea below was bone cold and endless. It crushed Orim more viciously than the claws of the beast.

Already, light had quit the waters, and warmth with it. In moments, the sea would shatter her eardrums, burst her sinuses, and flood into her lungs. Only the Saprazzan beast remained-its fury, its agony. Orim reached up toward the creature's shoulder, and her hand settled on the harpoon wound there. A twitch of pain went through the creature. She could tear at that wound, perhaps win free as the beast spasmed-or she could show the Saprazzan that she was Cho-Arrim, that she was kin.

Silver light appeared in an aura about her hand. Magic awoke from streaming seawater. Warmth suffused her hand in a tingling glove. It sank into the harpoon wound, coursing deep along ruptured tissues. The glow intensified, and it stitched tissues together.

The warrior beast released a great moan that might have been anger or ecstasy. It only dove deeper.

Heedless, Orim continued healing its wound. She stopped only when the cold black deeps drew her own life away.

Chapter 12

Gerrard, Tahngarth, and Karn might not have been crushed by rubbish, but neither had they been coddled by it. The three were spattered and smudged and foul-smelling when they were yanked up from their filthy knees. Soldiers further shackled them, loaded them on their bellies on a wagon, chained them yet again, and hauled them back to the city. No baths-but neither were they executed.

Simple termination was not enough for these three. They had publicly humiliated the chief magistrate and his minions. Their deaths would publicly repair the damage they had done.

So, it was chains and more chains, dungeons, and dank bread, nothing to drink but the septic swill that trickled through the prison catacombs. No baths, and no escape- not by brute force or cunning contrivance, not by ruse or bribe. These rock-hewn cells were too hard, cold, and deep, their bars impassable, their guards implacable.

Then, suddenly, a few weeks into their imprisonment, there were baths. Gerrard, Tahngarth, and Karn were marched out of the hole. Washed, powdered, dressed-but still shackled-they were led by a full regiment of soldiers. Their escorts conducted them toward the Magistrate's Tower in the center of the city. Gerrard scanned the crowd for signs of Atalla, Takara, or Hanna-but no outside aid appeared. He twice tried to improvise an escape but only got yanked back in line and flogged.