Kheda realised with some surprise that he still held his own bowl. He looked at the remains of his meal. 'I think I've lost my appetite,' he said apologetically.

'Me too.' Risala took Kheda's bowl from him and jumped down to disappear into the stern cabin.

The silence on the stern platform was broken only by the scrape of Velindre's spoon.

'Do you want me to take a turn at the tiller?' Kheda offered after a few moments.

'Not until I'm sure we've picked up that current I mentioned. After that, you two can share watches with me and Naldeth. He has no great feeling for water but his fire affinity gives him sufficient sympathy with air to be sure we're following the course I set him.'

Kheda glanced towards the young wizard, who was now standing in the prow, looking out across the ceaseless barren swells. 'When did that happen to him?'

'Three years ago.' Velindre said unemotionally.

Kheda yielded to his curiosity. 'How did you persuade him to risk himself in Archipelagan waters? What does this voyage to the west offer him?'

'The chance to learn something new about the magics of elemental fire.' Velindre smiled thinly. 'Something sufficiently extraordinary that our fellow mages will want to talk about his splendid new discovery whenever they encounter him, rather than trying to find a way to ask how he lost his leg and was he really a hero who saved those settlers. Either that or they tie their tongues in knots trying to avoid mentioning anything about it.'

The disdain in her answer left Kheda disinclined to enquire further. 'I'll go and see where Risala's got to.'

He climbed down the ladder and ducked his head to enter the low stern cabin. In the dim light filtering through small windows set beneath the aft beams, Risala was scraping the unwanted food into a bucket. 'We can throw this into the water at dusk if you're going to try fishing,' she said curtly.

Let's not discuss whether or not there might have been omens in the struggle between whales and serpents that Naldeth has polluted.

Kheda gestured to the barrels lining the wooden walls. 'What food are we carrying, besides sailer pottage?'

'Smoked fish. Duck sealed in its own fat.' Risala counted off the casks with a finger. 'Dried zira shoots and pickled reckal roots. Herbs and spices.' She nodded towards a net of plump sacks hanging from a beam. 'And there's plenty of dry sailer grain.'

Kheda contemplated the wooden trap door in the planking. 'What's down there?'

'The stern hold where we'll be sleeping.' She managed a brief smile. 'The rock tar and naphtha and the like are in the central holds. Naldeth has the fore hold and Velindre sleeps in here.' She pointed to a tidy pile of blankets in a box bed built against the bulwark.

'I think I'll see just what we're carrying.' Kheda

reached down for the brass ring sunk into the trap door. 'And that it's all securely stowed.'

'I'll call if Velindre wants you.' Risala looked upwards, her expression pensive.

Kheda pulled up the trap door and slid down the ladder beneath. This stern hold was shorter than the deck cabin with a reassuringly thick bulkhead built around the crossbeams bracing the hull. It was almost completely dark and he could taste the oily metallic bite of naphtha in the stale air.

'Leave the door to the deck open,' he called up to Risala. 'I'm not sleeping down here unless we get rid of these fumes.'

He tried the door in the solid bulkhead and found it unlocked. He went through to find more light was filtering through the canvas-shrouded deck gratings. Barrels were held back against the curved hull with plank partitions and further secured with nets wound between stout hooks. The scents of tar and oil were muted, which augured well for the seals on the casks. Kheda made a slow circuit all the same, looking for dark stains of seepage. As satisfied as he could be in the dim light, he tried the door to the next hold and found that unlocked as well.

A yellow smear on the chests of rough wood secured along one wall of the hull was bright in the gloom. It tainted the air with sulphur. Lidded baskets opposite held thick glass bottles tightly wrapped in woven straw. They were sealed with corks and twine and wax to be sure none of their viscous golden contents could leak. Kheda recognised them.

Barbarian pine resins. Janne Daish would offer equal weight in mother-of-pearl in trade for such bottles. What do these barbarians know of Aldabreshin recipes for sticky fire? Is there any quicklime here, or just sulphur?

As Kheda studied the other unhelpfully anonymous

chests, he realised that something else was tucked behind the one wedged closest to the stern bulwark. About the size of a small barrel, it was thickly wrapped in clean sacking tied with new hemp rope. Kheda reached over the inconvenient chest and tested the ropes. They had been knotted tight and not by an Archipelagan seafarer.

He eased the tip of his dagger into the heart of the topmost knot and worked it back and forth, careful not to cut the rope. Winning just enough slack to be able to shift the sacking beneath, he tugged at the coarse weave. The dim light from the covered grating fell on a dull maroon surface, gently rounded, smooth as glass, and beneath it a fresher red, the colour of blood. The web of fine cracks crazing the surface glinted softly.

Kheda drew back, blood pounding in his temples.

How could we have guessed what that dragon flying in from the western ocean wanted with our rubies? We were just relieved that chests of gems would placate it, would buy us time and lives and land. Who could have imagined the dragon could concentrate its magic so fiercely that it could meld the jewels it chose into this unnatural gem and generate a spark of new life in its very heart?

Why was it that this egg burned Dev alive when he turned his own magic to killing that nascent dragon? What enchantment seduced him to that unhallowed rapture even as the flesh melted from his bones and he was reduced to ashes?

Motionless in the breathless hold, he tried to force away the obscene recollection of the mage's death.

Why did Velindre demand the dead dragon's dead egg as her price for betraying the second dragon to me, the simulacrum she wove from air and magic to light the true fire dragon? Why did I give it to her? That false dragon would have died anyway. She'd already told me there was no sapphire at its heart to give it true life. Could I have convinced the people of Chazen that I was a warlord they could trust

if my leadership hadn 't been sanctioned by that deceitful victory? How many men died believing the lie that they were fighting to save the domain from a second predator?

As he stared at the mystery half-hidden in the shadows, the door to the foremost hold opened, startling him.

'Are you looking for something?' Naldeth stood in the doorway.

'I was just wondering exactly what you were carrying.' Kheda turned his back on the bundle, hoping to hide the disturbed sacking with his body. 'Are all these chests full of sulphur?'

'No.' Naldeth hopped into the hold, steadying himself with one hand on the door. 'We're carrying a fair amount of alum. Warlords who want to buy the stuffs to make sticky fire generally want the means of stifling it as well.' He lowered himself carefully to the floor of the hold. 'Did Risala tell you not to discard the vinegar from the pickles? It'll be more useful than water if I'm not on hand to kill a fire for you.'

'Indeed.' Kheda gazed at the remarkable contraption the one-legged wizard was laying out before him on the planks. 'What is that?'

'I thought such personal questions were considered impolite among you Aldabreshi.' Naldeth looked up from untangling a confusion of leather straps and buckles. He was grinning. 'How many folk do you think have actually asked me outright how I lost my leg since we sailed south?'