His father looked ashen. 'You put me in a difficult position, more difficult than you can know.' 'You will save him?'

'I will do what I can.' His father slid his mask back over his face. 'Go now, eat, and for the sake of your blood, henceforth, be sparing with the poppy.'

Before he ate, Carnelian made the round of all their cabins to see that his guardsmen were bearing up. He asked Keal how their people were coping between the decks. Nothing to worry about, Keal said. Carnelian knew he was lying and made him tell him the truth. One had been washed into the sea. Several were burning with fever. Carnelian had expected worse.

Back in his cabin he made sure that Crail ate something first. The old man was confused. He was recounting a nightmare he had had of a Master and a deck. Carnelian showed him a smile. When he ate with Tain, it surprised him how hungry he was. He gulped the food down though his stomach ached. He made jokes with Tain. They talked about dragons and the Three Lands, but all the time he was listening. Steadily the wind's moan had become a keening. He eyed the silver box with its promise of dreams. There was a crack so loud he thought a mast had snapped. Snatches of voices screeched over the gale. Then the storm front hit them like a hammer. The ship spun round to one side, and then was walloped round the other way. She leaned over. The lantern smashed against the ceiling. Crail was tipped onto the floor. Cries erupted on every side. The ship juddered once, twice; each time it seemed she had struck a rock. Tain's eyes were as round as his mouth. She righted herself, rocking.

For an age they clung to her as she rode the tempest. Each time her hull broke a wave, there was a thud that shook them to their bones. This would be followed by a hiss running over their heads to the stern. In the lulls they could hear the running in the corridor, the cries, the lamentations, the slam of doors. Once Carnelian looked out to see the corridor awash with foam.

Tain's eyes kept straying to the silver box. Carnelian only knew this because his eyes were there too. He relented and nipped pellets from the honey.

He was despairing that it had lost its potency until he felt the flames of comfort licking up his body. Fear burned away. The rocking seemed gentle.

The three of them sagged back into poppy dreams. Carnelian took care when he woke to send Tain out to bring them food. They forced it down. Stale water lubricated tedious chewing. Every shudder of the ship was mimicked by their bodies. Even before the bowls were clean their eyes turned greedily to the silver box.

On a day when there was a lull in the storm, Tain and Carnelian were sitting eating though they felt no hunger. Both had noticed that the cabin floor had acquired a permanent slope down towards the door. Neither had said anything. There was a knocking that they ignored. They had grown used to ignoring every sound. The door opened and a Master's mask came into the cabin. They both recoiled. The poppy still lingered in the folds of their minds and so it seemed to them that this was some terrible being arisen from the sea.

'Carnelian, why do you stare so?' It was his father.

'You… you startled me, my Lord.'

The Master crowded into the cabin and hunched forward. Tain found a space in which to perform the prostration. The door slammed open in a draught. Suth's cloak billowed up so that it filled the cabin. His gold face turned to look at the bunk where Crail was a crumple among the sheets. It lingered, then turned its eyeslits back to Carnelian. 'We are to have a conclave,' it said. Carnelian could hear a nuance of emotion in his father's voice 'When you are called you must attend. You are required to do nothing, save that, should it be required, you will vote with me.'

Carnelian said that he understood and his father backed out of the cabin. For a few moments, Carnelian remained slumped where he sat and then found the will to stand. Tain cleansed him. They stood there, Carnelian bowed by the ceiling, Tain bracing himself by holding on to his arm. An eternity later they were finished. Carnelian was like some dead thing that had been wedged between the ceiling and the floor.

It was Keal who came to get him. Carnelian was alarmed when he saw how much life had gone out of his brother. Keal rasped some words that Carnelian could not make out, then pointed down the corridor. Massing round the mast column were several immense shapes. As he came towards them Carnelian saw that all three Masters were there with his father: each masked, each shrouded in his travelling cloak, each a being of a power that the wooden bulkheads looked too flimsy to contain. In their midst the mast shuddered and the bronze shoe that held it squealed.

'Now that we are all gathered, my Lords, I would beg your patience to hear first the evidence of the baran's captain,' said Vennel. His voice played above the ship's creaking like an oboe. 'Captain, make your report,' it said in Vulgate.

The Twins Themselves are against us, my Masters.' The voice spoke from the ground. Carnelian searched among their feet and saw the captain grovelling there.

'You were asked for a report, not a theological conjecture.'

'Apologies, Master.' A glint curved around his neck as the captain thumped his forehead against the floor. The sliders on his collar chinked.

The ship, my Masters, has been blown far off course. For nigh on twenty days we have struggled south against the westerlies.'

Twenty days, thought Carnelian, startled. Twenty days already.

'We've lost several sails and one of the steering oars is close to breaking. The ship's been taking on water. Because of the storm we couldn't go down there. I must regretfully report that two starboard bulkheads have been breached and that sixteen oars of sartlar've been drowned.'

'Have the affected bulkheads been sealed off?' asked Suth.

'Yes, Master.'

'And they can be bailed out?' asked Aurum. 'We attempt it even now, Master.' 'So there's no immediate danger?' said Jaspar. 'If we're hit by another storm we could sink, my Master.'

'You appreciate the risk, my Lords?' Vennel said in Quya and then, in Vulgate, 'What's our current position, captain?'

'According to the lodestone and what reckonings I can make, Master, we should be somewhere near the Woadshore's southern reaches.'

'And how far from Thuyakalrul?'

'Under the right conditions, depending on our real position, taking into account-'

'How many days?'

'Perhaps three or four, Master. But against the wind?' He peered up with a twitch in one eye. 'I just can't say.' Vennel turned his mask on them. 'My Lords, it seems to me the height of folly to keep to our present course.'

'And what then is your proposal, Vermel?' asked Jaspar.

'It seems, my Lord, that our captain knows of some anchorage that should not be too far from here.'

'And this anchorage, I presume, is in the swamps?' said Aurum.

'And what will we do if we should miss it?' said Suth.

The winds will take us there,' said Vennel. 'We would be sailing before the tempest rather than against it. We would hug the shore. If there is some error in the captain's calculations, no matter. There are countless trading posts all the way up this coast.'

'And what does my Lord suggest that we should do once we find this salubrious spot?' asked Jaspar.

'We should carry out what repairs we can and wait until the tempest has blown itself out. From there we would need only a few days of clear weather to make a crossing to Thuyakalrul across the open sea.'

'I can see that you have given this matter much thought, Vermel,' said Aurum. 'But you seem to have neglected one factor.'

'And what, pray, is that, Great Lord?'

Time.'

'What matter time if we should end up among the fish?'

'You well know, my Lord, that time in this matter is everything,' said Aurum with an edge to his voice.