"This will be just like the time you helped us escape that warehouse," Kitai said.

"Except for the leviathans!" Ehren sputtered.

"Quiet!" hissed several people.

"Actually, your real worry is the sharks," Demos murmured, his tone practical. "There are always dozens of sharks around leviathans, and we're about to start passing through them."

Ehren's face turned white.

"Come on, Ehren," Kitai said. She stripped out of her tunic and kicked off her shoes without a trace of self-consciousness. "Be a man."

Ehren blinked, and spots of color appeared on his cheeks as he turned his head away and coughed. "Oh, bloody crows." He glowered at Tavi, and demanded, "Why do I keep on following you into this kind of thing?"

"You must enjoy it," Tavi said.

"I must be an idiot," Ehren responded. But he, along with Tavi and Araris, also began stripping down. "Let me get this straight. We hold on to the ropes. The Steadholder drags us over there underwater. I open up a hole in the hull, and we eliminate their witchmen. Then we run back here and sail away while the leviathans eat them."

"Yes," Tavi said.

"How long are we going to be under?" Araris asked quietly.

"I've never done this before," Isana said. "If I was alone, it might take me half a minute to move the distance. Perhaps a little more."

"Double it," Demos said, glancing away from Kitai. "At least." He lowered a rope carefully over the side. "Are you not going to strip down, lady? That dress is going to drag quite a bit in the water."

Isana arched an eyebrow at him. "I assure you, Captain, it won't slow me."

"Ah," he said, nodding. "Try not to splash when you go in."

Isana went to the rail and looked down at the sea beneath them. She had never actually gone swimming in it, much less engaged in watercrafting using salt water as a medium. She had heard that there were almost no practical differences in working with freshwater or salt water. Almost hardly seemed a comforting word, given that her watercraft was the only thing standing between them and a number of extremely violent, unpleasant forms of death.

For a moment, Isana felt her hands start shaking. What in the world was she thinking? She was no Knight, nor soldier, nor mercenary, to go hurling herself into the deadly sea for the express purpose of murdering two men whom she had never met, nor who had ever done her harm. She was a Steadholder, used to running a farm-and half the time she'd had that position, she had been traveling around the Realm for one reason or another. What could possibly make her think that she was capable of doing something like this?

Isana caught herself before all the anxiety and rising apprehension around her overwhelmed her thoughts. She took a deep breath, called to Rill, and lowered herself into the sea, parting the water beneath her so that she entered with hardly a ripple, much less a splash.

She stayed under for a moment, using the bond with her fury to reach out around her in the water. The sea was warmer than she expected, and there was a greater sense of buoyancy than in the cold streams and lakes of her home. She closed her eyes for a moment, focusing on the water around her, and immediately felt the presence of the furies laboring for the Slive's witchmen. It was crafting of considerable complexity and effort-allowing the ship to cut smoothly through the waters while simultaneously smoothing those waters only a few feet from the hulls. Isana had no idea if she herself could have managed it, and certainly she couldn't have done it for any length of time. The witchmen kept it up on a continual basis. It was a specialist's form of crafting, then, something that took time to practice and master.

It was probably why the witchmen remained so isolated from the rest of the ship-down in the depths of the hold, as close to the water and as far from the distracting emotions of their crewmates as possible.

She took a slow breath and felt Rill filtering the water. The air tasted slightly of minerals, like the hot springs in the Calderon Valley, but she had no particular difficulty. She willed herself forward and rushed through the water, banked in a half circle, and returned to the side of the Slive. It was somewhat daunting, how much water was around her. Isana had never been swimming in so much water that she could not feel either shoreline and the floor of the lake or river she was in. Here, in the sea, the water stretched out in every direction, for as far as her senses could reach, endless rolling blue all around her and endless, grave-cold blackness beneath her.

The water was disturbed behind and beneath her, and Isana darted to one side just as a smooth, sleek form more than ten feet long glided through the water she'd recently occupied. She saw a dark, glassy eye, and a mouth of jagged teeth. And then the shark was past her, and it vanished into the murky ocean in utterly silent grace.

Isana took a moment to deliberately extend her senses, so that she would have at least a little more warning should another shark attempt such a thing, and tried to slow down her wildly beating heart. Then she rose to the surface beside the ship.

Araris was halfway down the rope, leaning down, his expression drawn with worry. She met his eyes and tried to smile at him.

"Are you all right?" he murmured.

She lifted a finger to her lips as she nodded, and beckoned him. Araris turned and lowered himself hand over hand down the rest of the rope, the sinews in his back and shoulders rippling. He kept going once his feet hit the water and slid in slowly and quietly.

The rest of them came down the same way-except for Ehren, whose grip slipped halfway down the line. Isana was ready for it, and Rill was ready to receive him, a vaguely human shape rising from the waves to catch Ehren and lower him soundlessly into the water.

"All right," Tavi murmured. He treaded water beside Isana and seized one of the ropes on her harness. "Everyone grab hold. We need to hurry."

Isana turned toward the enemy ship as the Slive sailed on, and the others maneuvered through the water to catch hold of the trailing lines. It took them longer than she would have thought, and she felt the faint fluttering sensation of at least two more sharks circling fifty or sixty feet away.

"All right, let's go," Tavi murmured. She felt his hand touch her shoulder and squeeze once. His fear came pouring through his touch, but so did a sense of almost-eager elation. Great furies save her, the boy was enjoying himself.

"Deep breaths everyone," Isana said. She waited a beat, then she oriented on the receding form of the Mactis, reached out to Rill, and dived.

She noticed immediately how much more effort it took to move. A glance over her shoulder showed her that everyone was holding on with both hands, and stripped down to trousers, their bodies moved through the water as smoothly as they could. Even so, the additional weight and resistance to movement was considerable.

Isana ground her teeth. At this rate, it would take even longer than Demos's estimate to reach the Mactis, and the others didn't have her ability to breathe while underwater. Surfacing too near the enemy ship would be suicide, and if they stopped to discuss it, the Mactis might have sailed beyond her ability to catch up.

There was no help for it. She closed her eyes and redoubled her efforts, spreading more of her fury's attention into the water around her charges so that they cut through it more efficiently. Slowly, they began to pick up speed. The sensation of her bond with Rill became something tangible, a pressure on her temples, and she bent all her attention to her task.

She almost didn't notice it, but Rill's sudden warning made her bank sharply to avoid ramming something large and dark. She followed the contours of the object, pressing ahead. Its surface was odd, pebbly, and laced with barnacles and straggling, hair-fine bits of dark green seaweed. They passed along it for several seconds before it dawned on Isana that they were within arm's reach of a leviathan.