Ateis breaks off to run towards the lone figure standing watching the sea before I even recognise it as Lotan. “Ateis, wait!” I call after her, but I’m ignored.

I try not to worry. Children here are for the most part left to run free and explore by themselves or with each other. I remember a place where children are taught never to speak to strangers and kept in to get fat watching television and playing on a Playstation because their parents are scared to let them go outside on their own. The habits and fears of that place aren’t so easily set aside.

Still, as I see Ateis talking to Lotan and looking up at him, and he lowers himself into an relaxed squat to bring his eyes almost down to her level so he can reply, I feel uneasy and I hurry up to them.

“Not talking about me, I hope?” I ask nonchalantly, getting a protective hand on Ateis’s shoulder. Lotan doesn’t miss the gesture, unfortunately, and stands straight.

“What did you think I was going to do?” he asks.

I hadn’t wanted to say, but called out on it I do. Maybe I still shouldn’t have. “You don’t believe she exists,” I say. “You could do anything.”

There’s a distant rumble of thunder.

“I wouldn’t hurt a child,” he says. “Not even in a game.”

Still, I keep hold of Ateis. There’s another far-off rumble.

“What is that?” Lotan asks suddenly. “Is that thunder?”

“How can it be thunder?” I retort. “There isn’t a cloud in…” I trail off. It happens a third time. Behind me I can hear people running.

“Get the small craft further up the beach!” a man’s voice yells. I turn to look; it looks like Deregan, second mate from Master Retican’s ship, and the father of Beni’s child. He shouts past me at Lotan. “You! Get the children into the trees!”

I look back out to sea. There’s a smudge of smoke over the sea in the distance. This close to sea level the horizon isn’t far away. “Oh you are kidding me,” I say softly. The air suddenly drops in temperature. There’s a wind swirling around us from nowhere.

“It must be the sentry ships,” Lotan says. “They’re firing on someone…” He grins at me, suddenly excited. “Fantastic!” he exclaims.

“What’s happening? Tani, what’s happening?” Ateis asks, sounding afraid.

“I don’t–” I’m interrupted by a sudden pain in my ears. “Ah!” I cry out, clamping my hands to my ears. Ateis is doing likewise. I realise what it is immediately. There’s a strong wind picking up and the air pressure is dropping very very fast. “Ateis, suck your thumb!” I say. She’s just screaming, her hands pressed against her ears. My ears are hurting enough, and feel clogged. Hers are probably worse. So I demonstrate with one hand and point at hers with the other. She gets the idea immediately, just as Lotan gasps and puts his hands to his own ears. Mine pop once but immediately the pressure builds again. The air pressure is still dropping. The palm leaves are swishing and thrashing further up the beach. Most of the adults and teenagers are leaving in boats for the ships in the lagoon. The wind is still building and suddenly we’re in shadow. I look up and there’s a thunderhead cloud forming right above us as I look and spreading out to sea.

~Are we under attack?~ I think, sluggishly.

Out in the lagoon all the sails on the Satthei’s ship unfurl at once, like petals bursting forth in a timelapse movie of an opening flower. The ship almost seems to bolt forwards, before tacking so hard the starboard hull completely clears the water. She’s heading for the open ocean, out of the trap of the lagoon.

“Satthei’s leaving us!” Ateis yells suddenly; the fear in her voice directly echoes what I’m feeling.

“She’s just going to see what’s up,” I say, to try to calm her. My words are torn away by the hot buffetting wind. The Satthei’s making this wind, to give herself speed. The whole surface of the sea is starting to chop and churn. “Come on!” I yell to her. “We’ve got to get into the trees!” I realise instantly she’s going to be too slow, running, so I pick her up. “Lotan!”

He looks back at me. Rain is starting to fall. Big, heavy drops cratering the sand. We’re quickly getting drenched.

“We need to guard the children!” I yell. “Whoever they are might come around!”

Everyone seems to be heading out to the ships, to join the battle, and just assuming the atoll is going to be a safe haven until they return. No-one seems to be thinking what I’m thinking. The whole ‘battle’ might be a diversion and the target isn’t the Satthei at all.

It’s an instinct, I realise. Rally to the Satthei; she will know where the most danger is and go there, so leaving the children somewhere safe makes sense, because if the children were in danger that’s where she’d be. If you have more faith in the Satthei’s infallibility than I do.

“Lotan!” I yell. “LOTAN! We have to defend the children!”

“I guess.” The words are almost lost in the rain and the still-building wind.

“That’s not good enough!” I shout. I hitch Ateis up so she’s properly astride my left hip, supporting her with my arm. “Is she real?” I shout at him in English. He just stares, as if uncomprehending. I bend and grab his hand with my free hand and place it on Ateis’s shoulder and cover it with my own. “Is she real, Lotan?” I shout. “You’re no use to us if she’s not real!”

Ateis doesn’t understand what’s going on. She puts her arms around my neck and pulls tight, her hair up against my face. That close I can hear her sobbing with fear. I have to let go of Lotan’s hand. He raises it a little, to touch the top of Ateis’s head.

I look at him. His bearded face, his eyes showing confusion, a need he can’t trust. He doubts. He hesitates. That could kill us. I back away, shaking my head.

“Ateis, get onto my back. Quickly!”

She obeys, bless her, clambering around with my help until she’s astride my back. I turn and start running back along the beach the way we came. It’s hard work, carrying Ateis, but as long as I can keep doing it, it’s quicker than she can run on her own little legs. I think how much easier it would have been for Lotan to carry her, and how much faster we could have gone. But what if he decides to do something mad, thinking he’d mess with the game or something? The sand is turning to wet sludge underfoot, and I turn up to the treeline and keep running, where the ground is made firm by the roots of the trees and the sparse grass.

There’s a flickering light all around, and a moment later, a loud drumroll of thunder resonating in my bones. Real thunder this time. The rain starts falling even more heavily, with even larger thudding droplets stinging sideways in the wind.

I’m tired, and I almost trip over the pink petal-boat before I see it. It’s been dragged up, with the larger moth-leaf boat, almost under the tree canopy. They’ve been upturned, their masts and yardarms removed and lying alongside.

“Tani! Here!” I hear Sam’s voice. I turn, trying to track onto it.

Flickering light. Even out of my direct view it seems to leave a pink afterimage on my retina.

“No, that way!” Ateis, says, pointing past my head. Thunder. Loud; I’m feeling it through my bones. I don’t think, I just run in the direction Ateis is pointing under the tree canopy until suddenly I’m surrounded by people and Ateis is wriggling to get down. I stop and someone lifts her from my back. Sam’s there, and a bunch of kids, two looking about Ateis’s age, and an older girl and boy, and Beni, carrying her baby, and two other women I recognise as mothers of some of the children. They’re all bustling around Ateis and me suddenly. ~Protecting us,~ I realise suddenly. ~Protecting the Neri, like it’s a born instinct.~

“Did you see anything?” Sam’s almost yelling in my face. “Did you see what happened?”

I shake my head. “No.” I look around again. “Something engaged the sentry group and the whole fucking fleet took off in pursuit. Didn’t they leave anyone to guard us?”

She looks at me again, sharper. She gets it suddenly. “Just us,” she says, and pulls me through the small crowd to where someone quick-witted has already set up a bivouac with a hammock, instead of a groundsheet, fashioned out of a sail out of one of the small dinghies that have been dragged up the beach. They must have worked very quickly. The hammock is dry. Sam reaches in and pulls out our bows and quivers.

“Wonderful,” I comment.

“Where’s Lotan? Did he go with the others?”

I shake my head. “Deciding not to be useful,” I say curtly. “We should get onto higher ground.”

“It’s an atoll,” Sam points out.

Of course it is. I turn to the other women. “Get the children under shelter,” I order, getting the quiver on over my head. “Get them dry. And yourselves.” Amazingly they start to obey me, all except Ateis, who comes back to my side. “No, stay with the others,” I say.

“I don’t want–”

I squat down to her level. “Ateis, I need you to help keep the little children from getting too scared. They’ll feel less scared if you’re with them. Maybe you can tell them one of the stories we told you, how’s that?”

She stares at me, but then she nods. She understands how this works, the centuries of conditioning that makes the humans turn to a Neri for leadership at a time like this. Even if all that’s available is a couple of kids.

“Go on, get under the shelter,” I say, and give her a little shove to get her on her way.

Sam and I look at each other, and without having to say anything, we move off to the edge of the tree canopy, still in sight of the bivouac, where we can look out over the lagoon and the direction the ships have taken. “They’ve all gone,” I say. All the big ships. There’s just the smaller sailboats bobbing in the choppy water, including our own sloop, I see, and the tiny boats that could be dragged up onto the beach. “Are there any other groups left behind?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “Probably hiding in the trees like us. Can’t you use infravision and see them?”

I give her an ‘oh please’ look, and see she was joking anyway. I have good low-light vision: large irises that open far wider than a human’s; and a reflective layer behind the receptors to maximise the light that comes in, exactly like a cat’s eye. Not the same thing as being able to see in infra-red. It would be hard to evolve an eye that did that without its vision getting fogged out by the heat of the head it’s in.

Strobing light, off over the ocean, leaving a pink glare on my retinas. The clouds are thick and dark, where only a few minutes ago, it seemed, there was only clear blue skies and sunshine. I see in the light the silhouette of our ships, still heading out, the distinctive shape of the Satthei’s ship in the lead.

Thunder, and the rain intensifies even more. At least we’re protected from the wind, and most of the rain, except what drips from the leaves above us.

“They’re not thinking tactically,” Sam observes. “Assumed superiority. They see a threat, they go for it, and the Satthei leads the charge, calling down fire from the heavens as she goes.” She grins at me as another strobe of lightning plays across our vision. “Gotta say it’s bloody impressive. If I was an attacker I’d be shitting my pants right now.”

Thunder.

“Look,” Sam says. There are other ships out there. “Is that the sentry group?”

“I don’t think so.”

A part of the darkening cloud swirls and dips over the more distant ships. It’s too far to see really clearly, particularly through the rain, but it’s as if a long tentacle is stretching down to those ships, searching them out even as they’re thrown and rolled by the wind-whipped sea.

“It’s a waterspout,” I breathe, so quietly I doubt Sam can hear it. More are starting to form. “Jesus.”

“Who is it thinks they can go up against a Satthei?” Sam asks.

The waterspout finds its target. The ship twists and splinters and snaps in half, pieces of debris getting sucked up into the spout. I hear Sam swearing quietly.

Other ships turn suddenly, somehow keeping control amidst the wind and rain and the violent sea. Broadside, I recognise, just before the guns on all the attacking ships fire at once. One of the ships is hit by another waterspout and, already at the edge of its tolerances, just disintegrates. Smoke starts to obscure the scene, then the rain falls thicker and thicker, providing its own curtain across the events.

More lightning strobes across the sky, but the shapes are indistinct now. I become aware of events closer to home. The open ocean has washed right into the lagoon, making the boats anchored offshore buck and dive amidst the waves. Water surges up the beach where only a couple of hours ago Sam was teaching the older kids how to play football. ~Where are they?~ I wonder. Did they all go back with the adults out to the ships to fight?

I look back towards the bivouac. Everything there looks secure, although the way between it and us is strewn with fallen palm leaves and branches.

More lightning, more thunder, and another invisible broadside of guns. How can they keep firing under the weather Fareis is throwing at them? It’s violent here and we’re not even the target. We can’t see anything now. Except there, not a skyburst, but forked lightning, its image burning through the rain, striking down directly at a ship we can’t see at all. And again. Three times before the sky-ripping sound of the first reaches us. And a loud explosion.

“That was explosives going up,” Sam says.

“You’re right,” I say. “No tactics. They weren’t prepared for this. It’s insane to go up against a Satthei at the peak of her powers. It’s suicide.”

“Someone’s found a way,” Sam says. “At least they think they have.” It’s not the first time either, is it?“

My own memory plays it out. Fire and chaos on a familyship. My Satthei. My mother, Encelion. Being shoved into a hiding-place by my father. Boarders.

And captivity, and the end of Taniel’s memories, that I’ve been able to access.

“Is it the Reki?” Sam asks, her thoughts obviously following my own. “Are they building fleets now? Taking on the Neri at sea?”

I look back at the bivouac again. Someone’s made a small fire. There’s Ateis in the middle of all the other kids, holding forth while they listen, her cloud-grey hair darkened by water and plastered to her head. She glances up at me. In this half-light her eyes shine like bright silver coins.

“It’s not going to happen to her,” I say, too quietly for Sam to hear.

The storm goes on for hours. There’s nothing to see but rain and wind-blown bits of trees. But over time the gap between the lightning and the thunder grows. The battle is moving off. I can only guess which side might be leading the other away from the islands. Perhaps there are no ships left on either side, and it’s just the remnant artificial storm blowing itself out.

The cloud starts to break up over our atoll and the sea calms down. By the time sunset comes, it’s clear almost to the horizon in the direction the battle went. There’s no sign of them. The ocean and the lagoon water have thorougly churned together and look black. I can see some of the remaining sailboats haven’t survived; either sunk entirely or listing badly or draped with a fallen mast. Others are scattered, having snapped their anchor lines or just dragged their anchors, I’d guess. I look for our sloop, the one I’ve hardly been on since arriving at Denhall, but still, it’s in my name, and I think of it as ours. It’s still there, and it looks intact.

“But we have to wait here,” one of the mothers insists. “The Satthei will come back.”

Sam sighs. It’s been going back and forth for a while now. “Beni, how much drinking water do we have?”

“Three flasks and a bit.”

That shuts everyone up. “There’s eleven of us,” Sam points out. “That water isn’t going to last us to the end of tomorrow. Even in the best case, and the Satthei and the rest of the fleet are fine, they’re over the horizon.

“Can’t we get some from a spring?” one of the kids asks.

“It’s an atoll,” the eldest girl replies immediately. No springs, just a lot of rain to keep the plant life alive. And no knowing when it’s going to rain next. The Sattheis are usually a little more subtle with their weather manipulation. It could take a while for the local climate to stabilise. A little more presence of mind during the storm and we could have rigged something up to collect some of the rain. Oh well, more XP, I think, feeling a little gallows about it.

“There’s water stowed on the sailboats,” Sam points out. “Question is do we use it sitting here waiting for the Satthei to come back or do we use it getting to the next port?”

“We have to wait for the Satthei,” one of the women says again. “She’ll come back.”

“Have you ever seen a battle like that one?” Sam asks. “Any of you?”

No-one answers. Then, realising what Sam needs to convince them, I raise my hand slowly. The whole marketeer fleet knows my story; at least they know as much of it as I do. This just reminds them. At last there’s real fear in the eyes of the women and the older children.

“What is the next port on the route?”

“Taka’utuk,” I say, in unison with a couple of others. “Six days, thataway,” I add, pointing. Neri direction sense and a look at the charts the previous day are useful.

“Six days as the Satthei sails?” Sam asks.

“Well, the whole fleet.”

“With a convenient following wind,” Sam points out. I get the message, belatedly, and I’m not the only one.

“Can’t you make a wind for us?” Beni asks me.

I shake my head. “We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

I’m met with blank stares, except from Sam, who sniggers.

“What?”

“I think rustling up a following wind is the old fashioned way,” she says.

“Oh.” I can’t help smiling at that. “Well, they tend to follow prevailing winds anyway, ’cause it’s less disruptive. So we should have a reasonable chance of a good wind anyway.”

“I say we make for Taka’utuk. If the Satthei can, she’ll–”

There’s a noise that doesn’t belong among the trees behind the bivouac. The bow is back in my hand, arrow nocked and drawn, within a couple of seconds at most. I silently give thanks to Deidas for the drills. Sam still beat me to it, and she’s edging around to the back of the bivouac.

Everyone goes very quiet. I listen, trying to widen my awareness as Sam focuses more tightly on where the sound came from.

There’s another sound, dead ahead, and we both train our bows on it, then someone bursts into view through the screen of greenery.

“Hold fire!” Sam calls, unnecessarily.

It’s Lotan. He’s carrying a sword that doesn’t look like his own. I can’t remember if he brought his ashore. He looks excited and flushed from exertion. “We need to leave,” he says sharply.

“Yes, we just decided–”

“No, right now. Slavers.”

One of the women gasps.

“Oh how I love to be proved right,” Sam says sarcastically.

“I could hear you lot arguing from halfway across the island,” Lotan says. I hope he’s exaggerating. “They know you’re here.”

“Where are they?”

Lotan points. Back the way he came.

“How long?”

“Five minutes?” he speculates in English. Jeodine doesn’t have that much granularity in time units. “Don’t count on it. They might come out along the beach.”

“Right. Everyone, packs on. Tani, get Petals and MothLeaf turned over and down the beach. You,” she points at the eldest of the children, the curly-headed blonde girl in a long white smock, “help her. You,” she points to one of the women, “make sure we don’t leave the water behind, you,” he points to the other one, “make sure we don’t leave any of the children. Leave this,” she bangs the top of the bivouac. “Move!”

I move first, quickly getting my pack on my back.

“What do I do?” I hear Beni ask.

“You keep hold of that baby. Where’s that sling? Get it on, quickly.”

I grab up my bow again and run to the little upturned Neri boats at the edge of the beach. The girl that Sam sent with me looks about ten years old. She takes charge of Petals, turning it over and dropping the detached mast and yardarm inside. She looks like she knows what she’s doing. I do the same to the larger boat, dropping my bow in as well, then we’re both running down the beach, hauling the boats by their mooring lines. At least they’re light and the sea’s high, so there isn’t far to run. Soon we’re splashing in shallow water, deliberately not going far enough to be fully afloat. Seeing the other girl already doing so with Petals, I jump into the boat I’ve been pulling and start putting the mast up. It slots into place cleanly with a locking bolt, and I manhandle the yardarm with the furled sail into place.

Then I have the time to look up the beach. Ateis and the three other children are running towards us. Beni and the other women are following, carrying things. And there’s Sam and Lotan at the rear, mostly coming backwards, looking and listening into the trees and along the beach. The light’s fading. Somewhere on the other side of the island there must be a great sunset going on.

No-one else is coming onto the beach. I can’t believe we were the only ones left behind. I wonder if everyone else has been captured already, or if they’re too scared to come out, or refusing to believe the Satthei won’t come if they just sit tight.

I look the other way, spying out our sloop, still lit by pink sunlight. It’s the biggest intact-looking craft in close range, and I know it’s fast. I just hope whoever’s been sailing it since Denhall has been looking after it.

“Miss Taniel,” the girl in Petals says.

“What?”

“There’s not enough room!”

~Shit.~ I look at the boats, and everyone running towards us. “There has to be,” I mutter. We don’t have time to find another boat. Quick tally: Five children between three and ten, four adult women, one carrying a baby in arms, me, and Lotan, who’s big. One small dinghy built for three adults, one even smaller, built for kids. “There has to be,” I say again to myself, thinking furiously.

I yell back, “Can you sail Petals alone if you had to? It’ll be heavy in the water.”

The girl looks around herself at the boat again, appraising it with a sailor’s eye. “Yes.”

“Okay, you stay there.” I clamber back out, remembering to grab my bow, and splash over to Petals and turn to wave the four smaller kids in. The six-ish boy reaches me first and I lift him over the gunwale of the tiny boat. “Come on, come on,” I call to the little ones, and lift the first one that reaches me over. “Go foward–”

I hear the unmistakeable sound of an arrow being fired. I spin around and look back up the beach. Sam is nocking another arrow. Beni is getting aboard the bigger boat, her baby safe in the sling at her hip, I see. One of the others is dropping flasks into the boat, then climbing in after. I’m aware of the older girl behind me lifting Ateis into the boat, then the other little boy.

And there are our pursuers, at last, all attempts at stealth abandoned, running out of the tree cover onto the beach. Three, eight, more than ten… All men. I can’t tell what weapons they’re carrying. I don’t even have to think about it. I nock an arrow and draw back the bow. I remember Deidas’s voice, ‘Make your targets. Do not fire randomly.’ A moment of calm, of understanding the shape of where everyone is going, and I let the arrow loose. The hiss of the arrow flying away from me, the thrum of the bowstring. I keep watching as I nock another arrow, and the man closest to catching up with Sam falls flat. Sam breaks and runs down the beach towards us. I make my next target and I fire. Another running man falls. I’m already nocking my third arrow.

“Why aren’t they shooting back?” Ateis asks, standing in the boat behind me.

“Because they want us alive,” the girl at the tiller tells her.

“Ateis, get down out of sight!” I hiss. It’s probably too late for that, though, I fear. I turn my attention back up the beach. “Oh you’re kidding,” I mutter in English. Lotan hasn’t run with Sam down to the boats. He’s standing his ground between us and the oncoming slavers, raising his sword. “Oh fucking hell, Lotan,” I say to myself, and aim and fire at the slaver closest to him.

“Tani, we’re leaving now!” I hear Sam yell. “Push off!”

I don’t even see where that arrow goes. Without thinking, I turn and dump my bow into the boat. It lands awkwardly across Ateis and one of the other little ones. I start pushing the laden boat away from the shore, so it can get properly afloat.

“Crowd up forward you lot!” the girl tells the smaller kids, and I see them do so, getting out of the way so I can come aboard. Finally it’s afloat enough for the wind in the sail to pull it the rest of the way out. I grab the gunwale before it pulls out of reach and kick out with my legs and crash with very un-elvish lack of grace into the stern of the boat, at the girl’s feet. I can feel the sail really grabbing, the rush of water on the other side of the hull from my ear as the little boat heels over hard.

“How’s it handling?” I ask, trying to right myself without trampling the smaller children crowded forward.

“Like a scow. We’re on the good tack though. You want to take over?”

“No.” I get up on my knees and retrieve my bow and step up onto the gunwale on the higher side, to pull the other side a bit higher out of the water. I get an arrow ready, balancing on the edge. There’s nothing to shoot at. We’re already out of range. I can see Lotan swinging a sword and one of the slavers going down. Then he’s running after the remaining slavers, back into the trees. I lower my bow and return the arrow to the quiver and step gingerly down into the boat, only then realising what I’d just done. “You’re doing great. You know where we’re going? That sloop there.”

“Yes. I’m following them.”

The other boat. I look across. It’s very low in the water. I can see two of the women doing the sailing. For a moment I panic because I can’t see Sam, but then I do see her, just as she sits up at the bow next to Beni. Is everyone else aboard? I wonder. I have all the kids with me except Beni’s baby.

We must already be fifty metres from the shore, and the distance is still growing. I look for Lotan on the beach. I can only see bodies. I can’t tell if his is one of them, but I don’t think so. The last I saw of him he was doing the chasing.

Now I start shivering.

I killed three men.

Two for sure, I think, trying to account for it all. I hadn’t even hesitated.

“Why do you let her tell you what to do all the time?” the girl asks, breaking my thought-chain with something irrelevant.

“What?” I ask back. “Who?”

“The bossy one that dresses like a man.”

“Uh…” Sam? “Does she?” I hadn’t thought what Sam was wearing was especially masculine; not today anyway, what with that bra that was all she had on her top half most of the day. The girl must have seen us around when we were in port a few times. Maybe that’s what she was referring to. Sam did have a bit of a penchant for mannish fashions in the evenings, when this child should have been in bed, I can’t help thinking, feeling suddenly very English. Leggings and long boots almost to the knee and a flouncy blouse and a frock coat were typical of the style she was developing for herself when we were in civilised parts. I just thought she looked a bit butch, in a stylish, dandy way; a bit piratical.

“You’re always doing what she tells you,” the girl says.

“Well…” I’m at a loss. I’m also having to think about what we’re going to do when we get to the sloop. ~Is there a chance that there’s an intruder on board?~ I don’t think so; it was always in view from our temporary camp. “She’s smarter than I am,” I say. It’s all I can think of. She gives me a funny look.

“But you’re–”

I glare at her. “Not as smart as she is,” I say firmly. “At least, not as quick-witted. Look, she got us all away, didn’t she?” Except Lotan. I needed to talk to her about that. It wouldn’t be out of character for Lotan to just charge the enemy horde and be damned with tactical retreats. But Dave? “The Satthei listens to smart people, doesn’t matter if they’re Neri or not. Why shouldn’t I?”

She seems to accept that, grudgingly.

“Hey, girl, what’s your name?” I ask, remembering I didn’t know.

She grins. “Asu… Asuti.”

“Asuti. That’s pretty.”

She smiles for real. “I’m– Deregan’s my brother,” she explains. “He said I have to stay with Beni and the baby.”

“Ah.” I can see the resemblance now. “I think I might have seen you around. The rest of you,” I ask the smaller children, “what are your names?”

“Garelan,” the boy says. “That’s Ceslan and Jalese.” The name gives me a jolt. It’s just a coincidence, I have to tell myself. It’s not an uncommon name. Two small scared-looking faces gaze up at me. I smile, trying to look reassuring.

“They’re Demele’s twins,” Asuti says. “Garelan’s Chirasel’s kid, aren’t you?”

Garelan nods.

I look back at the island. I can’t help thinking that Lotan’s still alive, but we can’t go back for him. There’s just Sam and I with bows and a boatload of women and children to look after. I catch myself feeling angry at him for that. I woke up this morning still angry at him for Jalese and Kerilas, and now he goes and does something like this. Something stupid-heroic that saves the day, as if he knew there wasn’t room for him on the boats.

And I killed three men.

And I haven’t got time to think about that now.

The lead boat reaches the sloop and I can see Sam’s about to climb aboard over the stern.

“Bring us alongside their boat,” I say, and stand up. “Kids, move aft.”

“But I–”

“Ateis, just do it.” Thankfully she does, and even chivvies the other two small children into the stern while I move forward with my bow. “And stay quiet.”

“Do we still have to keep down?” Ateis asks me in the loudest stage-whisper I ever heard.

“Yes.” ~And behind the sail if there is anyone on the sloop,~ I think to myself. I get into position on the deck forward of the mast, keeping clear of the bottom of the yardarm and its stay line and nock my bow. I don’t draw, yet, keeping the arrow pointing casually into the water in front of the boat.

“Ready about,” Asuti calls quietly, behind me. We’re closing fast with the other boats.

“Ready,” I say. I’d positioned my feet so the yardarm forward of the mast will swing away from my feet.

“About we go. Bad tack.” The boat sways onto the other tack and turns. I keep my footing easily, staying focused on the sloop as Sam climbs in over the stern.

“Stupid,” I mutter. “I should go first.” I see her open the door and immediately step away from it.

I’m there. The bow’s come up against the bow of the other ship and Beni’s reaching across to grab our mooring line. I rock both boats by jumping over the sloop’s stern from a standing start.

“Show off,” Sam says, grinning. “Don’t think there’s anyone.”

“I’ll go,” I say.

“No, you wait here–”

“My eyes adjust to the dark quicker, and if I get shot I’m more likely to recover. You’re leader now,” I point out. “You don’t get to take stupid risks if you can avoid it.”

She looks at me. Then, amazingly, she nods. I’d expected her to argue it out. But then, like I told Asuti, she’s smarter than that.

“Forward hatch,” I say, and jump out of the cockpit and move forward.

“Shit, I forgot about that.”

It’s the covered grille just forward of the mainmast and over the bunks in the bow, where I had slept on our first voyage, to Denhall, next to Kerilas. I reason I can jump straight down onto the bunk, crouching, see if there’s anyone there, and jump right back out again. The rigging looks tidy anyway; as tidy as can be expected after weathering a storm.

I unclip the cover to the hatch and lift it, stepping out of the way of any arrows that might come through the grille. Nothing. I raise the grille and drop down. Dark, resolving in a second to a neat, empty cabin and a lingering smell of menfolk and cooking and a faint whiff of bilge water. I get a weird flashback to when we first stole the boat. It’s weird because that was Before. I had to roll dice for observation. Sitting on a hard wooden chair, feeling slightly mellow from James’s spliff. But this is so damn familiar. Only that time there were two of the enemy on board. I’d killed them. Roll of the dice, but I remember it now. I did it with a spell, a shamanic version of magic missiles I think, and I flash back to a charm in my flesh, then shards of ice flying out from my fingers like shrapnel. One of them had blood spurting from his impaled eye, and I’d jumped forward and kicked him down and stamped on his throat to stop him screaming. That detail, like so many others, hadn’t been in the gameplay.

“Fuck!” I say aloud.

“Tani, report!” I hear Sam’s voice from above.

“Cl– Clear!” I stammer. ~Oh shit, I did that. I’d forgotten.~ I sit heavily on the fur bedding, shaking. I can hear people stepping onto the deck above me; another old flashback, but I push that back; it’s just the little children and the mothers, climbing aboard.

Sam swings down into the cabin through the main door from the cockpit and sees me. “Tani, you okay?”

We still have to get out of the lagoon, I remember. We have to get the sails up and beat hell out of here. “We have to move,” I say, and climb straight back up out through the overhead hatch. “Is everyone aboard?” I call out.

“Yes,” someone answers. I don’t know who. I don’t pay attention to a detail like that.

“Better be right!” I step around the mast. The gaff is down, lashed to the boom. I quickly start taking the tarpaulin cover off. “Count heads! And someone come forward and get the anchor!”

That someone is Asuti. She gets on the winch and starts turning. I can just her singing something I don’t recognise.

“What do you need?” Sam says, appearing at the hatch I’d just climbed through.

“Jib. It’s stowed under the forward bunks. And put this somewhere.” I shove the tarp sail cover at her and clamber aft into the cockpit. “Everyone else get below!”

I look around. Everyone else is already below.

“Ten!” Someone calls from below.

“Eleven!” Sam shouts back. She’s on deck, forward. “Did you count the baby?”

Pause.

“Eight below,” the woman’s voice calls, with a little exaggerated precision.

“Three on deck,” Sam answers. That’s eleven. Good.

“Stand fast, hoisting mainsail,” I call, and start hauling the lanyard to pull the gaff up the mast. “Asuti, did you get the anch–”

“Yes!”

I check forward, past the raising sail. She and Sam are mounting the jib onto the front of the mast. She’s still singing.

The boom comes across and the sail fills. We’re moving. I grab the tiller and get us moving in the right direction. Close-hauled, the boat starts to heel over. “Sam! Need you on tactical!”

Sam appears, coming around the mast and dropping into the cockpit.

“Where’s Asuti?” I don’t hear her singing any more.

Sam looks around, suddenly concerned too.

“Asuti?” I yell, afraid she’s gone overboard.

“Here,” she calls back, suddenly at the door to the cabin. She must have dropped through the forward hatch.

“What are you doing down there?” I ask, querulously, as if that would hide the relief I feel. “I need more hands up here.”

“See, Beni? I told you!” Asuti says into the cabin, and quickly climbs the steps back out into the cockpit, her long smock gathered up in front in one bunched hand until she’s out. She’s wearing a huge, vindicated grin. I grin back. I can fill in the rest of what must have happened.

Sam’s where I want her, across the cockpit from me, looking astern, to see if we’re being followed. “I can’t see a damn thing,” she says. “It’s too dark.”

I can still see without any problems.

“Tani Tani I want to come up!” It’s Ateis. I don’t need this now. She’s already climbing the steps.

Asuti has started singing quietly again.

“No, get below.”

“But I want–”

“Ateis!” I glare at her, and she stops. “Get below and do what the grown-ups tell you or I’ll tell the Satthei you’re a little mutineer.” I make sure I say it loud enough for the grown-ups below to hear me too.

Ateis stares daggers back at me for a moment, then her eyes widen and look incredibly soulful.

“Ah-ah, no chibi,” I say. “No chibi. Get below, I mean it. You’re supposed to be setting an example to the little ones.”

She slumps and sulks back down into the cabin, flouncing her bunches. I shove the door shut with a foot. Sam catches my eye. She was clearly amused by that last exchange. I flash her a grin and look forward again, re-orienting on the reef I have to get us through. Two dark shadows in the water.

“Asuti, stand by topsail first, then jib. Not yet. Do you know which ones they are?”

“Um…”

I point.

“It’s getting seriously dark, Tani,” Sam points out.

“Don’t want to set a light.” My night vision is a tactical advantage now. At least, as long as the slavers don’t use flares.

“Agree.”

We’re coming up on the reefs. “Ready about,” I say. Sam drops into the cockpit. She’s already on the right side. “Asuti, ready?”

“Yes.”

“’Bout we go.”

I bring the boat about to get the right line through the gap in the reefs. We immediately start to get rougher water. “We’re out,” Asuti says, right by my side. “I found the topsail,” she adds. Her eyes must be adjusting properly now.

“Good girl. Haul it.”

I don’t have to look; I can feel her, right next to me and still singing, as she pulls the line to open the topsail. The little triangular sail linking the gaff to the topmast unfurls, and I can feel the added bite.

Sam briefly ducks down and opens the cabin door. “Everyone be quiet,” she says. I hadn’t been aware of the noise. I think there was noise, I was just ignoring it. There’s a brief ongoing conversation which I also ignore.

“Asuti, raise the jib now,” I say.

I concentrate on our heading for a moment as the jib goes up and make the necessary correction. It leaves us on a broad reach, and about as fast as this sloop can go on a course diagonally away from the island towards the East. I can sense the water deepening under our keel as the sea bed falls away beneath us.

“Is this the right heading?” Sam asks.

“Yes. We’re stable.”

“Good. I’ll go below, see what’s up. Call me if–”

“Of course.”

Sam opens the cabin door again and drops down inside, closing it behind her.

“Thanks to the Goddess for a good wind,” Asuti says.

“I didn’t ask for it, but I’ll take it,” I say, tying off the main sheet.

“I did.”

I look down at her, putting it all together at once. I can see her grinning at me in the dark. “Anyone else know you’re a windsinger?” I’d read about them in one of the books the Satthei gave me in Denhall: One of the rare humans — always female — who could summon weather with song. Windsingers in modern times tend to attribute their gift to the Goddess. Neri opinion is that the ability is innate and primitive; more like a kind of savant magery.

“Only my brother. You’re not going to tell anyone are you?” she asks. “I only do it when the Satthei goes off hunting, so she won’t notice. It’s just to help the fleet stay on course without her. My brother says the Satthei would take me onto the familyship if she found out.”

I grab her impulsively around the shoulders and kiss the top of her head. “I won’t tell anyone,” I promise.

Fareis would encourage her and train her in how to make best use of her gift and be an asset to the fleet, and do it all with kindness and love. Asuti would have a rich, full life, but most of all she would be kept close by, monitored and controlled and, living on the familyship, she would never have children and never fully grow up, if she went to Fareis still a child. Having read the stories of what used to happen to feral windsingers, I’m half persuaded it’s a good thing. Only half, by something that might be propaganda.

“Do you really think the Satthei’s been sunk?” Asuti asks quietly, flicking a look at the cabin door.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Your Satthei got sunk, didn’t she?” she says.

Flashback. “Burnt,” I say. I can feel Asuti shiver next to me, and I put my arm back around her. My other hand still rests on the tiller, but I could be tying that off now, I think.

“Why would someone want to do that?”

I don’t have any answers to that, so I don’t say anything.

“Is it the Reki?”

“I don’t think so. Those were men on the beach,” I point out. “Slavers.” But slavers have always been a minor annoyance to Jeodin. A handful of kids and young adults vanish every year from the outlying islands, and occasionally turn up in a market on the mainland. Nobody imagined slavers had the means or inclination to attack the big market fleets directly. It makes me feel cold and sick just thinking about it. Why is someone trying to take out the Sattheis now?