I steadied my breathing and tried to ignore the fact that one of those two boats could go boom within the next minute when it caught up to the prince’s yacht, and I could be out there when it did. A Sending involved my essence leaving my body to do something it’d be impossible or ill-advised for my body to do—like hover over a boat possibly packed with explosives. I didn’t know whether my essence could be blown up, but I didn’t want to find out.

I focused my will on my destination, trying to convince my stomach and nerves that I wouldn’t physically be going out over the water. Within moments, I felt myself rise out of my body and flow out over the harbor. As I crossed the hundred yards or so separating me from those boats, I clearly saw the pilot in the first one. Light brown hair, short military cut, chiseled features—everything perfectly clear, almost as if it were outlined.

Too clear to be real. Like a mask. Except it wasn’t a mask, at least not one you could buy. It was magic, a glamour. That pilot wanted people to think that he was an elf. I looked closer. He wasn’t shielded. The weather wizard would need to be within sight of the pilot boats, and there couldn’t be any shield or wards between him and the boats he was moving.

And if your goal was to ram the lead boat into a yacht and blow it up, there couldn’t be shields of any kind between you and your target.

The wind in the pilot boat’s sails faltered and so did its forward momentum. For only an instant, I got a look at who and what he really was.

A goblin. A goblin with a blood-red serpent tattoo on his cheek. That meant he was a Khrynsani assassin. The Khrynsani were an ancient goblin secret society and military order, and their assassins were even more fanatical than their merely homicidal brothers. I didn’t need to look in that boat’s hold; I could smell it, even over the stinking harbor water, I could smell it.