She put the finished fabric in her right sleeve, then took a fresh hank of cords out of her left and began again. The patterns were just a way of occupying her fingers; the work didn't calm her, exactly, but her irritation was more likely to come to the surface if shewasn't doing something.

A trumpeter signaled from the flagship, the five-banked monster to the right of Garric's. Captain Rhamis looked as startled as a mouse surprised in the pantry. "What's that?" he cried on a rising note. "What're we to do, Plotnin?"

Before the sailing master could answer, Chalcus laid a hand on the nobleman's shoulder and spoke reassuringly. A trireme pulled ahead, but nothing else about the fleet's stately progression changed. Rhamis bobbed his head, rubbing his hands nervously together.

Ilna smiled at an idle thought. She gave her completed patterns to oarsmen and soldiers, common people. She'd been around the rich and powerful enough in recent days to know that they had problems also, but somebody else could worry about them. Ilna would take care of her own first.

She'd always had a talent for fabrics. As a young girl she'd woven so skillfully that the other women in the borough surrounding Barca's Hamlet brought Ilna the thread they'd spun and instead of weaving themselves took a share of the profits from the cloth she finished. That as much as her brother's early strength explained how two orphans had survived in a community which, while not unkind and fairly prosperous as peasant villages went, had no surplus for useless mouths in a hard winter.

Ilna's talent was natural or at least passed for it, but when Ilna left Barca's Hamlet she'd taken a wrong turning that had led her to Hell. She'd met what looked like a tree there. The skills the tree had taught her gave Ilna the power to let or hinder souls, to change a heart or steal a life. She'd used her new abilities for what she thought at the time were her own ends but which she knew now were the purposes of Evil alone.