"Crowd more, you mean!" said Merota. "Will we have real rooms here, Chalcus?"

"Depending on the words our friend the Prince has with the Earl of Sandrakkan," Chalcus said laughing, "we'll have rooms or at least ground to pitch a tent on, I'm sure. The Shepherd of the Isles is as big as a warship gets, but I'll grant that with four hundred souls aboard you could find more room in a clothes press."

Chalcus dressed in as many different bright colors as a clown and had a clown's smile and cheerful laughter. As he spoke, he gestured with his free hand to point out this or that part of the business of landing which only an expert would see.

He was indeed an expert sailor. He'd learned his skill in the same hard school that taught him to use the slim, in-curved sword he carried stuck through his sash of vivid orange silk. As a youth he'd roamed southern waters with the Lataaene pirates, where the wrong choice meant death and the right choice didn't guarantee survival.

Under his long-sleeved saffron tunic and his red-dyed leather breeches, Chalcus' body bore the scars of wounds that should have been fatal a dozen times over. That he'd survived said as much for his will as it did for the undoubted strength of his tautly muscular body.

Ilna smiled again. Lady Merota was her ward, as amazing as that seemed to an illiterate peasant girl. Chalcus was her friend and her lover and… well, nother man, because he wasn't the sort to be anybody's man save his own, buta man; and even at age nineteen Ilna was aware of how rare a thing real men were in this world.

Ilna's fingers wove, then opened the coarse fabrics to weave again. She'd always had a skill with cloth. She could run her hand over a bale of wool and hear it murmuring of meadows and clover, of the brook south of Barca's Hamlet and the insistent warmth of the lamb nuzzling your udder.

Then she'd made a mistake, a wrong turning that took her to Hell and brought her knowledge fit only for demons. She'd returned to the waking world without leaving Hell, becoming Evil's most skillful minion for a time. It hadn't been long by most reckonings, but Ilna knew that if she lived forever she couldn't undo the harm she'd done while Evil rode her like a mettlesome horse.