“Bring us a fog to block their watchin',” the nasty pirate added, yelling at Bellany, Bloody Keel's resident sorceress.

“A fog,” the sorceress huffed, shaking her head so that her raven-black hair bounced all about her shoulders.

The pirate, who more often spoke with her sword than with her tongue, simply did not understand. Bellany shrugged and began casting her strongest spell, a fireball. As she finished, she aimed the blast not at the distant, pursuing ship—which was long out of range, and which, if it was Sea Sprite, would have had no trouble repelling such an attack anyway—but at the water behind Bloody Keel.

The surf sizzled and sputtered in protest as the flames licked at it, bringing a thick steam up behind the fast-sailing ship. Sheila Kree smiled and nodded her approval. Her pilot, a heavy-set woman with a big dimpled face and a yellow smile, knew the waters around the western tip of the Spine of the World better than anyone alive. She could navigate there on the darkest of nights, using no more than the sound of the currents splashing over the reefs. Deudermont's ship wouldn't dare follow them through the dangerous waters ahead. Soon enough Bloody Keel would sail out beyond the third jetty, around the rocky bend, and into open waters if she chose, or turn even closer inland to a series of reefs and rocks—a place Sheila and her companions had come to call home.

“He's no way to know 'twas us,” the crewman said again.

Sheila Kree nodded, and hoped the man was right—believed he probably was, for while Sea Sprite, a three-masted schooner, had such a unique signature of sails, Bloody Keel appeared to be just another small, unremarkable caravel. Like any other wise pirate along the Sword Coast, though, Sheila Kree had no desire to tangle with Deudermont's legendary Sea Sprite or his skilled and dangerous crew, whoever he thought she was.