But it was present nonetheless.

"'What news, what news, Lord Thoma?' she said," sang Merota, taking the women's parts alone now. "'What news have you for me?'"

Sailors were hard men, and sailors willing to serve under Captain Chalcus were often harder still; some of theHeron 's crew were little more than brutes. They listened to the girl with pleasure as innocent as her own.

It should come very shortly, Ilna thought, trying to read the pattern above the heavens.

"'I've come to ask you to my weddin','" Chalcus sang, and the heavens split with a continuing roar.

A blue-white glare hammered down, brighter than the sun in the first instants and growing brighter still. Ilna jerked her eyes away, but even the reflections from the wave-tops were so painfully vivid that she found herself squinting.

The clouds bubbled back like mud shocked by a thrown stone. Something was coming, and it was coming fast.

"Man your bloody benches!"Chalcus said. He was shouting, but even so the words were little more than a whisper over the sound of the sky tearing apart."Get a way on, ye beggars, or the Sister'll swallow us down to Hell where we belong!"

As Chalcus spoke, he grabbed Merota by the back of her tunics and tossed her aft, under the rising curve of the stern piece where the helmsman stood. It wasn't a safe place, but there was no real safety on a cutter; and as for gentle, that could wait for when there was time.

Ilna unpinned her hand-loom, folding it with the warp and weft still in place and returning it to its canvas bag. She worked methodically, making the same motions at the same speed as she would if theHeron had landed in Mona Harbor and she was preparing to go ashore. She always moved as quickly as she could without error; and if putting away her loom was the last thing Ilna os-Kenset did, then it too would be done properly.