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frowned. I
expect he and his menwill try to kill the three of you. You aren t the reason
thathe s coming here, and if you aren t his friends,you re unknown, and
unknown is often the same asenemy.
Ian turned away from her and stared at the blackened ridgebefore him. Perhaps
we can negotiate with them. Perhaps wecan work our passage. Perhaps we can do
something to help you, andin helping you, help ourselves. He glanced over his
shoulderat her. So which of your Family s enemies are we talkingabout?
Dokteerak? Masschanka?
Sabir, Kait said.
Ian winced. Ah. Sabir. That s bad, or at least it could be bad. I have an
unfortunate history with the Sabirs.Clever as I might be at offering my
services as a navigator, orhelmsman, or whatever the ship might need, if I m
recognizedthe Sabirs aren t likely to want my help. He sighed andlooked back
at the burned ground. I wish we d knownearlier that Sabirs were coming. We
could have been preparing. Wecould have had ramparts in place, made some sort
of weapons. . .
He frowned and shrugged. Well, thatcan t be helped. He licked his lips.
Youdon t know exactly which Sabirs are following you, doyou? he asked. He
put the question to her casually enough,but Kait heard the tension hidden
below the surface.
I only know of one for sure. Ry Sabir. There may beothers, but he s the only
one who s
everybit of color had drained from Ian s face as she spoke linked to me.
Ian? What s the matter?
Ry? he whispered. Ry Sabir?
Kait nodded. You know him?
For a long time he said nothing. Then he glanced at her, and hewas a changed
man. Cold. Deadly.
Full of hate. I knowhim, he said. We have things to do. We re going tohave
to get his ship, and we re going to have to beat him to do it.
Three of us against a ship s crew? We can t takethe ship by force.
Ian rested both hands on Kait s shoulders and stared intoher eyes. If Ry and
I meet, one of us is going to die. I knowmy chances of killing him aren t
good. But if I have to die,I ll die fighting.
He stalked away from her, heading for the bay.
She looked after him and considered the trouble that was tocome, and what she
might do to prevent it. She ran through her headall the histories she could
recall where smaller forces
haddefeated greater ones. Somewhere in the past, someone she dstudied about
had found himself in a similar situation, and hadmanaged to survive. In most
of the cases, like the Brejmen defeatof the Cathomartic hordes or the Marepori
repelling the Jastinvaders, the smaller force was better-
armed andbetter-disciplined.
With the right terrain and the right weapons and plenty of timeto prepare,
Kait thought the three of them might have had similarsuccess. But without
those advantages . . .
There is always a way to win, General Talismartea hadwritten in his
masterwork, The Warrior s
Page 23
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Book. If you arewilling to redefine winning.
Ian had defined winning as taking over Ry s ship andforcing the crew to sail
back to Calimekka.
But she knew that evenif she and her friends could wrest control from the
captain,they d have a hellish time keeping it and if they lostit, they were
dead. But what if they didn t need to be incharge to win?
She had to redefine winning. They won if all of them got back toIbera alive
and free, with the
Mirror of Souls in their possession.That was the only thing they had to have.
If they didn t have to take over the ship and control itfor months, they were
free to consider any form of safe passage aswinning. They couldn t hope to
have safe passage given tothem. But they might hope to demand it.
How?
An idea came to her. She d have to get Hasmal and Ian onher side, though she
suspected from his reaction to Ry s namethat Ian wouldn t like her proposal.
Then she d needsubterfuge and negotiating skill and a bit of Hasmal s magicand
more than a touch of luck to make it work. She found herselfwondering if her
years of diplomatic studies would serve her aswell as even a day s worth of
real experience. She closed hereyes and breathed in the ash-scented air, and
hoped she dlearned as much as she thought she had.
Chapter
6
A
fter three days in which Ry had becomemore and more certain that Kait was
dead, the tiny flashes ofenergy that linked him to her suddenly reappeared. He
couldn tguess what had happened to her to make her disappear, and hewouldn t
try. He was satisfied to discover that she was stillalive, and better yet,
that she was close. Incredibly close.
When the
Peregrine marooned her, he d seen throughher eyes that she was not alone, but
he didn t know if any ofthose who had been with her had survived. He wished he
could getanother glimpse through her eyes, so that he could see what he
washeading into, but she was wary, holding her magical shields astight around
herself as a woman would hold her cloak in a blizzard.Only flickers broke
through to guide him to her; he suspected thatshe hid herself as much from the
dangers around her as from him,but he couldn t touch her mind, so he wasn t
sure.
At the moment when the tug he felt from her ceased to be ahead and became
beside, he was standing atthe prow of the
Wind Treasure, anxiously watching thecoastline that ran by off the port side
of the ship. Hewouldn t have been able to explain to the captain or any ofhis
friends how he knew that the ocean had brought him as close toher as it could,
but he did know. So he shouted, Here! Thisis the place. Go inland here!
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