“Who told you of the test of steel?” Soromet glared down at the dirter.

  Days had passed since the Darkwind had left the city on the river’s mouth a smoking ruin, but the dirter woman had only just woken for the first time. The exertion, the shock, and the grief perhaps, conspiring to keep her asleep.

  Would that Soromet could sleep. In the wake of the Darkwind’s bombardment, countless dead and injured had been dragged out to sea from the river mouth, drawing predators of opportunity. The dawn sky had turned black with smoke as the wooden edifices blazed, the wind fanning the inferno until the fire stretched from riverside to city’s edge.

  This was justice, and the oceans would never lie calm until it had been served in full. But repaying the dirters for the husband they had stolen from her gave her no great satisfaction. Her marriage bed lay empty all the same.

  Empty of the raed commander she had loved, in any case. Not of the dirter criminal.

  “The man of night ’n fire told me about the test, and I demanded it,” the dirter said, turning her head to eye Soromet. “So when do I get it?”

  “The test of steel is the right of a raided captain, one who showed great courage in combat,” Soromet replied. “You do not command a ship. Nor do you have a crew. Nor were you taken in a raid or engaged in any sort of combat. You were rescued from the waves.”

  “But I’m of great courage and fearless combat, and you didn’t get me killt with your black sand ball, so you must be gonna give it to me.”

  Beneath her silk veil, Soromet scowled. “No one has demanded the test of steel in this age. It is the place of the tribe’s chief to decide whether it be granted to you.”

  “Then take me to him.”

  “I do not take orders from filthy dirters.”

  “Filthy this,” the younger woman muttered, making an obscene gesture she did not have the anatomy to support. Her dark eyes were already slipping shut again. Her health had improved by leagues since they had first hauled her aboard, but still she tired rapidly.

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  Soromet stood to leave, too drained herself to remain any longer. “Rest while you can, blood drinker. We return to the Waeld greatship soon. If the chief sees fit to grant you the test of steel, you will need every ounce of your mettle. If you fail—”

  “Throwed to the sharks. I done figured so, me.”

  “Keelhauled,” Soromet corrected. “Lashed to the hull under full sail while you are flayed alive by the barnacles and pounded to death against the keel. Anyone who demands a captain’s trial must be prepared to accept the price of a captain’s defeat.”

  ***

  The man of night’n’fire was back, talking about looking out her blind eye again. He liked to talk near as much as Lathe did, but when she woke up, she never could remember what they talked about, just that he made her feel better.

  When she did wake up, the pirates’ attack on Siu Carinal came back to her, and she cried until all her tears were gone and dry, heaving sobs made her inexperienced heart hurt. She wanted Pretty to be safe and waiting for her, but she kept imagining her twin drowned or burned or smashed to pieces under rubble, and thinking how scairt Pretty would have been and how in pain and alone.

  Lathe hoped the testing of steel was a scrap to the death. She hoped it was against that cold-eyed Soromet. The pirate gal was a haint in people skin, stone dead inside, life outside, and as soon as she got the chance, Lathe meant to get her killt the rest of the way.

  That meant getting strong again. If Lathe could’ve drank a whole body to the last swallow of living blood, that would’ve been good enough medicine to get her back on her feet. But none of the pirates had gotten close enough to snatch since the bombardment. She was a prisoner for real now, and they were playing cagey as alley cats with her. The only time they opened the cabin door was when someone left a piece of nasty-tasting fish-stinking fish and a cup of nasty-tasting, fish-stinking water for her.

  Something mighty big was following after the ship, though. She felt the creatures get close enough to touch if the wood wall hadn’t been between her and the water. Big, mean, bad medicine creatures, looking for the ship to make more blood and guts for them.

  Every time one of those monsters came within range, Lathe drank their energies dry. She wasn’t good at healing like Four was, but like Twenty-six, her body knew what to do with the extra medicine. And after three years of extra sword lessons with the crazy old crow Master Saint Daven, she knew how to get herself back in fighting shape. She just had to go about it slower than if she’d started out healthy.

  Soromet thought she was really something dropping that black sand on Siu Carinal. When they got to the test of steel, that pirate gal was going to find out just what kind of bad medicine Lathe was.

  ***

  “What does it mean?” Ojiin asked.

  In Darkwind’s wake floated a string of carnage—sharks, giant squid, whales. With each league sailed, more came to feast and joined the ranks of carcasses. The stiff tailwind blew the stink over the deck day and night. All the raedrs wanted to know the interpretation of this sign.

  Soromet did not wonder. She knew.

  “It is the blood drinker,” she told her crew. “She is death.”