'Feeling any better?' Crokus asked from the prow, his tanned young face creased with genuine concern.
The old saboteur wanted to punch that face; instead he just growled and hunched down deeper against the barque's hull.
Kalam's laugh rumbled from where he sat at the tiller. 'Fiddler and water don't mix, lad. Look at him, he's greener than that damned winged monkey of yours.'
A sympathetic snuffling sound breathed against Fiddler's cheek. He pried open one bloodshot eye to find a tiny, wizened face staring at him. 'Go away, Moby,' Fiddler croaked. The familiar, once servant to Crokus's uncle Mammot, seemed to have adopted the sapper, the way stray dogs and cats often did. Kalam would say it was the other way around, of course. 'A lie,' Fiddler whispered. 'Kalam's good at those—' like lounging around in Rutu Jelba for a whole damn week on the off-chance that a Skrae trader would come in. 'Book passage in comfort, eh, Fid?' Not like the damned ocean crossing, oh no – and that one was supposed to have been in comfort, too. A whole week in Rutu Jelba, a lizard' infested, orange-bricked cesspool of a city, then what? Eight jakatas for this rag-stoppered sawed-in-half ale casket.
The steady rise and fall lulled Fiddler as the hours passed. His mind drifted back to the appallingly long journey that had brought them thus far, then to the appallingly long journey that lay ahead. We never do things the easy way, do we?
He would rather that every sea dried up. Men got feet, not flippers. Even so, we're about to cross overland – over a fly- infested, waterless waste, where people smile only to announce they're about to kill you.
The day dragged on, green-tinged and shaky.
He thought back to the companions he'd left behind on Genabackis, wishing he could be marching alongside them. Into a religious war. Don't forget that, Fid. Religious wars are no fun. The faculty of reasoning that permitted surrender did not apply in such instances. Still, the squad was all he'd known for years. He felt bereft out of its shadows. Just Kalam for old company, and he calk that land ahead home. And he smiles before he kills. And what's he and Quick Ben got planned they ain't told me about yet?
'There's more of those flying fish,' Apsalar said, her voice identifying the soft hand that had found its way to his shoulder. 'Hundreds of them!'
'Something big from the deep is chasing them,' Kalam said.
Groaning, Fiddler pushed himself upright. Moby took the opportunity to reveal its motivation behind the day's cooing and crawled into the sapper's lap, curling up and closing its yellow eyes. Fiddler gripped the gunnel and joined his three companions in studying the school of flying fish a hundred yards off the starboard side. The length of a man's arm, the milky white fish were clearing the waves, sailing thirty feet or so, then slipping back under the surface. In the Kansu Sea flying fish hunted like sharks, the schools capable of shredding a bull whale down to bones in minutes. They used their ability to fly to launch themselves onto the back of a whale when it broke for air. 'What in Mael's name is hunting them?'
Kalam was frowning. 'Shouldn't be anything here in the Kansu. Out in Seeker's Deep there's dhenrabi, of course.'
'Dhenrabi! Oh, that comforts me, Kalam. Oh yes indeed!'
'Some kind of sea serpent?' Crokus asked.
'Think of a centipede eighty paces long,' Fiddler answered. 'Wraps up whales and ships alike, blows out all the air under its armoured skin and sinks like a stone, taking its prey with it.'
'They're rare,' Kalam said, 'and never seen in shallow water.'
'Until now,' Crokus said, his voice rising in alarm.
The dhenrabi broke the surface in the midst of the flying fish, thrashing its head side to side, a wide razorlike mouth flensing prey by the score. The width of the creature's head was immense, as many as ten arm-spans. Its segmented armour was deep green under the encrusted barnacles, each segment revealing long chitinous limbs.
'Eighty paces long?' Fiddler hissed. 'Not unless it's been cut in half!'
Kalam rose at the tiller. 'Ready with the sail, Crokus. We're going to run. Westerly.'
Fiddler pushed a squawking Moby from his lap and opened his backpack, fumbling to unwrap his crossbow. 'If it decides we look tasty, Kalam ...'
'I know,' the assassin rumbled.
Quickly assembling the huge iron weapon, Fiddler glanced up and met Apsalar's wide eyes. Her face was white. The sapper winked. 'Got a surprise if it comes for us, girl.'
She nodded. 'I remember...'
The dhenrabi had seen them. Veering from the school of flying fish, it was now cutting sinuously through the waves towards them.