“Sirines mature quickly. She’s only ten in human years.”
The ten-year-old sirine turned her attentions to Ulin. “I am so happy to see you again!” she squealed, hugging him to her ample front. Her skin felt cool and damp against his bare chest, and to his dismay, his face turned red.
This time it was Kethril’s turn to be amazed. “You know her?” he demanded. Ulin gently pushed her away and glared at Kethril. Playing the irate father hardly fit the gambler’s image. “She helped Notwen and me a few days ago.”
Kethril looked visibly relieved. He hopped to a rock ledge and sat, grinning at his aquatic daughter. “That’s my girl. Did you bring the elves, too?”
She nodded vigorously. “This clan lives near here. They are my friends. They’ve been looking for this marauding band of sea-sligs for some time, so after I found the entrance to this cavern, I went to see them.”
The chaos in the cavern was slowly subsiding as the sea elves killed the ghagglers and pursued those few that fought their way free. A few corpses floated in the water. All the sharks had vanished.
Ulin sat down on a rock near Kethril and tried not to shiver. He pointed to the prostrate sea lion and asked, “Is there some way to help him?”
The sight of the pitiable sea lion clouded the sirine’s face with sadness. She approached the beast slowly, singing a song in some strange language that sounded to Ulin like a whale’s song. The sea lion lifted its head and glared at her, but it made no move toward her as she unlocked the metal fetter around its tail and tossed it aside.
Just then a dolphin popped its head out of the water close by, its bottlenose sleek and gray. The sirine said something to it in her own language, and the dolphin replied in a laughing, low-pitched chitter. It swam back and forth near the sea lion as if assessing the situation, then it ducked under, emerged again, and squirted the lion in the face with a mouthful of water. The lion made an attempt to snarl, but it still did not move. Its mouth curved in a perpetual smile, the dolphin tried again. It had to repeat its squirts three times before the lion rallied enough strength to lumber toward the water. Growling at the persistent dolphin, it slid below the surface. For a minute or two, Ulin and Kethril could see the animal luxuriating in the healing comfort of its natural environment before it gave a deft twist of its massive tail and vanished into the black depths of the grotto.
The sirine waved her thanks to the dolphin and came back. “The lion is weak, but it is free now. It should heal.”
Two sea elves climbed onto the island at that moment and bowed to the two humans. The elves were both male, over five feet tall, elegantly built, with skin of greenish silver. Their blue hair was short-cropped against their heads, and their faces bore no trace of a beard.
Ulin pushed himself to his feet and bowed. He greeted them in Elvish and offered his heartfelt gratitude.
They studied him curiously from bare feet to matted, wet hair with no sign of arrogance or condescension, then they struck the butts of their tridents on the stone. “It is our pleasure to kill ghagglers,” one replied in heavily accented Common.
“Is there some way out of this damp hole?” Kethril grumbled. “I have things to attend to.”
“Yes, like meeting your other daughter,” Ulin snapped.
A grimace passed over Kethril’s face. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, not after the, ah, incident in Flotsam. The city council will not be happy to see me. I’m going back to Dead Pirate’s Cove to see if anyone is alive.”
“On the contrary,” Ulin said, his voice like a steel blade. “The council will be delighted to see you.” Although he never considered himself to be much like his grandfather Caramon, in that instant his anger kindled the fire in his eyes and tempered the curves of his face into hard planes and angles set with adamant. It was the look many foes had seen on Caramon’s face before they died. Kethril read that look and inched back on his seat, but Ulin would not let him back away unscathed. “You took the taxes from Flotsam. You are the reason we traveled halfway across Ansalon. You put Flotsam in danger of being destroyed, and you are the reason your daughter is in a dangerous situation. Now you will go to Flotsam to help fix this mess, even if I have to tie you to my back and swim there!” Ulin’s voice sharpened with each word until his anger reverberated through the grotto.
The elves watched him with interest. This was none of their affair, but they enjoyed the curious interaction of humans.
The sirine looked worriedly from one man to the other. She sidled close to Kethril and put a hand on his shoulder.
Kethril studied the younger man as if searching for some crack in Ulin’s fierce armor. There was none. At last he glanced at the sirine and the grotto beyond, then he said, “Ulin of Solace, if you give me your word that you will grant me safe conduct in Flotsam, I will go with you.”
“What makes you think you can accept my word?”
“You have something I have never had, but it is a quality I respect nonetheless. I will accept your word of honor.”
The young Majere knew he had little choice. Stuck as he was in an underwater cavern surrounded by disinterested elves, he needed Kethril’s cooperation to get back to dry land. There was also the irritating consideration that Kethril Torkay was Flotsam’s last hope. “You have it. I will take you to Flotsam and try to convince them not to hang you. But if you try to escape or flee or hide, I will hunt you down and kill you myself.”
The gambler sighed and heaved himself to one foot. “I believe you would, young man. I guess we’d better go to Flotsam.” In a swift, mercurial change of mood, he slapped Ulin on the back and grinned. “Daughter, my lovely green girl,” he called to the sirine, “see if you can find my clothes in the ghagglers’ spoils. I’m going to need them if I am to see my oldest.”
Notwen hammered away at the spikes holding the new mast to its framework. A few more nails here and there, and the thing just might stay upright-even if the wind blew. He’d been trying for several hours now to find the right configuration of rigging, spars, mast, and sail that would move his flat-bottomed boat. Unfortunately, all his books on sailing ships were on the shelves of his library in Flotsam, so he had to rig this sail from experimentation. He made a mental note to read those books when he returned home and make notes to bring on his next voyage. It was obvious he could not rely solely on his steam engine. It still needed a great deal more work to make it reliable.
While he worked, the Second Thoughts drifted placidly westward on the current, warmed by the afternoon sun. The great bay seemed too empty to Notwen. There were no ships or boats in sight, no sign of anyone other than a few birds, a school of passing flying fish, and a curious dolphin who poked its head out of the water, chirped at him a few times, and ducked out of sight. He was so involved in his work that he paid no attention to the progress of the Second Thoughts or the time of day or the pod of dolphins that approached the boat toward late afternoon.
The first sound that alerted him to boarders was the pleased greeting of a familiar voice. Things bumped against the side of the boat and the Second Thoughts rocked as people climbed over the railings. Notwen cried out in alarm and jumped to his feet, his hammer clutched in his hand. He saw a wet, nearly naked ghost come striding toward him, and terror overwhelmed his stunned mind. His eyes rolled up in his head, and his small body slumped to the deck.
“He fainted?” Kethril said incredulously.
Ulin gathered up the gnome and moved him into the shade of the cabin. “He probably thought we were dead.”
The sirine and a group of sea elves climbed onboard and wandered around the small boat touching everything. They examined Notwen’s tools, stared at the motionless paddlewheel, and admired the strange little engine, but when they saw the mast and the sail, they gathered in a cluster and laughed uproariously.