"Nobody on deck," Julia called back. "Maybe below, but the air's fouled. I don't hold out much hope."
"Check it out," Aelfred ordered, "but no heroics. I want you both back."
Julia flipped the first mate a quick salute. She and Garay moved from sight.
Almost immediately they reappeared. Julia was in the lead, Garay following, with a large bundle in his arms. With a twinge, Teldin recognized the shape of that bundle: another body. Julia swung quickly back over the rail aboard the Probe. Garay handed his burden up to another crewman and followed.
Aelfred and the other officers hurried down to the main deck. Teldin followed, a little hesitantly. As he drew closer, he knew he'd been right in his identification of the bundle. Lying on the deck, it was unmistakably a human body, wrapped in a heavy green traveling cloak. Aelfred knelt beside it, and slowly reached out a hand to pull the cloak back from the face.
The body sat up. With a slender hand, it pulled the cloak back from its face and shook out its long blonde hair. "Well," the body said in a rich contralto voice, smiling into Aelfred's astonished face, "if this is death, it's not as bad as I expected."
*****
The officers' saloon was as full as Teldin had ever seen it. Aelfred, Sylvie, and Julia-as Aelfred's second-in-command after the death of Sweor Tobregdan-sat around the central table. Estriss was notably absent, but presumably the illithid had decided his presence might disrupt the proceedings.
Teldin was present, too, though he'd pulled a chair away from the table and sat in a back comer. Nobody had actually invited him, but neither had he been excluded from the meeting, and-as his grandfather had always told him-it's easier to get forgiveness than permission, so he'd tagged along with the others. At first he'd considered keeping the hood of his cloak in place, then had decided Sylvie and Julia would have more important things on their minds than his changed appearance. He'd been right; neither woman had given him so much as a second glance. Their attention was focused totally on the sole inhabitant of the mosquito ship.
His own attention was focused pretty much in the same place, Teldin had to admit. He also had to admit that it was warranted.
The newcomer sat at the table, her back to the large port that looked out to the star-studded blackness of wildspace. She'd removed the heavy cloak she'd been wrapped in, and Teldin thought that was a great improvement. She was tail-almost as tall as Teldin himself-and slender, but her movements seemed to imply there was considerable strength in her supple body. She wore a jerkin and tights of forest green, not too different from the clothes worn by most aboard the Probe, but her garb was well-tailored to show off the curves of her figure. On her feet were boots of soft mahogany-brown leather that came halfway up shapely calves. Her face was slender, but her features were more rounded than sharply chiseled, and her small nose was slightly upturned. When she smiled-which was often-the tanned skin around her green eyes crinkled in what Teldin thought of as "laugh-lines," and she became even more beautiful than when her face was at rest. When she spoke, her warm voice seemed to have an undercurrent of laughter.
She was speaking now, brushing shoulder-length curls of honey-blond hair back from her face. "My name is Rianna Wyvernsbane," she said, "and, first thing, I want to thank you all for saving me. I thought I was dead."
Aelfred gave a half-smile and shook his head as though to dismiss the thanks. "What happened to your ship?" he asked.
"I was inward bound from Garden," Rianna answered.
"For Toril?" Sylvie put in.
"For Dragon Rock, in the Tears of Selune. I live on Tori], but I keep my ship-the Ghost-on the Rock."
"Toril to Garden's a long flight in a mosquito," Sylvie remarked.
"Not really," Rianna replied with a throaty chuckle, "not if you don't mind your own company. I make my living as a message-runner. If you need a message delivered to any planet in Realmspace-fast, with no complications-I'm your girl."
"You were telling us what happened," Aelfred reminded her.
Rianna favored him with a smile. "That's right, I was." She sat back in her chair. She seemed completely relaxed, Teldin thought, totally unconcerned that she was aboard a strange ship surrounded by potential enemies. Was she so brave that the thought didn't bother her, or so stupid that the danger hadn't even occurred to her? Or was her apparent relaxation just a facade?
"I'd delivered my message to the party in question," Rianna went on, "and I was climbing away from Garden when I saw another vessel coming up ahead. A deathspider."
Aelfred cursed. "Neogi again."
Rianna shot him a curious look, but he waved her on with her story. "The Ghost isn't much to look at," she continued, "and she's not much in combat, but I've stripped her for maneuverability, and she's fast…." She grinned wryly. "The long and the short of it is, I ran, down toward Garden again. If you know Garden at all, you know it's a cluster of large rocks in one atmosphere envelope. I ducked in among the rocks to lose the deathspider. It worked. Just." She grimaced. "Those neogi are nothing if not persistent. They got a few shots away, and the poor old Ghost took a bad hit…."
"I didn't notice any damage," Sylvie pointed out.
"Take a look at the starboard wing root," Rianna suggested, "you'll see it's held on by rope, a little wire, and a whole lot of good intentions. The keel is cracked, too, ready to give way, I think."
"Go on," Aelfred prompted.
"They followed me down," the woman continued, "right on my tail, until they had to break off or slam full into one of the rocks. I went on through. They had to reverse course, then take the long way around, so I had a good head start, enough to get away."
"What were the neogi doing there?" The question slipped out before Teldin could stop it.
Rianna's green-eyed gaze settled on Teldin for the first time. I wish I'd made myself more handsome, he caught himself thinking. Now where did that thought come from?
"I don't know," she replied with a smile, "I didn't stop to ask them."
"And then?" Aelfred prompted.
"Then I headed for Toril. I pushed the Ghost as hard as I could, for as long as I could keep my mind clear. I was well away from Garden, and I couldn't see the neogi anymore. That's when my helm died. No warning. One moment I'm tearing along at full spelljamming speed, the next, I'm moving at a crawl with no control over the ship at all."
Teldin felt a current of sympathy around the table. He could understand why. Vallus Leafbower's comments about distance in wildspace were still with him. The idea of being stranded in that vastness was terrifying.
"Bad," Sylvie commiserated, echoing the feelings of everyone else in the saloon. "What was wrong with the helm?"
Rianna shook her head, and her blond tresses swung. "I'm not an arcane," she chuckled. "I can run a helm. I can't troubleshoot one. It was just dead."
"And then?" Aelfred prompted again.
"Then I drifted. What else could I do? I was too far from Garden for its gravity to affect me, but I did still have some speed-though not much-and I was heading toward the sun. I figured the best thing-the only thing-was to conserve the air I had. No work, no movement that I could avoid. Just hope that some ship would find me before I suffocated." She bathed everyone at the table with a warm smile. "I slept a lot, but I didn't enjoy the dreams."
"The air was foul aboard your ship," Julia noted. "How long were you adrift?"
"Twenty-three days."
The female officer looked at her uncertainly. "You had food and water for twenty-three days? On a mosquito?"