"Still," Jherek said, not able to fully shake the doubt that had lived within him all his life, "standing up for me might not have been the best thing to do. The Amnians will get word of what Captain Finaren has done and Butterfly will be on their black lists."
"Kind of thought the same thing, lad. Seems Merchant Lelayn mentioned that to the cap'n. Said he didn't care to do business with a man who didn't keep his mind on business. Then the cap'n, he told the Amnian that an honest man was worth his weight in gold to a man in business for himself, and the passage to and from Baldur's Gate aboard this ship didn't come close to that amount. Said him not standing up for you might mean losing you, and that was his bottom line."
Jherek knew that wasn't true. Getting a berth on a ship's crew had been hard, even in Velen. If it hadn't been for Madame litaar and his experience working in Shipwright Makim's yard, Captain Finaren wouldn't have given him a second glance. If not for Butterfly, he didn't know what ship he would have crewed aboard. There were too many experienced sailors in the Duchy of Cape Velen, and none of those bore his sins.
"In the end," Hagagne went on, "Merchant Lelayn agreed that the cap'n standing up for you was good business. Said when he got back to Athkatla, he'd put another cargo together and ship with Butterfly again."
"That is good news," Jherek said.
"Aye. With the cap'n and Butterfly, we'll do all right. Not many got the rep of either of those."
It was something to take pride in and Jherek did, even though the edicts of Ilmater preached against such feelings. He glanced back at the Amnians below. "I'll wish them good luck in their fishing."
"From up here," Hagagne suggested.
"Aye."
Hagagne gave him a side-long glance. "And hope that the lady wins so that she doesn't have to live up to her end of the wager?"
Jherek's face burned. Thoughts of the young woman sharing her bed silks with anyone didn't set easy with him even though she wasn't what he'd thought she was.
"Don't be so embarrassed, lad. Your heart's full of love at your age, and there's nothing wrong with it, but you could do with a little seasoning, if you'd allow yourself. I know some of the tavern wenches who wouldn't mind a tumble if you'd only ask."
Ignoring the comment, Jherek gazed up at the darkening clouds. The storm seemed more threatening than ever. The shadows had chased the green from the Sea of Swords, turning even the water dark. Off in the distance, pale flickering lightning knifed through the sky.
"You reading again?" Hagagne asked, picking up the book.
"Aye."
"Never found a knack for reading meself," the crewman said, "but I like being read to well enough. What's this book about?"
"A liege's man," Jherek said. "He joined the king's army to fight against the goblin hordes threatening the kingdom, only to find that he's falling in love with his liege's lady."
"Does she know?"
Jherek nodded. "The lady's marriage was an arranged one. She doesn't love her liege. She loves the warrior."
"Perhaps when you have time, you'd read this one to me." Hagagne picked up the thick volume. "I'd predict a short, unhappy ending, but I tell by the heft of this book that's not the case."
"No." Jherek loved the intricacies of the plot, loved the way the liege's man was at war with his own feelings and the rules he'd laid down for himself. He still didn't know how the story would end. "Aye, I’ll read it to you if you'd like."
Hagagne clapped him on the back. "Now there's a good lad. I shall look forward to it."
Jherek replaced the volume in his kit, brought to him earlier by a crewman the captain had sent up. His eye wandered back to the cog's wake to study the fishing lines. He and Hagagne watched in silence for a few moments, then watched Yeill's line suddenly draw taut.
A cheer rose from the throats of the Amnians, showing the effects of the wine they'd been drinking. It died away when the shark's dorsal fin broke the water.
The triangle of cartilaginous flesh looked impossibly large. The brute's gray mottled head broke water next, the fishing line trapped in its snarl of teeth.
The cheers turned to a panicked chorus of fear.
Jherek rose to his feet, yelling down from the crow's nest. "Cut the line! Cut the line!"
The line was stout, unbreakable. Butterfly had a large crew and she had to feed them. The Sea of Swords held big fish, and the captain wanted none of them to get away once they were hooked. The enchantment on the lines he'd paid for kept them from breaking, though they could be cut. Still, two men had been pulled from Butterfly's deck before.
Captain Finaren himself moved first, shoving his way through the ring of Amnian wealthy. He drew his cutlass and pulled it back to swing.
Timbers groaned and screeched as Yeill's fishing chair yanked free of the deck and tore through the railing. She was gone in an instant, pulled under by the big shark she'd hooked.
Jherek stood in the crow's nest and drew his seaman's knife from his leg sheath. The knife blade was a foot long, thick and heavy, with a saw-toothed back for cutting through bone. The small handle barely filled his fist.
"Sea devils!" someone shouted.
Glancing to his left, Jherek saw a sahuagin manta surface on Butterfly's port side. The oblong barge used by the sahuagin to travel above or below water was much smaller than most of its kind that the young sailor had heard described. Like all of its kind that he'd heard about, the manta had been cobbled together from ships wrecked at sea or scavenged from shorelines. The boards were stained green with undersea scud from being submerged for so long, but fitted neatly into a wedge shape that made it very maneuverable. It rode low in the water, but the finned shapes of the sahuagin could be seen hunkered down on the benches. They paddled furiously, moving in response to a measured cadence, totally focused on their prey.
Jherek had heard stories about mantas that crewed as many as six hundred sahuagin, but firsthand stories were few and far between. Most men who saw them perished in the sea devils' attack. From his initial estimate, he guessed that there were forty or fifty sahuagin aboard, easily twice the number of crew aboard Butterfly.
Captain Finaren bawled out orders at once, calling his crew into action.
Jherek looked at the water where Yeill had gone under. He couldn't see her.
"Lad," Hagagne called from the ship's rigging, already moving down to the deck himself. He stopped when he realized what Jherek was about to attempt. "Leave her. She's probably already in that shark's belly by now and not worth your life even if she isn't."
"I can't."
Hagagne reached back for the young sailor, but Jherek avoided the other man's grasp. Without another word, he dived from the crow's nest, plummeting toward the dark water.
II
Jherek hit the ocean cleanly, holding his hands before him to break the surface tension and lessen the chance of injury from impact. Still, the force of hitting the water nearly drove the breath from his lungs. The cold bit into him with jagged, angry teeth. The sahuagin manta was ahead and on the port side of Finaren's Butterfly so he knew he wouldn't immediately be seen by the sea devils aboard their barge.
He also knew that the shark that had taken Yeill's hook hadn't bitten by chance. The sahuagin ran with the sharks. He didn't doubt the danger that more sharks would be around as he attempted to save the Amnian woman.
The darkened sky above the ocean cut down on the visibility beneath the water as well. Pale colored sand covered the rolling ocean floor, and brain coral stood up in bunches, like tumors. A coral reef that housed dozens of multicolored fish hiding from the sharks ran in an irregular line to his right. As always, being below the ocean line filled Jherek with a sense of ease. Everything moved more slowly here, and it seemed more open to him than even the sky. He could feel the water, feel the pressure of it against his body, feel the current that mixed warm and cold water in layers. He felt at home there.