'Kheda!' Risala was on deck, jungle blade in her hands, ready to hack the hands off anyone trying to come aboard.
Unable to think what to say, Kheda dived into the water, ducking his head under the cool sea, rubbing his fouled hands over and around each other, scrubbing at his head and body. Rolling and twisting, he struggled out of his tunic, letting it float away, his trousers too. Broaching the surface with a gasp when he could stay submerged no longer, he found the salt freshness had driven away the stink hanging around him.
'Dev's here!' Risala hung over the Amigal's rail.
Kheda wiped water out of his eyes, seeing Risala as no more than an outline against the first shimmer of the rising moon.
The Lesser Moon, just at half, distant and aloof, on the cusp of decline, so soon to be lost in the return of the greater jewel, but biding its time, knowing the next cycle of the heavens will see its full riding unchallenged in an empty sky.
Kheda swam for the rope Risala had thrown down for him. 'Where is he?'
'I can't get any sense out of him.' Risala was bloodied with scratches, dishevelled and exhausted, but there was a light of terrified triumph in her eyes. 'What's happened to him?'
Dev was huddled at the base of the Amigal's mast. Kheda knelt and pushed him upright against the wood. The wizard's head lolled as he grinned crazily at Kheda, dark eyes rolling. The fine silk of his tunic was stained and scorched, his gaudy jewellery clotted with dried blood, the very metal broken and twisted. His arms were scored with deep scratches still oozing sluggishly. Even in the failing light, Kheda could see appalling bruises through the tears in Dev's trousers, one foot darkening and swelling with the hint of broken bones within.
'Didn't realise, did he? What was he was doing, drawing more and more elements into himself? I could do it, though, matching him turning himself wrongways out and upside down.' Dev waved a feeble, broken-fingered hand and Kheda saw all the nails were torn, thumbnail wholly missing. 'He didn't know what I could do. It's all very well, calling that kind of magic, as long as you've got somewhere to send it.' Dev licked ineffectively at the spittle coating his chin. His lip was split, there were bite marks on his chin and his bald head was scraped raw in places. 'You're as screwed as a tuppenny whore on market day if you've nowhere to go with such power. I slammed the door on him good and proper, didn't I? Bet Kalion couldn't have done it, nor yet Planir, not hardly, not likely. What say I challenge one of them to try it? That's how the savages do it, prove who's best. Who's still standing at the end, that's your man, not whoever can make the most friends in the halls and copyhouses.'
Kheda silenced the wizard's ramblings with a slap to the face that echoed across the deck. Dev looked at him, mouth open, shocked. Kheda could feel Risala's astonished eyes boring into his back but there was no time to explain.
'Get some of that brandy of his, quick!' He seized Dev by the shoulders and shook him. 'The moon, Dev, look at the moon. Remember, we have to send the sign, to bring the other ships down here. There are still hundreds of those savages. They're everywhere. They'll kill us if they find us. We need Daish men and Chazen to come and reclaim the domain. The moon, Dev, you have to raise a cloud to colour the moon!'
Loose and boneless in his grasp, the wizard blinked, bleary-eyed, trying to focus on the distant half circle of light in the darkening sky. 'The moon?'
Risala appeared at Kheda's shoulder. Kheda propped Dev up with one hand to his chest and took the stubby black bottle, pulling the stopper free with his teeth. He spat the cork aside, coughing as the reek of spirits bit at his throat. 'You said you could do it, remember? You said you could lift sand high enough into the air to colour the moon for anyone looking from Daish lands? You promised me you could do it!' He forced the neck of the bottle between Dev's flaccid lips and tipped white brandy into the wizard's mouth.
Dev choked and coughed on frenzied giggles. 'A cloud to colour the moon? I said I could do that?' He reached for the bottle with clumsy hands.
'You did. You swore it.' Kheda wrapped the wizard's fingers around the brandy. 'Don't tell me you can't, not after everything you've done today!'
Hands trembling, Dev took a long swallow of liquor, his body shaking like a man in the grip of fever. 'You saw it,' he said, husky with emotion. 'You saw it all. I did it, matched that Dragonhide and more. Didn't know if I could. Didn't tell you that.' His laugh was little more than a hysterical gasp.
'Can you colour the moon?' Kheda thrust his face close, forcing the wizard to meet his gaze. 'You told me you could do that! Was that the truth?'
Dev sat up a little straighter, grip on the bottle firmer, face turning ugly. 'No man calls me a liar,' he snarled breathlessly.
'I'm not calling you a liar.' Kheda sat back on his heels. 'I'm asking you to prove yourself.'
'That wasn't proof enough?' Dev gestured in the vague direction of the carnage beyond the headland.
White brandy sloshed from the bottle to land cold on Kheda's bare arm and sting his scratches viciously. He tasted it on the air, sharp and spicy. 'Can you do it or not?
Furious, Dev hurled the bottle down the deck. The throw too feeble to break it, it rolled away leaving a glistening trail of brandy on the planks. 'Watch this, you ignorant pig of an Archipelagan!'
With a sweeping motion of one hand, Dev cast a swathe of faint red out towards the island. The magelight spread and faded and Kheda's heart sank as the last vestiges melted away into the ground. He turned away, sick at heart.
It's not going to be over then. There'll be no rest for you, no return home in triumph, not with these wild men still plaguing the Daish domain. How can we gather a force to fight them, before they summon some more of their iniquitous wizards?
'Look at that,' whispered Risala, awestruck.
Kheda opened his eyes to see red magelight rising from the shore; thicker now but dimmed, spreading like a mist but heavy with dust and debris from the ground. Dev thrust his other hand upwards and a shaft of searing blue light soared up to challenge the cold light of the first stars. It drew the haze of powdered earth inexorably upward, higher and higher, finally breaking like a fountain to be lost in the vastness of the sky. The dust kept on rising from the island, the magic darkening and deepening. The blue light carried it up, threads and flurries twisting and knotting.
Kheda waited, heart pounding in his chest. Slowly a shadow edged across the half circle of the distant moon, barely more than imagination at first but little by little thickening to a veil of red.
'That's your sign?' asked Risala.
Kheda nodded. 'It's a portent that everyone should be able to read. If Janne's done her work, it'll bring all the ships south. That should be swords and arrows enough to kill every last one of these accursed savages.' Hope twisted in his chest like the piercing blade of a dagger.
The magical radiance vanished like a snuffed candle. Dev fell to the deck with a heavy thud and Kheda and Risala dropped to their knees either side of him.
'He's barely breathing,' said Risala with consternation. 'What do we do?'
What does one do with a wizard? You were always taught magic was dangerous, destructive, corrupting. You've seen it for yourself and the slaughter that even a few mages can encompass. What does one do with a wizard? One kills it as one would a venomous snake.
He's helpless, unconscious. He's a mage who can scatter a beach full of armed men by turning their very weapons against them. He's a man who can burn men to char and ashes without so much as laying a finger on them. You've a dagger to hand, a Daish dagger no less. Cut his throat and who would ever blame you? Cut his throat and there's no one to tell Chazen Saril, Ritsem Caid or anyone else that you suborned sorcery as the only way of driving out these savages.