“Time to go,” Tithian said.
The king drew the energy for another spell and used his magic to levitate himself. Taking care to stay away from any giant that could bat him down, he drifted out over the stern. Behind him, the Silt Lion’s vats of Balican fire began to ignite, sending column after column of golden flame shooting into the pearly sky. Within moments, the schooner’s wreck could not be distinguished from that of the King’s Lady.
Tithian quickly identified Fylo’s distinctive form at the other end of the conflagration. The giant stood near the detached bow of the King’s Lady, the one piece of the ship that was not in flames, laughing in childish delight as he used a yardarm to knock the last few survivors off the upended hull.
Tithian drifted forward through the smoke and haze. At the same time, the king took the precaution of withdrawing a small glass rod from his satchel, but he did not fully prepare the spell that would turn it into a lightning bolt. Until he learned how Fylo had come to be a part of this ambush, and what had happened to Agis, he had no intention of killing the giant.
Tithian stopped just out of Fylo’s reach. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, yelling to make himself heard across the distance.
The giant stepped away from the wreck, raising his yardarm to swing at the king. “Traitor!”
Tithian dodged back. The huge club sank into the silt with a muffled whump, raising a curtain of pearly dust.
“Why are you attacking your friend?” the king asked, resisting the urge to cast his spell.
Fylo narrowed his eyes, gauging the distance to his target, then shrugged and turned back to the bow of the King’s Lady. “Tithian liar, not friend,” he said, using his yardarm to push a dwarf into the silt. “Agis real friend.”
“What does Agis have to do with this?” Tithian asked. He felt both relieved and angry, for the giant’s comment implied that he had released the noble and not killed him. “You promised to guard him!”
“Make promise before Agis show real Tithian to Fylo,” said the giant. “Then we go to Balic, and Agis tell Fylo about fleet going to Lybdos. He say, ‘Warn giants. Maybe they let Fylo live with them.’ ” The half-breed brought his pole down on a templar, crushing the man like a beetle. “Him right. Now Fylo can live on Lybdos-with beasthead friends.”
Tithian could not contain himself. “What makes you think anyone could tolerate a hideous moron like you?”
His eyes bugging out in anger, Fylo threw his yardarm at Tithian. The king tried to dodge, but the pole glanced off his shoulder, sending a terrible ache shooting down his arm and knocking the glass rod from his hand. He plummeted toward the sea, barely regaining control of his body in time to prevent himself from plunging into the dust. Fylo was on him instantly, grasping Tithian tightly in his massive fingers and preventing the king from reaching into his satchel for another spell component.
“Agis like Fylo!” the giant snarled. “Beastheads like Fylo!”
Tithian shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But Agis is just using you. So are the beastheads. When all this is done, they’ll send you away. Fylo will be alone, just like before.”
“No!” Despite the retort, the giant looked crestfallen.
“Yes,” Tithian insisted. “I’m the only one who could like you. Everyone else thinks you’re ugly.”
Fylo shook his head. “Tithian liar! Tithian do terrible things to his friends in Kled.”
“Did Agis tell you that?” Tithian asked, continuing his ploy. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. He’s been jealous of me ever since I became king. But what really hurts, Fylo, is knowing you believe him.”
The giant looked surprised. “It does?”
Tithian nodded. “More than you can know,” he said. “One has so few friends when he’s a king. I thought that you and I …” He let the sentence trail off, then lowered his eyes.
“Fylo think so too-once,” said the giant. He returned to the bow of the King’s Lady, then plucked the last templar off the upturned hull and tossed the unfortunate fellow to the wind.
“What are you doing?” Tithian asked, alarmed.
“Agis warn Fylo you try another trick,” the giant answered, squeezing the king so tightly that he could not draw breath. “Agis say leave you here.”
“You can’t betray me!”
“Fylo get even before he go to live on Lybdos,” the giant chortled. “Good-bye, friend.”
He flicked the king’s head with his huge index finger, and Tithian felt himself settling into a gray haze.
FIVE
OLD FRIENDS
In the shallow trough between two dust swells lay the severed bow of a Balican schooner. It rested on its side, blanketed by a gray mantle of silt, its bowsprit rising into the air at a shallow angle. On the hull lay a man, fully exposed to the crimson sun and as still as the sea itself.
“There he is!” Agis cried.
The noble pointed toward the debris. Kester, standing with him and Nymos on the Shadow Viper’s quarterdeck, turned her heavy brow to the caravel’s port side. Her eyes quickly fell on the wreckage, for the day was a calm one, almost barren of wind and more stifling than a kiln.
“Yer sure that’s him?” the tarek asked.
Although the distance was too great to see the prone man’s features clearly, Agis nodded. “I haven’t seen any other survivors, and Fylo promised that he’d leave Tithian where I could find him.” The caravel began to slide down the dust swell’s slip face, and the noble added, “Bring us alongside.”
The tarek shook her head. “He looks dead.”
“Living or not, I’m taking him back to Tyr.”
“Not on the Shadow Viper,” said Kester. “Ye hired me to capture a live man, not a dead one. I’ll not have his spirit plaguing me ship.”
“Then I won’t pay you for the trip home,” the noble threatened.
“Ye will pay-or I’ll set ye off over there!” She pointed at a scrub-covered island less than a mile away.
Agis shook his head. “Our agreement was that you’d help me capture Tithian-and it doesn’t matter whether he’s alive or dead.”
Kester reached for a knife, but Nymos interposed himself between the tarek and the noble. “This is foolish,” said the sorcerer, his blind eyes focused on neither of them. “Why don’t we go and see what Tithian’s condition is? If he’s not drawing breath, then you can argue.”
“A prudent suggestion,” said Agis.
Kester scowled for a moment longer. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll bring us about.”
The tarek turned her attention to the main deck, where the ship’s canvas hung furled to the yardarms. Twenty crewmen toiled along each gunnel, thrusting wooden poles, each as tall as a giant, into the silt alongside the ship. After the long rods touched the shallow strait’s bottom, the haggard slaves marched sternward, pushing the caravel along at a mekillot’s pace. To keep everyone in step, the first man in each line chanted a deep-throated dirge, “Push-ho, push-ho, push-ho or die.”
As the two singers reached the quarterdeck, they changed the chant. “Stop ye, stop ye, time to rest, mate!”
Both lines of slaves halted and withdrew their poles from the dust. After everyone had stopped moving, the man at the front of each group cried, “Front now, front now, to work with ye!” This sent them all scurrying forward to plunge their poles into the dust and start over again.
When the Shadow Viper’s bow reached the bottom of the dust swell, Kester braced herself against the gunnel and yelled, “Hard to port, Perkin!”