Pirvan wanted to suggest what the minotaurs could do with their parley and the council with its sudden need for delegates to it. However, that reply lacked a knight's dignity, if it was not actually unlawful.
Furthermore, minotaurs being the first to propose a parley was uncommon. It suggested shrewd leadership in their fleet, even if all their delegates intended to do was pound the table and bellow demands and threats.
Also, the human fleet's council was plainly not marching entirely to the beat of the kingpriest's drum, if they wanted any of the folk just named in their delegation. Surely there would be others, more in sympathy with the kingpriest-and still more if Pirvan and any of the others refused to go.
"I accept," Pirvan said, "likewise Haimya, subject to the approval of Sir Niebar. I must have that, by law. He should also be asked to join us, as commander over the embarked knights."
"Sir Niebar might command all the hosts of Ansalon, but he knows less of minotaurs than you do," Aurhinius said.
"I forged an alliance with one minotaur," Pirvan said. He knew he sounded tired and out of temper. He was. "One minotaur, moreover, very unlike most of his kind."
"That is still one more minotaur than most of us have dealt with," Aurhinius said. "But certainly I can ask Niebar."
"Sir Niebar," Pirvan said, but he was talking to a closed door, and Haimya had not only dropped the sheet again but climbed out of her bunk to embrace him. The embrace had just become mutual when knocking came again.
Pirvan opened the door just enough to see Aurhinius again.
"Yes?" He sounded as welcoming as a jailor hearing news of an uprising among his charges.
"Torvik's men are good, loyal stuff," Aurhinius said. "A new signal from Red Elf: she is staying to search the area, and has one survivor aboard already."
"As you said, good stuff," Pirvan said. "Or perhaps just with enough sense to tell ale from wine. I would not care to be known along the waterfronts of Ansalon as a man who abandoned the son of Jemar the Fair."
Pirvan took a firm grip on both the doorknob and his temper. "Now, my friend, a word of warning. The next person who knocks on this door before dawn, for anything short of the end of the world or the sinking of Wavebiter, will be bound, gagged, and hung up by his heels from the deck beams. Please send out the word.
"I can hardly be expected to bargain with minotaurs without sleep."
"Ah, but will you sleep more if not interrupted, or less?" Aurhinius said. With surprising speed for one of his age and bulk, he darted back before Pirvan could slam the door on his hand or thrust steel through the crack.
Haimya, meanwhile, fought so hard not to shriek with laughter that she finally had to lean on her husband to keep from falling.
"I-I suppose I said a word too many," Pirvan muttered into her hair.
"More than a few," Pirvan grinned and tightened his embrace. "Perhaps I lacked inspiration."
"Then pray let me provide it."
The first of Torvik's senses to awaken was his sense of smell. He smelled the scent of a tide-swept beach, overlain like silk by the perfume of tropical flowers, and also by overripe seaweed and other jetsam.
His ears came to reinforce his nose. Either he was on the beach of a landlocked harbor, or the sea was as calm as a pond. He barely heard the faintest gurgle and splash of water on the sand-fifty paces away, as far as he could judge.
He was not in the place where he had landed, he thought. He had a dim memory of gravel with as many teeth as a baby shark biting into his all-but-senseless body. Now he was on sand as fine as dust, with what felt like rushes in a bundle under his feet, to raise them above the level of his head.
Torvik was trying to pick out the scent of the rushes from the other scents on the breeze, when a new scent floated by. It had salt in it, and other smells of the sea, and also living flesh, sweet breath-he could almost say the smell of a woman.
Which was so unlikely here and now that Torvik decided to open his eyes, to see what was giving him the illusion of a woman's presence.
He opened his eyes, and found himself staring straight up into other eyes-two of them, vast and green, surmounted by thick eyebrows too brown to be called red and too red to be called brown. Above the eyes flowed hair the same color as the brows. Below was a face that lacked perfect beauty-the cheekbones were too high, the lips a trifle weathered, and the chin definitely sharp. The lips lacked nothing, however, including a gentle curve given them by a smile.
Torvik lay, wondering if he was the captive of an enchantress and if so, was this her real form? If the rest of her matched her face, his would be a joyous captivity.
He tried to move, to see the rest of his captor. His head moved, but his limbs refused to obey his brain.
"Lie still," the woman said. "You need to regain your strength. I will give you some water, if you can raise your head a little higher."
Her voice was low for a woman's, and although her Common was fluent, it held an accent he did not recognize. However, he had no trouble raising his head. At her command, he would have tried to dance on his hands.
He sipped fresh water, with a faint hint of herbs in it, which was all she allowed him to do. He would gladly have gulped the water down by the jugful, the more so when he felt strength creeping back into his limbs.
But that swiftly proved an illusion. He was glad enough to lie back down, head pillowed on the bundle of sweet-scented weed. It was only then that he noticed that the woman's skin held a faint but unmistakable tint of blue. It was a color he had previously seen only in the skins of the dying or the drowned, but this woman was plainly alive and in excellent health. She had strands of seaweed woven into that glorious auburn hair, rather like a high-ranking Istaran lady's hairnet.
His lips spoke without waiting for his mind to guide them. "My mother said that it is hard to wear blue and green at the same time," he said.
The woman smiled. "Your mother was wise. But I am also sure that she was human. What guides your folk does not always hold true for mine."
"Who are your folk?"
"We have been called the Dimernesti," she said, "the shallows-dwellers, and other names, some of them not friendly. The minotaur name for us means 'offal with flippers,' and that is not the worst."
"I suppose it would not be," he said. "The minotaurs are seldom polite, but still more seldom stupid." Minotaurs were the last folk he wanted to talk about now, but he did not wish to lie there with his mouth open like a dying fish.
Now his wits were beginning to move again, like the rowers of a galley falling into a faster stroke. "Was it you who saved me?" he asked.
"I did some work. My friends did more."
"Your friends? Other Dimernesti?"
She sighed, and for a moment he saw her looking far away toward something not in the world. He also saw crow's-feet at the comer of either eye. This sea-elf was no green girl-and at that last phrase, laughter nearly choked him.
The Dimernesti woman waited until Torvik got his breath back and sat up before going on. When he had, he missed her first few words. He realized for the first time that she was half a head taller than he, as splendidly formed as he had imagined, and quite unclad except for the net in her hair and a wide belt of fishskin from which hung several bottles and pouches.
"I am the only Dimernesti on this island," she told him. "But the sea otters and I are friends, and enemies to what Wilthur the Brown has unleashed on these waters. We may not be Wilthur's only foes, but we are certainly the only friends to humans."
Torvik remembered the sea otters, who must have worked together as if trained to bear him to the surface and the life-giving air, "Did they-have you saved any others of my men?" he asked.