Under the water, Wirrin could feel the world much better than she had from the boat. She could feel the soft, sandy mud below her. She could feel the solid, rotting, wooden frames that supported the hive-like, miasmic strangeness of the coral growths.

  She could feel the Flesh mage, a strong swimmer, making good time back toward the ship. She could feel Yern wiggling the tiller back and forth, trying to make the boat move from where she’d left it.

  Wirrin couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in the ocean, not clearly. It must have been before she moved to Tellan as a child. She had played in the ocean with some of the other kids who hung around the docks with the Sovtlan, but the memories were hazy at best.

  Even back then, Wirrin hadn’t much liked the ocean. The most fun she remembered having in the bay was in winter, when it froze over and even the adults would go out on the ice to skate and slide, or go ice fishing if they were boring.

  The statue below felt oddly like those childhood memories of the Ettovica bay. A hazy miasma, strange and unclear. Some combination of decay and life, driving rain and sunny breeze. Some combination of concrete and unknown.

  Wirrin pulled herself down, toward the sea floor and the statue. Behind her, she grabbed the swimming Flesh mage and dragged them along. Ideally, she wouldn’t have used a Flesh mage, she wasn’t confident she could kill one if they were ready for her. But she had to take the opportunity as it presented itself.

  Another mage dove into the water after them. They swam in almost exactly the same way as the other Flesh mage. Wirrin ignored them. They wouldn’t reach her in time, and her lungs were already starting to feel tight.

  The water was clear, the statue was not. A vaguely humanoid form with the tail of a fish and a strangely shaped head was buried under the porous, colourful miasma of coral growth.

  That coral growth was so distracting, Wirrin didn’t even notice that she’d let go of the Flesh mage she’d been dragging down here. She didn’t notice them pause so that the other Flesh mage could catch up.

  Had her lungs not been screaming for air, Wirrin might not have noticed the two Flesh mages almost reach her in unison. But despite the fascinating miasma of Haerst’s statue, Wirrin still needed to breathe.

  Wirrin and the statue burst from the water in a shower of mud, fish and loose coral. She gasped in a breath. Before she could see the statue, coral suddenly shed, she was blinded by the burning sun.

  The Flesh mages were still far below.

  A ball of sandy mud swooped over the deck of the ship and scooped up the Light mage from where he leaned over the railing. The light faded just as suddenly as it had arrived when the ball of mud slammed into Haerst’s statue with a loud crunch.

  The mud slid off the statue, leaving the shattered corpse of the Light mage. Wirrin finally got to see Haerst’s statue.

  A shark’s face protruded from a feathered head, neck, and shoulders, melding into the torso of a human, knees bent and arms upraised as if about to dive into the water. From the back of the torso grew a scaled fish tail long enough to rest on the ground.

  Much of the coral had been shaken free by the rapid rise to the surface, but some still clung around the statue, giving parts of the shark head, torso, and tail a mottled, porous look.

  As blood flowed from the Light mage and into the statue, colour spread across the grey stone, as with the other Fiends. Tanned flesh met glittering scales and bright feathers, grey, rough skin and brilliant, multicoloured teeth so reminiscent of something Wirrin had seen before as to be almost as distracting as the reefs had been.

  The coral that grew on the statue, by contrast, melded from strange, mottled colours to the solid grey of stone, fusing with the image of the Fiend as if carved and not grown.

  As the body of the Light mage slid into the mud, Wirrin put a hand on Haerst’s statue.

  ‘I am returned,’ the voice boomed like thunder, crashed like waves. It whistled like a high wind, clattered like a ship’s rigging. Below all that was the bubbling of surf on the beach, the shushing of a calm breeze, the gulping of the tide, and the gentle patter of rain on the roof.

  Grass was growing rapidly across the little platform of muddy ground that Wirrin had raised from the ocean. As vines curled up her ankles, a spout of water struck the Growth mage, still leaning over the ship’s railing, full in the face. He shrieked, and collapsed into the ocean.

  ‘Good,’ Wirrin said. ‘Nice to meet you, Haerst. Go talk to everyone else while I sort out these Flesh mages, would you?’

  Wirrin’s head pounded as a much wider swath of muddy ground burst out of the ocean, sending the Flesh mages flying into the air. Despite the increasing feeling like she could understand the Fiend’s babbling if she only concentrated enough, they were easy to ignore.

  A hole opened in one of the Flesh mages as a spear of rock burst through the mud, tearing through his robe and missing his flesh completely. The other Flesh mage hit the mud like diving into water and disappeared.

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  The impaled Flesh mage rolled sideways, tearing his robe off as the hole in his gut closed back up. Expertly, he dug an elbow into the stone and shifted onto his feet to slide, elegantly, to the muddy platform Wirrin had raised.

  He opened his mouth to say something. Wirrin clapped her hands over her ears, and he must have thought she was ignoring him. The final expression on his face was earnest offence.

  Out of the blue sky where the Light mage had burned away the clouds, a lightning bolt struck the Flesh mage on the top of the head and he collapsed, twitching, into the mud.

  The little boat where Yern had stopped struggling with the tiller and was pretending not to be fascinated by the goings on started to drift toward the platform where Haerst’s statue had emerged from the water.

  Wirrin waved at Yern to get her attention, and then positioned herself with legs apart, hands behind her back, body leaned over and mouth open. Yern frowned at her.

  The buried Flesh mage burst from the ground and met Wirrin’s teeth neck-first.

  Yern spluttered and cackled.

  The boat butted up against the muddy platform Wirrin had made and Yern carefully climbed out. She showed a remarkable amount of restraint as she picked across the mud, glaring at Wirrin and crossing and uncrossing her arms.

  Once she got to the grass, she ran and jumped on Wirrin. 'Stop leaving me behind. I had no idea what was happening.'

  'You're alive and unharmed?' Wirrin asked, holding Yern up.

  Yern leaned back to glare. 'Yes.'

  'Then I will not,' Wirrin said. 'I'd rather you survive than be perfectly informed.'

  Yern kept glaring. 'I'd rather be perfectly informed. You're bleeding again.'

  Wirrin nodded and let Yern climb down. ‘That does seem to keep happening, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Hope your first aid kit is waterproof,’ Yern said.

  Wirrin stood as still as she could while Yern added yet more stitches to her left side, smeared her in more of the myrrh salve, and wrapped some bandages around her middle.

  ‘I would tell you to stay out of trouble,’ Yern said, as she packed up the first aid kit. ‘But I think I can see the other ship.’

  Yern was right, as she usually was. That skinnier ship had almost reached the far side of the bigger ship that was still anchored and unmoving beside Haerst’s ocean platform.

  ‘You should leave, Wirrin,’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘There’s no need to fight them.’

  ‘Still so cautious,’ Haerst whistled like a high wind. ‘I only saw two mages fall, but they fell easily, did they not?’

  ‘In two days, Wirrin has fifty-three stitches,’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘She does not need more in a useless fight.’

  ‘It could be useful,’ Ulvaer cackled. ‘There’s more food to be had.’

  Wirrin picked up the Flesh mage she’d struck with lightning and took a bite. She wasn’t feeling worn out at all. The headache had been kept at bay, no haloes played behind her eyes. She ached from all her stitches, of course, but that was hardly a problem.

  ‘Wirrin hardly needs more food, does she?’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘It’s hard to have fun when you’re dead, I expect.’

  ‘I will be unaffected,’ Ulvaer cackled. ‘My fun unended.’

  Overhead, dark clouds started to fill in the blue sky that had been opened by the Light mage.

  ‘You wouldn’t miss me?’ Wirrin asked.

  Yern frowned at her. ‘What are you going to die of?’

  ‘I would miss you, Wirrin,’ Ulvaer rattled. ‘I have hundreds to comfort me in my grief.’

  Wirrin snorted.

  Yern escalated to a glare as the boat started to drift around the ocean platform.

  ‘Mkaer thinks I should leave, not get into another fight,’ Wirrin said. ‘The others think it would be fun to stay.’

  ‘I am staying out of this,’ Naertral burbled. ‘The Mountain is right that it would be pointless to stay.’

  ‘Naertral is staying out of it,’ Wirrin said.

  Yern returned to frowning. ‘I always appreciate the opportunity to practice,’ she said. ‘So I’m conflicted. If you die, I can’t practice. And I don’t know how to sail. If you survive, I get to practice more.’

  ‘There, the Mountain is outvoted,’ Ulvaer cackled. ‘We stay and give Yern more opportunities to practice her medicine.’

  It started to rain.

  Wirrin hadn’t noticed her sense of the world change, when she’d awoken Haerst. She hadn’t been focusing on it, but nothing had stood out to her as changed or improved. The rain was different.

  The rain was more distracting than the reefs had been. Vibrations emanated from each tiny drop, immediately painting a picture of the world around. The nearby ship went from a vague blob in the water to a pulsating image of flaccid sails, rattling chains and cautious sailors.

  On the far side of that was the messenger ship, sails furled, deck flexing with each stroke of the oars. Easily twenty mages moving around the ship, skirting around Work mages as the ship seemed to steer itself, carefully nosing between reefs to avoid the first ship. Wirrin could feel no sailors on this one.

  ‘You’re going to have to be out of the way again,’ Wirrin told Yern, pointing to the boat. ‘Do you remember how to open the sail?’

  Yern nodded.

  ‘Try not to worry if you start drifting away,’ Wirrin said. ‘If we need to leave in a hurry, it’s better to have the sail already open.’

  Yern frowned harder. But she climbed back into the boat and started unfurling the sail. The breeze was still westerly, and the boat was facing south, so Wirrin was fairly sure it wouldn’t take off on its own.

  ‘If it does start drifting, you can steer into the breeze and you should stop,’ Wirrin said. ‘But… I’d rather you be out of danger.’

  Yern sighed. ‘Fine. You better not die.’

  ‘You could always become a mage of Haerst here,’ Wirrin said. ‘Would make sailing much easier.’

  Yern puffed out her cheeks. ‘No, I’d have to go back to Tegalk first, so I can wake them all up again and do it properly.’

  ‘She seems sensible,’ Haerst bubbled.

  ‘Everyone says so,’ Wirrin said.

  ‘And they’re right,’ Yern said. ‘Someone has to be sensible around here.’

  ‘And apparently it’s not going to be any of us,’ Mkaer rumbled.

  ‘Don’t be a sore loser, Mountain,’ Ulvaer cackled. ‘We all get one vote.’