Wirrin left a flower in the house, to pay for repairing the floor. She led the way down through Ahepvalt toward the boardwalks and the docks. About half the city was built up on the boardwalks over the shallower, marshier part of the bay.

  Wirrin wouldn’t be able to feel the groups of mages moving around as easily, once she was on the boardwalks, but she would have much easier access to water. And she was fairly sure she knew a couple of people who might be able to help her track down Haerst’s statue, even if they didn’t know it.

  And it would help with the experiments.

  At one of the markets near the docks, Wirrin bought Yern a selection of sweets and bought herself a selection of meats. Though she was partial to some of the sweetened drinks that were popular in the desert, Wirrin had never had much of a sweet tooth. It would have meant carrying around too much stuff.

  They spent much more time in the market than Wirrin would have liked, slowly working through the selection of different meats. Wirrin couldn’t have said why she was so sure that only meat would work, but she was sure.

  Whether the meat itself actually helped with the headaches and weakness, or it was simply the act of eating, was unclear. Wirrin ate a lot, as Yern nibbled on the selection of syrup-soaked pastries and little cakes.

  The food was fairly similar to what Wirrin had been eating at the hetavatok, aside from the amount of fish and seaweed and the lack of dates. Lots of smoked and dried meats, seasoned with chillis and other, harsher spices than were popular in the south or west.

  Wirrin was quite enjoying herself. She was getting some odd looks, as she kept getting up from the tables to buy more food. Yern was taking notes in Wirrin’s notebook about which foods Wirrin was finding most refreshing. Unsurprising to Wirrin, the foods that were most helpful were the richer cuts of beef and goat.

  Finally, after what must have been more than an hour, a hoarse voice sounded across the market. ‘Is that Wirrin?’

  Wirrin smiled. As much as she couldn’t be expected to remember the voices of everyone she had met in her twenty years of travels, she recognised Valok much more by his voice than by his face.

  Valok looked like a sailor in his late thirties, because he was a sailor in his late thirties. He was tall and skinny, dark skinned and light-haired, leathery, wiry, and grinning. His small, monolidded, brown eyes gleamed in the late afternoon sun.

  Wirrin had been hoping to run into Valok, who usually lived in a bunkhouse nearby when he was in Ahepvalt. He wasn’t often in Ahepvalt. He was usually on the sea off the eastern coast, trading goods back and forth.

  Somewhat like Dartol, Valok was someone who Wirrin ran into every couple of years without warning. She hadn’t worked with him nearly as much, she didn’t like being on the ocean, but she’d gotten to know him on a stormy trip from Epatlok to Votiv some fifteen years ago, back before he was captain of his own ship.

  Wirrin stood up.

  ‘By the Gods, that certainly is Wirrin.’ Valok drifted over to give Wirrin a big hug. ‘And you seem to have acquired a child.’

  ‘Valok, Yern, Yern, Valok.’ Wirrin did the introductions. ‘Yern, Valok is the captain of a trading ship who I’ve known for a good while.’

  Yern nodded along, closed the notebook, and offered her left hand to Valok.

  To Wirrin’s surprise, Valok put his left hand on Yern’s. ‘A pleasure, Yern,’ Valok grinned. He was jovial, like Datol. To Wirrin, he asked: ‘What are you doing in Ahepvalt, then? Looking for work?’

  ‘Sampling the local cuisine,’ Wirrin smiled. She waved at him to sit down and dug the siblings’ notebook out of her pack. She opened it to the pages on Haerst and slid it across the table. ‘Exploring.’

  Valok laughed. ‘Dartol said you were up to something.’

  ‘Do you two talk about me?’

  ‘Dartol talks about you,’ Valok grinned. ‘Ran into him in Epatlok about a month ago. Said he ran into you on the way to Esbolva, but you stayed there with business.’ Valok waggled his eyebrows. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Bilar, if you must know,’ Wirrin smiled. ‘Met her in the library. Had a very relaxing few days.’

  ‘And then went to do some heresy from the look of it,’ Valok said, flipping back and forth through the notebook. ‘These aren’t yours.’

  ‘They are now.’ Wirrin shrugged. ‘So, any ideas?’

  Valok frowned. ‘More heresy, is it?’

  ‘What do you care?’ Wirrin frowned back.

  ‘Shyavt hikt terava,’ Valok said. ‘Kan vostoll Thaulgtok.’

  Yern frowned.

  Wirrin rolled her eyes. ‘Kan vostoll gol, og vosk.’

  Yern frowned harder.

  ‘Shyavt hikt terava,’ Valok said, smiling. ‘Fine. Northwest. Past the strait. The reefs. That’s your best bet.’

  ‘I knew you were smart,’ Wirrin said. ‘We’ll be down the docks, looking for a little boat or something.’

  Valok sighed. ‘Osgot has a sailboat,’ he said. Then he hugged Wirrin again, and got up. ‘Nice meeting you, Yern. Careful of this one, she’s a problem.’

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  ‘Oh, I know,’ Yern said, still frowning. She watched Valok buy himself a fish stew and leave the market before she rounded on Wirrin. ‘What was that?’

  Wirrin shrugged. ‘It sort of doesn’t have a name,’ Wirrin said. ‘I think I heard someone call it Ishok Yastavat. Presumably because of all the sailors back in the day, and being in the middle of things, I suppose, the language ended up being just a lot of everything else smashed together.’

  Yern nodded a number of times, opened Wirrin’s notebook, wrote something down, and closed it again. ‘Olg vosk Thaulgtok?’

  ‘He’s sensible,’ Wirrin shrugged. ‘Doesn’t want to be on the Church’s bad side. So he’ll tell them where we are.’

  Yern frowned. ‘You don’t seem concerned about that.’

  Wirrin shrugged again. ‘It’ll be fine. We just need a boat.’

  ‘I’ve heard that Osgot has a sailboat,’ Yern said, sliding Wirrin’s notebook into her pack. ‘Should we pay them a visit?’

  Wirrin nodded. ‘I think we should.’

  Osgot was a shipbuilder in her late middle age. Wirrin had heard of her a few times, but never met her before. Osgot’s workshop was on the eastern side of the docks, where most of the shipbuilders were set up closer to the woods.

  Nearly eight years ago, Valok had said that Osgot looked like Wirrin if she were a sailor, and he hadn’t been entirely wrong. Osgot was tall and broad, with thick arms and legs, and a soft gut. She was tan, with a broad, leathery face and bright, brown, monolidded eyes. She was unmistakably a northerner, taller and skinnier than Wirrin, with bigger eyes and a sharper nose.

  The sailboat in question had not been built by Osgot, it had been sold to her to be fixed. She explained to Wirrin and Yern that she’d replaced a few boards, put in some new caulk, and replaced the sail and rigging. It had been sold to her very cheap, and most of the materials for repair had been leftovers from bigger projects, so she only wanted three swords for it.

  Wirrin, who knew about boats from her time in Esbolva and time spent with Valok, haggled down a little. Mostly she was just killing time, waiting for the Church to arrive, so she only haggled down two hammers. Two swords and three hammers changed hands.

  Mkaer complained the whole time that she should leave.

  It was just reaching early evening as Wirrin slowly showed Yern how to get the sailboat ready to sail. She would have preferred to leave a bit earlier in the day, or the next morning. But she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

  Wirrin felt the vibrations of a group of people hurrying across the boardwalk toward Osgot’s boathouse. She couldn’t tell for sure that it was a group of mages, nor how many there were, but she hadn’t felt anyone else really hurrying. It wasn’t the time of day for it.

  Yern made a cute little ‘eep’ when the boat dropped in the water as the tide suddenly went out. It was a very localised wave. There was a localised flurry of activity as anyone on the few nearby boats scrambled for safety.

  The hurried group of mages, more than thirty of them, rushed onto the dock. Someone shouted: ‘Wirrin! Stop!’

  ‘I wonder how much the Church really cares about the ocean, if they got rid of Haerst and Naertral,’ Wirrin said. ‘Hold your breath.’

  Yern’s cheeks bulged as she took a deep breath, clamped a hand over her nose, and grabbed the mast with the other.

  Like blurred figures in fog, Wirrin felt kelp and seaweed under the water growing up toward the hull of the boat.

  ‘Oh, and close your eyes.’ Wirrin followed her own instructions as a huge wave washed over the boat and onto the dock where the mages were in various stages of noticing or bracing themselves.

  The wave splashed over twenty-eight mages and no one else. It technically wasn’t a tidal wave, but it was close enough for anyone who knew what to look for to have already gotten out of the way.

  Wirrin couldn’t tell what pendants the individual mages were wearing through the water. She figured Vonaer wouldn’t be too upset.

  Twenty-one mages silently collapsed to the ground. Far fewer than Wirrin would have liked. As her little boat started taking off, propelled by the water, a pair of War mages flashed across the deck and into the air. They drifted like dandelion seeds with perfect aim.

  Three more War mages were in the air before the first two landed on the stern without unsettling the boat in the slightest. As Wirrin’s head started to throb again, the water that had settled into the boat blasted at the War mages.

  As gently as they’d arrived, the boat nearly tipped over backward as they launched themselves out of the way. One of the airborne mages became very suddenly as heavy as a regular person when struck by an acid spout, and crashed into the water.

  The other two landed heavily on the back of the boat, sending the front up into the air again.

  This close, Wirrin had no chance to avoid being stabbed. The best she could do was be stabbed somewhere less important than the lungs. As a sword jabbed through her side, she grabbed one of the mages and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

  He grunted, stoically. Then he screamed, loudly, when Wirrin tore his right clavicle and part of his lung out of his body.

  Another sword stabbed through Wirrin’s left trap. Wirrin swiped at the other mage and finally saw her own body change. Claws like a cat’s growing from the ends of her fingers as she grabbed at empty space.

  Wirrin swallowed and her head stopped throbbing.

  A pillar of stone erupted from the water just off starboard. It was nice of Vonaer to miss like that. A mage moving only slightly faster than a peak human landed on the pillar and leapt at the boat.

  The top of the pillar hit the Flesh mage in the back and sent them hurtling into the water.

  One of the War mages landed heavily on the starboard railing, smashing it to pieces and lunging at Wirrin. Coincidentally, Wirrin was already in a good position to grab her. She made the unwise choice to follow through with the stab, cutting open Wirrin’s left side along the ribs.

  Wirrin’s claws sank into the mage’s back, her teeth sank into the mage’s neck. The mage managed to gurgle. Wirrin pulled out a chunk of her spine and didn’t chew.

  The next War mage was far enough that Wirrin had time to draw her sword. Rather than fight, the mage blocked Wirrin’s swing and launched themselves into the water below the boat. The water wasn’t safe.

  No more mages landed on the boat. No more floated like dandelion seeds on the wind. As they were pulling out of the harbour, the Flesh mage hauled himself up the port rigging. Wirrin’s sword sank into the top of his head like he was made from clay.

  Ever willing to experiment, Wirrin let herself be grabbed.

  This time, the skin that grew her mouth closed was much thicker. This time, it hurt. Wirrin tore her mouth open and sank her sharp teeth into the mage’s flesh. His blood dried solid. She dragged the corpse onto the boat.

  Wirrin sat heavily at the rudder. Only now did she start to hurt. She took another bite out of the Flesh mage. It helped the throbbing in her head. It didn’t help the pain.

  ‘Yern,’ Wirrin said. ‘Do you want to help again?’

  Yern was wrapped around the mast, hyperventilating. She nodded. ‘Is… is that…’ She pointed to the smashed section of the deck railing.

  ‘It should be fine,’ Wirrin said, blood dripping into her mouth.

  Yern nodded some more and struggled to take deep breaths.

  Wirrin took another bite out of the mage and the boat sped up.

  Yern did her very best to sound like a not-completely-terrified-thirteen-year-old. ‘You’re so gross.’

  ‘Can’t start a fire on a boat.’ Wirrin shrugged.