The sea devil's eye

I

4 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet

"What you want here, boy? Is it enough for ye to take a man's rightful belongings, or are ye gonna cut an honest man's throat too?"

Jherek pressed the older man up against the back wall of the Bare Bosom and held a scaling knife hard against the man's bewhiskered throat.

The man was in his early forties and his breath stank of beer. A skull and crossbones tattooed over his heart advertised his chosen profession.

Jherek breathed hard, and struggled to keep his hand from shaking. Full night had descended over the pirate city of Immurk's Hold hours ago. Clouds covered all but a handful of blue-white stars. Shadows filled the narrow alley behind the tavern.

Even at nineteen, Jherek was bigger and broader than the pirate, his muscles made hard from years of working as both shipwright and sailor. His light brown hair caught the silver gleam of the stars in the highlights bleached by the sun, and hung past his shoulders now. His pale gray eyes belonged to a wolf living in the wild. He wore leather armor under a dark blue cloak that reached to the tops of his boots. A cutlass hung at his side.

"If it's me purse ye want," the pirate offered, swallowing hard, "yer gonna find it light tonight. I been swilling old Kascher's homemade beer and dallying with them women what he keeps upstairs."

"I'm not after your purse," Jherek whispered. The very idea of robbing the man turned his stomach.

"Slice his damned throat."

Jherek cut his gaze over to the left, startled by the harshness of the words.

Talif stood near the building, fitting in neatly with the shadows. A sharp short sword was in his fist. He was one of Captain Azla's pirate crew. The ship's hand had stringy black hair and a triangular face covered with stubble.

"He lives-or we live. Which is it going to be?" Talif sneered.

Sabyna Truesail sat at a table in a hostel across the cobblestone street from the Bare Bosom and tried to relax. Nothing worked; she still worried.

The hostel was small, and at this time of night most of the guests meandered over to the Bare Bosom for more ribald festivities. The rest had called it a night in favor of an early morning. Sabyna, Captain Azla of Black Champion, and Sir Glawinn-a paladin in the service of Lathander-were half the crowd in the common room of the hostel. The scents of spiced meat and smoked fish warred against the stench of pipeweed and bitter ale. The tavern crowd could be heard easily from across the street, screamed curses mixed in with shouts of glee.

"I believe your attention would be better served elsewhere," Glawinn stated softly.

The paladin was middle aged but only a couple inches taller than Sabyna. He possessed a medium build, but carried himself with confidence, every inch a soldier. His black beard was short-cropped. Tonight he wore leather armor with a dark gray cloak over it. He used a brooch with Lathander's morning sun colors to hold the cloak around his shoulders.

"Where should I look?" Sabyna asked.

She stood a little more than five and a half feet tall, with copper-colored curls shorn well short of her shoulders. Seasons spent with the sun and sea had darkened her skin, but a spattering of freckles still crossed the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. Light from the big stone fireplace that warmed the hostel against the wet chill of the sea ignited reddish brown flames in her eyes. Her clothing was loose and baggy, worn that way so it wouldn't draw attention to her femininity.

Beside them, Azla wrinkled her nose in distaste. She held a half-drunk schooner of ale curled neatly in one gloved hand.

"He means you need to stop looking out that window so much," the pirate captain stated. "You're going to draw attention." Azla was a half-elf, bearing the characteristic pointed ears and slender build of her elf parent. Her features were beautiful and dusky, made even darker by a dozen years and more in the sun and wind. Silky black hair hung just to her shoulders, cut straight across. She wore a green blouse so dark it was almost black, and leather breeches dyed dark blue.

"The thing that worries me," Sabyna said, "is that he doesn't seem to be himself."

"No," the paladin said, "our young warrior is torn."

"By what?" Sabyna asked.

She risked another glance at the Bare Bosom, watching a sailor stride drunkenly from the establishment in the company of a serving wench doing her best to prop him up. The girl's fingers found the man's coin purse.

"There are things I feel a man should be willing to discuss on his own without having others discuss them for him," Glawinn answered.

"He could get killed over there tonight," Azla warned coldly.

"True enough," Glawinn replied, "but sometimes you have to rely on faith."

Azla snorted. "Faith isn't as certain as cold steel."

"It is for some." Glawinn's words were soft, but strong.

"Faith has never done well by me," Azla went on. A trace of bitterness threaded through her words.

Sabyna knew the captain hadn't always been a pirate. Azla had grown up in the Dalelands, but events and her own guilt forced her down to the Sea of Fallen Stars and into a pirate's life. Glawinn had no way of knowing that.

"The problem could be that you're not supposed to expect faith to do well by you," the paladin said. "You're supposed to do well by your faith."

"I am a mage," Sabyna said. "My faith is strong enough, but I'm no cleric to be led around by looking at a chicken's entrails to figure out what my chosen god wants me to do. I believe in knowledge. Our gods choose what knowledge to put in our paths, but it's up to us to learn it and choose what to do with it."

"My faith is not that way," Glawinn said. "I choose to let Lathander set me upon a path, trusting in the Morninglord that I will know what to do when the time comes."

"More men have died from conflicting beliefs than over gold and silver," Azla said. "Trusting a god is a very dangerous thing."

"On that issue, Captain," Glawinn said gravely, "I fear we'll have to disagree."

Sabyna pulled her cloak more tightly around her against the night's chill. More than anything she wanted to be up and around, doing something but not knowing what. "He's changed so much since I first met him," she whispered.

"How so?" Glawinn asked.

Across the street, a handful of cargo handlers deep in conversation walked across the uneven boardwalk in front of the Bare Bosom. One of them carried a shielded candle hanging from a crooked stick that barely beat back the night.

"When he first came aboard Breezerunner, there was a quiet desperation in him," Sabyna said. "I didn't understand that, now I understand his feelings even less after seeing how he handled himself aboard Breezerunner. He stood up against Vurgrom and his pirate crew in the middle of a maelstrom and never faltered. Now he seems…"

"Afraid?" A faint smile twisted Glawinn's lips. "He's a warrior, lady."

"Then why should he be afraid?"

"So that he might live, of course." Glawinn sipped his drink. "Warriors live with fear as they might a lover. They never forget that fear, else they step closer to Cyric's cold embrace."

The ship's mage wrapped her arms even tighter around herself, losing the battle against the night's chill creeping in against the banked coals filling the hostel's fireplace.

"Then where does that leave him?" she asked.

"He's dangerous," Azla commented. "He's dangerous to himself and to us."

"I don't think that's entirely true," Glawinn said.

The pirate captain shook her head. "I don't mean to disparage your beliefs, Sir Glawinn, but men believe what they want to believe. Sometimes purely because they have nothing else to believe in."

"And to live a life with nothing to believe in?" The paladin looked directly at her and asked, "What kind of life is that?"

Azla broke the eye contact, put on a deprecating smile, and said, "A very profitable one. If you're a pirate."

"Gold and silver assuages a wounded heart?"

Azla's eyes turned cold and hard. "You step over lines here, paladin."

"Forgive me, lady," Glawinn replied, though he showed no remorse, "I do indeed."

Sabyna watched the exchange in silence. She didn't know how Glawinn knew so much about the pirate captain, but she was aware how close he was to the truth. Azla's own life was filled with tragedy. The ship's mage reached for the hot tea she'd ordered and sipped it only to find that it was now cold.

"The thing that most concerns me is that your young friend didn't come here to take that pearl disk back from Vurgrom," Azla said.

"Then what?" Sabyna asked.

Azla kept her voice quiet and still. "I think it's very possible that your young friend came here to die as nobly as he can."

"I can't kill him," Jherek said. He stood in the alley, his body pressed up against the man, and silently damned all the events and the false pride that led to the point of holding a man's life at the edge of his knife.

"Then let me." Talif stepped forward and lifted the short sword.

The man in Jherek's grip tensed, on the verge of fleeing and taking his chances.

Jherek swung his empty hand, balling it into a fist and rolling his shoulder to get most of his weight behind the blow. His fist caught the pirate on the point of his chin and dropped him.

Talif knelt and grabbed the man by the hair. He swung his short sword toward the man's exposed throat.

Jherek kicked Talif in the chest, knocking him back across the hard-packed earth of the alley. Talif rolled instantly, coming up from the ground like a trained acrobat. His triangular face was a mask of rage. The short sword came around in a glittering arc.

The young sailor stepped in close and brought up his left arm. His open hand smacked into Talif's wrist and blocked the sword strike. Talif grunted in pain and anger. Before the mate could recover, Jherek slipped his free arm under the man's outstretched one and flipped him over his shoulder.

Carried by his own weight and momentum, pulled by Jherek's strength, Talif landed hard on the ground on his back. Murderous rage gleamed in his black eyes. "You're a fool," Talif snarled.

"That remains to be seen," Jherek said, "but I do know I am no murderer."

Talif struggled a moment to get free but couldn't.

"You knocked that man out, boy, but I've seen men knocked cold like that before. Sometimes they come around in just minutes, none the worse for it. He could still come into the tavern after us and let them all know we're among them."

"He doesn't know who we are," Jherek said quietly.

"By Leira's razor kiss, you fool, that man has seen me. He'll know I sail with Cap'n Azla."

"So you say." Jherek shook his head. "Maybe that's just your pride talking. We'll take our chances."

Talif cursed him soundly, using invective that would have shamed even most sailors.

Jherek maintained his grip even though Talif sought to shake out of it. "You think me a fool for letting this man live, but keep in mind that should a man attack me willingly with a sword in his fist, I'll not be so generous."

"A man doesn't always see the sword that cleaves him, boy," Talif threatened.

Jherek nodded. "But Glawinn would know." Azla's pirates walked lightly around the paladin.

"Umberlee take you both," Talif snarled. "The two of you think you're so high and mighty."

Jherek felt even more embarrassed. Glawinn was a paladin, a noble and courageous man who lived for honor and served a god who put quests and challenges before him. The young sailor knew he didn't belong in such company. He was only a foolish boy with misbegotten pride and an ill luck that followed him all his life as a birthright from his pirate father.

"Standing among men such as yourself," Jherek said in a harsh voice, "Sir Glawinn has no choice but to shine. I'd keep a civil tongue in your head, otherwise I'm going to feel that you're questioning his honor. That's something I won't allow."

Talif started to say something, but he glanced into Jherek's eyes, swallowed his words, and looked away.

Jherek released the man and stood with easy grace. He slipped the scaling knife back into his boot, then turned and walked toward the tavern's back door. He knew Talif thought about attacking him, but he counted on his own hearing and the dim shadows that moved on the alley wall to warn him if the man tried. And, truth to tell, maybe he didn't care.

Talif straightened his clothing and followed him a heartbeat later.

A short flight of steps led up to the tavern's back door. The door was narrow and made of scarred hardwood that showed years of abuse by guests and thieves and the neglect of uncaring employees.

Azla proved most resourceful as a pirate captain, though, and had provided Jherek a key that let him pass. He opened the door and stepped inside. A mixture of spicy odors tweaked his nose, almost drawing a sneeze. The aroma filling the room also held the scent of jerked beef and the strong odor of seafood. The stink of smoky grease overlaid everything.

Sand covered grease spills on the stained wooden floor. Grit rolled and crunched under Jherek's boots as he walked toward the narrow door on the east wall. He found the latch with his fingers and slipped it open with a tiny screech that he knew wasn't heard over the uproar in the tavern's main serving area.

Quietly, he went up the narrow and winding staircase, making himself go when every thought in his mind was to turn and leave. Kascher, Azla had assured him, used the hidden passageway to serve meals to guests who preferred to remain incognito. The man the young sailor was after was such a man.

Kascher's Bare Bosom tavern stood three stories tall, shouldered between the warehouses along the natural harbor at the center of Immurk's Hold.

On the top floor, Jherek paused at the door, listening. Muted voices echoed in the hall as footsteps passed.

The young sailor let himself out into the passageway. His eyes narrowed briefly even against the dim brightness of the small oil lamps hanging on the walls.

He glanced at the door on the right, reading the numbers. According to the information Azla gave him, the room he wanted was at the end.

The door at the end of the corridor was heavy oak, reinforced with bands of beaten iron.

"One side, pup," Talif said arrogantly. "Let a man do his job."

Grudgingly, Jherek stepped aside, leaving the door open to Talif. The thief moved to the door with a small smile curling his thin lips.

"Ah, pup," he whispered, "there's nothing like the sensation of being someplace you ought not be." Thin pieces of metal glinted briefly in his gloved hands. "Gladdens a man's heart, it does. The chance to prowl through another's secrets, steal kisses from another man's woman… there's nothing more sweet."

Shamed and furious, Jherek turned away. He heard the thin scratches of metal and tried to ignore them. The subtle arts Talif practiced went against everything Jherek believed in. Yet here he was, depending and hoping on the man's skills that he might set a greater wrong right.

The young sailor glanced out a window at the city.

Torches gleamed brightly along the wharf. From the tavern room, Jherek saw ships at anchor, men scurrying about aboard them, carrying crates and other prizes they'd no doubt taken from some luckless merchanter. His father, he knew, would have been perfectly at home here.

Farther into the interior of the city, fewer torches gleamed. The houses were ramshackle affairs for the most part, places cast together by seafaring men for families formed more by desperation than any emotion.

The men who worked the night were down by the harbor and the others lay abed or in the dozens of taverns throughout the city. Shadowy figures crossed the narrow, twisting streets below, some of them in groups but most of them alone. Thin wails of bawdy pirate chanteys drifted over the rooftops. The only thing that seemed normal to Jherek was the salt smell that lingered in the air.

"I'm done, pup. Do you want to join me?" Talif's whisper barely carried to Jherek's ears.

"Aye."

The young sailor drew his cutlass, the razor edge sliding free of the sash he used to bind it to his waist. He filled his other hand with the wickedly curved boat hook.

Pausing, Jherek nudged up the thin glass protecting the oil lamp's wick and flame. He blew it out, then replaced the glass cover. That end of the room darkened immediately.

"You have more skills at this kind of skullduggery than you'd think, pup," Talif said as he eased the door open. "Maybe you're not so honest as I thought, or you'd like to believe."

Jherek didn't argue, but he felt a sick lurching inside his stomach. Pirate's get and thief-he didn't really deserve any other label. Except maybe fool.

Talif led the way into the room, and Jherek covered his back. The young sailor heard the hoarse rasp of deep breathing as he gently closed the door.

Reaching back, Talif pressed a finger against Jherek's chest. "Wait," the man hissed.

Jherek breathed shallowly, taking in the sour odor of unwashed flesh and old rotgut whiskey. The stench of pipe-weed clung to the room, salted with the flavor of cheap perfume.

"Not alone," Talif whispered. "I smell a woman."

For a moment, Jherek considered leaving the room. Catching the man they were after, even with everything Azla had ferreted out, had been difficult and risky enough. Endangering an innocent wasn't something he was prepared to do.

Talif's finger left his chest and the man glided silently across the room, a swiftly moving shadow.

Jherek moved immediately. His own vision quickly adjusted to the dark. The room was spacious but held only a couple trunks, an armoire that listed badly to one side, and a four-poster bed shrouded in mosquito netting.

"Alive," Jherek warned.

Reluctantly, Talif nodded. He moved to the left of the bed, while Jherek moved to the right.

Jherek put the hook back in his sash, then reached for the sleeping figure, brushing aside the mosquito netting with the blade of the cutlass. He clamped his hand on a face that he suddenly realized was too small, too smooth, and without whiskers.

At the other end of his arm, the young woman he'd grabbed by mistake opened her eyes wide in fear. She tried to sit up in bed. Jherek was so surprised by the turn of events that he didn't resist, watching in horror and embarrassment as the sheets fell away from her bare breasts.

The other form in the bed lurched up, a wickedly curved scimitar sliding free of the space between the feather-filled mattress and the carved headboard. Jorn Frennik was a large man, broad shouldered and beefy from a dozen years and more of living the savage life of a pirate.

Like the woman, he was naked, but he wore his calf-high boots. Bed covers flew as the pirate forced himself to his feet in the middle of the bed, yelling in rage and fear. He drew his scimitar back to swing.