Southern Fire

'What will you do if I don't take her?' Kheda spat. 'Feed her some shellfish?'

Ja

Kheda gave up. 'The Chazen dry-season residence. Tell her I'll find her there.'

Who knows, by then, I might even have worked out what to tell her, how to explain what I have done and how it landed me in this mess. If it wasn't for the sand beneath my feet, the breeze in my face, I could almost imagine this was some horrible dream. But no, no dream. I couldn't dream such agony and not wake from it.

Kheda stormed down the beach to row back to the Amigal. As he swung himself up on deck, Dev and Risala were standing there, faces avid with curiosity. Kheda glared at them with challenge in every line of his body and both hastily adopted studiedly neutral expressions.

'Can't say that looked to be going well from here,' said Dev cautiously. 'Not that we could hear much, but isn't that Chazen Saril who's just died such a remarkably painful death?'

Finally, something to shake that bastard's composure. That might almost make this all worth it.

'He ate some bad shellfish,' said Kheda in as dispassionate a tone as he could manage. 'Which leaves the Chazen domain without a ruler. Ja

'Oh,' said Risala blankly.

'Forced?' Dev looked slyly at Kheda. 'There's a handful of ways that trireme could come to grief, before it ever comes to port.'

'I would hate to think of that happening,' Kheda said with cold threat.

'So where do we go now?' Risala tried to see past Kheda to the shore.

He didn't look back. 'I need to get to the dry-season residence of the Chazen warlords. I don't know what there'll be left of it but it's somewhere to start.' He glanced down at the little skiff bobbing at the Amigal's side. 'Can I have this? You can take me as far as the main sea lane before you turn north, can't you?'

Dev's response surprised him. 'I'll take you all the way you want to go, never mind that.'

Kheda hesitated. 'You should go north, both of you. There'll be all ma

'Suspicions maybe, but none so many witnesses,' gri

'Ja

'Crazed with fear and thirst and hunger, who can be sure what they saw?' Dismissing them with an airy wave, Dev limped painfully down the deck towards Kheda. 'You don't get rid of me that easily. You owe me and plenty, don't forget that. It's a good thing those savage mages weren't interested in turtle shell and pearls, otherwise you'd be hard pressed to pay me this side of the next new year stars.' He passed Kheda and went to sit by the tiller. 'You and the girl better raise the sail if we're to make Chazen waters by nightfall.'

Kheda looked at Risala. 'We can find you a ship going north, I'm sure of it.'

'Shek Kul will want a full report, not half a one,' she said, attempting to equal Dev's offhand ma

'Let's hope you can take that news north sooner rather than later.' Kheda looked down at the cipher ring pensively.

'The sooner we start, the sooner it'll be done,' Risala encouraged him.

Not trusting himself to reply, Kheda turned to use the heavy sweeps to turn the little ship while Risala busied herself with the sails. Dev tended the tiller in unconcerned silence. Once they had the Amigal on her way across the open waters, Kheda went to stand in the prow, alone with his thoughts.

How can she be so cold-hearted, so ruthless? Her iron will's not so admirable now, is it, when it's turned on you instead of against the domain's foes? Rekha, of course she'd go along with Ja