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all that her body allowed.
    Jaja continued to perch atop the bow, the thrash of the waves too forceful for him to risk jumping down. His tail fanned out in fear, the fin waving back and forth like a banner. When the boat rocked with a force that almost threw Mahri from the deck, Jaja barely had time to scream before a swell swept him into the channel.
    Mahri screeched the vilest curses she could think of, struggled to a sitting position and flicked her staff. The bone extended and she used it to support herself to her feet, only to have her body betray her and sag back to thedeck. Jaja swam like the fish he partly was and he needn’t come up for air for hours, but if he slammed into a rock, or slipped into the maw of a wide mouth skulker… She didn’t know this passage, couldn’t know if any skulker’s had staked this territory, but any smuggler knew that where the water ran swift, skulkers usually hunted.
    “What’s wrong?” That deep, strong voice at her ear.
    “Jaja,” she cried, struggling upward again, locking her muscles when she reached hands and knees. By-the-moons, she’d asked too much of her body, it wouldn’t respond to her demands. She reached out a hand and tried to wrest the root pouch from him.
    He swatted her hand away as if it were a pesky insect. “No more root, water-rat, do you want to die?” And then he did the most selfless, idiotic thing she’d ever seen. He jumped over the side of the boat after her monk-fish.
    Now she’d have to save both of them, she thought with more than a little disgust, and started to crawl aft. Typically arrogant of him to think that the only zabbaroot she had lay in her pouch. Mahri pushed then twisted, and exposed the secret compartment in the deck—standard, although hidden differently, in every smuggler’s boat. She reached far into the cranny and pulled out her supply.
    The Royal’s also a Healer, she reminded herself. What if he’s right about more root being fatal? She’d never pushed her tolerance this far.
    Yet Jaja is more family to me than those in the village. There’s really no choice here. Mahri crunched zabba.
    The oddest sensation shivered through her veins, as if the overdose of root had forged new pathways through her. When the flush reached her head she rememberedthe vivid dream that she’d had from her coma. That the natives were intelligent, that they could communicate through the mind and had done so with her. The Speaker’s demand that she Bond with the prince.
    Mahri grimaced. That she’d Bond with anyone, much less a Royal, was laughable. She’d given up her freedom once, and although not Bonded she’d given her heart to her lifemate and her soul to little Tal’li, and lost them both. If she thought that there was even the slightest chance that this physical attraction could develop into something more—she’d never risk that kind of despair again.
    She shook her head, stood and splayed her legs on deck, Saw into the water, the strings and bits and dots, and cradled her craft along the surface of the froth. Scanned the channel for a pale head, an even smaller brown one, and noticed with alarm the several odd humps that weren’t rocks.
    They’d stumbled on an entire nest of skulkers then. She shuddered with a moment of weakness at the fear that she’d been too late for Jaja and Korl. That they’d already gotten sucked into one of those powerful maws that waited just below the surface, were sliced and flayed by the rows of jagged teeth that encircled the mouth of the beast.
    Mahri couldn’t even curse, the terror swelled so strongly within her. She frantically Saw into the water, kept the boat steady, Looked through the skulkers for the Patterns that meant Jaja and Korl. And realized the fear for the one was as strong as her fear for the other… but of course, she needed Korl to Heal the village.
    The boat listed to the side and she swayed with themovement, glimpsed the hand that flailed at the rail before disappearing