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led her into the darkness. They seemed to shuffle along the dim, narrow passage for a long time. It twisted several times, confusing Maura as to the direction they were headed. Would they emerge somewhere behind the tavern…or down the street from it?
    Suddenly a light appeared ahead of them and the passage opened into a room. Rath lurched forward, stumbling on something. An instant later, a raised doorsill caught Maura’s foot and made her stumble, too. As she squinted against the light, she felt Rath’s hand wrenched out of hers.
    Before she could open her other hand to release a cloud of powered madfern into the air, Rath cried, “No!”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, inlander,” their tattooed guide chuckled. “You aren’t in any position to be giving orders.”
    Maura knew Rath had been speaking to her—not that it mattered. For at the same instant, someone grabbed her hands and pulled them tight behind her back. She concentrated on keeping her fist clenched around the powdered madfern until she got a better opportunity to use it.
    “Well, well, what have we here?” asked a voice.
    Maura glanced up at the speaker as he rose from a chair and turned to look them over. He was a small, slender man, a bitless than her own height, which was tall for a woman. The man wore black breeches and leather boots that reached halfway up his thighs. His shirt, the color of dark blood, billowed in loose folds over his arms and upper body, while a long strip of the same cloth had been wound around his head. It covered all his hair except for a long, black plume that stuck out of an opening in the top—a mockery of the way Hanish soldiers pulled their pale hair through the tops of their helmets.
    For a moment Maura thought he had a fur collar draped around his shoulders. Then the “collar” raised its head, stared at her and hissed. She flinched from the creature, a long-legged hillcat with sleek brown fur.
    “Mind your manners, Abri.” The man raised his hand to caress the beast.
    He wore snug-fitted leather gloves with holes through which his bare thumb and fingers poked. Only three fingers, though. The smallest on each hand was missing.
    “This inlander strolled into the Monkey,” said the tattooed man, “with a wench twice too pretty for the likes of him. Said he wanted to see Captain Gull.”
    “Indeed?” The little man sauntered toward Maura.
    When he lifted his hand, she flinched, but he only tilted her chin with the gentle pressure of his fingers to turn her head to one side.
    “Tell me, inlander, was that all you wanted—to see me?” He let go of Maura, stepped back and struck a pose. “Now you have seen me.”
    He glanced toward the tattooed man, and in as mannerly a voice as he might have used to bid them be escorted away, he ordered, “Kill them.”
    “We wanted more than to see you!” Rath cast Maura a sidelong glance that she sensed meant, “Get ready!”
    She flashed him one back that she hoped he would understand meant, “This is not going to work.”
    Oh, she could mutter the spell under her breath and dropthe madfern. Perhaps even kick it up into the air. But in this small, crowded room, there was a good chance she and Rath would become as befuddled as everyone else. Or the others might do them some harm while in the grip of their confusion.
    “We were told you could take us to the Vestan Islands,” said Rath. “Can you? Will you? It is vital we reach there!”
    Captain Gull looked from Rath to Maura and back again. All the while he petted the cat draped around his neck. “You must know it is death for any Umbrian to sail more than five miles from the mainland. My friends and I are but humble fisherfolk.”
    Maura could not bite back a retort. “You do not look like any fisherman I ever heard of!”
    “Ha!” Captain Gull let out a laugh that seemed far too deep and loud for his slender frame.
    “A bold wench!” He remarked to the cat. “I like that.”
    The cat looked over at Maura