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pirate captain drew a deep breath and expelled it, muttering denials and refusals as he did so. He groaned suddenly.
    “No. Not Kennit,” the tiny voice confirmed in amusement. “Nor are you the Vestrit you think yourself to be. Who
are
you?”
    It was disconcerting to feel a mind groping after her reaction. Instinctively she recoiled from the contact. She was stronger far than he was. When she pulled away from him, he could not follow her. In doing so, she severed her tentative contact with Kennit as well. Frustration and agitation roiled through her. She clenched her fists at her side and took the next wave badly, smashing herself into it rather than through it. The helmsman cursed to himself and made a tiny correction. Vivacia licked the salt spray from her lips and shook her hair back from her face. Who and what was he? She held her thoughts still inside herself and tried to decide if she were more frightened or intrigued. She sensed an odd kinship with the being who had spoken to her. She had turned his aggressive prying aside easily, but she disliked that someone had even tried to invade her mind.
    She decided she would not tolerate it. Whoever this intruder was, she would unmask him and confront him. Keeping her own guard up, she reached out tentatively toward the cabin where Kennit shifted in his sleep. She found the pirate easily. He still struggled through his fever dreams, hiding within a cupboard while some dream being stalked him, calling his name in a falsely sweet tone. The woman set a cool cloth on his brow, and draped another over the swollen stump of his leg. Vivacia almost felt the sudden easing it brought him. The ship reached out again, more boldly, but found no one else there.
    “Where are you?” she demanded suddenly and angrily. Kennit jerked with a cry as the stalker in his dream echoed her words, and Etta bent over him, murmuring soothing words.
    Vivacia’s question went unanswered.
             
    KENNIT SURFACED , gasping his way into consciousness. it took him a moment to recall his surroundings. Then a faint smile of pleasure stretched his fever-parched lips. His liveship. He was on board his liveship, in the captain’s well-appointed chambers. A fine linen sheet draped his sweating body. Polished brass and wood gleamed throughout a chamber both cozy and refined. He could hear the water gurgling past as Vivacia cut through the channel. He could almost feel the awareness of his ship around him, protecting him. She was a second skin, shielding him from the world. He sighed in satisfaction, and then choked on the mucus in his dry throat.
    “Etta!” he croaked to the whore. “Water.”
    “It’s right here,” she said soothingly.
    It was true. Surprising as it was, she was standing right beside him, a cup of water ready in her hand. Her long fingers were cool on the back of his neck as she helped him raise himself to drink. Afterward, she deftly turned his pillow before she lowered his head again. With a cool cloth she patted the perspiration from his face and then wiped his hands with a moist cloth. He lay still and silent under her touch, limply grateful for the comfort she gave. He knew a moment of purest peace.
    It did not last. His awareness of his swollen leg rose swiftly to recognition of pain. He tried to ignore it. It became a pulsing heat that rose in intensity with every breath he took. Beside his bed, his whore sat in a chair, sewing something. His eyes moved listlessly over her. She looked older than he recalled her. The lines were deeper by her mouth and in her brow. Her face looked thinner under the brush of her short black hair. It made her dark eyes even more immense.
    “You look terrible,” he rebuked her.
    She set her sewing aside immediately and smiled as if he had complimented her. “It’s hard for me to see you like this. When you are ill … I can’t sleep, I can’t eat … ”
    Selfish woman. She’d fed his leg to a sea serpent, and now tried to make