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lying on the deck, Treia handing him something to drink.
    “Then Skylan’s a weak fool.” Treia let go of her sister’s arm and sank back down onto the sea chest. She smiled an unpleasant smile. “But I’ve always thought that. I overheard the two of you talking and now I know the secret that Vindrash kept from all the world. I know the secret of the Five Vektia dragons. I know that to control one of the Five, you must have all of the Five. And if Skylan does not kill me, I will find all five.”
    “And give them to Aelon?” Aylaen asked.
    “I won’t ‘give’ the Five to anyone,” said Treia. “The god will have to come to me.”
    “You poisoned the guards. You poisoned Keeper,” said Aylaen shakily. “I’ve tried to love you, Treia. I’ve defended you, even knowing you tried to kill me along with our comrades. You sent us into the catacombs knowing that Raegar was plotting our deaths. I am your sister, Treia! These men are your friends!”
    Treia gave a bitter laugh. “Friends who mock me, call me ‘spinster,’ term me ‘frigid.’ My own stepfather deemed me too ugly to try to arrange a marriage for me.” She cast Aylaen a scathing glance. “As for you, I never asked you to love me.”
    Treia looked away. She sat on the sea chest, her arms clasped tight around her. She was tense, rigid, her jaw clenched. For all her talk, she was afraid.
    “Skylan won’t kill you,” Aylaen said. “He won’t kill you because he is Skylan and you are defenseless and alone, just as Keeper was defenseless and alone when you poisoned him.”
    “What else could I do?” Treia cried angrily. “You were going to surrender to the ogres. And Raegar was coming to save me. He loves me! No one else. Only him.”
    Aylaen understood. Treia was right. With Keeper, one of their godlords, on board the Venjekar to vouch for the Torgun, the ogres would have welcomed them as friends and allies. Keeper and Skylan planned to rally the ogres, urge them to attack Raegar’s new dragonship. Treia couldn’t allow that to happen and she had murdered Keeper.
    “I pity you,” said Aylaen softly.
    Treia stared into the darkness of the hold. “You should have died. If you had, all would be well now…”
    Aylaen turned away, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and went to search for the flour.
    “Aylaen,” Skylan called tensely down into the hold. “Are you all right?”
    “He must think Treia’s going to murder me,” Aylaen muttered. Remembering Treia’s burning eyes, Aylaen was suddenly glad she was wearing armor.
    She called back that she was fine as she made her way to the stern where the jars containing the supplies were stored. The jars were well secured. Only one had broken in the tumultuous trip downriver and that jar had not, thank the gods, contained the flour. Aylaen groped about until she found a piece of the broken jar to use as a crude bowl. She mixed some of the flour with the water to form a whitish paste.
    “Give me the spiritbone of the Vektia,” said Treia. “If you don’t give it to me, Skylan will die.”
    Aylaen tried to shove past. Treia blocked her way.
    “I’ve seen the way you look at Skylan,” Treia sneered. “You little whore. First you jump into Garn’s bed, and now that he’s dead you leap into Skylan’s.”
    Aylaen gasped as though Treia had punched her. “I’m not—”
    “Be quiet and listen to me. If you keep that spiritbone, Skylan is marked for death. The god, Sund, looked into the future and saw Skylan with the Five bones and the Old Gods defeated. That’s why the gods want Skylan dead.”
    “That makes no sense! I don’t believe you,” said Aylaen scornfully. “And I won’t give you the spiritbone.”
    Treia shrugged. “Then Skylan is doomed.”
    Aylaen swept past her sister and, carrying the paste, she doused the light and climbed the ladder and went up on deck.

CHAPTER
    4
    The Torgun gathered around Keeper in solemn reverence. Death comes to all, ogre and human,