need for him as blood. Blood could be found anywhere for the taking. The company of one such as Wynn was precious. He turned his attention back to the puzzling parchment.

Creeping down the short ladder into the schooner's cargo hold, Leesil tried not to think. It was a pointless effort, even with his head still clouded from sailor's grog. Around his neck hung a small flask of oil and a small flask of water. He carried a lantern, and his box of tools was stuffed inside his ragged shirt.

Magiere had killed the first assailant, cut his throat. Chap had pinned the second, now locked in a storage room below deck. Leesil had let the third escape due to his own drunken incompetence.

Useful, dependable Leesil had botched things up again.

Magiere called them assassins, but Leesil knew better. Skilled assassins were shadows passing unseen and unheard even by their victims. They didn't work in groups. They didn't bungle through a cabin door, rousing their victims, nor use iron cudgels and baling knives. Someone had hired common thugs to murder Magiere—someone who wanted either a cheap kill or who had no knowledge where to hire a trained assassin. Leesil was going to find out who that person was, one way or another.

Standing in the dark and narrow passage, he succumbed to shame. After all the weeks he'd spent preparing himself for what he knew was coming her way, the first time she truly needed him, he'd been in his cups again. Wasn't that what he always did when troubled? To wash away nightmares of the betrayals and assassinations for which his parents had raised him, he'd drowned himself in wine until sleep became a dreamless escape.

No more. Not a drop.

He wouldn't give in again. For two months since their last battle, he'd consumed only water and tea, and he'd still managed to sleep through the worst of his dreams. He would be what Magiere needed, even if he never slept again.

A knife's throw down the passage was a door to a small hold for the sailors' supplies. Pulling his box out, Leesil noted he wouldn't need to pick any lock. The door's latch was sealed with a cargo hook.

He lifted the hook, quietly entered the room, and closed the door behind himself.

Raising the lantern, he saw an exhausted, overweight man shackled to the floor. The chains were old and worn but still functional. The captain had questioned this prisoner earlier, but the man refused even to speak his name. Magiere learned nothing regarding who her attackers were or who'd hired them. She didn't express fear, but Leesil knew she was troubled by this mystery. So was he.

And he knew ways of asking a question that perhaps the captain did not.

The man looked at him and blinked in surprise, his round face glistening with sweat.

Leesil removed the faded green scarf from his head, letting his nearly white, shoulder-length hair fall around his face. He pushed it back behind his ears, so their slightly pointed tips were in plain view, and set the lantern down at the man's feet. With his amber eyes and dark skin, he knew he looked bizarre and unnatural to this common lowlife sitting before him.

He knelt down, his gaze never leaving the man's face, no expression passing across his own.

The stout man instinctively pulled back against the room's rear wall. Close to the prisoner, Leesil smelled old ale, stale sweat, and a hint of urine. The man's unkempt hair was dusty rather than greasy. Brown stubble covered his chin and jowls. His flesh hung slightly loose, as if he'd once eaten too well and then come on hard times. Perhaps he'd been a dockworker in Miiska before the warehouse burned down. Leesil didn't care. This man had tried to kill Magiere.

Leesil flashed a sudden smile. The man flinched.

"So you know who I am," Leesil said, "but you don't know me. I've come to give you a test."

He opened his box of tools, displaying the white metal of the one good stiletto, the garrote, and the curved, shorter blade. Pressing the catch inside the box, he flipped open the lid's interior panel, exposing the array of hooks, wires, and probes in their fabric holding straps. He took out a thin strut of gleaming metal.

"Since you tried to murder Magiere," Leesil continued, "and you were obviously hired, that makes you an assassin." He held up the wire. "Tell me, using this, what's the quickest way to kill a man from behind?"

The portly