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Without warning, a big body heaved up out of the water not a body’s length fro The flat face took theh what it could actually see with those hard, red eyes he could not be sure The eels that were its hair writhed wildly, eyeless snouts snapping mindlessly at the empty air It spun with a half turn backward and hit the water with such weight that water sprayed everywhere, a neer of rain, salty and tasting of the waste that huhtlessly duhed sharply and shook off the water The Hessi wo herself off, but did not otherwise retreat Her colleagues spilled backward onto the toays in fright Their voices rose like those of startled crows

A visage rose from the water, pale and stretched, hoisted by the razor-tipped hands of the ed, wreathed by vinelike leaves tangled around sohand leaped backward as, with a final heave, the great spar clattered down onto the wooden quay and came to rest at his feet

The spar was the re ships of the tree sorcerers Caught in its leafy spire rested an object so bloated and pale that at first he did not recognize it

"Ai, Lord have"It’s a man’s head"

Sea wor eye sockets In places the skin had peeled away to reveal the gleam of skull beneath

"One of the Alban ships did not escape our allies," observed Tenth Son

Stronghand stepped over the spar and its rotting centerpiece The water eddied in cool circles below hihtened perceptibly as the sun tried to beat through

"This was unexpected I have not forgotten that Alba awaits" Truly, he did not understand his ht they wanted only the flesh of his enereater purpose beneath their ence and a slow- sed into the depths of the sea, shuddering on tides known only in the deep waters

What did the otiations ree Indeed, they seemed to knohat he wanted more than he knehat they desired out of this alliance Yet surely it ht he alone could help thenorance, because ignorance signaled weakness

Stronghand could never betray weakness Too e into his back

The waters roiled A dozen tails flicked out of the muddy bay and slapped down, in tribute, in coed backs cut the water as they sped bayward With their wake spreading behind the into the deep channel, and were gone

2

A SINGLE lah light to illu the life of the blessed saint for which the chapel was justly famous Nor, really, could Antonia see clearly each distinctive pillar, carved with the visage of one of the seven disciplas, that ringed the inner sanctuht granted only a glimpse of each carved face: Matthias, Mark, and Johanna to the left, and Lucia, Marian, and Peter to the right Back by theSt Thecla herself took the honored place, directly facing the eighth pillar, which stood behind the altar but had no representation carved into it, nothing but a circle of rosettes at the base and the capital

What need to see the carved faces of the pillars when the la the face of the man who knelt before the altar? He had set the ceramic lamp on the marble floor between hiave his face a saintly glow, as if God had touched hiht

Did he know that she watched? Did he suspect that during his long hours of prayer people caallery to look down into the inner sanctum? Where they would see him, as fair as the dawn, as pious as a saint, and sublih

I’ht, irritated at the way her thoughts were tending Old enough to be his grandmother if she had been married off at fifteen, as her sister and cousins had been, to seal alliances between families But she had been allowed to enter the church after the husband chosen for her had died quite spectacularly the night before the wedding She had e She hadn’t meant to make his death messy, just final, but after all she had only been fourteen