Then someone mumbled that Johan's party vanished.
"Vanished?" blurted Adira. "How so?"
"Dunno." A blond, beardless lad was reluctant to speak. "I saw them quit the Dandysprat. The barbarians scooched, so the master might mount the chair. I thought it a powerful queer time to be departin', for t'was after midnight. Where could they walk by night? But the bald man waved a hand and off they trotted. South. Johan craned his head around like a vulture, but he didn't see me in the shadows. Lucky, I was, I know now! Then he twinkled his fingers, an' the whole party disappeared!"
"Invisible," said Adira, who possessed that trick herself.
"Yes, cap'n. Must'a been."
"South, they turned?" Musing, Adira faced that way. Night cloaked the coast, but Adira had seen that a rugged rise verged on a high plain, then trees.
She asked, "Are there roads along the coast through the forest?"
"We only venture south in ships," said a dark-tanned woman. "Precious little beachhead exists along the Storm Coast. Not till you round Sheep's Head."
Past that bald knob, the shore veered east to become the Craggy Coast on the way to Bryce.
"There's ox-paths for logging, but they dead-end," said a logger. "They don't like us venturing too deep."
"'They'?" Adira wished she could throttle these slow-speaking folk and shake out quicker answers.
"The people of the pines," said a lithe woman in furs with the look of a scout. "They don't welcome trespassers. They allow some logging, for they like coin to buy our iron and brassware. Too, they barter furs. But they ain't friendly about it."
"Arboria," put in Bardolph, "so they name the pinelands.
A mysterious clan. They've reappeared these past three years. For decades before they were gone."
"Where?" asked Jasmine Boreal, a wanderer of the woods. "Why disappear for decades, then come back?"
"And what," asked Adira, "could Johan seek in the depths of a dismal forest?"
Fear skittered on the night wind. People stared at the ground. Puzzled, Adira repeated the question.
With a pained sigh, the cleric Bardolph admitted, "Legend speaks of… an undying mage who inhabits a castle in the forest."
"Name?" prompted Adira.
More gloom. Bardolph shook his head. "We dare not invoke her name. The less said, the better. But be warned. She's capable of greater evil than Johan can conceive."
"She?" Adira waited, but no one sullied the silence. Finally she sighed and rubbed her smudged nose. She craved a solid meal, a bath, and a day's sleep, but likely she'd get none. Pondering the sparse news, she mentally shrugged. Many mages were undying or very old. Johan was centuries old, by all accounts. Yet he'd been bested by a ragtag army and Hazezon Tamar's sorcery.
For just a moment, the pirate queen's thoughts drifted to her ex'husband. She wondered what Haz was doing now and how he might have aided her quest. Mostly she wondered how two people so in love couldn't live together. Their marriage-had had to end peaceably before it erupted in blood. Still…
"Dira?" Simone the Siren touched her chief's elbow.
"What? Oh. Bless me, I'm luffing." Adira's apology made the Circle glance about in amazement. "It makes sense. Johan would visit a local mage to learn about another mage living in the nearby forest, then he'd kill the informant to cover his tracks. He hired agents to slow us further."
"Oh, yes," said Bardolph. "You mentioned agents before. Do you suspect someone in Buzzard's Bay stirred up strife?"
"I know it," said the pirate chief. "Meaning no offense, but one minute I was talking to your sheriff civil as I might, and the next some fluff sparkled in the air. Everyone turned ugly and riotous, including my crew, and here we be."
"Oy, I remember!" A lean man in the crowd rose on tiptoe to peer around. "It was Darswin and his gang shouting you down. Queer, them talking like patriots being offended. None of them wastrels was ever civic-minded. The whole bunch needs a good hanging."
A woman bleated, "I saw Darswin and one of his brigands duck into Noah's warehouse just before the fire! I thought they was pilfering."
"They must'a fired Noah's warehouse to kill the strangers!" bawled a man. "That arsonous son of a-"
"Find the bastards!" rose a chorus. "Find Darswin and his cronies! Scour the town! Find 'em!"
Roaring, coasters fanned out through dark streets. They left no door closed, no barrel standing, no shed unexplored. In the meantime Adira and her crew accepted Bardolph's invitation to sup in his small rectory. Slabs of coarse black bread and cheese were washed down with more beer. While Adira questioned Bardolph about forest lore, Jasmine Boreal and Whistledove Kithkin sat rapt. Virgil and Wilemina and others dozed off, Murdoch actually standing upright. The halloo of the hunt, like a pack of dogs chasing a scent, seemed to echo off the surrounding mountains.
Adira and Bardolph halted as halloos turned to cheers. Bardolph sighed. "Our quarry is treed. I must preside at their last sunset."
With pirates tagging along, the cleric paced sedately to the far end of Seafarers' Quay where most of the town congregated. Big men stood over three quailing suspects who had been shoved to their knees with hands bound behind. The criminals bore black eyes and bloody noses. Adira's pirates felt no pity, having fought fires that claimed half the shorefront.
Unfolding hands from his sleeves, Bardolph asked mildly, "Have they confessed?"
"They have," boomed a man. "They wanted to unchain their souls before they died. Darswin was recruited by Johan's huntsman and instructed by the high lord himself. They was to stir up strife and get these newcomers killed. They squealed like rats in the bilges."
Bardolph nodded. "It's a shameful life you've led, Darswin, and doubly a crime for roping your friends into assassination. We are all born free under the skies, masters of our fate. You three chose the twisted path to the end of this dock."
The ominous words hushed the crowd. Adira's pirates wished they were elsewhere, but they burned with curiosity. The crowd parted. Sailors bore rolls of canvas like rugs. Darswin began to curse and another thug to sob. The criminals' bonds were cut, but a dozen strong hands mashed each flat on an unfurled canvas: an ancient linen sail. Still pinned, the felons were rolled over and over, swaddled so tight only their heads and feet stuck out. A sailmaker ripped a scrap from the edge and tied a stout knot around the wrapped men. All in silence.
"By the light of the Holy Nimbus," intoned Bardolph, "the ever-shining star that guides us home, I charge you three to change your ways and return better beings. Now go, washed free of all sorrows."
"Return from where?" whispered Virgil, but was shushed.
Solemnly three men hefted each swaddled offender, swung them thrice without counting aloud, and pitched them off the docks. Darswin shrieked as he hit the water with a great splash that scared cormorants and gulls off the water. The trio sank in a light froth of bubbles.
One big-bearded man dusted his hands. Gruff, to cover emotion, he said, "That's that. No use dallying here. Let's get those burnt timbers cleared away." Quietly the crowd trickled into the night.
Adira Strongheart and her crew stood gawking at the bay and the grisly execution.