Morgan got to her feet. To Sirius and Amanda she said, “Well, go take a look then. I’ll ready the men. Let me know what you find.” With plenty of confidence she said directly to Amanda, “Given my new knowledge, maybe the fight will go differently this time.”

  Amanda didn’t look convinced but she said nothing. Her eyes slid toward the spirit bottle on Morgan’s desk. Before she could make a move toward it, Sirius reached her and gently nudged her in the direction of the door.

  She was quiet as they descended deeper into the ship.

  “Maybe I should fight him,” Sirius thought aloud. “It wouldn’t be quite proper but if he bested Morgan-”

  “No!” Amanda said far too quickly.

  Sirius frowned.

  She glanced back at him with a worried look. Yeah, there was definitely something she wasn’t telling him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  He waited for an explanation but that was all she said.

  “Amanda?” He reached out for her shoulder.

  She slowed but she didn’t stop and she didn’t look back at him. He could feel her shaking. With a little more force he stopped her and he turned her around to face him.

  Her gaze found the floor.

  “Why not?” he asked again.

  When she looked up he could see a glimmer of wetness to her eyes as if she were trying not to cry.

  “Because I can’t lose you again. He killed you too.”

  “In a fight?” Sirius asked.

  The drop of her gaze suggested no. She shook her head. “He came up behind you and got you by surprise.”

  “So not really a proper fight,” Sirius replied. “I’m the best fighter on this ship.”

  She fixed him with an angry look. “That doesn’t mean you’ll win.”

  “I might be the best chance we have.”

  She shook her head.

  He let her go and they continued down into the hold. He understood she was scared for him but it wasn’t her choice to make. Did he think he could win though? Shiv had fought the man and won, half blinded him in fact. That had to make his sword fighting worse. But Sirius had never been able to beat Shiv. And Morgan had lost, which meant The Butcher was still good but Sirius had gotten a good look at Morgan’s skills very recently and while she was a very competent fighter, he knew without doubt he could beat her again. She was fast but she was reckless and undisciplined. Maybe he had a shot against The Butcher. If he fought him, he would have to kill him. He knew that much. He doubted the day would end in a bargain while The Butcher still lived. Morgan probably thought the same. Did she have another plan that she hadn’t mentioned or was she just hoping to win the sword fight?

  They reached the hold and Sirius spoke to the guard who was there.

  As they sorted through the contents, Amanda remarked, “It explains a lot, him being a lie detector. That’s how he knew Morgan was bluffing about agreeing to the deal.”

  Sirius nodded. “Hard to bluff a man who can tell if you’re lying.”

  Amanda paused. “Actually, the trick is to bluff yourself. Most lie detection magic works not on absolute truth, which can be non-existent sometimes anyway, but on whether the speaker believes what they are saying. So if you can convince yourself then you can fool a lie detector.”

  “That sounds easier said than done. Here, take a look at this. I think I can sense something.” He threw her a small metal stick.

  She caressed it in her hands. With a smile she replied, “It’s a firestarter. Pretty weak but at least you’re not likely to catch the ship on fire with that.” She tossed it back to him with a sigh.

  They quickly went through the rest of the things. Sirius had been right, a lot of the cargo were infusements of various types.

  At one point Amanda held up a necklace with a surprised look on her face.

  “What’s that?” Sirius asked.

  “That,” she replied, “Is mindwalking magic.”

  “That seems useful.”

  But her face said otherwise. She sat down on a nearby barrel with a sigh. “It’s not tightly wound.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It takes skill to use it. And the problem with that borrower is I can’t think of a single magic that can’t be twisted in some way. Magic used without control is dangerous and it takes so much more skill to be in control than it does to make someone lose it. The worst thing is I hadn’t even thought of doing things that way. Most borrowers fight you for control, they don’t fight you for chaos. He’s clever.”

  “So we’ll be clever then.” Sirius turned back to look at the firestarting sticks. He put several in his pockets then faced Amanda again. “So, anything here we can use then?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how to deal with the borrower.”

  “You said he can’t read very far?”

  She nodded. “But I don’t know how far that would be and it means being subtle and physically close to whatever you’re doing.”

  “What if there were multiple people using magic? Would that distract him?”

  “Maybe. But no one else is really trained with infusements are they?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s weak right?” He held up the firestarting stick.

  She met his eyes with a look of hope in her own. In the low light of the lamps her hair flickered like a flame. “I think I have to fight him.”

  “What?” A cold washed over him. He hoped she wasn’t referring to who he thought she was.

  “The Butcher. It’s the only way I can get close enough.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “I won’t be playing fair.”

  “And the borrower?”

  “You do your thing. I’ll do mine.”

  “You said he took control of your fire. That he burned the ships.” He could feel himself shaking now. He knew that look in her eyes. The one that said she’d come to a decision and wouldn’t be moved.

  She nodded. “He won’t if I’m subtle and I will be but I have to be close to The Butcher for what I have in mind to work.”

  “If he knows you’re using magic in battle, he will call the others in. It’ll be a mess.”

  “He won’t know. Everybody cheats. The trick is not to get caught, remember? I’m the best damn poker player there is. I can bluff anyone.” She nodded down at the fire stick. “Make it look like the crew on this ship use magic regularly and they won’t know what we have, just like my first plan and if we time it right, maybe it’ll hide what I’m doing from the borrower.”

  “Even if you manage to pull this off they won’t believe it.”

  “They won’t have a choice. And if… when I pull it off, even if he gets a read, if it’s subtle enough it’ll surprise the borrower too, at least a little bit, make him hesitate. He had some command over the others I think. Even if I’m wrong, if you get as close as you can, at least taking him out first will give us a chance.”

  “What are you planning to do exactly?”

  “It’s probably better I don’t tell you. Then you don’t have to lie.”

  Sirius shook his head. “He will cut you down in seconds. You may not get enough time.”

  “Morgan didn’t. She toyed with me. I just have to make him do the same. Make it look like he’s overconfident. Wait for him to make a mistake.”

  “If you fight him, you have to kill him. Do you understand that?” He fixed her with a hard look. He decided then and there that he had no intention of letting her fight. When the time came he would do it. But it was important to plan for every inevitability just in case. She needed to understand that The Butcher could not survive the day.

  She nodded.

  Riki, the ship’s healer, poked his head in the room a few minutes later. “Any luck? They’re getting pretty close. We’ve probably only got a few minutes before they’re here.”

  “Maybe,” Sirius replied. He held up a handful of the firesticks. “I’m gonna head up then and hand these out.” He gave one to Riki and then turned to Amanda, “You keep looking. See if there’s anything else.”

  She nodded. She got the impression maybe he was hoping she’d stay down here until the battle was over. She had no such intention though.

  Sirius left.

  Riki studied the firestarting infusement in his hand. “Stinger filled me in. You time travelled?”

  She nodded.

  “Risky,” he remarked but he gave her a sort of impressed nod.

  She’d forgotten he’d studied magic. That he’d gone to sorcery school. Maybe he could help. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “For how to fight the borrower?”

  She nodded. She was tired, much tireder than the previous two days, almost as if her body hadn’t fully reset. Her hangover too had eased off much faster. She was half tempted to go back for that bottle in Morgan’s cabin. Her magic had always been a little easier to control when she was a little tipsy. It probably wasn’t true for sword fighting though but she would need to be close for her latest plan to work, unless Riki had an alternative option. She had decided this morning that there was no way she was figuring this all out on her own. She needed their help. So far she wasn’t sure things were really going much better than last time though, and the worst thing of all, there would be no do overs this time.

  She had hoped there might be more time travel in here but there was none. There was something else though, something that was far more of a back up than a main plan. Something she hadn’t mentioned to Sirius.

  “Well, not with this.” Riki tossed the firestick up and down casually in his hand. “It’s a nice idea I suppose. There’s a chance it will work but if the borrower’s any good he’ll be able to read the user’s skill even on something this weak and constrained. He’ll know they’re not used to it. Although, I suppose with enough of them, multiple people will be harder for him to read.”

  “What about this.” She handed him the mindwalking charm.

  His eyes widened. His eyebrows went up.

  “There’s more of them,” she told him.

  “Well, that’s something different. I wouldn’t give this to anyone who’s not familiar with mindwalking magic though, it’d be chaos.”

  “Can you use it?”

  He bit his lip and thought for a second. “Against the borrower…” He glanced toward the rest of the stuff. “You didn’t find any binding magic?”

  She shook her head. “They had some binding bracelets on the other ship though.”

  Riki took a seat on a nearby crate. He looked ashen. “That probably means they have a binder then.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Can’t rule it out and if that’s the case we’re screwed.” He glanced at the mindwalking charm. “We could threaten to destroy these. They’re pretty valuable as a trade. Risky though, we’d have to be willing to go through with it and the only way to do that is to burn through the magic.”

  “Surely, you could do that safely enough? You’re a sorcerer.”

  He shook his head. “I never graduated. I was only ever a mage, and most of what you learn they wipe from your mind when they kick you out. Not everything, but enough. And mindwalking’s a tricky magic even for the best of them.”

  “How much chaos could he create from mindwalking?” But she knew the answer even before she’d looked at Riki’s expression.

  “Hallucinations, voices, sounds that distract a good swordsman,” he started, but then he shook his head and reconsidered. “No. That requires control. Mindwalking magic at its core opens up the mind. He wouldn’t be able to manipulate what we see, not if we were in control but he could make everyone’s mind readable by everyone. Novice mindwalkers have trouble keeping out of people’s heads. It’s overwhelming. You’d think that would affect us all but they probably have more practice. What about that one?”

  He pointed to the other necklace she was holding. It was obviously different, and much like regular infusements everywhere, except for the ones in Sirius’s coat, each type of magic had been infused into its own style of item. The mindwalking one was on a silver chain with what looked like a decorative knot hanging from the middle. She’d assumed as much since it wasn’t one she recognised but it looked like the sort her mother might tie around a parcel for aesthetics. The other necklace she held was black leather with a little white carved bird skull hanging from it. The two were clearly different enough that they were different magics.

  “Oh, that’s no…” Amanda was about to tell him it held nothing at all but then she saw the look on his face and she knew she couldn’t fool him. Somehow he already knew that one held something. “You can read it from there?” she asked, impressed. She always needed to touch an infusement to feel what was in it. This one had taken a little longer to sense too. Riki really was skilled.

  He nodded. “I can’t tell what it is, just a sense of weight from it. I know it’s something.”

  She handed it over. That had been her back up. Riki was obviously more skilled than she though. And his natural power wasn’t so far from it in some ways. Perhaps it was better he had it. She half expected him to scold her though, to tell her it wasn’t a magic anyone should use. That even if done successfully there would be a cost. It was not something that could save everyone. She had meant to keep it for Sirius, and Sirius alone, just in case, and whatever the cost, and for that she felt horribly guilty.

  “Necromancy,” Riki remarked.

  She sighed. “You’re going to tell me that’s not helpful either. That it requires a sacrifice. That it has to be done quickly and in a controlled manner and we probably won’t get the chance to use without the borrower interfering.” Even knowing all that, it had still given her some hope. It was false hope though.

  But Riki surprised her by shaking his head and smiling. “Actually. This might be just the thing we need. Are there more of them?”

  She nodded and frowned. “But I thought…”

  He held up a finger. “I don’t intend to use it our people.” With a smile he added, “You mentioned chaos, well this is just the kind of chaos that might benefit us more than them. If we do it wrong just right.”

  “If-”

  Riki cut her off with a sudden change in expression. He glanced up. “You feel that?”

  While they’d been talking the ship had slowed down a lot. Then there came a small jolt and some rocking.

  “I think they’re arrived. It’s show time.” He gave Amanda a devious grin. “Morgan’s gonna hate this but if it works she can scold me later.”

  here