She regarded them now as portents. May my enemies’ bones keep you company, she wished them.

"You’re certain about this, Dir Agnon," this from Rathe, the priest-warrior from the Hinter Islands. His fleet lay in safety in the cove whose calm waters defined the near edge of the children’s playground. Safety won too late, Skalda thought sadly, looking out over the sun-sparkled water at those handful of ships, masts split by spells of lightening, crews decimated by sendings of thirst and wasting disease.

They’d come here to huddle behind the great, untested fleet of the Circle Cove, to be nurse-maided and told it wasn’t their fault, that nothing anyone could do would succeed against the Enemy. Which might well be true.

"Certain? When are any of us certain these days, Dir Rathe?" Agnon offered in his soft, careful voice. As priest-advisor to the secular rulers of the Cove and the outlying island clusters, he was magnificently non-committal at any given time. A virtue in times of slow, peaceful prosperity; a dangerous paralysis in this time of utter peril. Skalda stared out to the narrow mist-filled opening that led to the open ocean until her eyes ached from the water’s glare.

"Dir Skalda sounded quite sure of this course in our Council. And why else are we here today, with them?" Rathe pointed a bone-thin finger at the brightly clad group near their feet. The ten children, daughters and sons collected from each of the Noble Houses, were equally oblivious to the presence of adults or to portents of doom, half-arguing and half-laughing in dispute of a shell. Their shrill voices rose into the still morning air like the piping of shorebirds.

"I am sure we have no other options left to us, comrades," Skalda answered. "Let us choose and speedily. No amount of magic will delay the tides for your debates. We’ve little margin as it is to allow the Mariner’s Pride safe passage over Blood Reef."

She looked back at the children playing amid the bones of their elders’ hopeless war and prepared to make her own selection. When Rathe would have simply picked the two nearest to be done with it, Skalda touched the heavy fabric of his sleeve and shook her head. His eyes were as haunted as she knew hers would appear.