By dusk light, some two hundred sailors of now sunken ships are slumped over the gunwales of my fleet. Manacles and ropes and torn cloth--whatever my crew could spare--bind their hands to the outside hull, such that they look down over the waters of this rocky cove, which has cost me so much. A brave few struggle, or yell, or plot with shifty eyes. Most have seen too much for that. They have witnessed first hand the magic the Known World has come to fear from me and me alone--and having watched the hundred ships they sailed on count for nought against my five, they are resigned to my power. At best, they pray.
       I stand aboard the Mallard beneath a bloody flag and stretch wide my arms to feel the Lines of the World. They are like cobwebs and like ropes that bind the elements, and the mind, and the soul. About my ships and my person, I have tied Knots in these Lines no less essential than the mundane rigging of the sails. By this means did my hulls turn the cannon-fire of my enemies, by this might have I left that vast swell of flotsam and corpses out in the Great Sea beyond this cove, by this measure am I the enemy of all the many kingdoms of men. Never have I met a man who could feel or bend the Lines as I do, none who even thought of Athenae's so-called 'loom' as such. I never worked much in textile. I am a sailor born of a people that have plied the Great Sea since afore Heracles sacked Troy--and I know Lines, and I know Knots. Some mark this is, of the grand and vague destiny which my tribe once prognosticated.
       Had they seen the future better, they might still be here now, instead of all this. Alas.
       Out of my reverie approach two of my own pi-rates, Euripides and Fadwa, guiding forth across a plank from the Nightjar, the single man bold enough to demand my audience. The man stands a head taller than I, though this is scarcely a challenge. His well-adorned blue coat retains a certain crisp style even after being fished from the drink, and he stands, though manacled, with stalwart self-assurance. He is young, and his feet are unsteady on the deck, and I can tell he is not many years at sea.
       "Black Calchas," he addresses me, and I see some glimmer of disappointment in his eye to witness such a reedy little man as I. The name Calchas I took myself, after a Seer from the Argos of ancient days. Black, I was dubbed by the kings of the lands I stole from, perhaps by the color of my beard. Or perhaps not. I wear the color well, besides, in a stately coat and hat.
       The man continues, chin high, "I am Admiral Bremon Canopides, leader of the Third United Fleet." I can hear the Athens in his accent, so he is here by writ of the Grey Maiden's Church, no doubt. What other force could assemble such an al-liance of nations? "I am here to negotiate."
       I look past both him and the rocky arms of the cove in which we're anchored, at the great broken and burnt mass of sunken ships of which this man declares himself the Admiral, tossing upon the waves. Sharks fill the water, and carrion birds the air, and no doubt the crabs upon the sea floor shall have their fill aside. I shrug and say, "Shall you accept my surrender?"
       The pirates laugh, though young Bremon stands no less tall. "I demand the release of these fine sailors. Though proud men all, you will earn no ransom for them. Only for myself as the Prince of Athens, Heir to the Erechtheid, and steward of the violet crown." He is no doubt right, though he surely inflates his own importance as some third son of some third son. "Should you free them as a show of good faith, I will comply entirely."
       "A bold offer," I declare. Across all five of my ships, my pirates are dragging up from holds great barrels, some long stored in ice, common goods stolen from the shipping lines of the Great Sea amid glittering treasures. They are placed beside the captured men, who grow more restless by the moment. "But unnecessary, Admiral. I have no intent to keep your men." A captive over on the Osprey has leapt over the side to dangle against the hull by her wrists, hoping for some escape, forcing my sailors to drag her back. That won't do; the sun is low and the time is nearly here. "Tell me, though, has your coalition of nations provided them all with boots of the same make?"
       Bremon is confused, and the pirates, more fa-miliar with the unexplained oddness of my demands--they fulfill them even now--chuckle at his expense. My crews do not understand the workings of my power, only that if they enact the prep-arations I ask, great deeds are done. Perhaps a scant few of them glean enough to guess at my aims, though none ever showed talent for my craft. The greater deed coming, I have concocted all my own.
       Bremon stammers, "Boots? I. . .I believe so, yes. Boots were on the requisition forms, yes."
       "And you wear the same?"
       "Well. . ."
       "Give me your boots, Admiral."
       "What?"
       One of my pirates, Glaphyra, goes to smack him across the back of the head, but stays her hand at my gesture. "Give me your boots," I repeat.
       Bremon's hands are manacled loosely in the front, and his feet are unsteady, but clumsily he unties his sodden boots and hands them over.
       Feeling about them, yes, there are Lines binding these to every captive's boots, links of shared make and purpose, like the single breath of twins, and I collect them in my other hand. To Bremon, this surely looks silly, my airy wool-gathering. This bundle of lean connections I tie into a hitch, and loop it round a hearty Line of the Mallard itself. So many Knots have I tied between the five ships of my pirate fleet, they are scarcely separate vessels in spirit, and for my magic act as one.
       I drop Bremon's boots to the deck, and they do not bounce in the least, snapping to the surface like iron to a lodestone. And across five ships, captured men cry out that their feet stick to the floor. Boots as one, ships as one, bound together by my Knots. Arms bound, feet bound, stretched with the railings digging into their bellies, the Third United Fleet's survivors have no space left to struggle, and so they only struggle more.
       Bremon begins to panic. "What are you doing?"
       I've no reason to answer him. I give no order to have him join his men, either. Let him be the sole witness. "Is all ready?" I shout over the waves. Across five ships, pirates raise their fists in assent, knowing not my aims but just to execute my will. They have seen my deeds afforded by their aid, poor fools, and comply heartily.
       I stand as tall as I may upon the afterdeck of the Mallard, and feel the Lines of the world shift as the Sun sinks toward the West. It is time. After some lifetime, after countless sins and hardships, it is time at last to remedy that loss which has so defined my life. I have torn the world of Men asunder in my quest--now, finally, it is the Gods' turn.
       "Begin!" I cry, and my pirates hoist barrels over the gunwales, between the shoulders of panicking captives. Golden trails of honey ooze into the waters of the cove.
       Reaching into the open air, I grasp at Lines I had until now barely dared to glance my fingers across, great ropey binds of the world itself that feel as thick across as a man's leg. They resist me, oh, how they fight my grasp, but I have prepared for this day for so long.
       The next set of barrels tips, and great waves of pure white milk slosh into the sweetened seawater.
       With my entire body, I hoist and Knot together forces I can scarcely comprehend, not the light of a flame or the bond between boots or even the memory of a man as I have twisted time and time again, but the principles of life and death.
       More barrels, great cascades of barley mixing with the waters. Already I can feel the alchemy of the concoction, this libation told of in tales two millennia past, when heroes might venture into places not meant for the living.
       This godly Knot tests my strength of soul and body both, but at last it closes and holds fast. I feel the world recoil at this connection I have made, Gaia and Poseidon and whatever remains of Usurped Zeus alike balking at the scale of my hubris. Fear not, high ones, it is none of your domains towards which I reach.
       Wine joins the mixture in the cove, countless vintages by the cask and the bottle, some vineyards proudly claiming two thousand years of heritage, back to that same age of heroism long gone.
       Onto and through this dragon of a Knot I loop a dozen other Lines I have set aside, my hands a-flurry. Bonds of my own body, as well as lesser and stranger esoteric forces only I have known and which I have not yet bothered to name. In another world, I might be a philosopher, categorizing in my mother's tongue the forces other men can only dream of. It is a thing of terrible beauty I have made, the product of a life's study and search, a spell the likes of which the world has never seen.
       Then comes blood.
       My pirates slit the bound sailors' throats one by one, however they might struggle. Bremon screams out for the sake of men whose names he does not know, deaths he could not fight as he is held back by the pirates he took to the sea to kill.
       This offering is spoken of in myths of the age of heroes--water, honey, milk, barley, wine, and blood. An offering to the dead. A libation that they might take forms with which to speak to those who visit the Underworld.
       Or perhaps those who bring It to them.
       The last glimmer of the sun shines over the horizon in the West, and with a deft hand, I tie that too into the edges of my Knot. And then loose it at its core.
       The world rips apart under the forces I have levered against themselves. Broken lines--I have never known them to snap--whip across my senses like a lash. The sea reverberates with the weight of what I've done, as though I had dropped some impossible stone in the waters of the cove. I've done it. I've broken the world.
       Lapping at the bloody frothing mess that fills the cove, the shapes of dead folk appear.
       Shades. Ghosts. Phantoms, ancestors, eidolons. They stand or crouch or crawl over the surface of the waves, clad in ragged shifts. They are ethereal, but grow more solid as they sup upon what I have poured into the sea. I have ripped open a door to Hades and called them here, and my magic shall bind them further still and give them life again!
       I rush to the gunwale and elbow over limp corpses to shout out in a language I have scarcely had cause to use since I was a boy, "Mother!"
       A few shades turn up their faces at me, and I scan diaphanous visages for the familiar.
       "Auntie! Bomlicar, is that you?" I can barely make out their faces, still growing in physicality. It's been so long. "I came back for you! There was a storm coming! I couldn't outrun it, but I promised." What eyes meet mine show no sign of recog-nition. "Mother!" There are. . .there are so many of them.
       Dozens. Hundreds of shades. Crowding the banks of this cove I left so long ago.
       I left behind a tribe of sixty.
       I turn back and see living faces struck with horror. Brazen pirates cowering from the ship's edges. I hear the unearthly moans.
       One exsanguinated young marine over on the Pelican, apparently moments away from loosing both his boots and his binds before his death, slumps unshod over the gunwale and splashes into the drink. The dead close slowly on his body with an unmistakable menace.
       "No," I say. This is wrong. It should have only summoned my tribe; they should have been able to take on new forms, physical forms, a second life, to live again! No!
       At last, I meet the eyes of a familiar face among the shades. A girl of some sixteen I was besotted with as a boy, Carthala, the curve of her cheek sunken and skeletal. Her eyes are dead and blank and do not recognize me in the least. In life, she could scarcely bear to crack a crab, but as she looks away, she sinks her spectral teeth into the flesh of a man.
       What have I done?

       How the wind across the Sea cut through me that day, so many and too few years ago. Before I could bind it, before the shape of my quest took form in my mind.
       What cruelty, what cruelty, I thought, as my young hands struggled with the spring-tight lines under a darkening sky. What cruelty, that the wind carries the storm faster than the sailor.
       The raft beneath my feet rattled like a beast afraid as it coursed across the Sea on winds that could sunder it. Should have sundered it already, how I was not yet drowned I could not have in the moment said. The storm that reared up behind me--black sky turning calm sea into chaos--should not have been; it had been a clear day, still in the dry summer, and the birds had given no portent of bad weather. I had only been halfway through the rites when the wind began to pick up dangerously. This was supposed to be my age of covenant, my transition into manhood. The Tribe had awakened at dawn, still in the clothes of mourning for our warriors, to anoint and instruct me, that I could prove myself on the sea in isolation. Once done, I would return to that cove--
       By the gods, that cove. I willed the ship to catch more wind, to hold more fast, to skim more lightly on the waves.
       The cove had been a desperate port of call, the first place the tribe could lick our wounds after such a defeat. That other tribe had made some bargain with the Mainlanders, wielded those fire weapons that had trickled out of the East--how dare they call themselves of the People to so betray our ways. Ousted from everywhere else, we had been forced to set camp in a cove that was everything my father had warned me to avoid in storm season: curled against the wind, rocky and steep. If caught unawares, this storm would dash all that remained of my family against those rocks. I had to warn them, to help them evacuate.
       One of the lines anchoring my tortured sail to my failing raft at last snapped, and in desperate reflex I grabbed at it--at these speeds, such might cost me a hand, but it scarcely mattered. The rope whipped away from me at a speed I could scarcely see, and yet my hand wrapped around. . .something. I could see nothing in my grip, and yet I felt clearly the braided threads tug along my palm, and the sail that should have drifted loosely held, yet remained taught. The snapped rope twisted in the evil wind, and yet I held some other Line upon the sail that kept it right.
       Since my struggling birth, the Elders had spoken of destiny, my ill-formed head a mark of Godly favor. Always had I felt strange energies brushing against my skin, as though the open air was filled with cobwebs. Never had I held one in my hand before, never had I conceived they might attach to things within the real.
       I was disturbed from this strange revelation by a voice from above and to my right. A great many-decked ship, a Mainlander vessel with more sails than I could count, had pulled up behind me. I had noticed it cresting over the horizon as I began my rites and had cursed its intrusion upon my ritual solitude. It seemed they had spotted me as well, as we fled the same storm. A man upon the prow called out again over the roaring wind, and tossed me down a net up which to climb.
       The ethereal Line that held my sail in place slipped from my grasp, and in desperation, I leapt across the drink to catch the net. The Great Sea bit about my legs as I hoisted myself up the mainlander hull, and I heard my sacred raft dashed in the waves as the black sky overcame us. I climbed for what seemed like hours until strong hands bit into my arms and hoisted me over the gunwale. Several men spoke in bold and frantic voices, but I knew Achaean not well enough to catch the words.
       "Please, please," I gasped, oscillating between my mother's tongue and what I knew of the Mainlanders'. "There's a cove, my family is trapped. We must help them."
       A tall, red-bearded man in an elaborate coat approached across the water-logged deck. "Boy!" he said--the words are etched in my memory. "You'd best thank the Earth-Shaker and the Messenger alike that we came along to save you. As is, we'll be lucky if the Lelante here sees the other side of this tempest; that raft of yours had moments more at best. What were you doing all the way out here, lad?"
       "Please," I repeated in my broken Achaean. "My family! There is a cove, northeast of here. We must find them. Help them."
       This captain looked me up and down, cocking his head around my egg-shaped skull, then rolled his eyes. "Of course. Of all the people to save, we fish out a touched Phon. The savages probably left him out here to die."
       "Please!" Tears streamed down my face as the rain began to pelt the deck. "We must help them! I can show you to the cove!" I grabbed at his coat, but he shoved me aside with the strength of an ox. The storm raged over us, wind growing stronger as the thunder grew near. "They will die!"
       "One less pack of barbarians raiding the coasts for us to worry about then," he said. He pointed to a member of the crew. "You, whatever your name is, find someone who speaks his language and start showing our new cabin boy the ropes. He'll get a taste for proper civilization in time."
       "You monster!" I cried and tried to run at him. He drew a wicked cutlass and battered me over the head with the pommel. I stumbled onto the slick deck, but my hand wrapped around another something. A narrow, tightly corded Line that somehow felt of disgust and pride. I tugged on it, and the captain blinked and shook his head as though a dizzy spell had overtaken him. "Save my people," I demanded from on my back. "Save them from this storm as you did me."
       There was an instant, a fleeting moment in which the captain's eyes flared with consideration. But I had only grasped that Line that led to a facet of his mind; I knew not yet how to tie a thought in Knots, or to loop my words or will around them.
       The boot of the man who pulled me from the drink met me in the stomach, and I lost my grip on the captain's mind.
       "To the brig with him, then!" I heard the captain return to himself as more boots and hands abused my flesh. "We can sell him once we get to port. Then we'll see what the civilized world makes of the likes of him."

       My quarters are too dark. I like it that way, normally. Sharpens the other senses. That I may hear the waves lapping at the Mallard's hull, smell the grain of the wood, and the spices I've stolen. So, I can feel more keenly the coarseness of the threads that make up this world.
       But tonight, those threads are ragged and torn from what I've done. The sea reeks of the foul libation we've given it. And the wails of the dead drown out even the waves.
       Let it not be said I am a stranger to sin, but this is something else entirely.
       I've failed.
       I ought to be proud; nonetheless, magic like this has scarcely been worked since the Age began. But after a lifetime of preparation, I've failed. What's worse, I am left with a keen awareness of why I failed, by what measure were my plans doomed from the onset. Would that I could tie time itself in a Knot and feel still the bright, optimistic ignorance that has defined my bleak career. Instead, I see all too keenly, save for the dark in this room.
       Feeling through the close air, I grip two Lines suitable for lighting my lamp. I loop the threads of the elements into a simple bend and pull it tight, and power seethes within that rig, raging at its binds. I liberate it carefully, untying the knot as I flick it forth, such that a spark of flame darts toward the lamp's wick and bursts upon it, granting light by which I bear witness to the spoils of thirty years of plunder and folly.
       Blades of the fallen adorn the walls like the teeth of some great beast on whose tongue I sit. Glittering vessels and trinkets of a dozen and a dozen more kingdoms, Europan, Assuwan, Afaran, collect dust. My desk--too large for any room in the galleon I stole it from, let alone the nimble Mallard--is a mess of maps and star charts, self-sketched diagrams of my arcane failure, held in place by a bottle of wine I had rescued from my final ritual. I place my hands firmly onto this clutter and shove it with deliberate slowness to the floor. Shuffle, shuffle, clatter, shuffle. To replace it all, I set upon the dust-scarred wood a silver mirror, that I might look upon a sinner.
       The roots of my beard have not been dark in some time, and my eyes seem intent on escaping the world into the recesses of my oval skull. I feel the smallness of my frame like Atlas must. How anyone fears me, I can scarcely comprehend; all I see is my mother's hawkish nose and father's bee-stung lip. The two of them are out there somewhere, adding to that mindless, Hadean cacophony.
       The razor does its work, and in stages, I am a different man. The sunkenness of my cheeks stands starker, and I can see the wrinkles in my neck. I can see more clearly the egg-like cast of my skull, that accident of birth that the tribe held in such reverence. "Like the kings of old," they said. "Touched by the gods! His destiny is grand indeed!" Well, I took that destiny by the throat, I did. Look at the good it did me, them, all.
       I search the floor for my hat, where did I. . .there. And the coat, black as my name, buttons up tight. And the blade, certainly can't be seen without the blade--the Knots I have tied into the spirit of the saber stud it like an Age's ethereal barnacles. So much power have I woven into the iron thing I latch upon my hip that even common men can feel the magic on it. There. Razor's work be damned, they'll know Black Calchas to see him.
       The men look twice at me as I mount the decks of the Mallard, but they know better than to interrupt me when I'm tying Knots. My hands flick around the Lines, binding my quintet of ships with subtle magics as I feel the wind on my naked cheeks for the first time since I was a lad. The dawn is not yet over the horizon, but the sky is bloody red--a warning, any sailor knows--and old jilted Phosphoros winks at me from her place above the morning. The fetid smell of what we poured into this blighted cove rankles the nose, each component turning the others sour, and the water froths an ugly pink still--even the sharks do not abide what we mixed with the blood. Further out to sea, the flotsam of my enemies turns in the tide, the ruins of a hundred proud warships of a dozen proud nations come to escort the world's most notorious pirate to Hades. And by the rocky shore of the cove--I must force myself to look--the dead still amass in ethereal cloaks. They wail, and drift across the water, bobbing like jetsam, and if I look too long, I shall know some few of their phantasmal faces. Too few, too many. I have called them here, and fed them their fill in my folly, and for naught. This is no second life. They carried not enough back with them from Dread Persephone; if they had even carried it to her in the first place.
       Now for next steps.
       "Fill a boat with a man's weight in riches from the hold," I say to the pirates amassed at my order. Helen and Izem rush off to comply. "And bring me the prisoner." There's only one left in the brig. One that I spared. Jon and Khafre run to fetch him.
       The bosun, Laokoön, stands tall--he scarcely has to; he looms above me, slouched just fine, though he keeps a healthy distance. "You'd send the admiral off with our loot?"
       I snap at him, "You think men who can do what we've done ought need for gold?" and gesture at the horror. I meet the eyes of each sailor on the deck, dare them to oppose me, and with my other hand, subtle as a cutpurse, I pluck at the Lines that trail from each of their minds. "Look at who we are! Not since Paris still strut 'bout Ilium with Athenae's own Wisdom have such acts been worked by mortal hand." I wrap the bushel of their memories in a hitch of my words, and their recall of the events is changed ever slightly. The horror, the error grow dull in their minds, in their place leaving only glory, only the things of which I speak. "We have cracked the Rich One's own demesne open, and you misers would cling to one drop out of the bucket of petty coppers you stole from mortal men? No. No, here and now we send a message. We are beyond their trappings of prestige. We can no longer be bought."
       The sound of jangling manacles announces the arrival of my prisoner, my erstwhile witness. Admiral Bremon Canopides, the owl and cicada pendants upon his azure jacket no less gleaming, though the swagger he summoned hours ago has tarnished beyond repair. His legs are yet more unsteady, and the coif in his hair stands askew. He looks at me with a mad gaze of terror, muttering prayers to his homeland's Maiden.
       I have killed every man and woman he set sail with, all by my order, too many by my hand. He has watched me rip reality apart in more ways than one. My vessels turned the fire of his great imported bombards like acorns against the rock, I en-sorcelled the eyes of his proud marines against one another, and I sank his ships with fire and with lightning. Even through that, he kept his head, his pride. And then what few survived my onslaught, I dragged aboard my ships only to slit their throats into the water as libation for the damned. And so far as he is concerned, it was all according to my plans. I am as a mad god to this man, and, as a good Athenian would from any god, he shall take my riches as readily as he suffers my wrath.
       I look the man in the eye, though I address my crews. "On this day, we tell the world! Black Calchas steps beyond mere piracy! This is the dawn of a new Age! A new chapter in our tale, and the world's! Gold is a pittance to you lot now, and the kingdoms of old ought fear what plunder you do now come to reap! You shall not heed the warning of this dawn's red sky, you curs! It warns of Black Calchas!"
       Through the cheers echoing across all five ships--even that scarcely drowns out the shades' wailing--I tell Jon, "Put him at the oars," and walk the admiral over to the boat, its middle weighted by glittering plunder as it's lowered over the bloodstained gunwale. Bremon is shoved into place at the boat's prow, and if my pirates question why I take the seat across from him, they do not say as much. They know, now better than ever, that the Admiral is no threat to me.
       Bremon struggles some to take up the oars in shackled hands, and once done, he rows us out across the bloody sea with a frantic dread, flinching at each impassive shade we pass. He eyes me like a fish, and I swear I can hear the heartbeat in his breathing.
       The weight of the steps I am now taking sinks into my chest only once we're a ways from the Mallard, past the crowd of dead. Should it not be simple? The gods know I've done worse deeds--after ripping the dead from their afterlife, what qualms could I have left? But it is the novelty of what I must now do that eats at me, the finality of it, even in the face of the changes I have faced already. In the end, it is not my lost Tribe that my ritual has cursed with a new life.
       I ask Bremon, affecting nonchalance, "What had the nations of your coalition assumed of my keenness to plunder such luxuries? Could a man really be such a glutton for wine, and honey, and milk?" He has no answer, only rows with manic steadiness. "They ought to have studied better the ancient tales. The heroes of Wise Paris's day who ventured into Dread Persephone's court and offered libations to the dead. They might have caught on; the only missing ingredient was blood." To our port, the dead still lap at the salty froth to bind their ghostly visages to the matter of this realm. Is that Doryclus, the elder who so long ago taught me the names of the fish? Or just a man with the misfortune to perish at the site of my sorrow?
       Some hopeful reflex urges me one last time to eke out some victory from this horror, to pluck one familiar soul from the parade of phantoms and coax into it the second life I had designed. But I see--at last and too late--the totality of the world's unfairness. The dead are lost to prodigy and pillock alike.
       "What you did last night," Bremon says--his voice is not so deep as he made it out to be afore I killed all his men, "is unspeakable."
       Convenient phrasing, that. "I'm glad you think it so."
       "Why?" he says, rowing more steady now. "What cacodaemon whispers in your ear to lay this blight upon the world?"
       I take one deep breath in and out. Would that not be fine? That I could lay the blame upon some spirit, and not my own accursed bones? But that is not really what he asks. "My people have plied these coasts for ages, you know," I say. "Once, it is said, in the time before Ilium reforged the world, the Phoniqiae held great cities, long since felled by ca-lamity meant for someone else. Now we live in small tribes, a family or three apiece, fighting each other for the good scraps of coast between your empires. My family came to this very cove just after losing such a skirmish--our men dead and our women grieving. We took our shallow little boats to the first port we could find, and they set about making me a man. I ought to have waited another year or two; I was just a lad. But I was touched by the Gods at birth, they said, and destined for great things, and with the Sea under me, they thought I might avenge them.
       "I'm not to speak of the ritual with outsiders, but suffice to say I was to venture out on a raft on my own, and find there in the Far Sea whom I was supposed to be.
       "Instead, I found a monster of a storm, headed for them straight on. That cove offered no protection; the whole tribe would be dashed against it."
       Have I spoken of this aloud, even once, since it happened? Even to the crews who held my life and legacy in their hands? No, why trouble oneself describing what one is working to undo? And now it comes spilling out.
       "An Achaean navy ship--not unlike your own--just outrunning the tempest fished me out before I could be sunk. I begged them to find that cove while there was still time, to save my family. I pleaded and cajoled and threatened until they threw me in the brig. When at last I escaped and made my way back to this place, there was nothing left."
       The terror in the Admiral's eyes softens ever slightly. He'll never see Black Calchas as a mortal man again, but it is another thing to find the wellspring of a man's sin. "All this," he says, "ravaging the Seas from here to Fodla, terrorizing a hundred nations with unheard-of magic, making yourself an enemy of Athens and the gods them-selves, all because your family died in a storm? Because you thought you could bring them back?"
       I nod, and seek familiar faces among the crowd of shades, willing the ache within my breast to ease. Like scurvy, a long-healed wound reopened. "Seems I cast a wider net than I'd hoped," I force a laugh into my words. "And fished out not as much. They were supposed to be a few, just those bound to me by blood and memory. And it was supposed to be a second life. Instead, I think I got everyone who ever died on this cove. And I don't think there was enough of any of them left to live again. Probably there never could be. They'll fade over time. Or disperse. 'Least I think so. I was wrong the first time, after all.
       "My tribe wasn't too wrong 'bout my destiny. Never met a soul who could tie the Lines of the world as I can."
       It takes him a moment to grasp what I refer to. What concept has he, faithful and unquestioning, of the forces I've wielded since my youth? "They say you've struck bargains with many Daemons."
       I spit at that. "I bargain with no one. Athenae's weave and weft are just the sail. I Knot the Lines that hold it taut in the wind." As if to demonstrate, my hands form the motion of an intricate hitch.
       "Blasphemy," says the Admiral.
       "What's another sin?" I pull a key from my pocket and unlock the Admiral's manacles. He minds this act with a weariness we both have more than earned. "Some consolation," I say. "This time, at least, I'll leave your men coinage for the fer-ryman. And both my families, too."
       "What?"
       I pull tight like a vice around all the Lines I've collected leading to his mind, and the Admiral's eyes go slack. I hold in my hand about an hour's worth of his most recent memories, and it struggles against my grip like a viper. But what is that to a man who's bent the world itself? He'll recall my ritual clear as anything--after stewing on it through the night, that terror is woven into his bones. But getting dragged from my brig, and all this con-versation, those recollections are mine to twist as I please. I toss my hat as far as I can into the pink froth bleeding out of the cove.
       "My name is Hiram, son of Hasdrubal," I say and pluck the essence of the words from the air to wrap them 'round the bushel of the admiral's thoughts cleanly as a noose. And to him it is as true as the things he's seen with his own eyes. Truer even than some. "An hour or so ago, I was thrown into Black Calchas' brig, in the cell next to your own." I slip out of my coat, trading Bremon's memories between hands, and stuff the manacles in a pocket so that both sink beneath the waves. I wear simple traveler's clothes beneath it.
       "I introduced myself as a Phoniqian merchant, traveling along the coast, who witnessed Calchas' spell and tried to flee, only to be caught by his landing party. I revealed to you that I had swiped a key from one of our captors, and once alone, we escaped together. I took what I could carry from among the Mallard's stores, while you snuck into Black Calchas' quarters and killed him as he slept, with his own cutlass." I unlatch my scabbard. "Which you later tossed into the Sea." I hold the blade over the side of the boat. . .but my grip will not slack. No, I can't bear that loss. I've tied too much magic into that blade. Amid such failures, it is a singular Opus of a craft I will never use again. Instead, I bury it among the riches pooled at our feet and note to hide it from him later. "Which you later tossed into the Sea. We fought our way off the Mallard together," I tie one more bend from the hefty Lines of the elements and pull it tight as I can. Here I face the point of no return. Here, yet again, my dedication is tested; and though this night I have held daylight and memories and deaths in my hands, they shake like those of the old man that I am.
       I say, "And we set the ships ablaze as we fled." I turn back to flick the knot open towards my ships, and the energy streaks out and strikes the Mallard's mainmast in a great burst of fire.
       Helen and Laokoön, still watching me leave, are thrown over the gunwale into the bloody drink. The ship goes up in no time, and the subtle ties of magic I'd lain between the Mallard and her sister ships carry the blaze to my entire fleet, first the Quail, then on and on. Men and women--every name and story known to me like verses of a song I sing--rush to quench the flames or leap overboard, where the shades encroach upon them menacingly. No, nothing left there of my old tribe. At least the holds of those ships--the fruit of decades of piracy--will leave them plenty to pay the ferryman this time.
       Again, I lose a tribe on this cove. But I could not take them with me, and they would not let me go.
       I turn back to Admiral Bremon, and he stares slack-jawed still. I say, "And just now as we fled, you and I swore between us, on our gods and the river Styx, on whatsoever we hold sacred, that we would tell no one of Calchas' sin. Not our mothers, nor our brides, nor our priests. That secret, all knowledge of that ritual, dies with the two of us."
       I tie off the end of his memory--if I am half as wise as I hope, the last act of magic I will ever commit--and as I set it loose, and he blinks back into the moment, I shout in another man's voice, "Row man, row! You can gawk later!"
       Bremon snaps to attention and takes up the oars in earnest now. He looses a nervous laugh like he's shaking it out of his pockets. "It's over. At least it's over."
       "My people say it's not over 'till you're on the shore, keep moving, man."
       "We'll be heroes, Hiram," he says. "Even if we don't tell the whole story. We're still the men who killed Black Calchas."
       "Ah," I say. "You're free to keep that glory to yourself, Bremon. I'll be satisfied to take my share of the bounty and set a life for myself. Whatever kingdom I buy my way into the court of, I'll be sure they honor you."
       "Nonsense! You freed me, Hiram. Without you, I'd still be at those pirates' whims, and Calchas' sins would go unanswered."
       I shake my head and feel the first rays of the new sun's glare dance across my misshapen skull. "I'm not made for heroism, Bremon." I hop overboard to stand in the shallows to push the boat to shore. "I'd be a fool to try."