Silver sparkles flared around him then disappeared. He sent his awareness upward, through the deck, and sent it questing through the minds of the people who were aboard the boat. He dipped briefly into the thoughts of a sailor who was gripping the riverboat’s tiller—how much better it was, this fellow was thinking, to sail aboard a boat as a free man—and into those of a second sailor who was serving as lookout. Perched high on the mast, this second fellow was awed by the speed at which the riverboat was traveling. It was only his tenth trip south, and yet he’d been chosen as lookout, due to his keen eyesight. The thought filled him with pride.
There were also two guards on board—one half-asleep as he leaned on one of the deck-mounted crossbows, the second tense as a spring and gleefully visualizing sending a bolt into attacking slavers. Idly watching them was the captain, a man whose mind wasn’t on his duties. Instead his thoughts were lingering on the woman he’d lain with last night as he tried to recall her name.
The thoughts of the next man were much more interesting. His mind was focused intently upon the wind that was driving the boat along. He was controlling its intensity with a spell. Unlike the others on board, he thought in terms of sound and tactile sensation. Though he was directing the wind against the sail, there was no accompanying picture in his mind. He thought of the sail in terms of a taught canvas under his hand, of the creak of its yard as it shifted under the wind. He must, Arvin realized with some surprise, be blind.
There were three passengers on board: a merchant who was fretting over a delay that had nearly caused him to miss the boat, and a husband and wife on their way to Ormpetarr to attend a relative’s wedding. She was eagerly anticipating it; he was dreading the tedium of being cooped up in a room with her boring kinfolk.
Arvin continued searching, but found no sign of Karrell. He wondered why she wasn’t on board. Had she chosen not to travel to Ormpetarr after all? The thought disappointed him. At the same time he felt relief to have found no sign of Zelia. There were only nine people aboard the riverboat, all of them strangers to Arvin. All were just what they seemed to be. None were mind seeds.
Arvin drew his awareness back inside himself, ending the manifestation. He slid a hand under the small of his back, grasped the dagger that was sheathed there, and vanished it into his glove. He wouldn’t use his weapon unless he had to. For now, his plan was to present himself as a stowaway with good reasons for sneaking on board—the captain’s thoughts had given him an idea—and offer to pay for his passage.
He shoved open the hatch and clambered up onto the deck, dragging his pack behind him. Two people who must have been the husband and wife—he a sour looking man with a heavy black beard, she a narrow-faced woman wearing a white fur hat, her hands shoved into a matching muff—had been standing next to the hatch. They started at Arvin’s sudden appearance. The merchant, a portly, balding fellow in a gold-thread cloak, was a few paces away. As Arvin appeared from the hold, he blinked in surprise.
One of the guards—a wiry fellow with a hook nose and tangled black hair-whipped a glance over his shoulder, shouted, “Slaver!” and immediately tried to swing his crossbow around to point inboard, only to find that it wouldn’t swivel that far. The other guard—the older, gray-haired man Arvin had distracted last night when he crept aboard—looked startled but wasn’t yet awake enough to react.
Arvin glanced up at the raised rear deck, searching for the captain. Three men stood there: a dark-skinned human with short, dark hair tarred flat against his head and a shadow of stubble on his chin; a barrel-chested man with a beard that didn’t quite hide the faded S-brand on his cheek, holding the tiller; and an elf clad head to toe in white, his eyebrows furrowed in a V of concentration and his silver hair twisting in the magical wind like fluttering ribbons. The elf’s eyes were unfocused, identifying him as the blind spellcaster.
Though both of the other men looked like ordinary sailors, the dark-skinned one was clearly in command. He stared a challenge at Arvin, fists on his hips.
Arvin gave the captain a grin and opened his mouth to begin his explanation, but before he could get a word out, he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye. The hook-nosed guard had yanked a sword from the sheath at his hip. He tensed, about to attack.
