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  Aram’s eyes darted up. They both knew what he was talking about, though Greydon had never addressed leaving his family before, and Aram had always been too stubborn to demand answers. “What reasons?” Aram now asked, not wanting excuses.

  “Not now. Not here. But I promise I’ll tell you everything soon.”

  Their eyes met, Aram’s pleading for an explanation; Greydon’s, for patience.

  “Soon,” Greydon repeated. “You have my word.”

  Aram thought about this for a few moments. Then he nodded. In unison, both Thornes breathed spontaneous and identical sighs of relief. It made Aram smile, and Greydon ruffled his boy’s hair and moved off to offer a roan centaur some jerky.

  Aram knew nothing had really changed. “Soon” could mean anything, of course. But Aram’s one nod seemed to release six months’ worth of tension between them, and Aram felt a sudden sympathy for his father. For the first time since he was eight or nine years old, Aramar Thorne felt prepared to offer Greydon Thorne the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there were reasons. Honestly, they didn’t even have to be great reasons. Certainly, they couldn’t be very good reasons in hindsight. But if Greydon could explain why he thought he had needed to leave Aram and Ceya, then that might be enough. Under his breath, Aram whispered, “A halfway decent explanation plus three rawhide shields make enough enough.” He smiled to himself and flipped back a few pages in his sketchbook to finish the drawing of his father. It turned out quite well.

  Good magic.

  Never in his life had Aram done so many sketches in one sitting. Night had fallen; torches had been lit, and his hand was starting to tire and cramp, but there was always some new fascinating subject stopping by the pavilion to sample Wavestrider’s—or perhaps he should say Lady Bloodhorn’s—wares.

  Even Bloodhorn herself had come, and Aram was trying desperately to finish his sketch of her before she departed. She was chewing on a strip of boar jerky and, with her mouth full, laughed her snorting laugh, claiming it “tasted like quilboar.”

  Then she leaned toward Greydon and whispered, “These packets are almost spent. Less jerky reduces price.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Deal was made. These are your samples I’m passing out.”

  She laughed loudly, spitting tiny bits of jerky everywhere. “Had to try!”

  “Of course you did, milady.”

  She practically twittered then, hiding her eyes behind one massive hand and punching him with no little force in the shoulder with the other. He grunted painfully, but maintained his smile.

  Then she departed, but two large male tauren stepped up in her wake. The first slipped coins of gold and silver into Greydon’s hand. The second held three immense rawhide shields, which Meeks, Ribierra, and Canton took possession of at a nod from their captain.

  The two tauren then piled one pallet atop the other and effortlessly walked off with them. All that remained were the two open packets on the table. Greydon carefully counted out seven strips of boar jerky and distributed one each to Meeks, Ferrar, Ribierra, Canton, Flintwill, Aram, and himself.

  Absently, the captain tore a chunk off with his teeth. The rain was falling in earnest now and leaking through the oversaturated cloth of the pavilion tent. A drop fell, spoiling a corner of Aram’s sketch of Bloodhorn. Aram attempted to dry it without smearing the page, then closed the book, wrapped it, and pocketed it.

  Greydon stuffed a wad of half-chewed jerky into his cheek and said, “You men, see those shields into the hold. Then you can take a few hours’ shore leave. But be back aboard before sunrise. The storm’s coming in, and we’ll want to be gone before it arrives.”

  A chorus of “Aye, Aye, Captain” followed, and the four men practically raced off into the night.

  “Might I sample your wares, good mariners?” a whispered voice said.

  Aram turned back to the table. An overstrong scent of jasmine wafted across it. Cobb’s hooded man stood there, his face still hidden, still shadowed by his hood.

  Greydon, his hand resting on the hilt of his cutlass, replied, “Be my guest, stranger.”

  The hooded man bowed elegantly. He said, “I am much obliged to you, friend.” His voice, elegant in tone, was a whisper, like windblown sand across a beach.

  As the man’s gloved hand selected a piece of jerky, Aram attempted to subtly lean over to look at the face hidden within that hood. But the man kept his head angled down, and Aram couldn’t manage a better view without being obvious or rude. He noticed Makasa and his father were likewise trying—but from their expressions, it was clear they, too, were trying and failing. Makasa gripped and regripped her harpoon tensely. Aram swallowed hard, remembering he had left his cutlass aboard ship yet again. He suppressed a groan.

  The man brought the jerky into the shadowed depths of his hood and inhaled deeply. “Mmmm. Smells positively divine,” he whispered softly. Aram wondered how the hooded man could smell anything over the quantity of jasmine water he must be wearing.

  The strip emerged whole and the man slid it into the pocket of his long cloak. “Still, I’ll save it for later,” he whispered. “I might lose my head over it—or at least my jaw.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean,” Greydon said, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

  “Oh, just that I could easily find myself overspending, buying more than I need from our good friend Bloodhorn. But thank you.” He didn’t lift or turn his head, but continued in that same eerie whisper: “Fine-looking lad, there. Is that your boy?”

  Aram felt a chill run down his spine. The jasmine seemed to sour in his nose. There was something underneath the flowery scent, something rotten—or rotting.

  “My cabin boy,” said Greydon, “yes.”

  “Ah. My mistake. I seemed to perceive a resemblance that perhaps does not exist. Not a nephew then? Or a cousin?”

  Aram croaked out, “We’re not related at all.”

  Greydon, unable to help himself, shot his son a look, as if needing to confirm the boy was following Greydon’s lead and not denying their relationship. Then Aram could see his father mentally kicking himself for offering up that tell.

  “No,” the hooded man whispered. “Clearly an error on my part. You’ll forgive me, I hope. No offense meant, of course.”

  “None taken,” Greydon said in a clipped tone.

  “Well, then, I’ll take my leave. Safe travels, sailors.” He turned abruptly, his dark cloak slicing through the air, sounding much like his voice. He vanished into the rainy night, leaving behind only the wafting jasmine and the dread it covered up.

  “What was that?” asked Makasa.

  “Not sure,” Greydon said.

  “Was he even human?”

  “Maybe. Maybe once. Leave the rest. We’re going back to the ship.”

  Greydon took hold of Aram’s arm and guided him forward; Aram didn’t resist. Makasa followed a few feet behind.

  “That man,” Aram said in his own whisper, “that Whisper-Man, I saw him earlier. Talking to Old Cobb. I’m pretty sure he gave Cobb that silver piece.”

  Greydon stopped and faced Aram. “Pretty sure or pretty blasted sure?”

  “Pretty blasted sure. And there’s something else, now that I’m thinking about it. When I went to collect your cutlass the other day, Cobb was in your cabin, standing over your desk. At the time, I thought he was just collecting your breakfast dishes. But—”

  “But my charts and our course were laid out on my desk.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Greydon and Makasa exchanged looks.

  “Anything else?” Greydon asked.

  Aram racked his brain. “Maybe. At the gnoll camp, Cobb disappeared into the forest for a few minutes. Might be nothing.”

  Makasa stared at Aram. “That’s a lot of nothings. Why didn’t you speak up sooner?”

  “I don’t know. I kept meaning to …”

  “Spilled milk,” said the captain. “Makasa, shore leave is canceled. Gather up the crew;
get them back aboard. Find Cobb.”

  “Yes, sir. Soon as I see you back aboard Wavestrider.”

  “No, Second Mate, you follow my orders now. I’ll take Aram straight to the ship and send Silent Joe to help you. But we’re not waiting for sunrise to leave this port.”

  “Why tip his hand?” Greydon asked.

  Aram was in the captain’s lamp-lit cabin with his father, One-God, Makasa, and Third Mate Silent Joe. Two days had passed. It had taken less than an hour for the first and second mates to gather the entire crew back aboard ship—or rather the entire crew except for Jonas Cobb. As the storm built through the night, two more hours were spent unsuccessfully trying to track the old man down. Another two hours were spent consulting Bloodhorn and Ridgewalker. Both knew the white-headed saltbeard from voyages past, but neither could locate him now, despite their network of connections in the undersized port. By this time, even the most generous and unsuspicious member of the crew had to admit that Cobb’s leave was long past over and that it wasn’t like him to be this late. He had either deserted or been taken, or he was dead. Ultimately, Captain Thorne decided to leave his cook behind, and the Wavestrider had set sail three hours before the dawn. Maintaining a southerly heading out of Flayers’ Point, they had stayed ahead of the storm.

  Some of the crew had grumbled about leaving a man behind—storm or no storm—particularly as neither captain, mates, nor Aram had been forthcoming with their suspicions of Old Cobb. But within that elite quintet, no one harbored much doubt: Cobb had sold the Wavestrider’s secrets to the Whisper-Man. So Greydon had plotted a new course: one the cook could not have predicted or sold. He sent the ship spiraling north, back around the storm and far out to sea, hoping to lose any possible pursuers.

  Thus far, the strategy seemed to have worked. But late into this night, one question still ate away at Greydon Thorne’s gut. “We had no suspicion of trouble until the Whisper-Man came to our table. So why did he tip his hand?”

  Durgan One-God snorted. “Maybe he’s a fool.”

  Greydon shook his head. “He was no fool.”

  “Arrogant?” suggested Makasa.

  “That’s just another kind of foolish. It felt like he was there with a purpose.”

  “He seemed interested in the boy,” she stated. Normally, Aram resented Makasa referring to him as a boy when she had five years on him. But Aram couldn’t summon up much resentment while simultaneously feeling so guilty. The captain and his mates had had no suspicion of Cobb because Aram hadn’t revealed what he had observed. Makasa never seemed to stop scowling at Aram—not an unusual occurrence—but for once Aram felt he deserved it.

  “Yes, I thought of that,” Greydon said. “He did seem to want confirmation that Aram was my son. But aboard ship that was hardly a secret. Cobb could have told him.”

  “Maybe he di’nae trust Cobb,” One-God said, “which’d make him a blasted sight less a fool than the four officers o’ this ship.” Aram didn’t know whether to feel relieved or depressed that he wasn’t included in that accounting.

  Greydon nodded absently, taking One-God’s suggestion as the most plausible yet offered, but he clearly remained unsatisfied. For perhaps the tenth time that night, the captain raised his compass, stared at it, frowned, and let it drop against his chest. For a while after, they were all as silent as Joe.

  Eventually, Greydon said, “Here’s another question: Jonas Cobb’s been ship’s cook since we formed this crew four years ago. Why betray us? And why now?”

  “That’s two questions,” One-God said.

  Greydon ignored him, asking his mates, “Did any of you sense dissatisfaction? Resentment?”

  All three shook their heads. Greydon turned to Aram, who swallowed hard and said, “I just thought he was, well, you know, a sour old man.”

  “He was that,” One-God said. “But he was that four years ago, too. By the Life-Binder, I’d lay odds he was that at birth.”

  Makasa asked thoughtfully, “If I might ask, did he have a standard five-year contract?”

  “Yes,” her captain confirmed. “The whole crew does, except Aram and you, Makasa.” Aram hadn’t known the crew had contracts. That side of things had never crossed his mind. Now, he wondered why Makasa didn’t have a contract. But he knew it wasn’t the time to ask.

  “So he was only a year shy of receiving his full share of the voyage’s profits?” she asked.

  “Eleven months, to be precise. Why risk that?”

  “Maybe he was promised a bigger share,” said One-God, “once the pirates divvied up their spoils.”

  “So the Whisper-Man was a pirate?” Aram asked.

  “Among other things,” One-God said. Greydon and Makasa said nothing, though they had seen the Whisper-Man and One-God had not. But by now, all present knew that the Whisper-Man was most certainly one of the Forsaken, a corpse raised into undeath by the darkest magic.

  Aram tried to imagine what would motivate an undead pirate. Dubiously, he asked, “And he wants this ship?”

  They stared at him, each of their four faces presenting a different version of insulted annoyance.

  “No offense,” Aram said. “I’ve come to appreciate our cargo. But look in our hold. Wouldn’t a pirate be disappointed? And wouldn’t Cobb tell them as much?”

  Contemplating this, they were all silent for another long stretch. Greydon checked his compass again.

  Aram bit his lip and asked his father, “Is it possible I got it all wrong? I mean, I saw what I saw. But maybe Old Cobb went into the forest to, I don’t know, empty his bladder. And maybe he was just collecting dishes off your desk.”

  “And the silver?”

  “A gambling debt.”

  “And the reason he didn’t report back aboard ship?”

  “Uh … drunk in a gutter somewhere?”

  Greydon shook his head. “I’d like to think better of the man, even if that made me the villain for abandoning him in Slayers’ Point. I don’t want to think any man or woman on this crew would be disloyal. Truth is, if I could convince myself the Whisper-Man had grabbed him up, it would ease my mind—awful as that sounds. But I can’t get my head around any explanation save betrayal.”

  One-God and Makasa nodded. Joe crossed his arms.

  More silence.

  Then Greydon slammed his fist down on his desk and repeated: “Why tip his hand?!”

  Eventually, Captain Thorne dismissed his mates—but asked Aram to remain.

  Greydon unrolled a chart on his desk, using the dice-filled pewter beer stein and the wooden dragon as paperweights. Then he took out a pencil to plot a new course. Aram approached and was surprised to see his father wasn’t working off a chart of Kalimdor, but one that encompassed all of Azeroth.

  Without looking up from his work, Greydon asked, “What is home to you, Aramar?”

  Aram hesitated before saying, “Uh … Lakeshire?” It almost seemed like a trick question.

  “No, I mean what does home mean to you?”

  “Um, my mother. My brother and sister. Soot—I mean, our dog. And …” For the first time he hesitated to say the name in his father’s presence.

  But Greydon said it for him. “And Glade. Your stepfather.”

  “Well … yeah.”

  “And that’s right; that’s good. If you take nothing else from this voyage, take that.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “You know Ceya wasn’t born in Lakeshire, don’t you?”

  “I … uh, yeah. She was born in Goldshire.”

  “Yes. Born in Goldshire, raised in an Eastvale logging camp, and then she moved with her mother to the coast. She and I met in Stormwind Harbor, and it was only after we married that we decided to make our home in Lakeshire. I’d never been there. She’d been to market there a few times as a child. It wasn’t home to either of us, but it became home.”

  “All right,” Aram said, almost as if humoring a rambling child; he had no idea where this was going.

  “The
point is,” Greydon said, looking up from his chart for the first time, “home isn’t a place. It’s the people with whom you choose to share your life. Family is what makes a home. Not the other way around. And there are all kinds of families.”

  Suddenly, the conversation seemed significant. Suddenly, it occurred to Aram that Greydon was finally about to reveal his “reasons.”

  “This ship is a family,” Aram said. “I can see that. Contracts or no contracts, it’s your family.”

  “One of them, yes. A person can have many families, Aram. Even a man like Robb Glade, a man who’s never in his life traveled five miles beyond little Lakeshire, will have at least two families in a lifetime. The one he had as a child with his parents, and the one he has as a man with his woman, their children … and you. Oh, and the dog.”

  Aram flinched. It was one of Greydon’s less noble habits to separate Aram out from his half-siblings, as if a decent, uncomplicated man like Robb wouldn’t treat all three of his children equally. As if Robb didn’t treat Aram as a son. (Frankly, Greydon’s implication was that Robb equated Aram with Soot.) But this didn’t seem the time to protest, so Aram simply changed the subject, trying to get to the heart of what he thought Greydon was trying to teach him—because Greydon was always trying to teach him something. “It’s why Cobb’s betrayal hurts. He’s not just a cook betraying his captain. He’s a man betraying his family.”

  “Yes. With this crew in particular. I should be wiser than to think that, but it is how I feel. In here.” He slapped his fist against his chest, as if saluting a centaur—which instantly gave the gesture significance. Aram felt he now understood its origin. The knowledge excited him, and he felt the impulse to confirm the revelation with his father. But Greydon had leaned back over the map of Azeroth, and Aram saw him draw a long arcing line from southeast Kalimdor—over the top of Pandaria—to the southern tip of the Eastern Kingdoms and beyond.

  Suddenly, Aram knew. Greydon was plotting a course home.

  Aram was stunned. “You’re taking me back?”

  Greydon didn’t reply.