The storm raged through the night and until near noon the next day. The ship rolled and lurched, lines snapped loose from where they were lashed, and sailors were laid low with sore wounds or sickness. When the seas died down and the sky began to clear, the crew of the Dance of the Damned took stock of what they'd lost. Two men had gone overboard, one gnome blown clear over the bulwark, and the man that had gone in after him. The sails were, thank the gods, intact, but they'd lost several barrels of water and whiskey. Captain Cullygan ordered them into harbor – the port city of Escalant was not far. They had done better than expected in Bezantur. While hoping for a healthy profit, it looked as though most of it would be eaten by this storm.

Mackrem Cullygan had always been fond of the woman now known as Dania. He'd met her one evening at a bar in Luskan nearly ten years before, back when he had made an occupation raiding the villages of the Sword Coast. She'd saved his life that night. He'd come to her later, when she was the commander of a great keep in his homeland. She and the boy who would later be known as Keowan the Navigator helped him to avenge the slaughter of his home village, Leeves.

When he'd run into them the summer after the war with the King of Shadows had ended, the two of them had been on the lam and hiding out at some rat-infested inn in Baldur's Gate. They'd never explained to him why it was so critical that nobody find out their true identities, but he'd gathered from the gossip he heard on the wind that the boy had done something terribly foolish and turned on her. The official story out of Neverwinter was that Bishop had betrayed the Captain of Crossroad Keep, had opened the gate for the hordes of the King of Shadows' Army to pour in, but that the Captain had made it to the King's stronghold in the Mere and there perished, giving her own life to save the world. It was none of Cully's business how she had survived, or why she had chosen to forgive the rascal. He also had a healthy skepticism about the "official word" out of any nobleman, Lord Nasher or otherwise. For all he knew the whole thing was a lie and she'd never even been to the Mere of Dead Men. Perhaps, he thought, someone high up in Neverwinter had tried to have her killed, to create a martyr for the cause.

When they ran into each other, Cullygan knew very well that he owed a debt of honor to the girl, doubly so since she had helped him to take down the assassins that had burned his village. She refused to go anywhere without the boy, and so he took him on too. The fact that they had made loyal and steadfast crewmembers was just the icing on the cake.

It really would be too bad if she'd drowned in the storm. Such an interesting girl, he thought.

He found Keowan, straddling the bowsprit, chainsmoking and staring out over the water. The boy was into his twenties by now, but still often had the look of a motherless child, as he did now, staring dejectedly into the distance.

"Lad," Cullygan said. He didn't really feel any duty towards Keowan. He was a good navigator and, so far, a loyal crewmember, but he did feel some pity as he sat there, "We didn't find her body."

The navigator was silent.

"We found the other two men in the wreckage. But we didn't find her, and we didn't find the dog."

Keowan looked down, and then up again, exhaling a lungful of smoke.

"It means she might have made it to shore," the captain continued, "She's a strong swimmer and it was less than a mile."

Keowan took another drag off his smoke, and looked thoughtfully towards the shore. "I talked to the men on duty. They said the yard came down on her with all its force. She fell thirty feet to the water unconscious. I'd be a fool to hold out any kind of hope."

"Lad," Cullygan said, "After what she'd been through, do you think a bump on a head and a swim in the drink is going to kill her?"

Keowan nodded, and flicked the stub of his smoke into the water. "So we find her," Keowan said, "Tell me we find her."

Cullygan mused for a moment, "We'll need to stay in Escalant. Even without the storm, we'd have to fit the boat to travel upriver. Remember that dreadful journey from the Shining Sea up the Wash to the Sea of Fallen Stars in the first place?"

Keowan chuckled. He'd been a novice when that happened. He'd caught a sickness on the river and spent most of the journey belowdecks with a fever. He didn't remember much of it, only that the masts had been taken down and stowed, the crew had taken turns rowing.

"It's the closest town," he said, "If she's there, we'll find us. If we don't, I imagine she'll find us."

Keowan nodded, and scrambled back up onto the deck to do what he could for the ship, his spirits raised somewhat. Cullygan had a point. Addie – Dani – that girl with the black hair – did have an uncanny way of squeaking out of trouble. Before he'd met her, he never would have even tried. He'd have jumped ship in Escalant and found something else to do. Wander the wilds of Rashemen or something until something more interesting came along – death or something less permanent. He'd grown unused to that way of thinking some time ago. She'd kindled something like hope in his breast. Yes. Hope. That's what you would call it.

The first time he had lain eyes on her, he was almost eleven, still a boy with a slingshot in his pocket. Though only a few years his senior, she had seemed grown up to him. Less so, after Kyla had died. Kyla, who was both his mother and his sister, whom he both loved and hated, even more so after her death. Kyla brought comfort to everyone, to the boy who she'd gotten when her father forced himself on her, to the sailors that paid good gold for her company.

He was fourteen when one of her customers murdered her, and it was Adahni who had been there to hold him while he cried on that awful morning. She must have been twenty or so by then, and hardened herself, her voice husky with whiskey and smoke, her arms bony. She had given him over to her husband as an apprentice. Dayven Elhandrien, for whom the faithful black hound was named. He had lost his name, become known only as Bishop, the name of the man who was both his father and his grandfather. He had learned to kill without feeling. Those were formative years that he had been an apprentice of the Circle of Blades. When most boys were practicing peacetime trades, learning to shoe a horse or assemble a barrel, he was being instructed to slit the throats of prisoners, and to look them in the eye when he did it. At a time when most boys were having their first kisses, he was murdering his first prostitute. It was a mere three years, but they were important years, and he would never have them back.

He was seventeen when he'd betrayed them. Dayven had sent him on a mission, to murder the whore that had lain with the ambassador's husband. He'd done so, climbing through a window in the brothel, only to find the john dead on the floor, and the whore sore wounded in the bed. He'd thought her dead, and woken her.

He recognized her almost immediately when she opened one eye – the other had been blackened and swollen shut.

"He killed Kyla," were the only words she said. And he understood what she had done. Adahni had also loved Kyla. She had avenged her, and been wounded near to death in the process. He'd tugged her to her feet and told her to run. And then, at the door of a room in a brothel, he had taken his first real kiss while he was supposed to be murdering a prostitute. Stealing a kiss from his master's wife not a week before he was plotting to murder him too.

When he lay dying later that week, in the burning remnants of his home village, when his dreams grew feverish as he bled from numerous wounds, it was Adahni, not Kyla, who came to comfort him in those dreams. And, as it would happen, it was Adahni's uncle who would wander by and find him.

He didn't quite know if he believed in fate or predestination or any of that, but if the past had taught him one thing, it was that Adahni would always show up. Without fail, and when he least expected it. He would continue on the journey, if only because it was the only thing he knew how to do, and just keep hoping that their paths would cross once again.