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deeply from all the men on board—his only object was to kill them. I wondered if he intended to use this ship as his sleeping quarters, and then had decided that he could not trust those on it to be protectors during the day.
    He was a throwback in vampyrism to some age when vampyres were truly nothing more than the rotting undead. He had no glamour, no semblance of health. The blood did not bring back his youth.
    In some respects, he reminded me of Artephius—one who held the essence of immortality, yet could not keep his flesh from falling away over the centuries. But Artephius was not a vampyre. He had stolen some of the secrets of the immortals, but not all.
    A vampyre without youth?
    The drinking of blood and the glamour—which was our youth and beauty—was part of our tribal energy. How could a vampyre have none of this? Surely such a vampyre would have extinguished long ago.
    Why did a member of my tribe follow us, and yet not reveal himself?

    3

    I went in search of supplies for the other ship. I found salted meat and barrels of water stored belowdecks. I poured some of the water into wineskins I found in the galley and carried as much of the salted pork as I could. There were bags of grain, also, which I tied at my waist. As I was about to leave, a flash of red along an upper shelf caught my eye. It was the beloved red box full of dusty leaf for smoking. I sniffed at it and found the aroma intoxicating. I grabbed two of the boxes, tucking them beneath my arms, above the sack of pork.
    When I returned to the other ship, I took these supplies to the young sailor and told him to give the red boxes to Illuyanket alone. “I am sorry that my friend has killed two of your men,” I said. “It was beyond my control.”
    “Sir Demon, we did not mean to offend her. Nor you,” he said, a tremble in his voice. “She brought us food and water from a ship, as well. I will not talk of the spirits of the dead, for they may lurk nearby.” He drank greedily from one of the wineskins, and tore off a chunk of the salted pork, chewing it as I spoke to him.
    “This will be good for all of you for several days, if you ration it carefully. The water, too. Tomorrow night, we will bring more of it. What they have in storage there might last another month or more.”
    “All the men are dead?” he asked. “None survive?”
    I tried to block out the face of the boy who had died from fright. “The ship is abandoned. I found no one.” I searched for Pythia within the stream and felt her presence far belowdecks.
    I went with him to the old seer, who wept tears of joy as he lit his bowl and sucked the yellow smoke from the stem. Pythia crouched beside him, and I gathered he had been regaling her with stories that had bewitched her, for she was genuinely caring of his condition. I wanted to draw her to one side to speak of the vampyre who had followed our flight and now hid upon one of the other mired ships, but it was not the time to do so.
    She glanced up at me, and in that brief look I saw another side to her—the aspect of this Pythoness that had been missing beyond our night of passion. I dread to say it, but it was her mortal side—and when she returned her attention to Illuyanket, she seemed not like a terrible vampyre who had slaughtered many, but like his granddaughter, sitting by his bunk, listening to stories and legends of another country that she had heard once as a little girl.
    “Yes, Illuyan was the name of the great ancestor demon.” He nodded as he puffed on the stem. “There are many statues in the hills of my homeland of him dressed as a warrior, with sword raised so.” He lifted the pipe up as if it were a weapon and gave a fierce scowl. “He saved our people and drove back the enemy. These are ancient fairytales, but in my family, it is believed, for we are his bloodline. In those ancient days, demons and mortals mated, though when the demons were driven away, those of us with even a drop of demon blood