"How did you know?"

  "Oh, come on. The beads, the sandals, the robe. The magical light was a bit of a giveaway. Plus, you..." He turned away, and his voice was much quieter. "You look like him."

  The shadowy face of the other Wisdom flashed across my mind's eye. The false calm. The inner tension, the horrible strain.

  "Listen closely," he said, deciding something. "I'll take you as far as the helm. But everything else is going to be a little too wet for even my dry wit." He smirked.

  And then I realized what was bothering me about him. I drew up the lantern and shone it at him from several angles. He watched impatiently, casting shadows that swayed left and right.

  Words presented themselves to me: Bulkhead, hatch, steam line, rivet, beam. Golden lacing traced in every nook and cranny between every structural component, lining bolts and cracks like a liquid.

  It didn't touch him. No name, no level, no nothing.

  "What's your real name?" I asked. It was a feeling, and as soon as it came out of my mouth, a spark caught my eye. Something floated, a scrap of light twirling dreamily. It was feather shaped--or maybe a leaf, a petal.

  "Chris" smiled with vulpine teeth.

  A rattling pipe nearby burst and startled me half out of my skin. My lantern snuffed out.

  "Follow me," he said. He drew his rapier.

  It would have been nice if the ship could find it in its heart to be still. Its--I could not make myself think of it as a 'her' regardless of Chris's admonishments--rhythm was arhythmic. Left, right a little, left, forward left, backward, right a lot, left a little, a false return to the right, and left again. It took too much of my mental power just to compensate, to say nothing of calories burned countering its sway.

  We tromped and stumbled down dim passages where torn cables hung and water ran freely, sloshing what ought to have been stationary pools from corner to corner. Now and again a crew member with a soaked white shirt and reddish mohawk dashed across the hall ahead, and, despite my shouting, vanished into the chaos of the ship.

  "A light," suggested Chris, "might not hurt." He glanced back just enough to cast the extreme corner of his eye in my direction.

  "I'm sure it would," I said. "But it comes and goes. Thing's got a mind of its own."

  He splashed to a halt and turned back to me. The hull groaned an ugly, canine sound.

  He twisted the sleep mask bandana into a thin, black cord and began to tie his hair back low behind him. I almost suggested that he might button his shirt up a bit while he was at it, but thought better of being snide to my guide.

  Chris sighed heavily, breathing out the words "I can't believe I'm about to do this," although I was not meant to hear that. "Alright, listen. Hold out your hand."

  "This one?"

  "Is that your lantern hand?"

  I wasn't sure if I had a lantern hand, per se, but the object (if I could even call it an object) had as of yet never materialized in my right hand.

  "No."

  "Then, the other one. We do not have an overabundance of time, given our circumstances." He closed his eyes and recentered himself. "Yes, like that. Now. Listen. I want you to do something."

  "What?"

  "Stop listening." I began to speak, but his shiny rapier whipped out and smacked me on the side of the hand before I could fully drop the position. It stung, but did not cut. "Focus. The pain will fade." He took a long breath. "And so will I. Cease hearing my words. Cease hearing the flowing water, the boat, the... blessed birds outside."

  "What about the screams?"

  "Cease hearing them as well," he snapped.

  "Hearing is involuntary," I said.

  "What?"

  "Listening is voluntary. Hearing is involuntary. It's not something you can just turn off."

  "That," he said, jabbing the point of the blade into my heart. Or, at least, that's what he had begun to do. It halted against my robe, and was uncomfortable, but did not break the skin. The sword was duller than a river stone. "...is your problem." He blinked slowly. "Your domain, that is."

  "Figuring out how to not hear things is my problem and my domain," I repeated. "That's your nugget of wisdom for me?"

  He raised one eyebrow and looked at me hard from beneath it.

  "Ah," I said. "Right. But then, how do you know so much about how Wisdom works?" I thought of Beamon and Hudrak defending me in the prison tower that was not a prison at all, of Constitution drawing away my wounds and taking them onto herself. That made some kind of sense, maybe. But I hadn't gotten the chance to ask her about those people, the monks and the snake-man, or why Dark Wisdom had attacked them.

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  "Oh my god," I said out loud. Two of the little golden leaves sparked into life, fluttering downward. No--too small for leaves. They were petals. "Those men and women. And the snake guy. They were servants of Wisdom. Servants of... me."

  Of course no prison warden would lay down their life for their charge. At least, not here in this brutal world full of roiling seas and nags and magical evil monks. They were the secret service bodyguards of Wisdom itself, under siege by their old lord turned traitor. What was it they'd called me?

  Chris's face lit up. Not just metaphorically, either. The lantern was back, hanging from my left hand, filling the cold and frightening passage with warm light that glinted against dripping droplets of water. Information offered itself up to me, distances and vectors, wayfinding arrows that guided me toward different parts of the ship, swirling away when I did not engage with them.

  "You're--one of them," I said. "You're one of Wisdom's protectors."

  He laughed, genuine and a little bit at my expense, from the belly but short. "Like I said," he said, sheathing the dull sword. "Not my wheelhouse. I've crossed paths with, ah... your predecessor." Chris turned and began to splash heel-first through the hall. "I never did see things his way." He deftly picked his way over equipment boxes and busted window frames. The damage to the ship was getting worse, but Chris's steps were infallible in the light. "I suppose that's the whole point."

  "Do you hear that?" I said. It sounded like when we'd put pennies into an empty soda can and shake them around, only scaled up about a million times. It was muffled, a wild beating on pipes, walls, metal and more metal, like a dryer running with a toaster in it.

  The worst sound I have ever heard shattered my eardrums. One of the bulkheads snapped free of its tremendous iron joints, its lock breaking like a popsicle stick, and a meteor of iron and claws and water trampled it. A new tide rushed out of whatever half-flooded room was behind it, rushing up to my shins, frigid and dark.

  Something amphibious writhed and screamed atop a mountain of iron.

  My lantern light flashed tremulously. I'd seen Teo's overheads do that, threatening to go out when whether was nasty on his side of town. But it held.

  Constitution rolled and wrestled with something green-gray and horrifying, a rubber-skinned cloud of teeth and claws, like some mad scientist had gone back to the drawing board and rebooted the concept of "frog" in the worst possible way. It was webbed, slavering, bulbous, and it folded and contorted at all the wrong angles. I hated it. The kind of claws you only see in archaeology sprouted from shapeless hands (forefeet?), occasionally breaking free of Constitution's grasp and spraying an impressive pyrotechnic display of sparks against her helm, pauldrons, shoulderplates.

  A panel of information came forward from the beast, materializing so close to it that it perceived a threat and swung at the numbers, dissolving it into swirling light dust, but not before I caught what it said.

  The Pang was easily three times the height of a Nag, and, apparently, a level ahead. Its dull eyes swiveled with cloudy strain as it spasmed and jerked against Constitution's hard grasp.

  And then it saw me.

  It was hard to say what its eyes were focused on, as no clear pupil or iris was there to indicate its target. But it stopped attacking her and tensed its awkward trifold back legs, longer even than its trunk was tall.

  "No!" shouted Constitution. "You look at me, you-" All four of its legs blurred with tantrum speed, slapping and digging. You could almost hear the sound of burning rubber as it revved up. It used her breastplate and face for purchase, pushing her back toward the gushing bulkhead as it escaped her hold and rocketed toward me. "Wisdom!" she yelled, swiping one gauntlet at the thing's stubby tail, fingers clacking together on empty air. "Run!"

  Running would have been smart, I bet. The wise thing to do, even. But it would have had to have happened several seconds earlier to matter.

  At first I could see the water, the damaged passage, and Chris's hair. Then all I could see was sharp teeth around a rubbery maw. There were two rows, I noted, with a little more stoic acceptance than befits someone with a well calibrated survival instinct.

  I didn't freak out, because I didn't have time.

  A helicopter of gold struck the Pang in fast succession, a half dozen meaty slaps. The staff of light had returned, and not a moment too soon. It paused. I paused.

  The creature roared. It was more than a sound, sawblade frequencies lashing the walls and rippling water. The pure animal fury of an already irascible creature denied. It tensed. I tensed. It jumped, or tried to, but the staff of light swept its feet out from under it, and it splashed clumsily into several inches of chilly water.

  You know those videos of animals just completely beefing it on camera? The wrongness of seeing a squirrel miss a branch landing or a bear fall out of a tree?

  Yeah.

  It wasn't happy, and I knew that we had primed it for an utter rage response. It snort-coughed water out of its face, swiped in impotent fury, sending up a spray of water. I knew I wasn't going to hold it back a third time. It was so mad it was getting sloppy.

  It tensed to spring.The dark bulk of Constitution lunged, a desperate kick against the wet floor. She half-tackled it, her gauntleted fingers splayed wide and grasping. It was one of those moments that never seem to happen in a clean way like the action scenes in movies or comics, a tangled moment of uncertainty whether she had pinned the rubbery beast or not. It wailed and twisted, jerking free of her clasping arms as her full weight splashed down again, a knobby cap of armor over her elbow driving a spiderweb crack into the floor.

  But something was wrong with her gauntlet. From somewhere behind the dark shape of her hands came a subtle glow of color, so faint I hesitate to call it light. I could feel its warmth. She wasn't reaching toward the beast, but past it. Toward me.

  It was too late. The attack came in a flurry, too close to really say what happened. Claws raked my chest, tearing robes. Teeth bit fast, over and over, neck, shoulder, and arm wrenched and tugged nearly out of sockets as it attempted to rapidly dismember me. A tongue covered in sucking, oozing nematocysts slapped and slurped and dragged, attempting to relieve me of my flesh. My skin smoked.

  But for some reason, there was no pain. I'd heard of this, experienced it briefly during my attack by the Nags. Teo had once mentioned it when describing a particularly savage attack in one of our more traditional sessions, describing it as some response by the body in moments of severe trauma. Shock locked everything down. I froze, unable to act, unable to feel, and stared into the bleak gullet of my killer, all twitching wet framed by dripping sharp. Rivers of spittle rushed forward to flood the stinking cavity in anticipation of feeding. Its breath was not pleasant, no, but I was not thinking about the smell when an oozing lattice of wet muscles were jerking involuntarily, trying to coax me down into its throat.

  A flash of golden light, and the back of its tongue flattened. Its hanging uvulas (who needs two uvulas?) retracted and vibrated. Another flash of light, accompanied by a thump somewhere between me and the bulkhead. It was screaming. I was staring down the mouth of something screaming.