“Can you sew?” I ask Liana as we prepare to sleep. The albino girl, Taur, and I are in the captain's quarters, which are quite spacious.

Liana has been given the bed. “My aunt was a seamstress. I used to watch her and help her, mainly just spinning the wheel for her because her foot was bad. Why?”

“I need you to sew a flag with the lightning bolt symbol of Lord Riyel. Can you do that?”

“I'll give it my best,” she says, stretching out on the bed. “I've never slept in a real bed before.”

Taur is lying on the floor over a thin mat. His precious fur cape hangs from the coat rack to dry, and the occasional drop of water falls as we speak. I am lying on the brocaded couch, positioned so that I can watch the door, which we've locked from the inside.

“I don't know the psalms like you do,” the horned man says, and I realize that he is forced to sleep on his back because of his horns and can't sleep on his side. “How do I know what I'm supposed to do?”

“Following Lord Riyel isn't about following a bunch of rules,” I say as I try to find a place for my tail, which drapes over the end of the couch, but still has enough stiffness that it wants to stand. “God the Healer created all life, so ultimately, to oppose him is to embrace death. After God the Healer created humans, he said, 'Flourish, and bear fruit.' It's a simple matter to ask, 'Am I flourishing, Am I thriving? Am I living an abundant life?'”

Taur adjusts the pillow under his head, which is a carpet bag filled with fine clothes. “What about rum? I notice you didn't drink tonight.”

“I've been sent by God on a mission, so I'm a special case.” My tail flips idly about, trying to find a resting spot. “If when you drank rum tonight you were living your best life, then good. But we've all seen the guy whose life has fallen apart, who can't stay sober, who's drinking himself to death. As I said, God is about life, to oppose him is death.”

“So God punishes those who disobey?” Liana chimes in from the bed.

“I used to think that,” I tell her, and rest my hands on my belly, which is cool. “Now I believe we punish ourselves. When I woke in the flames I thought God was punishing me, but then I realized that there has to be justice. The psalms say we are made in the likeness of God, so we need justice—things have to be made right. When I was alive I rationalized my behavior, lied to myself, was so driven by my own insecurity that I felt I wanted to betray my wife and son.”

“I'd like to have my own wife and son,” Taur says, staring up at the beams in the ceiling.

“And you'd rather die than betray them,” I tell him.

“So why...?” Liana begins to ask, but hesitates to spell out the question.

“Why would I betray my own wife and son? Because of the dark gods.” I shake my head. “Oh, yeah, I had reasons, it all made sense. It was going to make me feel good about myself. But when I woke up in purgatory, I not only remembered everything, but I knew. There were no rationalizations, no excuses, no sweeping aside inconvenient facts. I knew the truth, and that was the worst punishment of all. A mirror was held up to my face, and my ugliness was the most horrifying sight imaginable.”

* * *

The Triumphant, the last remaining ship of the Tarantans, has been blown off course by the storm. The seas have been rough for the last two days, with intermittent rain and winds that pick up and howl, threatening a storm, before dying off. The crew of our ship, The Lucky Maiden, have done well for themselves fishing at the island, which forms a steep drop off that is the favored hunting grounds of pelagics such as marlin, tuna, and dorado. The fish we haven't eaten have been filleted and stored in salt in the hold.

It is dawn of the third day, and the seas are calm. The Triumphant is heavily armed, while The Lucky Maiden has no fixed armament, but we have an advantage in that we not only know where they are, but where they will be. Furthermore, while the crew and I have rested in the safe shelter of Ascension Island, the men of The Triumphant have been driven over the sea by the storm and its tail end, without rest.

When The Triumphant nears the island, the man in the crow's nest spots The Lucky Maiden headed in the direction of the harbor city Tarantos. The naval men pay scant attention to the dinghy floating in their path, until they are close enough to pull up beside it.

I have been floating in the shadow of the dinghy, conscious of the fact that the sea here is laden with sharks. As The Triumphant nears, I slip beneath the rowboat and swim beneath the keel of the ship to emerge on the other side.

A member of the crew descends a rope ladder. “There's a fire!” he shouts, seeing smoke rising from a pile of clothes. When he pulls the clothes aside, he sees several cannonballs packed with grapeshot, which explode in his face.

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I am up from the ocean, and if you've heard the saying “like water off a duck's back,” it really should be “like water off a gecko's back,” because my skin is extremely hydrophobic, which is a fancy way of saying I don't get wet. I clamber along the hull, already dry, with my flat body clinging to the sides of the ship and my flexible spine following its contours.

I slip in through the last cannon port and emerge inside the ship where a line of cannons rests perpendicular to the prow, facing out to sea. Cannon balls are stacked in pyramids, and barrels of gunpowder are tied to cedar columns. Other barrels are stuffed with padding, with crates of special shot piled beside each cannon. It's hard work, but I wheel around the two nearest cannons so that they face the stairway leading above deck. With muscles straining, I push the carriages holding a third and fourth cannon toward the first two, but point them in the opposite direction at the far stairway. I'm conscious of the noise I'm making, but the sea makes noises of its own, accompanied by the sounds of the sails in the wind.

A crew member comes down the steps, singing a tavern song, so I slink out of one of the ports and rest along the hull until he finishes his work and plods back up the stairs. I'm grateful for the rest and the chance to feel the ocean spray on my face on a sunny day.

Slipping back in, I turn as many of the cannons inward as possible, being careful to stop before I become too exhausted—I still have fighting to do. I load the cannons with gunpowder, add stuffing to keep the charges in place, then add grapeshot, something like buckshot, but the size of a ball on a trailer hitch, made of lead. Admiring my handiwork, I decide I'm ready.

I walk straight up the stairs on two feet, singing one of the psalms. Fittingly, it's about the gecko of God meting out justice. I'd whistle if I had lips.

Holy Gecko, dispassionate one,

slow in motion, slow to wrath.

In the hour of judgment

you will strike the enemies of God

As the lightning...

I pass a crew member who hardly notices me, until he stops in his tracks and whirls around. I pounce on him in an instant before he can even bring his hands up, and my jaws have locked over his head. The handkerchief tied around his head is damp with perspiration and tastes foul. I spin, whipping my tail into two men coming at me from the mast, while continuing the spin and hurling the man in my jaws like a discus. He sails into another group coming from the bow.

Someone is foolish enough to drop down from the rigging feet first, so I seize his lower legs with my jaws in midair and slam him into the deck, but not too roughly, because I need him to scream, both to draw attention and to get his mates to rush to his aid. I whip him into the wood deck several times, making him yell. His yell turns to a scream when he tries to catch himself, resulting in a compound fracture in his arm, with the jagged end of his broken ulna poking through the skin.

I leave him shrieking on the deck and dash down into the hold.

By now the entire ship is on alert, and every sailor has armed himself and gone running down below deck. I face the first wave, who are jammed into the stairway in their eagerness to get to me. I open my jaws wide, spraying an acid mist into the men at the forefront. They stumble, clawing at their faces, but are shoved down to the deck by the weight of sailors in blue leggings and white linen shirts surging in behind them.

With a single leap I am behind the array of cannon, but the crew in their rage are so focused on me that the significance of the rearrangement of the cannon hasn't occurred to them. Sailors also stream in from the opposite end. Standing at the hub of the cannon radiating outwards, I wave my manacled arms and open my jaws wide, imagining myself as a velociraptor in Jurassic Park. It's all a show designed to distract from my tail, which discreetly lifts a torch from its sconce and ignites the four cannon surrounding me. I swing the torch in my tail at the face of the men, drawing them back for a moment.

The cannon booms, scaring the crap out of me. Literally. I leave a black cannonball on the deck, which looks like a combination of dough and ash. Normally, that would be super embarrassing, but if you're a six-foot gecko, you're already beyond embarrassment. Another cannon goes off, then two at once. The hold is filled with smoke, and the noise is deafening. Men are blown back by the blast, while others are torn apart, sending severed limbs tumbling through the air.

The room is filled with a gray cloud, but I have leapt to the ceiling, where I cling with all fours. If you remember earlier when I said the ceiling is always spotlessly clean, well, I take that back, because this ceiling is covered with soot from torches, oil lamps, and cannon explosions. I scramble over the ceiling, upside down, while the men beneath me cough, and hack at each other or imagined movement in the pall of smoke. I still carry the torch with my prehensile tail and ignite one cannon after another. Several more deafening blasts tear through the hold, which is already filled with sailors who are either groaning from their injuries or fading from this life. As long as I am on the ceiling, I am safe, so I set off several more cannons, then slip out of a cannon port and climb up the hull toward the helm.

I slither over the gunwale and onto the deck, which shakes when cannons fire off below. The captain sees me and moves to draw his sword, but I am already on top of him, seizing his skull and crunching it like a dog with a chicken bone. He falls over his feet, and the helmsman spins, wide-eyed. He starts to run, but I wrap my tail around his waist.

“Hold her steady and you'll live,” I tell him.

He resumes his grip of the helm, only with shaky hands.

I see that The Lucky Maiden has circled around, using Ascension Island to block its approach. The few stragglers who have survived the carnage below decks have massed and approach timidly across the deck, nearing the helm.

“That's close enough,” I warn them. “My crew will be here soon. I can kill you all now, but any man who surrenders will not be harmed, and will be given free passage. Your fleet is gone, destroyed by the storm. You decide your own fates.”

Several drop their weapons, and others follow suit. They sit on the deck and wait. In time my ship pulls up beside us, ropes are thrown between the two ships, and a boarding party comes onto the deck, led by Taur with his war club.

I raise my voice to be heard by the boarding party. “I have promised them no harm will come to them, and fair passage.”

The crew give me puzzled looks.

“You men of The Triumphant may board The Lucky Maiden. It's yours now, take it where you will.” I release my tail from the helmsman and step out to study the men on the deck, who are wearing uniforms of the Tarantan navy. “Those of you who wish to stay may do so. You will be privateers, free to plunder any who do not fly the flag of Lord Riyel.”

One of the men stands, smoothing his blue uniform and brushing it with his hands. “If you're going to Tarantos, they'll kill you.”