Rising Tide by Mel Odom

to spy on him, she couldn’t. She even thought he’d been leading her on at times, letting her almost see, tantalizing her with his secrets only to take them away at the last moment.
    At present he was head and shoulders taller than Laaqueel, and he no longer looked emaciated. His body had filled out, becoming broad and supple. The runic tattoos spread out to fill the extra skin, but still hadn’t become any more legible to her. He wore a black silk blouse and black breeches with silver buckles and chains over black boots. A sea-green cloak hung from his shoulders to his ankles, more an affectation than any real comfort from the cool breezes swirling through the port city.
    Laaqueel stopped in front of him and waited.
    Only running lanterns glowed on board the pentekonter, enough to obey the Waterdhavian harbor rules. Little of the deck was occupied, but the sailors were more of the wererats Iakhovas had involved in the raid.
    The weak light traced patterns across Iakhovas’s face. He would have been handsome by human standards, Laaqueel knew, even with the scars that tracked his features. No matter what magic he’d worked over the past fifteen years to rebuild himself, he hadn’t been able to remove those scars. He’d grown a short beard and mustache that covered some of them. A sea-green patch that matched his cloak covered his empty eye socket. Even his hair had grown, filling in the patchy areas and dropping past his shoulders now, turned coal black.
    “How may I aid you, exalted one?” she asked.
    “Why, little malenti, I merely wanted you to join me at the beginning of our triumph over the surface dwellers,” he stated. He shifted, lithe as a dancer on his feet in spite of the moving deck. “You have your own desires for power, though it’s remained somewhat elusive for you in spite of the fact I’ve raised your station in life and among your own people. I’ve recognized you for your worth though they didn’t. For all of your years of support, you deserve that.” He waved a hand at the port city, then clasped it into a fist. “I would offer you a kingdom, little malenti, if I ever cared enough to share.”
    Laaqueel knew him well enough to know that was the real reason. Iakhovas wanted an audience for his conquest-an audience who knew all of the truths, or at least knew more of the truths than the sahuagin tribes who’d listened to him did. He loved the complexities of his own plotting, and the layers of subterfuge he manipulated seemingly so easily, loved the way his whispering voice seemed to have a hypnotic effect on those who listened. He had the power to advance his ideas and make others believe they’d thought of them.
    “Gaze upon Waterdeep, little malenti, which the surface dwellers descry and proclaim as the crown jewel of all Faerun,” Iakhovas said. “I have been told that people journey to this place, expecting to enjoy pleasures they don’t have at home, and feel safe and secure in their rented beds.” He smiled, and the expression was filled with evil. “Ah, but tonight, tonight we strip that from them, never more to return, as we shatter the spine of her navy.”
    The Waterdhavian Naval Harbor lay farther to the north, managing two water gates of its own. The navy was one of the chief concerns the malenti had about the night’s raid. The Waterdhavian Navy had always defended the shores of the city well, and of course there were the mermen.
    “We’ve not gotten the bulk of our forces past the harbor gate yet,” she reminded.
    Despite the power he held over her and the potential he offered, she couldn’t always simply agree with him. He was no true sahuagin, even though the others believed he was. In the intervening years, she’d come to understand why the sahuagin of her own tribe hadn’t readily accepted her even after Baron Huaanton had named her as a protected ward after her birth. Her own exterior was an accident of birth. Iakhovas only masqueraded as a sahuagin. In her