Jason was acutely aware that Kerny was waiting and listening. Now was not the time to argue. Mutely dreading the unseen parasites about to turn his body into their vacation resort, Jason raised the shell to his lips.

“Squirt a little pulpa oil in there to loosen it up,” Kerny interrupted. “Otherwise you’ll have to suck like a tube-billed mud strainer.” The bartender held out a glass vial with a tiny mouth and inky blue liquid inside.

Jason tipped the vial above the puckerly, wrinkling his nose as the colorful flesh writhed at the contact from the dark drops. Tossing his head back, he dumped the contents of the shell into his mouth, disturbed that it kept squirming.

The texture was like raw egg yolk, the flavor slightly salty, richer than any seafood he had ever tasted. He chewed briefly, then swallowed, the slimy mass coating his throat on the way down.

“What do you think?” Kerny asked.

“Really good,” Jason said, surprised.

“Honestly?” Rachel asked.

“Try it,” Jason challenged.

Rachel dripped some oil into her shell, then downed the contents. Her expression brightened. “We’ll take a platter.”

Just then a man jostled into Jason from behind. Turning, he saw a short, stocky fellow who had been seated at a table near the door. The man had thick black hair and dense stubble on his face. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled back over hairy forearms bulging with muscle.

“I’ll have the chowder,” he growled in a deep voice.

“Not until you bring in some money or wash some dishes,” Kerny responded, overly articulating his words. The bartender glanced apologetically at Jason.

“I’m not good enough to wash dishes,” the man blubbered in despair. “I’m not good enough for chowder. Sorry to bother.” He wheeled around and plopped down at a nearby table, laying his face on folded arms.

“What’s his problem?” Rachel asked softly.

Kerny shook his head. “He’s depressed and dizzy. Nobody should sit near the outer wall when we’re spinning this briskly. I extended him some credit, but there are limits to what a person can do. I pity him for his mishap, but I can’t let him bankrupt me.”

“What mishap?” Jason wondered.

“Where have you been? He’s the sole survivor of the Giddy Nine. Poor sap.”

Jason whirled. So somebody did jump from the raft! His rescue attempt had not been a total failure. He felt a rush of relief knowing he’d saved at least one person’s life.

“Will you take your food at the bar or at a table?” Kerny asked.

Jason turned back. “At a table. And I’ll buy that man some chowder.”

“Suit yourself. What will you and the young lady drink?”

“Water,” Jason said.

The bartender shrugged and moved away.

“Notice he didn’t ask me what I wanted,” Rachel whispered.

“Now is not the time to discuss women’s rights,” Jason whispered back. “Did you want chowder too?”

“Water is fine. But I wanted to be asked.”

Jason sat down beside the man he had rescued. Rachel sat across from them. “I’m Jason,” he said. “This is Rachel.”

“Tark,” the man replied in his gravelly voice, not looking up.

“I ordered you some chowder.”

Tark raised his head, smiling. He leaned back as he looked at Jason, as if trying to bring him into focus. “That was right gentlemanly of you.”

“No problem. I heard about your friends.”

“They were the lucky ones,” Tark moaned, clutching his hair.

“But didn’t they die?” Rachel asked.

“Like I was supposed to.”

Jason tried to cover his surprise and confusion. The one person he’d saved was devastated at having survived? He cleared his throat. “So, uh, what instrument did you play?”

Tark eyed him. “You aren’t from hereabout.”

“We come from far off.”

“I play the sousalax.”

“What is that?” Rachel asked.

Tark huffed. “Merely the largest of all lung-driven instruments. Only six or seven men along the coast have the capacity to sound it properly. Away north they use the instrument to summon walruses and sea elephants.”

“That sounds handy,” Jason said, sharing a small smile with Rachel.

Tark nodded obliviously. “I was supposed to play to the end. The sousalax lays the foundation for the other instruments. You know? And it was more than that. Listen, this stays between us. Simeon, our leader, had been absent a long while. He had a habit of going on excursions. One day Simeon shows up claiming a prophetess told him if we floated down the river to the waterfall playing music, we would summon a hero to help depose Maldor. He had an exact date and time in mind. At first we thought he was having fun with us, but he just kept staring, grim as a widow on her anniversary. We discussed the idea a long while, and eventually came to a unanimous accord. I mean, what do we need today more than a real hero? Not these fakers looking for a free ride to Harthenham—I mean the kind of heroes we sing about, the kind who actually stand for something. Simeon convinced us to play right up to the end and summon a hero by our sacrifice.” Tears brimmed in his eyes. “But I reneged.”

A barmaid approached and laid down a platter of puckerlies beside two tall glasses of water and a wooden bowl of chunky chowder. “Don’t let him get started,” she warned Jason. “You’ll be trapped here all night with him repeating the same sorry story.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jason said. He turned back to Tark. “Go on.”

Tark raised the bowl to his lips, took a long sip, wiped his mouth, and sighed contentedly. Jason dripped some pulpa oil onto a puckerly and swallowed it. Rachel grabbed a puckerly as well.

“It was all the fault of that sadist who fired the rescue arrow,” Tark resumed, gazing at his chowder. Jason stiffened, biting his lip. “We were all resolved to our course of action until a chance for escape thrust itself upon us. With the arrival of that line to shore our determination slackened.

“The arrow took Stilus through the shoulder. Funny thing, he had been the one most opposed to the idea of our sacrifice. It took a good deal of cajoling to convince him. Old Stilus was superstitious, you see. I’d wager he took the arrow for a sign he’d been right all along. No sooner had he fallen than he began wrapping the line in a figure eight around one of the cleats. Stilus never did have much luck. I suppose he thought he was doing the right thing, trying to save us.