Chapter One

      â€œIt looks pretty,” Ricky Morales said.

      â€œBad country,” Maggie Santiago replied. “Worse comin’.”

      She was a small woman, with jaw-length brown hair that was held off her face by a headband. She had a slight build and was decidedly flat-chested. Ricky was sixteen and noticed that kind of thing.

      He wiped sweat from his forehead. The approach of the Yazoo River to its confluence with the Sippi was unquestionably beautiful, with tall green grass to either side, crowned by the shattered ruins of what he was told was Vicksburg rising above it to the south, and the brown expanse of the great river itself ahead. The Yazoo rolled by the hull of the Mississippi Queen, brown and slightly greasy in the hot sun, which threw eye-stinging darts of morning light at the slow, slogging waves.

      A great blue heron, with its beautiful gray-blue plumage shining in the sun and a crest of feathers sweeping back from its head, stalked majestically through the shallows of the northern bank. It was hard to believe the green reeds lining the flow, and the green heights to the left, harbored any kind of wickedness or ugliness.

      â€œI don’t know,” Ricky said, holding up a toothed washer to the near-cloudless sky to squint through it, looking for lingering grit or crud. The slight machinist and mechanic was teaching him to disassemble the Queen’s bow winch. It was just the sort of thing the youth found fun. “It looks double-peaceful to me.”

      Krysty Wroth, her flame-red hair tossed by the slow afternoon breeze—moving, in fact, rather more than the light wind could account for—joined the pair. She stood gazing out of the blunt round prow of the river tug with one boot up on the gunwales. Ricky tried hard not to stare at the tall, statuesque woman. As usual. She was one of his companions, and one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He had a crush on her, even though she was the lover of the group’s leader, the one-eyed Ryan Cawdor.

      â€œIt’s hard to imagine anything so beautiful could be so deadly,” Ricky told Maggie.

      A sliding brown ridge appeared in the water near the wading heron. A pair of big, broad jaws burst through the surface in an explosion of spray. They snapped shut on the majestic bird. A savage shake, a roll, a wave, and the bird was gone beneath the water with nothing to show that it had ever been there, except for a heavy roll of greenish water slowly diminishing to become one with the flow, and a blue-gray feather swooping down to light delicately on the river and be carried away downstream.

      Ricky jumped to his feet. “Whoa!”

      â€œHey,” Maggie snapped. “Mind the parts, kid! You kick them in the Yazoo, and I’ll kick you in right after.”

      She referred to the components of the winch, which they had spread out on oiled canvas. Though she was only an assistant to the vessel’s chief engineer, Myron Conoyer—also known as husband to the captain of the Queen, Trace Conoyer, with whom he co-owned the boat—she took her task seriously. So did the rest of the crew who worked for the pair.

      â€œWhat was that?”

      Maggie glanced that way. Ricky hadn’t thought she’d noticed the commotion, but she had.

      â€œNile crocodile,” she said matter-of-factly. “These waters are lousy with them.”

      She gave him a gap-toothed smile.

      â€œOne of the reasons this is a nasty stretch of river,” she said.

      Ricky looked at Krysty. “Didn’t that bother you?” he asked. He was still freaked out about seeing the bird snatched below the lazy, deceptively innocuous water so precipitously, and he needed someone to validate him.

      â€œWhat?” she said.

      â€œThe bird—the heron. A big old croc grabbing it just like that—that doesn’t bother you?”

      Krysty shrugged. He tried to keep his eyes off the fascinating thing that did to the front of the plaid shirt she wore, and failed.

      â€œIt’s just the circle of life,” she said.

      â€œWhat’s the problem, Ricky?” a voice asked from behind him. “We’re not getting paid to sightsee.”

      He turned. There was no mistaking that voice.

      â€œHe was alarmed because a Nile croc took down a heron, right over there, Ryan,” Krysty said, as her man approached with the captain and her husband alongside.

      Ryan came up and put his arm around her. He was a tall rangy man, narrow-waisted and broad-chested, with shaggy black hair and a single pale blue eye. His other eye was covered by a black patch, and a scar ran from brow to jawline.

      â€œI just don’t want him kicking any parts of my winch overboard,” Maggie said.

      â€œDon’t worry,” Krysty told her. “He loves his machines far too much for that.”

      â€œNile crocodiles,” Ryan grunted. “Great.”

      â€œDon’t mind them,” said the short, potbellied, curly-bearded man in the glasses next to him. He wore grease-stained tan coveralls. “Everything else here is much worse.”

      â€œYou and your exaggerations, Myron,” Trace Conoyer said. She was taller than her spouse, with a hawk nose and piercing dark eyes to match, and dark blond hair worn short. “Though for a fact, I’d just as soon people keep their eyes skinned proper until we’re well out in the Sippi stream and heading south.”

      â€œStart with the worst thing, then,” Ryan said. “After that, it’ll only be good news.”

      â€œDon’t be too sure of that, my friend,” Myron said. As the Queen’s chief engineer, he was Ricky’s nominal boss while aboard the vessel. Although in Ricky’s mind his boss would always be the group Armorer, and his mentor, J. B. Dix.

      And Ryan, of course.

      Most of them had abilities that were useful to the vessel and her crew—even Doc, with his weird, eclectic old-days knowledge.

      As a general rule, Ryan Cawdor did not hire his group out for sec work, unless survival was at stake, for one reason or another. When survival for himself and his small, loyal band of friends was concerned, anything and everything were always on the table.

      The companions had been hired on the Queen as crew. There was always plenty of work to be done. Captain Conoyer was grateful for fourteen extra hands to do it, and willing to pay with room and board and a share in the proceeds of every transaction—the same deal she and every other member of the crew had. With differences in percentage, of course.

      One of the conditions of the companions’ employment was that if—more likely, when—there was fighting to be done, they would be required to defend the ship. It just so happened that the new crew members were all ace at that particular skill.

      But then again, that was pretty much an unspoken condition of every job, including