DEDICATION: For Findle, world's most impatient alpha reader.
6/01

The dolphin was still following the ship as it approached the Sumerian coast.

The reason the dolphin was following the ship was because Joxer was still feeding it when he could. For a time he'd regretted the initial impulse that had led him to toss part of what little food he had to the dolphin, but lately he had little appetite anyway and was well rid of what maggoty crusts he was given. The dolphin ate them anyway. It must be awful to be a dolphin if it made you that hungry all the time.

He'd been angry at the Sumerians that first time because they'd been trying to net the dolphin and even though he knew Sumerians were barbarians he hadn't realized they were that bad, cannibals practically. They spoke like it was only a fish, but all civilized people knew dolphins were the reincarnations of drowned sailors. Cannibals! He'd been furious and had almost charged the captain, but it would have been suicide and he needed to get to Sumeria, had to get to Sumeria. So he'd kept his mouth shut, his gut churning at this additional evidence of the cruelty of the Sumerians (and it was that cruelty that was his reason for being there in the first place) but the dolphin had easily evaded their nets. The Sumerians were pissed and when they saw Joxer sneaking it a bit of food over the side they took out on him pretty hard, even for Sumerians. But shortly after that they'd started assigning him to tasks on deck more often, and giving him more mostly inedible salt fish and biscuit, so that he could continue feeding the dolphin, and they could continue trying to catch it. And the dolphin ate the food, foul as it was, and danced away on its tail laughing aloud at the Sumerians' attempts to capture it. Perhaps it had been a Sumerian itself, when it was a human. Certainly it seemed to be able to anticipate their moves, and Joxer thought it looked as if it was enjoying itself at their expense. At least somebody was.

The increasingly well-settled coastline was close enough now that he thought he could almost reach out and touch it, although distances were hard to judge at sea. It might be half a mile, it might be seven leagues, but it was close enough to see. That meant the capital, the coastal city with its unpronounceable Sumerian name was within an hour, maybe less, and that meant the goal was in sight--and farther away than ever. He didn't know how he was going to get to the palace. He didn't even know how he was going to get off the ship. At least not alive.

Something struck him in the ribs and he wound up sprawled on the deck, wheezing. One of the crew had caught him daydreaming and kicked him, real hard but at least not overboard. They'd been tossing the weakest overboard for the past couple of days, those with no resale value, and although you couldn't see them everyone knew there were sharks following the ship as well as the dolphin. Joxer ignored the man's cursing and pushed himself to his knees, his head bowed submissively. He couldn't lose now. Not when he was within sight of his goal. Not when there was so much at risk.

The dolphin tailwalked alongside the boat, laughing at some dolphin joke; then it dove beneath the waves and vanished.

Joxer returned to scrubbing the deck, trying not to think. Not to think about the harbor, not to think about the pain in his side, not to think about the burning on his back or the dull ache in his gut. Xena always said not to dwell on things, and--Not to think about Xena. Not to think about Gabrielle, oh, gods, Gabrielle! He shut everything out except the feel of the rough planking under his knees. No thinking. Waiting. And soon--something.

The Sumerians were talking among themselves in Sumerian, pointing excitedly at other ships and landmarks along the harbor. Joxer kept his head down for as long as he could before looking up again. There were wharves visible now, long and dingy, the kind of place where a person could easily be lost from view within a few moments. For a second an unreasonable hope sprung up in him, but it just as quickly died. This ship was carrying far too many goods, and of too fine quality, to tie up at such a berth. They'd dock closer in to the center of town, where the security and the guards were thicker, and then they'd take all the cargo off, and shackle those who still lived, and march them away to... Wherever it would be, it would mean that he'd failed. And he couldn't afford to fail.

The wharves looked close. How close were they really? Did it matter?

Someone shouted, and the crew ran to the front of the boat. A huge trireme, carved and gilded about its bowsprit and stern, moved steadily past them. Its rowers were obviously fresher than the merchant ship's, and the elegance of its lines and its decoration meant it probably belonged to some noble. Joxer had heard the Sumerian nobles traveled in the highest of style, although his admittedly limited experience with them had seemed to indicate otherwise. The sailors gaped at the boat and talked excitedly among themselves. Perhaps envy, perhaps worship. Who could tell with Sumerians?

And on the other side, the long wharves continued to slip by.

Barely daring to breathe, Joxer stopped what he was doing. The short chain connecting the manacles about his wrists rattled once, and was still. He wondered if he had enough energy to do it. He wondered if he even had enough energy to stand.

He thought of the Sumerians, and of Gabrielle.

Joxer gathered his legs underneath him and sprang for the rail. It wasn't a graceful leap like he'd wanted, wasn't a quiet slipping over the side. He caught his foot and banged his knee, and he had to scramble up atop the rail and the chain clanked and clattered like all the bells in Delphi, and the sailors saw him and shouted and came running, and there was murder in their eyes. He didn't dive so much as plummeted, and he thought he felt a hand brush his ankle and he swallowed the panic and kicked it away, and it was gone.

And then he was plunging down, down, into cold unending darkness, and now he did panic and thrash and kick helplessly, no longer sure which way was up. He was choking, the breath knocked out of him by the fall and the water wanting to run in to replace it. He tumbled end over end, and then there was air, and then there wasn't, and then there was again.

He broke the surface, gasping, shaking the water out of his eyes, and he could see the ship. The rowers had already carried it well past him, but he started swimming away from it as best he could in any case. The Sumerians would snag him if they could, but they wouldn't turn around for somebody like him, next to worthless in the market.

They didn't seem angry. In fact, they seemed amused.

Joxer gasped, turned his back on them, and faced the wharves. He was trying to swim but it was hard with his arms bound and the chain weighing him down, and the water was so cold. Who knew it would be this cold, when Sumeria was so hot? The cold and the metal were pulling him down, and the currents batted him about here and there, turning him around so that with every breath it seemed he was facing something different, this wharf, that wharf, water, the ship again.

The Sumerians were openly laughing. They pointed behind him.

I'm not going to fall for that, Joxer thought, and a wave turned him around and he thought he saw--

No. Had to be imagining it. Another wave broke over his face and he choked and went under and almost didn't come up again. And when he did, he thought he saw it again.

No thinking. Swimming.

And the shark fin glided past and then back around again. It was taking its time. He'd seen the way they hunted the men thrown overboard. They always took their time, like a warrior aiming a spear.

He kept swimming. What else was there to do?

Failed. Failed utterly. Gabrielle, he thought. Gabrielle, I'm sorry. He wanted that to be his last thought, but his mind refused to cooperate and continued to roil in fear.

A wave brushed him up and around, and he saw the fin closer. It was coming for him now.

And the water exploded in front of him.

Joxer backpedaled, choking, the spray in his nose and eyes and throat, and the dolphin splashed back into the water from the apex of that spectacular leap and swamped him again. It skimmed quickly towards the shark, from the side, and rammed it. He saw the big fish's tail flop into the air as it dove, and felt some terrible sorrow. For some reason, with all that was at stake and all that he'd lost, it seemed as if getting that poor dolphin killed was the last straw.

The shark fin broke the surface again, its fin and part of its back arched upwards, then went under. The dolphin reappeared, chittering madly, then dove after the shark.

Joxer was too tired to swim any more. He kicked barely enough to keep himself afloat, in some strange sympathy with the Sumerians who were also watching for the shark to reappear. When something bumped against his side he was too tired even to react.

It bumped again, and pushed him up. It was the dolphin.

"Oh," Joxer said dully, "hello".

The dolphin thumped against him again, and more out of reflex than anything else he clung to its side. It chittered approvingly, and set out toward the wharf.

It took Joxer long moments to realize what was happening. He heard the Sumerians yelling in fury behind him but their voices were being drowned out by the sound of the waves. Of the shark there was no sign. A chance, he finally thought, the idea filtering slowly into his brain. I still have a chance.

The dolphin swam carefully around what few boats dotted the harbor at this side, dove suddenly--Joxer barely grabbed a breath in time--and resurfaced nearly underneath the end of one of the wharves, no tied-up ships or barges visible among the pilings. The water was filthy, smelled horrible, tasted worse, and seemed impossibly to be even colder than it had been out in the harbor. Joxer had never been so pleased by any body of water in his life.

He let go of the dolphin and scrabbled with numbed fingers against a piling. The dolphin gently nudged him further along the pier, to where the half-rotted remnants of a long-unused access ladder, overgrown with weed and algae, reached almost to the water. He grabbed it, and when the dolphin backed away his grip held.

Joxer shook the water out of his eyes and looked at the dolphin. "Thank you," he said solemnly. He wondered who it had been when it had been human, and if he'd known it then. If he ever drowned and became a dolphin, he decided, he'd make sure to go around saving people like this one did. It would only be fair. "I'm sorry I don't have any more of that fish."

The dolphin chittered, its long toothed snout looking almost like a smile and its demeanor conveying: No problem. It flipped its head up once in farewell, then it turned away and dove beneath the waves and was gone.

Joxer clung to the ladder for a long time. Then he pulled himself up one rung and again remained still, gathering strength for another effort. Another rung, another, and when he was fully out of the water he locked his arms and legs through the ladder as best he could, looping the chain around to hold himself in place. Then there was a long time for which he dozed on and off, exhaustion and pain dragging him down, nightmares and cold waking him again. During this time the sky went dark, and then light again. Then he went to sleep for a long time and when he awoke it was past noon, and he was more thirsty than he had ever been in his life, and he untangled himself from the ladder and climbed up onto the pier.

-----

Now what he needed to do was find the Queen.

That shouldn't be as hard as it might sound. He'd heard she held open court every day in the heat of the afternoon, allowing any and all petitioners to approach her with whatever they wished to ask. It wasn't a measure of her love for her people, nor theirs for her. It was to show how utterly fearless the Queen was, a woman running a country dominated by men and unafraid of any of them. People could and did try to kill her during open court. No one had yet succeeded. They said the Queen was invincible.

Joxer shuffled along in the crowds, heading for a gleaming white marble building visible above the tops of the local shacks. It was set up high overlooking the harbor, and he guessed it would either be the palace or pretty close to it. All he had to do was get there. Which was going to be difficult, because he was dressed in rags, filthy, chained, and the wrong color. The Sumerians had beautiful skin tones of deep rich browns and blacks, where Joxer's skin was so pale it stood out even among Celts or Gauls--and practically all of it was exposed to view right now to boot. He shuffled along, keeping his head down, not meeting anyone's eyes, and tried to be invisible. He was good at being invisible. It was a survival skill Xena might not approve of, but it had kept him alive and more or less whole ever since he'd been thrown out of his family and that a long, long time. People looked at him and saw nothing to threaten them, nothing to interest them, and therefore no longer saw him at all, and he was invisible. It'll work here too, he told himself. It will. Although he really would feel a lot safer with some clothes on.

The traffic grew thicker, people on foot thronging the streets, and now he could relax a bit because the crowd was so dense no one could really see him. It all seemed to be funneling towards the white building, and he allowed it to carry him along until he found himself at the back of a large open square, packed with people, and at the far end of the square was the white building. A series of grand steps led up to a dais high above the street, and on the terrace he could see a woman sitting on a gilded chair, two attendants standing on either side of her holding fan palms. The Queen.

Joxer looked at the crowd. He should be able to get to see her by...by the next full moon at this rate. That wouldn't do. Nor could he shoulder his way along, it would draw too much attention--and the crew from the ship could very well be here, and if they saw him--Okay. What could he do? He couldn't go through the crowd to the dais. He couldn't fly over their heads. He couldn't tunnel under their--

Or could he?

Joxer dropped to his hands and knees, which caused no commotion from the people around him--maybe the slave chains made him even more invisible than normal, good--and started to crawl through the crowd. He shouldered aside a leg here, was met with a return kick there, and the people fidgeted and grumbled as he went by, but no one looked down to see what was happening. He couldn't maneuver, and had to hope everyone was more or less facing the palace so that he could follow their feet. The crowd would occasionally break out in a cheer, or a roar, and once something happened to make them so approving that they clapped and stamped their feet, and he got pummeled for a few moments and had the wind knocked out of him, and had to stop. His knees hurt like hell and his back ached, and he was still not thinking--and there seemed to be light ahead through the forest of limbs. He pushed his way through, and found his head out in sunlight once more, blinking at the brightness. He was at the front of the crowd, and the steps were in front of him, and there was the Queen.

And there were guards on the steps, and they were staring. Joxer realized a little too late that he probably neither looked nor acted much like a regular petitioner. He pushed himself to his feet, startling the people around him, looked at the guards, started to speak--and thought Oh, the hell with it. From somewhere he gathered strength he didn't know he had, and ran straight up the steps.

Not very far, because there was a guard in his way almost instantly, and Joxer ducked around before the man could bring his spear into play, grabbed the spear and pushed backwards. The guard lost his balance and fell into a guard behind him, and Joxer returned to running. Not that many steps, well a lot of steps actually, too many steps if you asked him. The guards were pursuing and the Queen wasn't even bothering to notice. Playing it cool, as always--darn her. "Your Highness!" Joxer howled. "Your Highness, your Queenship--Nebula!--"

Something struck him hard between the shoulder blades and he went down, almost howling with rage at the universe that allowed him to get so close and then snatch him away again. He panted, felt the pressure on his back. Not dead. The guard had pinned him with the butt of the spear, and now there were other guards approaching, and--"Nebula!" he gasped, the volume gone with the air, "I--"

A second guard pushed his head aside with the blade of a spear this time, lifted his chin so that Joxer could watch. It was the guard who'd fallen down and he was very, very aggravated. He raised the spear slowly, Joxer pinned and helpless and watching every movement of the blade and wanting to scream with grief and rage. Everything was very quiet.

And a voice said "Hold."

The guard pulled the spearpoint back just a little, and Joxer heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He couldn't twist his head up enough to see much more than strong bare brown feet stop on the step just above him, and the voice said, "Hey, studmuffin. Long time no see."

By twisting his head to the side he could look up with one eye. Queen Nebula of Sumeria was looking down at him, the amused wolf grin on her face, and she was the only damn person he'd seen for months that didn't look mad. "Nebula," he gasped. "Need...help. Xena and Gabby, they..."

"Let him up," Nebula ordered, and the guards backed off. Joxer threw himself at her feet, which he had a vague idea was something one should do when begging a favor from a Queen. "Pirates," he wheezed. His mind wasn't working very well any more and he couldn't seem to put the words in order. "Kidnapped, Sumerian pirates, need help. Not for me, for them, the baby, I..."

"Whoa, back off, love. I just washed these feet."

"Please," Joxer said. He pushed himself up as best he could, which wasn't very, slipped on the marble steps and was down again. A couple more guards, women this time, who had been standing behind the throne walked down to join Nebula on the steps, and Joxer grew frantic. "Please, you have to..."

"Joxer, what the hell are you doing here?" one of the guards said.

Joxer blinked. It couldn't be.

The guard poked him with a booted foot. Joxer looked up and blinked again. The guard looked exactly the way she sounded, which was exactly like Xena.

"And what are you babbling about?"

The guard was dressed in fine Sumerian armor and silks, but she looked just like Xena. Joxer tried to say something but all he could do was kind of gape.

"Joxer!" the second guard said. He turned and looked at the second guard, and she was also dressed in finery, and she looked and sounded exactly like Gabrielle. "You're a mess," she said, which was exactly what Gabrielle would say.

"But," Joxer finally said, which wasn't much of an improvement on being silent, "but, but, the pirates..."

"The rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated. As usual," Xena said. She grabbed him by one arm and hauled him to his feet, and when he stood he saw Eve peering at him from her bundle slung behind Xena's back.

"But you were, and they, and I thought--" He looked from one to the other. "And you were here all the time? And you were safe? And everything?"

Gabrielle rolled her eyes. "Of course we were."

He looked at her. He looked at Xena. He looked at Eve, and he looked back at Gabrielle. They were here, they were alive, whole, safe. All the nightmares, all the worries, none of it was true, not this time, and everything was all right, and he loved them so much and was so relieved and oh, gods, Gabrielle. He looked at them, trying to express everything that was in his heart. "You bastards," he said and passed out.