Book 4: Chapter Eleven

Ariadne gazed out at the endless ocean, trying to hide her apprehension. She’d never been on any ship larger than a river raft before, and that had only been for long enough to get to the opposite bank. Until the group had arrived in the port city of Nysa, she’d never even seen the ocean, having lived her whole life in Tir Yadar.

The trip from Aencyr had been uneventful, the six weeks of slow riding allowing her to spend her days practicing trade tongue with Treya, Sarette, and Corec. In the evenings, she helped Ellerie and Bobo plan out a book on the history of the Chosar, and sometimes she sparred with Sarette and the men. She found the sparring to be an unusual experience—having to train herself not to use her spells, after spending seven years ensuring they became second nature. As for the book, it was difficult to speak of her people’s past when she wasn’t certain what had become of them, but their story deserved to be told.

The group had parted ways with Josip in Nysa, the guide heading north with a trading caravan on its way to Ankarov Dor—which, if the maps were accurate, seemed to have been built over the remains of Tir Ankara. Ariadne hadn’t spent much time getting to know the man, but he was one of the few people she knew in the world. It was strange to realize she’d likely never see him again.

There was a scrabbling sound from the side of the ship, and then a three-tined spear was tossed up and over the railing, landing on the deck planking with a clatter. A young man soon followed, climbing up a rope ladder that had been left hanging down over the side. He carried a net bag wrapped around a huge, blue- and gray-scaled fish. As he neared the top of the ladder, he hefted the bag up onto the deck, then finished climbing and swung his legs over the railing. The other sailors called out to him, congratulating him in the peculiar mix of languages they used amongst themselves. Three men, working as a team, pulled the fish out of the netting and hung it up on a rack so it could be cleaned and gutted. From tip to tail fin, it had to be six feet long, and was rounder and fatter than the river fish Ariadne was familiar with.

The young man watched them work with a look of satisfaction on his face. He was a few inches shorter than Ariadne, but heavily muscled. Cold didn’t seem to bother him—he was still shirtless from his swim, wearing loose breeches that only covered his upper legs. He ignored the chilly wind blowing against the seawater that still dripped down his bare chest.

When he noticed Ariadne staring at him, he grinned. “Ahh, mysterious Ari,” he said in trade tongue. “Do you see my catch? I defeated the great blue tunny in single combat. A shark smelled the blood and came by to steal it from me, but I whacked it on the snout and chased it away.”

“My name is Ariadne,” she reminded Loofoo yet again. In the few days she’d known him, she hadn’t been able to figure out when he was telling the truth and when he was making up stories. It didn’t help that he regularly used words she wasn’t familiar with—some, perhaps, from the trade tongue, but others obviously from different languages.

“What kind of a name is that?” the seaborn man asked. “Names should flow like water.”

She shook her head but changed the topic. “How do you keep up with the ship?”

“It’s not going all that fast, really. You might be able to keep up with it if I taught you how to swim the right way. Of course, you’re wearing far too much clothing for that. Shall I help you remove some?”

Ariadne sighed. “Will you be serious for once? You promised you’d tell me about Pado.”

“I brought in tonight’s supper so I suppose Captain Valen won’t mind so much if I talk to you, but why the interest in the homeland? You claim to not be seaborn, and you wear metal armor—I saw it the day you came on board. So why all the questions, mysterious Ari?”

“Maybe my parents were seaborn,” she said. It was easier than telling him the truth.

His grin was back. “There’s one way to know for sure. Dunk your head under the waves and take a breath, and see if you swim or drown.”

She hadn’t learned the word drown yet, but given the context, there were only a few possible meanings, none of which were pleasant. She couldn’t stop her shudder. “I don’t think so.”

He laughed. “Pado is Pado. What do you want to know?”

That was a good question. What she really wanted to know was whether the Chosar had somehow become seaborn. The seaborn on the ship did look something like her people, yet there was something not quite right about them. She wasn’t certain she could even put it into words, but she’d known at a glance they weren’t Chosar. She wasn’t going to mention any of that, though. She had no intention of telling her life’s story to every person she came across.

“How long have the seaborn lived there?” she asked instead.

Loofoo crinkled his brow. “Since time before time, when Irisis first created the seas, and then us, the children of the seas.”

“But Irisis is one of the new gods,” Ariadne pointed out.

“Ahh, but newer than what? Bear and Raven and Fox may have come first, creating the land, but Irisis came soon after, bringing the sea to all the world.”

Loofoo, apparently, didn’t have a firm enough grasp on history to be a reliable source of information about the origins of his own people.

“Why did you leave?” Ariadne asked.

Loofoo scowled and spat on the deck. “I was hunting a giant sunfish, and followed it into The People’s fishing grounds without realizing.” When he said The People, he meant his own people. It had caused some confusion the first time Ariadne had spoken with him. “I sold the meat rather than giving it over. Emperor Kono’s agents found out and called it poaching, and banished me for ten years. I can’t return to Pado and no seaborn ship is allowed to take me on, so here I am, stuck working for humans on their miserable ships.” He tilted his head and shrugged. “Though Peregrine isn’t so bad. She could almost be a seaborn vessel.”

“Are all the seaborn here criminals?”

“I’m no criminal!” he protested, wearing the same look of questionable innocence he used when telling his more outlandish stories. “How was I to know I was in the wrong area?”

“Fine, not you, but what about the others?” Ariadne said.

“Them?” he said, glancing at the other seaborn sailors, who made up a quarter of the crew. “They’re not banished, they’re just lost. They’ve lived among the humans for so long, they’ve forgotten who they are. Some left Pado to see the world, some were born in our foreign enclaves, some were born to banished parents and have always lived in human cities. They could return if they wanted to. They choose to remain lost.”

Ariadne nodded. “What’s it like on Pado? It’s an island, right?” Loofoo had told her before that the seaborn lived on land much of the time. They could sleep underwater, but when they did so, they couldn’t protect themselves from predators. Plus, if they didn’t tie themselves to something, they would float with the current.

“If you want to call it that. What’s to tell? Cities on the coast, with canals that the druids keep clean and full regardless of the tide. Farming inland—we do just as much farming on land as we do in the sea. Pado is just like anywhere else. I’m more interested in you. Where do you hail from, mysterious Ari? Your friends are from Aravor, but you obviously aren’t. And you don’t speak Nysan or Doravi, so you can’t be from Cordaea.”

“Oh?” Ariadne said. “And you’ve spent so much time time traveling inland that you think you know everything?”

“Then tell me.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, hiding a smile. “But if you guess correctly, maybe I’ll let you take me swimming.”

That should be a safe enough bet. And if not, well, he wasn’t unattractive.

#

The group had sold all of their horses and mules when they’d finally reached Nysa, so Nedley didn’t have any animals to take care of on board the Peregrine. That meant he was back on dishwashing duty. When they were on the road, everyone washed their own dishes, but the galley on the ship was too small for that many people to be going in and out. Washing dishes was easier than being a groom, but Nedley thought he might leave that part out of the story when he told his brother about his adventures.

He finished drying the last pan from the midday meal, ignoring the swaying motion—the sea had been rough all morning. Done with his work, he headed for the passenger cabins at the other end of the Peregrine. Miss Ellerie had been surprised to find the familiar ship waiting for them in port. Apparently, after Leena had informed the investors of their expected arrival in Nysa, Burton Senshall had told Captain Valen to wait for them there. The ship had been in port for over a week by the time they arrived. The sailors hadn’t minded the extra shore leave, but Marco had said the Senshall agents were mad about having to sell a load of perishable fruits locally, at a loss, and then search for another cargo to take its place.

When Nedley reached the cabin he shared with Marco, he was relieved to find it empty. It wasn’t that he disliked Marco, but half the things the man said didn’t make any sense. Conversations with him were always awkward, but Nedley made sure to listen politely, in part because he planned to ask for a letter of recommendation once they reached Tyrsall. A recommendation from Marco could secure long-term work with Senshall, as well as with other trading companies. It was the same sort of work Corec had done for years, so Nedley thought it might suit him too.

Since he had the cabin to himself, he retrieved the coin pouch he kept hidden in the bottom of one of his saddlebags. He poured the coins out onto his cot, separating them by type, then counted them once again.

He’d been saving his wages—the seven silver pieces Marco paid him each week. Even after the boots and new socks he’d had to buy in Nysa, Nedley still had one hundred seventy-two of those silver coins left. That was worth more than four gold.

And that didn’t include the tiny bit of silver he’d earned for his part in the ambush outside Tir Shar, or the seventeen gold and thirty silver he’d received after the big battle at Tir Yadar. After visiting a moneychanger in Aencyr, most of that was actually in gold. Nedley had never thought he’d own one gold coin, must less seventeen of them. He’d felt guilty about taking money for the fight in Tir Yadar since he hadn’t actually done anything, but Boktar had explained that just being ready to fight still counted. Miss Katrin, Miss Shavala, and Marco had all gotten paid too, and they hadn’t done much either, so Nedley figured Boktar must know what he was talking about.

More money would be coming after they reached Tyrsall, which was only a day or two away. Miss Ellerie had told Nedley that his eighth of a share would be worth somewhere around thirty-five gold, though it might not all be available right away. She’d also offered him another six and a half gold for something he hadn’t entirely understood—something related to to an offer she’d made to the Senshall people. He didn’t need to understand it to accept it. Marco thought it was a good deal, and Marco knew more about money than Nedley ever would.

The end result was that Nedley would have … he would have …

He chewed the inside of his cheek as he tried to add the figures in his head. Whatever it was, it was a lot. Enough to convince his brother, Bertram, to leave Larso and come home. The only problem was that Nedley would have to do the convincing via a letter. He’d learned enough writing that he thought he could manage that part, but Bertram couldn’t read. Someone else would have to read it to him, which meant Nedley had to be careful about what he put down on paper. He couldn’t mention what had happened to him in the mercenary army, and he’d have to be discreet about the money too.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

That meant the letter alone might not be enough to convince Bert, but Nedley couldn’t go get his brother himself. Miss Treya wouldn’t allow him to go to Larso. She was worried the voice would take him again if he got too close to Telfort. The thought of the voice made Nedley cringe, as did the splatter of blood and gore as he raised his sword and—

He screwed his eyes tightly shut, chanting, “It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone. It can’t get me!”

He managed to push the vision away and bring his mind back to the present. Shaking off a shiver, he gathered up the coins and put them back in the coin pouch, then dropped the pouch into his saddlebag.

On his way up to the deck, he noticed Corec and Katrin’s door slightly ajar, which meant whoever was in there wouldn’t mind being interrupted. He knocked.

“Yes?” It was Corec’s voice.

Nedley opened the door to find Corec and Miss Katrin both in the cabin. Corec was sitting on one of the cots with the maul across his legs, while Katrin stood near the entrance.

“Oh, hey, Ned,” Corec said.

“Are you busy?” Nedley asked him.

“No, come on in. We were just—”

The bottom seemed to drop out of Nedley’s stomach as the ship hit a swell.

Corec grimaced and clenched his hands around the maul’s shaft, his knuckles going white. “What’s going on up there?” he asked. “I haven’t been sick in two weeks, and now it’s all coming back.” Corec was a real-life baron’s son, and almost a knight, but he didn’t handle sailing very well. Sometimes Nedley allowed himself to feel just a bit smug about that.

“There’s a storm on the horizon,” Katrin said. “The captain’s trying to go around it. You should come up on deck with me. Treya says it helps.”

“I like it here, where I don’t have to see the water,” Corec said. “I’ll go up in a bit to get some fresh air.”

Katrin nodded. “All right, see you soon. Bye, Nedley.”

“Goodbye!” Nedley said, moving out of the way so she could get by him. After she was gone, he pointed to the hammer in Corec’s lap. “Are you trying to learn that spell again?” Corec had told him about the trick Hildra had attempted to teach him.

“There’s nothing else for me to do on this damned ship, so I thought I’d work on it. But I’m starting to understand why Ellerie’s always got that look on her face when she’s studying a new spell. Maybe Hildra’s wrong—maybe I can’t do it.”

Nedley shrugged. He didn’t know anything about magic. Well, he knew a lot more about it now than he’d known before, but it wasn’t anything that would be useful as advice. “Can I ask you a question?” he said instead.

“Sure.”

“How much would it cost to buy my armor? The things you helped me pick out in Tir Yadar.”

“What all do you want to buy? The plate and the mail? What about the sword?”

“That too.” Nedley had already planned on buying the sword, but it was the cost of the armor he was worried about.

“You might still grow out of that plate, you know, and the bigger sets are too big. Are you sure you want to buy it?”

Nedley bit his lip. “What should I do?”

“Well, let’s see,” Corec said. “You might grow out of it, but if you’re going to wear silversteel plate, Ariadne thinks you should stop wearing mail underneath. She says the gaps are protected well enough already, and you’d be faster without it. She doesn’t wear mail under her plate. And what about a shield? Do you want one of those round ones?”

“They’re not as big as mine,” Nedley said. His wood-and-metal heater shield was heavy, but it covered more of his body than the small silversteel shields they’d found in the Tir Yadar armory.

“No, but you’re not fighting on horseback, and an arrow’s not going to penetrate your greaves,” Corec pointed out. “You don’t really need the bigger shield, and you’re already better with the smaller one. You don’t have to give up your old shield, but I think you should practice more with one of the others.”

“I guess,” Nedley said. “If it’s not too expensive.”

“How about this? Come work for me, and I’ll buy it all for you.”

“What?”

“Boktar hasn’t already hired you for something, has he?”

“No, he said he was going with you to the free lands.”

“You should come too. I need guardsmen. It pays two silver a day, and if you choose to live in the barracks, it includes room and board. If you want to live on your own, you’ll have to pay for that yourself. Your brother’s still in Larso, right?”

“I think so.”

“We’ll be close to Larso, even if you can’t go there yourself. Maybe Razai can deliver your letter when she goes to Telfort.”

Two silver a day was twice what Nedley was making now, and matched what Senshall paid their caravan guards. Corec was offering him a guaranteed job with practically the same duties, but without having to travel back and forth all the time.

“I’ll do it,” Nedley said.

“Good. You’ll get your armor and weapons, and if you grow out of the armor, we’ll find you something new. You’ll have to learn how to use a crossbow. Stick around for at least a year and the armor’s yours to keep. But don’t tell the other guards that—that offer is just for you.”

Nedley grinned.

#

Sarette grasped the railing as the ship suddenly listed to starboard, the sails straining from the strength of the wind, and the yardarms creaking ominously. The weather had gotten steadily worse all day, the water growing choppy and the gray hazy skies of the morning giving way to dark clouds.

She’d known the storm was coming, but hadn’t realized the ship would pass through it. On land, her senses worked intuitively, letting her know when bad weather was on the way, but the ship sailed farther and faster than a person could walk or ride in a day, and it moved in a manner she wasn’t able to predict, following the currents and sometimes traveling in a circuitous route to avoid head-on winds. It made her weather sense almost useless, at least at a distance.

Another wave hit, splashing a light spray of seawater across her face.

“Should we do something?” she asked Shavala.

“The center of the storm is too far away,” the elven woman replied. “We couldn’t reach it.”

“I meant about the wind and the waves,” Sarette said. Storms were caused by warm and cold winds mixing together, which could be reversed to an extent, but she couldn’t imagine any mage trying to stop a storm this large.

Before Shavala could reply, Captain Valen stalked out of his stateroom and joined them on the quarterdeck, glowering at the junior watch officer on duty. “Helm a’lee, and strike t’gallants!” he shouted to the crew.

By turning the helm leeward, the ship itself would turn windward, toward the weather. The topmost sails on each mast, the royals, were already furled, but now sailors rushed to strike the next lowest, the topgallants, leaving only the topsails and courses.

While his men worked, Valen turned his scowl toward Sarette and Shavala. “Are you doing this?” he demanded. A week out from Nysa, he’d figured out they’d been affecting the wind.

“No,” Shavala said. “We stopped when the weather got worse.”

“Then get below decks with the others.”

“We can help,” Sarette told him.

“You can help by getting out of my way! We were trying to go around the storm, but now it’s too late. We’ll have to heave to.”

Sarette winced. She and Shavala had worried it wasn’t safe to affect the weather with the storm coming. Had the captain been counting on the extra speed they’d been providing?

There was a heavy gust of wind, and then a loud cracking noise. The upper half of the mainmast split almost in two from top to bottom, one side tipping slowly over, taking the upper yardarms and sails with it as it crashed down, destroying the port side railing on the main deck. The crew shouted and dodged out of the way, but one of the yardarms hit a sailor in the chest, knocking him overboard.

The ship jerked to the side as the rigging was pulled tight, the broken mast half on board and half off, dangling over the edge of the ship.

“Cut it loose!” Valen shouted. “Cut it loose!” Sailors drew their belt knives and quickly started cutting the lost rigging rope by rope.

While they did that, Ariadne’s seaborn friend ran to the side of the ship and leapt over, diving in headfirst after the man who’d fallen into the ocean. Another seaborn sailor unfurled a rope ladder so they could return—the nearest ladder that hadn’t been lost when the railing was crushed.

Captain Valen growled. “We need to heave to, but the storm’s coming on too strong. We might lose another mast even if we take the sails down. Can you do something?”

“What do you need?” Sarette asked. They’d learned not to make assumptions about sailing after Valen had lectured them for making his crew do extra work. Instead of increasing the wind from directly behind the ship as they’d been doing, he’d convinced them to send it at an angle. Doing so made better use of all the sails, he’d insisted, allowing the vessel to go faster than if it was running directly downwind. And once the breeze started coming from the direction the captain wanted, the crew wasn’t forced to change the sails as often to take advantage of it.

“The storm’s blowing southeast. We need to be farther west to get around the worst of it, but we can’t do that if we take all the sails down. If we heave to here, it’s going to get rough. Can you get us past it and keep us from losing another mast?”

“We’ll try,” Shavala said.

Valen shook his head. “Do it fast or don’t do it at all. I need to give the men their orders.”

“We’ll do it,” Sarette assured him.

He nodded curtly, then strode away, shouting, “Human crew, below decks! Batten everything down and get more men on the pumps! Seaborn, strike the jigger tops’l!”

While Shavala applied more westward wind to the remaining lower sails, Sarette went to work lessening the strength of the storm coming toward them. It seemed a never-ending task, though, with more winds always on the way, showing no sign of abating.

“Can the staff do anything to help?” she asked.

Shavala gave her a curious look. “This isn’t its purpose,” she said. “It would be just as happy to end up on the bottom of the ocean as anywhere else.”

Sarette sighed and redoubled her efforts. “I need a better view,” she said. “I can’t do enough from down here.” A stormrunner should be flying the storm, not looking up from below.

“Can you fly without lightning?” Shavala asked.

“My uncle can,” Sarette said. She’d never attempted it before, but there was no lightning in the sky—it was late in the year for thunderstorms. She could call down a lightning bolt herself, but it was too risky to do so while she was on the ship. There were too many people nearby. Even if she pulled it directly into her body, it could still damage the ship or injure the crew. She’d have to wait until she was far enough away.

But even without lightning, there was always some charge in the air, and with a storm, the opposing charges grew more active as they fought each other. It might be enough.

If she thought about it for too long, she’d talk herself out of it. She backed up to give herself a running start, then dashed toward the side of the ship while pulling the charged power into her body. At the last second, she jumped up, bracing one foot on the top of the railing before launching herself into the sky.

There was a brief moment where she wasn’t sure she’d stay up, but she extended her reach and pulled in power from a broader area. It worked, and as soon as she was clear of the ship, she summoned a lightning strike. It hit her outstretched hand and immediately suffused her entire body—for the first time, not filtered through a staff-spear. It gave her enough power to fly up into the clouds, where she could use the opposing charges to maintain her elevation.

She hovered high above the ship, staring down at it through the misty lower level of the clouds. The vessel had gradually started turning, but waves were still hitting it from the side, rocking it back and forth. Waves were created by wind—not by tides or currents, as Sarette had assumed before sailing across the ocean for the first time—so, as the wind grew worse, the waves would as well.

She stretched her weather sense out as far as she could reach. Shavala had been right that the center of the storm was too far away, but that distance would also help them. Could Sarette counteract just the small area around the ship? Not by stopping the storm—that was impossible if she couldn’t reach the source. But stormrunners were better at starting storms than stopping them.

At the far end of her range, between the ship and the storm, she drew coldness from the ocean up into the air. The storm winds were warmer, and that warmth floated upward naturally, leaving an opening. The cold air drifted into the opening, creating the first hints of wind. Sarette strengthened the wind with magic, to start a reaction that would keep the cold air flying farther than it would have on its own.

The force of her windstorm pushed back against the massive rainstorm in that one small area, countering the winds which had been blowing outward. It wasn’t enough to stop the waves, which carried energy from miles and miles of wind, but it lessened their power just a bit.

Sarette kept it up for as long as she could, to give the ship as much time as possible, but when she felt herself losing strength, she dove back down toward the Peregrine. She’d gotten better at landing, but she hadn’t mastered it yet and the ship was a smaller target than usual. She missed the deck and slammed against the side of the ship, her head bouncing off the planking.

She plunged into the ocean, the waves spinning her around as she tried to recover from the collision. It was too dark to see through the water. She couldn’t figure out which way was up, or which direction would lead her back to the ship. It was all she could do to remember to hold her breath.

With her clothing wet, it became harder and harder to move, but before she had time to panic, a rush of force shot up from beneath her, lifting her up out of the waves on a column of water. Shavala. Sarette wiped the water out of her eyes, blinking as she tried to get her bearings while perched on top of the unsteady pillar. She took to the sky again just long enough to hop over to the ship, then wrapped an arm around the jiggermast rigging and took deep gasping breaths.

The bow raised as the ship hit a tall wave head on, then dropped sharply just before the next one hit, water splashing across the prow.

“Throw out the sea anchor!” Valen shouted.

The sea anchor turned out to not be an anchor at all, but a large piece of sailcloth tied over a frame of wooden poles. Attached to a long rope, it was tossed into the sea from the bow of the ship. Sarette didn’t try to figure out what it was used for—her mind was too foggy to concentrate on anything.

“We’re through the worst of it,” Shavala told her.

Sarette didn’t reply. It didn’t seem important enough to say anything.

“Sarette?” Shavala said. “Look at me! Wake up! I think you need Treya.”

Treya? That sounded like a good idea. Treya would make things better.

She didn’t remember anything after that.