I was brought back to awareness by the sound of a young man groaning with exertion. Stuck on land as I was, my senses were somewhat limited, but slowly I began to gather more details.

Adam was chuckling a few feet away. Jim was right next to me, groaning occasionally and panting heavily in between grunts. My hull was rocking slightly, coincidentally timed to Jim’s efforts. Further away was the regular bustle and murmur of a busy city, just waking up and starting its day. Fortunately there weren’t any roosters nearby, given their annoying tendency to crow constantly so long as the time even approximated dawn, or if another chicken did something, or if they thought they saw a fox…

The horses in the neighboring stalls made for far more enjoyable animal companions. At the moment they were slightly on edge due to not understanding what Jim was doing, but even then the most I heard out of them was a few snickers.

“I. Don’t. Believe.” Jim gasped out, “That you. Moved this. By yourself.”

“Stat’s and skills go a long way towards making the impossible possible. It’s always a good idea to have an open mind and give people the benefit of the doubt. Or are you just trying to get out of helping me carry Slappy here back to the harbor? I’m sure your mother could still use a hand or two if you wanted to check in with her.” Adam answered his son, moving closer as he did so.

“No thanks.” Jim answered dryly. “Anything but that.”

“Suit yourself. There aren’t any convenient handles on this boat, so it probably makes the most sense for me to do the heavy lifting and for you to play spotter for me. There’s a lot more traffic out there than there was last night, and the last thing I want is get thrown in jail for running someone over with a boat on dry land, no matter how funny that mental picture might be.”

“So just walk in front of you and yell at people?” Jim perked up, especially now that he wasn’t trying to drag me around.

“I’m sure you can, Son, but I’ll settle for you just telling me if I’m about to run into something.

Adam was now next to me, and much like he had the previous night, he lifted me up by one end, before slowly working his hands along my length till I was completely in the air and on his shoulders. Hearing his deep breathing right next to my magical ear was a little disconcerting, and I took a moment to mentally try and shift the Listen spell further away. It worked well enough that I was able to make out Jim walking in front of me and Adam, keeping up a running commentary on upcoming turns and obstacles, as well as brief descriptions of nearby people for Adam to look out for.

“You have a right turn up here to get into the alley back up to the front of the inn. No one’s in the alley at the moment, but there’s a group of sailors walking by slowly. They should be gone by the time you reach there, but there’s a fish person? Someone with scales covering their face that’s hanging out in front of the inn. He’s waiting for someone right now, but he might decide to move towards us.”

“Don’t stare.” Adam chided. Jim made a few noises as though he wanted to defend himself, but settled for grumbling under his breath for a bit and then returned to his color commentary.

The sound of an opening and closing door heralded the arrival of Gladys. “Our bills paid up, and when John heard we were heading to Dirint he told me about a convoy leaving pretty soon that we might be able to join.

“A convoy?” “Who’s John.” Were the two responses to her information, and Gladys decided to placate her suspicious husband over answering her son.

"John is the lovely innkeeper who’s been running this place for the past forty-odd years. Says I remind him of his first wife, and once we got to talking he was more than happy to trade local news for what I could remember of things back home.

“Anything concerning?” Adam asked his wife, even as he switched directions to follow her to whatever location she’s leading us.

“Nothing overly concerning. The four cities are still concerned with profit over all else, so I don’t think we’ll have to worry too much about the politics of this war. Some mercenaries or adventurers might head that way to challenge themselves, but I believe it will be business as usual, as the saying goes.”

“What’s a convoy?” Jim repeats his question, not about to be distracted from getting an answer.

There’s a pause, before Gladys surprises me by being the one to answer the question. “Safety in numbers. When travelling from one place to another over dangerous or difficult terrain, travelling with a larger group offers more protection against monsters, bandits or pirates, or natural hazards.”

Jim seems satisfied with this explanation, but Adam shares his own perspective. “With the way travel times can change from city to city, it’s usually more economically efficient to travel in a loop from place to place instead of heading directly to and from a single place. Goods and passengers still take roughly the same time to get to where they are going, but multiple ports to call on make it easier for captains to make a profit. Also lets them drive up prices because anything they don’t sell at one stop can be brought out again at the next one, instead of having to take it back home at a loss. More ships together on a loop give them more cargo space and flexibility to work with, and multiple captains or Navigators mean that all the ships can take advantage of any shortcuts individual captains might have picked up over the years."

“Shortcuts?”

“Anyone with the ability to Navigate can get from one town to another, and with a good enough compass and enough time anyone could muddle through, but some people are either lucky or skilled enough to be able to complete what should be a five-hour trip in three or four hours. Any sailor who’s been around long enough has a few of these faster routes that they bring to the table, and can use to bolster a spirit of cooperation.”

The family had to switch their focus towards threading their way through a somewhat tight spot, and by the time people had spread out again the moment was over. Their conversation afterwards was kept purposefully light on Adam and Gladys’ part, and Jim seemed willing to oblige them.

The place they decided to launch me made the rest of the docks seem like an idyllic Sunday park. All around me were crews yelling and scrambling to get their jobs finished, and a few entrepreneurial captains were standing on shore trying to get one last bit of business done. One of those captains took a break to come over and have some whispered words with Adam, but his response and the clink of a few coins was enough to close their conversation on a happy note.

I, meanwhile, busied myself with scouting out what the rest of the convoy looked like. Contrary to my expectation, I wasn’t actually the smallest craft present. A trio of canoes bobbed in the water nearby, their riders content to stay quiet and still for the moment. Even smaller than them was the school of mermen waiting in formation underneath the waves. One of them was giving a speech to the rest, but while I could pick up the bubbly sounds he was projecting, I was unable to translate it into anything recognizable. It would have been nice to have had a universal translation ability, but at least I could understand what most of the population were saying. Right now they were saying “Anchors aweigh!”

Some of the faster cutters made me worry that I would find myself being left behind, but Adam’s hands on my oars were a reminder that I wasn’t the only one who could help move my boat. He wasn’t pulling at the moment, just providing a bit of cover so that I wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary. I made a mental note to thank him later and continued looking around. The canoes and a few of the barges likely were the slowest vessels present, but whoever was in charge of this convey knew what they were doing. The slower ships carefully positioned themselves so that they could trail behind the faster ones, taking advantage of whatever wake they might be creating. Once or twice I thought I could make out the narrow outline of a rope connecting a pair of boats together, but if ropes were being used for that purpose they would almost always be taut from the strain placed on them, and weren’t about to be trailing lazily in the water.

Over the course of the next few minutes I found myself being angled towards a position in the convoy towards the back and on the right-hand side. A few of the ships were closer than I was personally comfortable with, given their greater size and mass, but Adam seemed to treat it as normal, and I knew that if I had to I could probably row myself away safely. With all the ships more or less satisfied with their position I let my focus turn inwards, to investigate the niggling sensation that Navigation had been feeding me.

This was the first time I had been out on the open ocean where someone else was doing the navigation, and it seemed like my Navigation enchantment disagreed with the path that they were plotting for us. It was one thing to have the abstract knowledge that there were multiple ways to get to the same destination, but it was another thing entirely to have a portion of my mind insist that I needed to turn ten degrees to the right to get there safely. There was only one reasonable response to this problem.

I turned Navigation off. As useful as it normally was for letting me keep my bearings, and for letting me chart my own course, at the moment it was more of a headache than it was worth. I knew that travelling in a convoy would make for a faster trip, and even if it didn’t, it would make for a safer and less remarkable trip. Travelling like this meant I was only one of a dozen or so small boats, some brown with oars of varying sizes, while others used wind or magic to sail effortlessly along. It meant that when we arrived in Dirint and Adam and I parted ways that I would have a period of time to act before eyes were on me for being unusual or special.

Being part of a larger group had other benefits as well. It didn't take long for some of the other sailors to pick up a song, and soon a good quarter of the fleet was joining in with various tunes that they all knew. I did my best to commit them to memory against the day that I would have a voice of my own, but for the most part I simply enjoyed the talent on display. Most of the sailors were ordinary singers, slightly off key and with poor breath control and diction that was compensated for with enthusiasm, but a couple clearly had both Skill and skill for singing One man in particular had the range to alternate between tenor, baritone and base lines for various songs, as well as a Skill that let him occasionally sing three notes at once, usually reserved for the closing chords of verses or lines.

The time passed quickly, and what would have been a four-hour journey by myself only took two hours, and only felt like one.

I had been told that Dirint was a big and prosperous city, but no one had told me that it was basically magical Venice. Canals competed with regular streets for the space between houses, and underwater was basically a second city. Full merpeople were still rare, but I could feel sealed ships, swimmers, and all manner of sea life rushing around underneath me, and only wished that I could make them out better. I was a little nervous having so many strangers underneath me, but nothing came of it, and soon Adam had directed me through half a dozen twists and turns and splittings of the canal to arrive at a section of town that was a little bit more worn down than the rest.

There wasn’t a dock nearby that I could make out, but it turned out that Adam didn’t need one. Balancing carefully, he reached out to knock on a door that was right up against the canal.

It took a long minute for someone inside to make their way to the door, and even longer for them to unlock the half a dozen bolts and chains that were keeping it shut from the inside. Even after the door creaked open the stranger didn’t say anything, simply staring at Adam for a while.

Eventually he spoke, his voice so husky that I could almost hear the smoke pouring out with every word.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face again, Billy Boy.”