My dreams were fitful, dreams of fire and screaming. I woke a dozen times thinking I'd heard the door smash open in the night, but each time I awoke to the empty darkness of night, the world still and silent but for Aldo's easy breathing in the bunk below mine. And, somehow, by the time the pre-dawn hour came to pass, I'd transitioned to a dream where my mothers, my sisters, and I had teatime in a peaceful little meadow. I remember thinking in my dream that the invasion of our home had been a terrible nightmare, but that we were happy and safe now. Alas, I awoke sobbing with the realization that my family living happily was the dream and the Lapis-Crowns were very real. I forced myself to stop - if I woke Aldo up, I'd have to suffer the indignity of him seeing me cry yet again.

"It's morning?" he yawned.

"I wasn't crying," I said quickly.

"Um… great?"

The day greeted us with a clear and sunny morning peeking through the little cloudy porthole that was our bedroom window and, before too long, more sobbing from the girl across the hall as she awoke. She didn't cry at breakfast, managing to limit her misery to sullen sniffing while she chewed on breakfast porridge like it was rubber (it was a bit burnt but quite edible). Since she was mostly silent, Rook had to introduce us to our new friend: Mailyn - an odd name in Gionia, to be sure, but reasonably common in Wexland.

"Mailyn's a pretty name," I offered.

"Thanks," she mumbled. Even with that one word, I could tell she had the brogue of a country girl.

In a quieter voice, I added: "I miss my family, too."

Among the three of us, I think Aldo had the easiest time at Rooks, since all of his greatest traumas were years in the past. He'd been plucked off the street after one of Rook's contacts had spotted him cheating at street games with a bit more than simple sleight of hand. I, on the other hand, had been violently separated from my family, whom I loved and cherished, and now I might never see them again. And poor Mailyn was arguably the most aggrieved. Her parents had sold her to one of Rook's lieutenants for five octavos. Her parents, whom she'd thought loved her very much, had haggled him up from four octavos. Mailyn had three brothers and a sister, which was a lot of mouths to feed. Five octavos to remove a plate from the dinner table was too good an offer for a dirt-poor family to pass up. Her older sister cried and begged the man not to take Mailyn, but nobody else said a word as she left with him. Nobody else would even meet her teary gaze.

I only got the details of Mailyn's story days later, when her inconsolable grief was well on its way to becoming a cold and lasting anger toward those who'd betrayed her… her parents, I suppose. She and I both held a cold fire in our hearts - the flame that burns but does not warm. That permeating, sublimated anger does wonders for a Shadow, but it is terrible for a child to hold.

Before the morning got on, Rook opened the doors to our bedrooms, handed each of us a fresh change of clothes, and told us to bathe.

"You're to set sail at noon, and there probably won't be a chance for a bath until you reach Floria. I want to be very clear with you - nobody is to know that you're headed to Floria, so don't say a peep about it. You may find an introduction letter in a hidden pocket - this will let the right people know who you are…"

Aldo rifled around through the brown trousers he'd been handed, eventually finding a folded-up sheet of something that wasn't quite paper - it was too sturdy and had a slight gloss to it. He unfolded it and, with a frown, examined both sides. "It ain't got any writing on it," he observed.

"The right people will know who you are," Rook repeated. "The wrong people will not. You will be traveling with my associate, Mrs. Sealie. She'll see to your safety during your travels, and you are to listen to her every word." He gestured toward a forty-something woman seated at the end of the breakfast table. The woman reminded me a lot of Elzie, my former nanny and governess: her dress was common but very well-made, her expression was no-nonsense, and she kept her hair in a professional bun.

"You're not coming with us, Mr. Rook?" I asked.

"I'm much too busy," Rook said quickly. He checked the time on his pocket watch. My fingers twitched at the sight of it - I was a bit envious of the contraption, since pocket watches were a luxury at the time and I'd never gotten a chance to examine one at Uncle Horantz's. "Speaking of which, I've matters to attend to. Do keep them safe, Sealie."

"I shall fulfill my end of the contract, Mr. Rook," the woman said a bit too vaguely for my liking. "Ready your things, children - we leave in ten minutes."

Rook's city house was a five minute walk from the teeming piers of the western port. It wasn't a particularly pleasant neighborhood, as all of the city's fishing went through the port. I could smell fish guts, sewage, and brine on the wind from the moment we left the downstairs pub. I suspect that Rook had some sort of minor enchantment on his place to keep the smell out, because I retched at the difference the moment we crossed the threshold.

"Do not vomit on your fresh clothes," Ms. Sealie hissed at me.

"Yes, ma'am," I mumbled.

In addition to fishing and small-scale trade, Portogarra's western port was known for two industries. The first was treasure hunting - over the centuries, the sheer number of naval engagements and shipwrecks against the outlying barrier islands gave every idiot and their sister-who-happened-across-a-water-survival-trinket delusions of finding sunken gold or ancient artifacts in the lagoon's fairly-shallow waters. The second industry was human trafficking. While slavery had been outlawed in Gionia for over a century, indentured servitude was perfectly legal, and the majority of indentures did not go voluntarily.

Indentured servitude as practiced in the Gionian colonies and the inaptly-named Free State is not technically slavery, but it's much closer than you might expect. The vast majority of people forcibly shipped across the Pelagic to the Turan continents aren't slaves but 'criminals' sentenced to a term of indenture. These terms can be for anything from three to twenty years, depending upon the crime you are convicted of. In practice, almost any indenture is tantamount to slavery since your contract-holder can add time for often-spurious violations of the contract, including your refusal to be disciplined by them, and the local magistrates will back the contract-holder over the indenture ninety-nine times out of a hundred. I've heard it said that the average five-year indenture lasts fifteen years and anything starting at fifteen years or more is effectively a life sentence. While there are actual slaves in the Turan Free State, the indentured servants escape that distinction by a mere legal fiction.

In any case, human traffickers plied a major trade in Portogarra's western port, transporting convicts and prisoners of war off to the colonies to pay their debts to society.

As we made our way down the pier, it was obvious that the human trade was bustling. In the prior month, nearly five thousand of my fellow Selenites and another few thousand assorted undesirables (i.e. enemies of the duke) had been arrested. The most common conviction among Selenites was a five-year indenture for blasphemy (this is probably what my parents and siblings were charged with), though the duchy would tack on whatever additional charges they had even the flimsiest evidence for, so about half of the prisoners I saw were probably looking at indentures of ten years or more. They were all still dressed in whatever clothes they'd been captured in - many in flimsy night clothes, mud-streaked and unwashed for weeks, and huddling up to preserve whatever modesty they had. Others wore sleek mercantile attire that had no doubt cost many silver kronettas new, though even the finest of gowns had become dingy from days of wear. All of these prisoners were shackled, arrayed in long rows along the pier and waiting to board. Many of them had black, wavy hair and golden brown skin, just like me.

We passed at least three such clusters of prisoners lined up in front of the prison ships they were to board on our way out to our ship, the Auspicio. They glared at us with envy and resentment - and I can't blame them. But for the grace of Honored Asuna, I would have been among their number. I craned my neck, looking for my parents or anybody else I knew, but all I saw was a cavalcade of desperate and forlorn strangers awaiting a hard journey and a life of toil and subjugation.

"This is the one," Mrs. Sealie stated stiffly, and she marched up to the officer overseeing the boarding process. A second officer nearby was busy documenting each of the two hundred thirty prisoners set to occupy the ship's main hold. Mrs. Sealie presented our tickets to the man: "Four passengers for second-class cabins."

"Anything to declare?"

"Just our luggage." I probably could have fit in Mrs. Sealie's suitcase. By contrast, the canvas bag that served as my luggage contained one change of clothes, a night dress, a Barsoan recipe book that Rod let me have, and two of Trismegistus's shed feathers to remember the little carrafin by. That was the entirety of my earthly possessions.

The Auspicio was fitted for human cargo of both the willing and unwilling varieties. It had a large main hold that could reasonably house up to two hundred prisoners, though, like most ships of the type, they crammed quite a few more in there. On the main levels of the ship, there were perhaps two dozen rooms for second- and third-class passage (the difference being whether they fit two or four cots into the cramped rooms) and another half-dozen first class suites for wealthy passengers. Beyond that, the ship had space for the crew, a dry hold for the food, and two full galley rooms to supply meals for the over three-hundred people aboard - one for the prisoners and one for everybody else. An excited cabin boy only a few years older than me narrated the ship's various features out as he led us to our room. We made our way below decks to the second- and third-class section and were shown our rooms - a pair of two-cot bunks across the hallway from one another.

The cabin boy handed Mrs. Sealie a pair of brass keys. "Rooms B-7 and B-8, miss! D'you need anything else?" He smiled and coughed, clearly expecting a tip.

"That will be all," Mrs. Sealie said simply. I offered him a shrug, which was all I could offer - I didn't even have two red tollos to rub together. As the boy skulked away, Mrs. Sealie unlocked both doors and gestured for us to enter the smaller of the two rooms.

I shared a glance with Aldo before turning to Mrs. Sealie. "Maybe Mailyn should stay with you," I volunteered. I didn't care about the room being smaller - if the girl continued to cry as much as she seemed wont to do, neither Aldo or I wanted to bunk with her.

"None of you are staying with me," Mrs. Sealie said with a huff. She proceeded to yank one of the flimsy cloth mattresses from her own bunk and toss it into our room. Then she, with a little jostling, she locked the three of us in our bunk and proceeded to go about whatever other business she had.

"Hey! Let us out!" Aldo said, banging on the door.

"She left us," Mailyn sniffled, the accusation dripping in her voice.

"Hey! I'm telling Mister Rook!" I shouted.

I don't know whether Mrs. Sealie heard us, but she certainly didn't care. I imagine she'd been charged with making certain we got to Floria safely and not with being friendly to us or making sure we liked her. And, in hindsight, it is much easier to keep three precocious children safe if they're locked in a small room versus roaming about a busy ship laden with human cargo. I pounded on the door to no avail for a good five minutes before letting out a snort of indignation and storming over to the unclaimed mattress to pout.

"I can't believe she locked us up! And now… now she's gone off to do Asuna-knows-what! And we're trapped in the dark without a window or anything! What are we supposed to do?"

"We could, um…" Mailyn mumbled. "Reckon we could play a game?"

"I'm too mad," I stated. "Maybe later." I crossed my arms, sat against my mattress, and pouted at the wall (since we didn't even have a window) as the ship slowly swayed into motion and began rocking over the gentle waves of Lagoni Portogarra's waters.

We stayed like that, awkwardly brooding in the gloomy darkness for perhaps half an hour. If you've never been on a proper oceangoing ship before, most of the belowdecks is completely dark - there are gunports for the alchemical cannons, and the occasional window in the parts well above the waterline (typically the captain's quarters, the ready room and, on a passenger ship, one small porthole for each first class suite or commissioned officer's room). Our only light was a single ruddy oil lantern fixed to the wall - most folks in Gionia can't manage to light a single glowglobe, so they're much rarer than in Floria - but the sounds were quite diverse. The pounding of boots as the sailors went about their duty above us, the creak of wood as the ship turned to pass through the narrows separating the lagoon from the Pelagic Ocean, muffled voices from the cabin next to ours, and the occasional slap of water as a wave struck against the other side of the wall. After half an hour, though, the dam burst and the inevitable came up:

"I need to use the privy," I said.

"Yeah, same," Aldo said.

"Me, too," Mailyn added.

Seven-year-olds are not renowned for their enduring bladders.

"So…" I said, gesturing toward the locked door. "I'm not about to go on the floor."

"Gimme your hair pin," Aldo said.

"Excuse me?" I asked, slightly offended.

"Your hair pin. I'm gonna pick the lock."

"Back at Mr. Rook's, you said you couldn't pick locks," I said.

"Said I couldn't pick Mr. Rook's lock," Aldo clarified. "I don't reckon this one'll shock me if I foul up a bit."

"Ah."

"So? Do you want out or not?"

"Yeah," I sighed.

With only a bit of reluctance, I handed it over and proceeded to watch over Aldo's shoulder in the gloomy lantern-light as he went at the cabin lock with my brass hair clip. It was clear to me that this wasn't Aldo's first time picking a lock, but he wasn't yet a consummate expert. It took him a full five minutes of fiddling with the lock and cursing to himself to turn the tumbler over and click the lock open. He pumped his fist in triumph as the door cracked open by the slimmest of margins.

Aldo nudged the door open and I squeezed past him out of our bunk, so as to be first to the privy, only to run right into somebody passing by in the hallway. I yelped, thinking I'd been caught by Mrs. Sealie, that she'd been waiting out in the hallway for us to attempt an escape, but this adult wasn't wearing her drab travel dress. He was a tall, dark-skinned man in a crisp burgundy officer's uniform, complete with its peaked cap and telltale piping. The man regarded us patiently, one eyebrow inching up in curiosity. Mailyn was first to recognize him for what he was, prostrating herself against the deck.

"Master mage!" she said.

The man chuckled and nudged our door the rest of the way open, taking a glance at our living quarters within to make sure all was well. "I'm not the patriarch, dear," he said. "A curtsy will suffice."

I recovered from my literal run-in well enough to curtsy. "Good afternoon, sir. Are you really a mage?"

He ran a finger along the gold piping of his hat and nodded - among Gionian merchants, burgundy uniforms are the norm, with white piping for petty officers, silver for commissioned officers, gold for ship's mages, and two silver for the captain and first mate (or one gold and one silver if either happens to be a mage). "Why were you locked in your bunk?"

Aldo was quick to respond, pushing past me and offering what he must have thought was a very formal bow. "It's our auntie, sir! She locked us in on account of bothering her and just left us there." It was a better lie than I could have come up on the spot.

The mage chuckled before crouching to examine the lock and, with a furrowed brow and a series of complex hand movements, he managed a bit of manipulation magic that made something inside the lock click. Then he demonstrated that the door was still locked from the outside but not inside, so if Mrs. Sealie checked the door, she would still find it locked.

"It's got an internal toggle that I've just flipped - I won't tell her if you won't," he said with a wink. "Do you want to see me invigorate the sails?"

Mailyn clapped excitedly, looking every bit the country hayseed. "Can we?"

"Yes, please, sir mage!" I said, and I gave him my best rendition of a Gionian naval salute - one hand over the heart and two fingers touching the temple, symbolizing fealty of heart and mind. "What's your name, sir?" I asked, offering yet another curtsy.

"Second Mage Awis'le," he said. Gionian naval mages come in three ranks, plus 'mage cadet' apprentices. For a ship the size of the Auspicio, a Ship's Mage Second Class (or Second Mage) and two cadet apprentices would be the most common allocation, meaning Awis'le would be the head mage on the ship, responsible for keeping the sails invigorated and working the ship's single mage-cannon, should the ship come under attack.

"Second Mage Awislay," Mailyn repeated his name, not quite getting it right.

"Awis'le," he repeated. "It's a Brezian name. Do you know where Brezia is?"

"I do!" I said. "It's just east of Kronoj! That's where my family's from - I even know Kronojic!" Then my eyes went wide and my face went red - everybody knew that Selenites came from Kronoj, and my Selenite features were pretty obvious. If anybody suspected my ethnicity, I might well end up with the prisoners down in the chattel hold. "Um… we're Gionian now, though," I added. "My family is. I've never even been to Kronoj…"

"I left Brezia as a little boy," Awis'le said, seemingly oblivious to my near-admission. "I wasn't much older than you, actually. Come on, I'll show you the sail tassels."

As we headed above decks, Mailyn leaned over and whispered into my ear: "A real live mage!"

Mailyn was star-struck over meeting a mage, whereas I was only mildly impressed. Whatever Aldo's feelings about mages were, he kept them quiet.

I had, of course, been taught to respect mages - but I knew that, in the hierarchy of magic, a ship's mage wasn't all that impressive. Both of my parents had at least a little talent for magic, and my mother was probably talented enough that she could have been a mage if she'd found a school in Gionia that accepted Selenites or women. When my father displayed his relative ineptitude, mother would good-naturedly tease that it was a good thing he was so skilled with money and numbers because he'd never have made it as a ship's mage. My mother's brother, Uncle Jiori, was a ship's mage on a galley with the Theriquan Interest, and whenever he visited us in Portogarra, he would entertain the children with wind tricks, pyrotechnics, and a handful of other flashy cantrips. All mages learn a broad base of skills, but ninety percent of being a ship's mage is knowing how to magick the sails.

The three of us scampered up the stairs after Second Mage Awis'le and into the fresh breeze of the sea. My loose hair fluttered about and my nostrils filled with the tang of salt. Already, the sludge and murk of the lagoon was over a mile behind us, the lagoon islands reduced to a fading smudge in the afternoon haze as the Auspicio navigated its way through the outlying strip of breakwater islands further out to sea. Sea gulls wheeled about in the blue sky above and a squadron of manta rays slid along the white sand below us, kicking up little clouds of sand in the otherwise clear waters.

"Wow! What's that?" Aldo shouted, pointing to the eighty-meter concrete tower jutting up from the largest of the barrier islands.

"Ain't you never seen the lighthouse afore?" Mailyn drawled. "You can see it all cross the shore…"

"Never got to the shore much," Aldo huffed. "Wow… it's tall!"

"Ships have to know where the barrier islands are, else they'll wind up wrecks on the bottom of the reef with all the crabs and corpses," Awis'le said. Then he reached up toward the rigging and gripped a small, silvery rope attached to the sail. "And this… this is a sail tassel. Does anybody know what it does?"

About the most detailed knowledge that any of us had was that the tassels made the ship go faster, so Awis'le gave us a short primer, first asking if any of us knew what surface area was, which none of us did (adults have very odd ideas of what concepts children ought to know). So he then explained what that was, and I was a bit disappointed at how obvious the term was in retrospect… it was the area of a surface.

He pantomimed small and large sails using his hands. "A small area can only pick up a little wind, but a large area can pick up lots of wind… and what is it that makes a sailing ship go?"

"Wind!" we all shouted.

For those of you who have never delved into naval magic, the most important job of a ship's mage is to keep the sails invigorated in clement or moderate weather and to keep them anti-invigorated in inclement weather. This is accomplished through a series of runes sewn into the sail with magic-storing and -conducting material called glimsilk. At minimum, five runes are involved, and these serve to increase or decrease the effective surface area of one or both sides of the sail, which greatly increases sailing speed when employed properly.

Since sail invigoration only lasts a few hours, a ship's mage with good endurance is needed for any significant journey to keep the boat at speed. A ship with invigorated sails can travel around three times the speed of a ship without enchanted sails and can maintain several knots even in becalmed weather. Just as crucial, gale-force winds are much less likely to damage anti-invigorated sails. Awis'le delivered a simplified version of this explanation as he manipulated the tassel - the little cord of glimsilk-infused fiber integrated into a sail's runes - and sent shaped thaum into the runes to invigorate them.

Meanwhile, Awis'le's cadet apprentice invigorated the smaller foremast of the ship, earning a nod of approval from his mentor. It takes most cadets four or five months to learn the full suite of sail manipulations. Conversely, in the Salt Dogs of the Collegium, we're expected to be able to work the sails by our third week… but we Shadows are cut from a different cloth, if you'll pardon the pun.

"Well… what do you think?" Awis'le asked.

The ship's acceleration had increased noticeably, but I'd been expecting a flash of magic or a luminous pulse, neither of which had happened. But my mother had emphasized the importance of being polite to mages (or anybody important, really), so I smiled and told him, "That's amazing, sir mage! You must be the greatest mage on the ship!"

"Don't be a suck-up," Aldo muttered.

"I, er…" Awis'le glanced at Aldo and pursed his lips. "I most probably am. Well, I need to be getting on with my duties, children. Do you think you can find your way back to your bunk?"

"I reckon so," Aldo said with a smirk.

"We'll go right back there!" I lied.

Of course, we didn't go back to our bunk. Not when there was a whole ship to explore!