When Rhys went to take over the helm around midday, he found Lucy standing against the bulwark on one side, staring out into the distance.

‘What is it?’ Rhys asked, coming over to stand next to her.

‘There’s a ship out there. I was just watching to see if it was coming any closer. It seems to be going the same way as us, but you can’t be too careful,’ Lucy said, motioning to a distant ship framed against the horizon.

‘Oh, yes, I spotted it yesterday,’ Rhys said, seeing the one she was pointing out. 'It may be another ship leaving Arn Allinor.'

‘Hopefully. Well, I’m going to get something to eat. Could you keep an eye on it?’

‘Yeah, of course, it’s my shift now anyway,’ Rhys said, heading over to the helm to check their course.

‘Alright, see you in a bit,’ Lucy said, smiling at Rhys and glancing at the other ship before heading below deck to get some food.

Satisfied that they were still heading in the right direction, Rhys idly walked around the deck. He liked to walk around the deck when he first came onto a shift on the helm, just to see what was around them.

Other than the ship they’d seen, there wasn’t much of note nearby. Rhys could see a few small spires in the distance, ones too small to house a settlement. Oliver talking about the mining being done on spires within the misting made Rhys wonder what else was hidden below the cloud sea.

Each of those spires he was looking at stretched all the way down to the very depths of the abyss, who knew what wonders or secrets they might hold within them.

It was a tempting thought to investigate more and see what could be found, but it was outside of Rhys’s means right now. He lacked the funds and the equipment to do any sort of expedition like that. Not to mention that it involved going down to the misting, maybe even the upper reaches of the abyss. Just thinking about that made Rhys’s gut clench.

Pushing it out of mind, for now, Rhys cast a last glance at the other ship before settling in to wait. It did look a little closer than yesterday, but it was probably nothing. After all, the chance of it going perfectly parallel to them was slim.

-**-

Rhys’s watch passed without event, and he spent the evening working on practising his runes. He was happy with a few of them now, so the next step would be to get some materials when they docked in Arn Gol and see what he could make.

The question was whether to make something for the ship or just to make things to sell. Then again, that would depend on if they could find work in Arn Gol. It might be that he’d have to make things to sell just to keep them going.

Regardless, it was a problem for when they got to Arn Gol.

-**-

‘Morning, Tom, how are you?’ Rhys called out as he came up on deck the next morning. He wasn’t due to be manning the helm until later, but he’d fancied feeling the wind and watching the clouds go past for a little while.

‘Not too bad, Captain, yourself?’ Tom said, giving Rhys an easy smile.

‘Not bad at all. I thought I’d come and relax up here for a little bit, take a break from my runework,’ Rhys said, walking over to Tom. It was almost habit to glance at where the other ship was now, to see if it was any closer.

Rhys paused as he looked at the other ship, cocking his head to one side as he tried to remember how it had looked yesterday. It felt like it was a lot closer than it had been.

A cold sensation trickled down Rhys’s spine as he remembered thinking that it had gotten closer at the end of his last shift on the helm. It was closer again now.

It could still be an innocent coincidence. The other ship could even be having the same worries about them. That being said, Rhys was going to take steps to make sure that they were safe.

‘Tom, mind if I take the helm for a moment?’ Rhys asked as casually as he could, walking over as he spoke.

‘You’re the captain, Captain,’ Tom said with a shrug.

Rhys smiled tightly as he took the helm and brought them two points to port, away from the other ship. It was a small course change, but it would open the distance between them over the next few hours.

The question now was what the other ship would do. If they changed tack and came straight for the Endeavour, then the other ship were pirates. If they carried on instead, well, they could still be pirates, but it was less likely.

‘You’re concerned about the other ship,’ Tom said, his relaxed posture disappearing as he turned to give the distant ship a more focused look.

‘Yes, they’re a lot closer than yesterday. They might be trying to slowly sneak up to us.’

‘Maybe, I did think they were a little closer, but not enough to warrant bringing it up. Still, a course change will show the truth, one way or another,’ Tom said, a grim note creeping into his voice as he shared a look with Rhys.

There were only four of them on the ship, a small crew by any standard. If pirates caught up to them, then they were finished. They had too few guns to standoff another ship and too few hands to repel boarders.

Lucy’s talk of security measures came back to him now, and Rhys cursed himself for not doing more. It might well be too late now, but if it wasn’t, he’d make sure they did what they could to rectify things at Arn Gol. They’d had an influx of cash recently, so now was as good a time as any to pay out for conventional upgrades to the ship.

Thinking about upgrades made him wonder whether it would be worth buying up a few commercial-sized shipments of akast crystal and feeding it all to Zaxx. There was an entire sub-section of what Zaxx could do for weaponry. Rhys remembered a compression upgrade that would increase the range of the cannons they already had, maybe even making their swivel guns a genuine threat.

Realising that he was just trying to distract himself, Rhys turned to look at the other ship and breathed out a sigh of relief. No sign of them changing direction. If they were pirates, he would have expected them to be watching the Endeavour constantly, so any change in direction would be picked up.

‘I think I’ll stay up here for a few hours, just in case,’ Rhys said, more to himself than anything as Tom was still focused on the other ship.

Thankfully, despite several tense hours, they saw no response from the other ship, and the distance between them had continued to grow. Lucy and Oliver had both given their opinion on the situation, and the general consensus they’d reached was that when dusk came, they would turn another point or two to port.

Between the change they made earlier and the extra distance they would gain overnight, they should then be far enough away to relax.

Oliver took charge of the helm as dusk fell, and Rhys reluctantly went below. He wanted to stay on watch all night, but he didn’t want to look worried or make the others anxious.

‘Zaxx, wake me at dawn, please, and keep an eye on our surroundings as best you can. There’s another ship nearby that may be a pirate vessel,’ Rhys said once he was back in his cabin. As much as he hated early mornings, getting Zaxx to wake him up early was the best compromise he could come up with.

‘Yes, Rhys. My exterior senses are limited, but I will make you aware of anything I find pertinent.’

‘Thanks, Zaxx,’ Rhys said, rubbing his face as he climbed into his bed. He’d see what the situation was like in the morning.

-**-

‘Rhys, wake up,’ Zaxx’s whisper slipped into Rhys’s mind as he dreamt, waking him up but leaving him a little disoriented.

‘What is it?’ Rhys asked with a groan, reaching out automatically for the tea on his bedside table.

‘You asked me to wake you at dawn, but Mr Brown has increased our speed and is currently changing our course. I thought you would want to be woken for this.’

‘He increased speed and is changing course,’ Rhys repeated, the words slowly sinking into his mind and waking him up just as thoroughly as a bucket of ice water. There was only one reason why Oliver would be doing that.

Rhys downed the tea, feeling the warm liquid flow through him and help him wake up. Hurriedly getting dressed, Rhys opened the door to his cabin right as Oliver was running down the corridor, knocking on each door as he came.

‘What’s happening?’ Rhys called out as he saw the other man.

‘Definitely pirates, they changed course during the night and increased speed; they’re gaining on us.’ Oliver said with a grim expression and a worried look in his eyes.

‘Damn it,’ Rhys cursed, rushing past Oliver and up on deck to see for himself.

Sure enough, the other ship was astern of them but was closer than it had been yesterday evening. Rhys could tell that it was smaller than them, and if it was a pirate ship, it likely had powerful engines specifically for a stern chase like this.

‘Are we at full speed, Zaxx?’ Rhys asked under his breath, his gaze fixed on the other ship.

‘Yes, Rhys. I could only increase our speed further with one of the upgrades you can purchase. However, we lack the energy to perform an upgrade.’

‘Damn,’ Rhys muttered, gripping the stern bulwark tight as he watched the pirates and realised that he could visibly see the ship grow larger as they continued to gain on them.

‘What’s the plan, Captain?’ Oliver asked as he came up next to Rhys. Glancing over his shoulder, Rhys saw Tom and Lucy join them, their expressions just as tense as his own.

‘Well, we’re not fast enough to outrun them, and we can’t outfight them.’ Rhys told them, accepting the hard truth that they were outmatched by the other ship. Even a single cannon would let the pirates outrange them. There was only one real option when the enemy had a longer range and was faster than you. Hide.

‘What are you saying?’ Oliver asked, concern written across his expression.

‘We need to hide somehow, we can’t stand up to them directly, and we can’t get away like this. Tom, check the map. Is there anything nearby?’

‘Aye aye, Captain,’ Tom said, heading over to the helm to look at the map they had of the local area.

‘You’re thinking of trying to find a forest or somewhere to lose them?’ Lucy asked, coming over to stand on Rhys’s other side and peer at the pirate ship.

‘Yeah, that’s our only way out of this that I can see,’ Rhys said softly, wishing he’d just spent money on even a single weapon for the ship.

‘It’ll be hard. That’s a hawk if I’ve ever seen one,’ Lucy said with a grimace as she nodded to the pirate ship.

‘You mentioned them before; they’re fast pirate ships, right?’ Rhys said, thinking back to their previous conversation.

‘That’s right, and they prey on lightly armed merchant ships like the Endeavour. They’ll have experience fishing out ships from the clouds. We need to be careful.’

‘Are there methods to catch a ship that’s gone down into the clouds?’ Rhys knew that Lucy had experience in these situations. He needed that right now. ‘What can we expect?’

‘There are two main methods that I know of. The first is bombardment. The pursuing ship fires down into the sea to try and drive the other ship up or make them expose themselves somehow. The second is to observe the motion of the clouds and see the effect of the ship moving through it. It takes an experienced sailor to do that, one with good eyes. Not to mention that if the fleeing ship is going carefully, they will limit their effect on the clouds around them.’

‘So, we need to get out of sight and then move slowly away. That way, they won’t be able to track us,’ Rhys said, nodding slowly as he started to pull together the start of a plan.

‘It might work, and we don’t have much else in the way of choices, it’s worth a try.’

‘Captain, I might have found something, but you’re not going to like it,’ Tom called out from the helm.

‘What is it?’ Rhys turned from the pirates and headed over to see what Tom had found.

‘A forest, the closest landmark to us as far as I can tell,’ Tom said, pointing down at the map.

‘That’s exactly what we need. Why won’t I like it?’ Rhys asked, looking down at the map to see where Tom was pointing.

‘Because it’s half a day’s flight from us, maybe more. At the speed the pirates are going, they’ll catch us before that.’