Marlowe’s things were spread out across my desk. I stared, aghast.

“Just what the hell do you think you're doing?”

He barely looked up from the charts and gadgets that made a limited measure of sense to me. “There’s no tables anywhere else but the galley, and I’m afraid Dixhe will cut off my fingers if I use his table. Besides, the galley is rather out of the way for my work, don’t you think?”

I planted my palms on top of his map and leaned across the table toward him. “I will cut off more than your fingers,” I threatened.

Heaving a sigh, Marlowe glanced up at me. “Ah, so the sea wakes the beast in you, too. Tell me, Captain, do you want me to do my work, or not?”

I took half a step backwards, a little surprised by how irritable he seemed. “You could have asked first,” I grumbled. “I would have said yes.”

Marlowe slammed down his pencil and fixed me with a piercing glare. “Then why, pray tell, is it an issue?”

His face was strangely drawn, and a tickle of regret brushed over me. Perhaps I ought to have noticed it sooner. “Are you alright?” I asked.

“Fine.” He fluttered a dismissive hand. “Only that the sea does not wake the beast in me.”

I frowned. Marlowe had never been one to get seasick, but the grim set of his jaw said that was on the verge of changing. I also knew he would skin me if I said anything about it. “Don’t vomit in my cabin,” I told him. “Get some air if you get a chance.”

His eyebrow strived to meet his hairline, even as he followed a column on his charts with a finger. “I said I’m fine, Owen. We’ll be sailing west for now, but we’ll turn…” he paused, taking a deep breath before continuing, “...north a few days from now when we can skirt the peninsula.” He gestured to the protrusion of land on his map.

I nodded, even though the charts still made no sense to me. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

His glare could have stopped the turn of tides. I lifted my hands in defense and backed to the door. “I’ll leave you to it,” I said. I considered saying more, but his stiff dedication to his work bade me a very firm farewell and I decided it was best to leave, and shut the door behind me.

The sea air greeted me with a cheery breeze. For near three hours now there had been no land in sight, only a vast blue expanse as far as the eye could see. In my years of education and following every lead I could find, I had forgotten the feeling of being indescribably small, and I realized now that I had missed it.

But the breeze was not the only thing that greeted me. A pair of humorless sailors were waiting for me.

The first was Paul Ronan. He was a man of great stature and made me feel even smaller than the sea did. His dark, clean-shaven head shone in the sun, and he looked me up and down. Marlowe had informed me that he was the best ship’s mechanic on this side of the world.

The second of the men was Clive Herriott, a man of middling age with years of whaling experience and a few extra pounds about his waist. He’d been nothing but helpful in the art of preparing Flux Levity for the sea, and I had appreciated him well enough from a distance.

It would seem that the sentiment was not reciprocated.

“We been thinking,” Herriott said. “You’re meant to be our Cap’n. Only we ain’t seen much of you, have we?”

My mouth made some idiotic gaping motions. I wondered if there would ever be a time when my mouth would not betray me. “I…I’ve been around,” I said feebly.

Ronan grunted, which was the closest thing I had heard to a word from him.

“We’ll you’ve been around, alright,” Herriott said, “but you’ve been locked away in your cabin, haven’t you? Marlowe said we were hunting monsters, but we don’t know a lick about the monsters, do we? We’d have thought you’d be telling us more about it.”

“I… no, I will,” I spluttered. “I just…”

“Hey.”

My salvation in its most unlikely form. Rafe McCrea strode across the decks, his oiled coat billowing behind him. With the wind in his hair and his face stung ruddy by the salt in the spindrift, he looked like a young god. He came to an attentive halt beside Ronan. I was somewhat stunned to see that McCrea was a full two inches taller than Ronan, though only a fraction of his width.

“Is there a problem here?”

“Not a problem,” Herriott said, which I adamantly disagreed with. I was cornered outside my own cabin being questioned on my motives by my crew. I would certainly classify that as a problem.

Oh, and there were so many more problems. Not the least of them was figuring out how to tell my crew what we were up against without McCrea overhearing. And turning north a few days from now without raising McCrea’s suspicions. Oh, yes, McCrea was one of my many problems.

He looked down his nose at Herriott. “Well, then. You’ll pardon me to discuss matters with the Captain. And any further concerns you may have may be brought to me.”

My mouth at last did something right. “No, it’s alright, McCrea,” it said, not even bothering to consult my head first. “Any of my crew may approach me to address concerns.”

McCrea smiled sourly. “Very good, Captain.” Then, turning to Herriott and Ronan, he added, “Though your crew would do well to respect their captain. I could hear the, ah, incivility from the foremast, and I should like to never hear it again.”

“Yes, sir,” Herriott mumbled. Ronan grunted and the pair wandered off.

I stared at McCrea for a moment as he watched them go. He held himself very rigid, from his knees to his jaw. He was striking in the sunlight. In my years of study I had come across many an image of Merdagh, goddess of the sea with male consorts on her arm. I could imagine McCrea as one of them, strangely enough. Except that most legends referred to them as drowned sailors, and against all odds, McCrea was still here.

Oh, yes. He was a problem.

He caught me staring and pulled up his lip, a gesture that still put me in mind of a dog about to bite. “What are you looking at, trog?”

“You,” I snorted. “Whatever happened to respecting the captain, hmm?”

A wicked smile deepened the premature creases around his eyes. “You’ll always be a skinny little trog, but you’re not a captain until you prove it.”

I frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

McCrea’s smile disappeared as he squinted toward the horizon. It struck me, as it always did, that he looked older than his twenty-three years. If I didn’t know him, I would have been shocked by the lack of gray threading his dark hair.

“You can have a grand title,” he said at last. “You can have a fancy coat and a great hat, but a captain is made by his virtue. He’s nothing but an overlord until he puts his crew and his vessel before himself. Respect them, and they’ll respect the hell out of you.”

“That’s very philosophical,” I said, stunned. McCrea had never struck me as an intellectual type.

He took a swig from a flask he carried on his hip, and I caught a whiff of strong rum. The bastard was still drinking. I made a mental note to discuss it with Marlowe when he had his sea legs—leg—back beneath him. Hopefully his mood would improve and I could utilize his apparent influence. He would be instrumental in solving the many problems named McCrea.

“Strange things happen at sea,” McCrea said, and stalked away.

What a peculiar man. Demanding respect one moment, and then turning about and calling me names. Drinking himself stupid and spewing philosophies about captaincy, which he had expressed a keen interest in never experiencing again. But he was stronger, I thought, than he had been in Port Adonis only days ago.

The sea wakes the beast in you, too.

How many beasts did I plan on waking?