A pillar of water carried Matayal silently up the stern of the boat, settling her behind Sohan. With all of his attention focused inward, he wasn’t prepared for her to come from a different angle- and with unexpected stealth.

The tip of a spear pressed against his back in a short grip as her arm reached around his throat. “I’d like to hear your explanation for why you are here,” Matayal said calmly.

Captain Sohan showed only mild discomfort, shifting awkwardly. “I appreciate your restraint. It’s quite easy to explain, really. For a fleet like this they needed as many ships as they could get their hands on. Something of this scale wouldn’t slip past my ears, you know.”

“And what, the pay was good enough to sever your relationship with the Brandle clan?”

“Oh, certainly not. Even if they got you there would be far too many Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators after my head. I thought you could use a little backup, and time was short. I had to come directly here without a chance to contact your clan. I slipped in among the numbers.”

Matayal kept watch for any movement among the crew that would indicate they had spotted her. So far, there was none- but they’d have to take notice soon enough. “You expect me to just believe that? That they would miss a well known captain such as yourself slipping in among them.”

Captain Sohan shrugged, “They did, so… I don’t know what to say on that. But if you require some persuasion I suggest you ask the guards we provided shelter to.”

“Why not open with that?”

“I thought you would want the full explanation. I’m sure you’ll find it difficult to sense them at the moment, but I assure you they are… better off than when we found them.”

Matayal could still sense Livna and Yonit, who were keeping an eye out for movements of other ships. “I want to see them.”

“We can go down or have them brought up,” he suggested. “Then I would suggest leaving rather quickly. They’re scouring the area for you and these guards, and they might suspect something about the latter soon enough.”

“Have them brought up,” Matayal said. As she did so, she ducked down- the tip of her spear still pressed against Sohan’s back.

“Mawar! Could you bring up the members of the Brandle clan?”

“Aye, captain!”

The Wavecutter was not so large that it took long to retrieve anyone, and soon enough the remaining guards stepped out from below deck. “Is there word on Clan Head Matayal, captain?” one of them asked.

Matayal released some of the control of her energy as she stood, letting them feel her as they saw here at the same time.

“Clan Head!” They all bowed. “You made it.”

Seeing that they were quite unrestrained, and not on their guard, Matayal was convinced of Captain Sohan’s words. His crew also didn’t seem particularly worried to spot her with her spear pressed to his back.

“I might suggest we leave,” Captain Sohan smiled.

“Livna, Yonit! Hop aboard!”

“Time to sail,” Captain Sohan ordered to the crew. “Let’s turn this around.” To Matayal, he added, “Expect them to begin chasing after us shortly. To that end, we could use your help. While the Wavecutter is fast, some of that is making good use of tactics. We don’t have a Consolidated Soul Phase cultivator of our own to accelerate us, so they will have a chance to catch up to us in this early phase. If you could slow them down…”

Matayal nodded. There was still a slim chance this was all some elaborate setup, but if that was the case Captain Sohan was taking a big risk to his life specifically. No cultivate was above a bit of petty revenge if it came down to it, and even with the other guards injured Matayal, Livna, and Yonit were a serious danger to Sohan and his crew if they tried anything. The only thing she knew was no alliance was perfect, and even if Sohan had proven himself reliable there was always something that could influence people.

The ship was not terribly fast to turn around, but it had almost completely turned away from the Kelp Spire Forest when Matayal felt a response from the other ships. The Wavecutter was on the north side of the Kelp Spire Forest, and Nurul Purunomo was on the east side. After about a minute it was clear that the rest of the ships wouldn’t be able to catch the Wavecutter, but the Purunomo’s flagship, the Zenobia, was gaining on them after it properly oriented itself.

The closer ships didn’t just let them leave, however. They had harpoon guns made for spearing fish and ships, and before they were out of range they took their shots. Matayal stood with Livna and Yonit, organizing their energies to call great vertical waves to slow the attacks, leaving them to droop into the sea instead of impacting the ship.

“I was told this was one of the fastest ships in the Shimmering Islands,” Matayal commented. “But I don’t feel it. Even if we hit the top speed, can we really outpace them?”

“Absolutely,” Captain Sohan said. “But… unfortunately, it seems like we might need close to an hour to really get away from the Zenobia.”

Matayal sighed. There really wasn’t a better option than the Wavecutter anyway. The crew was willing to work with them and the ship was fast. Unfortunately Nurul had more experience accelerating the Zenobia than Matayal had with the Wavecutter.

“Are you sure it’s better to slow them down?” Matayal asked.

“Absolutely,” Sohan nodded. “The Wavecutter is already efficient enough, reducing the drag like they are would only help marginally. And directly pushing us along would just be a waste of effort.”

That might be true, but Matayal thought of a good compromise. She anchored herself to the ship and pushed behind them, creating a large wave that pushed back against them. A cultivator could avoid such difficulties if they chose to, but this provided more force and accomplished two tasks at once. The wave struck the Zenobia behind them, briefly staggering it.

The ships were still quite some distance apart, so the wave had lowered in intensity by the time it reached them. Matayal did some mental calculations on how close they could afford to let the approaching ship.

She knew that a Consolidated Soul Phase cultivator like Nurul could move more quickly than the ship on his own, but if he came to attack them… she’d just kill him. Even if he had a few peak Soul Expansion Phase cultivators who could keep up, they would be insufficient. Thus, the enemy had to try to catch them all together.

Matayal tried several different things with the waves, focusing the energy of the other Brandle clan cultivators high waves did little but splash the crew on board, and water element cultivators weren’t going to be bothered by a little bit of ocean spray. She attempted a wave below the surface, but it wasn’t terribly effective. The keel depth of the Zenobia was not so great that she could create a large force underwater, and the enemy were all water cultivators as well. Nurul was already influencing the water at the prow of the ship, so it did very little. Even so, Matayal and the others were maintaining a difference of about a kilometer.

The crew and captain Sohan were putting in their work as well. The winds weren’t exactly what they needed, so they had to tack back and forth to ultimately head in the direction they wanted. Matayal looked ahead nervously, spotting dark clouds, full of great intensity. “I don’t know if I can keep this up for the full hour. And even if I do… aren’t we going to run into that storm? Aren’t we off course?”

“Did your husband not talk about his trips with us? We’re the fastest on the sea not just because we move quickly… but because we don’t have to spend days going around large storms.” Captain Sohan grinned, “You just help keep us ahead and don’t worry about the rest.”

The winds in the area had begun to pick up, and the sea was turning choppy. Matayal’s manipulation of the waves began to be insignificant compared to the natural power of the area. She slowed down her actions, timing them with the natural flow of the sea. It was becoming more difficult to keep an eye on the Zenobia, and even energy senses became less clear as the water and air energy making up the storm disturbed the balance of the area.

Then the lightning started. Matayal was barely able to hear Captain Sohan telling her to get inside, but she went down with the majority of the crew. She was still planning to keep an eye out behind them, but found that the insulating formations kept much energy from flowing either way. Then she had to strap herself in as the sea started to become exceptionally violent. And Captain Sohan went into it deliberately. Sometimes, the one with the highest cultivation wasn’t as important as the one who was the craziest. Matayal fully believed that, as she was fairly certain that the ship fully rolled over- but kept moving forward.

-----

The rule for when the triplets were to go to bed were quite strict… when Matayal was the one in charge. As their grandfather, Netanel felt justified in being a tiny bit more lenient. The kids would just be restless in their rooms for a while if they didn’t take the extra time to tire themselves out, and they wouldn’t be up that late. The servants were going to be up for several hours more regardless of when they got in their baths.

Ursel was particularly resistant to baths, not because she disliked water but because she felt that being in water all day automatically made her clean- regardless of whether it was salt water or the outside pools on the property. Melanthina liked being clean, and Tirto never resisted one more chance to deal with water. In fact, the latter mostly became trouble when it was time to dry off… and Netanel had decided that if he wanted to sleep with soaked hair, he could do so. If his bed was ruined by a little moisture, it would never have lasted anyway.

Netanel hoped that his granddaughter would be returning soon, because the triplets seemed to be having a growth spurt, not in terms of height but their spiritual energy. When he’d first felt wild spiritual energy in the children’s rooms in the middle of the night he thought there was an attack, but the actual truth was something more bizarre. It wasn’t much but they were controlling spiritual energy while they slept, with various side effects for the rooms around them. Fortunately they were quite durable, and the children didn’t seem to hurt themselves- though they had people watching for such dangers.

Teaching them better conscious control had become a priority, since it was easier to handle something they did on purpose than by accident. And they didn’t want them to be afraid of using spiritual energy either, though perhaps that would never have been a problem.

Melanthina was quite casually making shapes with bits of darkness. They weren’t artistic, and had the same form as the scribbling of any child. Just vague shapes running around after each other.

“Grandpa,” Melanthina commented. “Who’s that woman?”

“Where?” Netanel asked. All of the servants and guards nearby should have been familiar to the triplets.

“Over there,” she pointed off into the darkening courtyard.

Netanel was tempted to just say she was seeing things, but he was more experienced than that. He carefully squinted as he looked out into the courtyard, and saw nothing but shadows. Nothing felt odd about the spiritual energy in the area. Not with his strictly passive senses, anyway. And if he hadn’t been looking for something, he wouldn’t have taken note of any of that.

“What do you think?” Netanel asked, “Does she belong here?” He carefully projected his voice towards some of the nearby guards, hoping they would get the hint.

“I don’t think so,” Melanthina commented. “Everyone here is like you, mom, and Tirto. She’s more like me, but not from the Tenebach clan.”

“That’s about right,” Netanel nodded as he stood up, “Let’s get you off to bed, okay?” He nudged her towards one of the nearby servants. Then he stood and stretched. “Ah, the joy of the summer tides.” The comment was rather strange, but was a signal for the guards to roundabout patrol to the far side of the courtyard. If he suddenly made a move the woman might flee, and though Netanel was in the Consolidated Soul Phase he really wasn’t up for a prolonged chase. And he didn’t have his spear with him, so he’d have to use an inferior one. Best to be safe. And in the morning he’d tell Melanthina she did a good job spotting the woman. If she’d gotten closer or acted against anyone Netanel would have spotted her, but Melanthina had seen through her guise of darkness… which wasn’t really a surprise at all, except the fact that she hadn’t even received the blessing of the Tenebach’s guardian beast yet.