“Man overboard!”

“The girl’s gone too!”

Lucius hit the water before I had so much as woken from my sleep. With hands outstretched, he pierced the surface like a javelin, only to be swallowed by darkness. Compounding the natural blurriness of underwater, the shine of the moon could scarcely pass through the waves. He could hear nothing but the slosh of air within his ears. He could feel nothing but the cloying tug of torn weeds and boundless surges of tide and current. No amount of thrashing about with his arms caught hold of Aisha.

For that moment, he was unarmed, in a world outside his control. He had left behind land and air both, to an otherworldly domain unfit for humans. All senses but one became useless to him: the sense of being watched. The great immensity of unmeasured depths below, where Saphira’s unloved children lurked in wait of easy prey.

He had to twist, kick, and surface. He sucked in breath as the sailors chucked a rope at him. What he saw first was bubbles breaking the surface beside him and beneath, a hint of red.

Lucius dove once more, straight for the frantic hue. His arms found hers, their bodies wrapped tight across one another and he wrestled her back to the surface. He breached first and hauled her up second. Aisha cried out as she sucked in breath, and swung her arms around for stability. Wet hair stuck across her eyes and it fell to Lucius to grab hold of the rope tossed to them. Sodden hemp ripped through his grasp before he took hold of it and Aisha with his other hand.

“Furl the sails! Throw anchor!” Captain Bodin shouted. Two sailors remained at the other end of the rope and they hauled Lucius against the current, but the rest scurried to slow the ship.

“I hate ships!” Aisha screamed into the night. Then she threw her arms around Lucius’ neck and pulled herself onto him. For a moment, his head was shoved beneath the water, then she had her own grip on the rope.

Lucius bobbed back up as the anchor(1) sank down in search of the seabed. With too little slack, the lead tip caught upon some stone and jerked the ship backwards. The two swimmers nearly lost hold of the rope as the hull twisted across the water. Both of them roared and screamed, water garbling their words to mere noise. It was by the brawn of the sailors that they were dragged back to the ship.

For every sail furled, every rope tied off, another hand grabbed onto the lifeline, until at last they cast netting over the side and scrambled down to the waves. Lucius and Aisha lacked the strength to climb the cord of hemp, but the sailors managed to reach down and grab fistfuls of cloth or limb. They pulled them up and onto the netting.

Lucius blindly groped his way up, hand over hand until his feet could catch the loops of rope. He offered a hand down, grabbing Aisha by the wrist and she his. With strength not yet sapped by safety, he hauled her onto the net as well. A moment later, they both rolled onto the deck and stared up at the moon like washed rags.

Lucius bellowed out in savage joy as his pounding heart at last slowed. Aisha joined the noise by coughing up water and grime, the gritty taste of algae in her mouth. The crew laughed, driving away their own fears of meeting the same fate, but Captain Bodin kept a level head. He clapped his men on the arm and shoved them back to undo all they had done. To draw up the anchor, to open the sails, to regain the speed they had lost.

I watched the flurry of commotion, and how the bedraggled pair laid across the wood, and I said, “They need a fire and a change of clothes.”

The captain frowned and nodded. “Get the cook pit going,” he ordered, and we forced the two of them below deck. Tarps were hung up for privacy as the bits of kindling became a hint of warmth. With so much tar and hemp and wood exposed, the blaze hardly sufficed, held by a barrel of sand as it were. Lucius and Aisha sat opposite each other, salt water dripping from their hair as they clutched dirty tunics to their bodies and shivered.

Fatigue and drunkness had been washed from their minds. Shame held Aisha’s gaze down to the fire, and embarrassment kept Lucius’ there as well. Any errant glance aside seemed to show him more of the girl’s flesh than he was prepared for. The noise of sailing seemed louder for them, feet pounding the deck like a drum and canvas slapping with the wind.

It stifled their conversation.

As much for his own sake as to take their thoughts off Aisha’s mistake, Lucius spoke. “Never did like swimming very much.”

“That was my first time in salt water,” Aisha mumbled.

“You swam in the oasis, right?”

She nodded. “When I could. Sometimes I would get in trouble for it. The temples always seemed to be random about whether the goddess permitted it on any given day. I think they were hiding fears of drought.”

“Drought in a desert? Why, I’ve never heard of that before.”

She sniffed a laugh, which tickled something wrong and she sneezed. She wiped her face again with the stained tunic and fidgeted. “Thank you.”

Lucius found himself unable to respond to her thanks. Every formulation of, “You’re welcome,” seemed wrong in his mouth and the moment passed uncomfortably. “At least this was a better reason than the first time I took a swim in the ocean.”

At last, Aisha lifted her head and smiled at him. “What happened the first time?”

“Master Amurabi tossed me in to prove a point.”

“And you still follow him?”

Lucius laughed. “Of course. He succeeded in proving his point.”

“It must have been a wiser point than this Jacque you met,” she said, twisting some of her hair around her hand and wringing more drips from the ends.

“If only I had met Amurabi first. Would have saved me a few months of hunger.”

She stared at him, her smile morphing to disbelief. “No… no, don’t tell me you actually went west of the mountains to live like a savage.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t call it a very savage life. More a state of nature. Savage was what Edvin did to me when he heard I snubbed his sister like that.”

“This doesn’t sound like the kind of story that is good to help fall asleep…”

“No, it’s probably not. Do you want something cozy instead? I could tell you about the first time I had roast dragon.”

Aisha’s expression twisted up in a mix of envy and discomfort. “I think that would just make me despair that we didn’t even have warm food for dinner,” she said, looking again at the fire between them, hardly fit to light a lantern. “Just don’t leave me on a cliffhanger, will you? Sleep is going to catch me eventually.”

“No promises.”

~~

The Ashe family gave him the sword he requested, an adult sized infantry blade, but strung him along with delaying tactics. They offered him a cloak for his journey, and a meal to set him off, then had the doctor make tutting noises about his healing. Ruby thought keeping him in their hospitality longer would make the spark of defiance go out, while her sisters both hoped it wouldn’t. A riled up boy the age of their daughters was not something they desired under their roof.

This resentment was picked up on by Edvin, and in his childish way, amplified.

While Lucius sat in the palace courtyard, scouring his clothes with a bucket of water and thinking about the journey, the little lordling tracked him down. “I hear you have a sword now, cripple. Got one gifted to you?”

“It wasn’t a gift, it was a reward,” Lucius said, setting aside his shirt to dry. In truth, it needed more cleaning, but the action brought him over to the weapon, just in case.

Edvin smirked and crossed his arms. He hadn’t come alone. One of his lackeys accompanied him, as did Patrocles, his tutor, to which he asked, “You can’t be any good with a sword if your right arm has been cut off, can you, Sir Patrocles?”

The older man stymied his tongue and answered the question, trying to not look at Lucius but rather to scout around for any of the ladies Ashe. No higher power made itself available to him. “It’s possible, m’lord. Some men are born off-handed, and it is not such a loss as it might have been.”

“But that takes years of practice, no?”

“All things take practice, m’lord.”

“More years than this brat has even been alive, I’d say.”

“Not quite so many as that.”

“Patrocles, you say that like this brat had a sword in his hand while still in the crib.”

The tutor grinned. The tug across his face exposed several scars that hadn’t healed right, giving him a scowl that would have terrified a normal boy. “He wouldn’t be the first babe to have such a life. That’s more common in Skaldheim than here though. To answer your question, I wouldn’t think a miner would have much time for training, no, m’lord.”

Edvin sneered. “So he took from my aunt something he isn’t even fit to use. So childish, don’t you think?”

“I can use it,” Lucius said, pulling his still damp trousers on. Normally, not an advisable course of action, but he could see where it was going with Edvin and the nodding sycophant beside him.

“Like you used that knife to do… what exactly? Claire did all the real work saving the girls, so why is everyone fawning over you?” Edvin asked.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything. You people forced me here, abducted me from my…”

The boy pounced on Lucius’ lapse. “From your what? Your troupe of wanderers and pickpockets?”

That struck a nerve within Lucius. He balled his hand into a fist, anger trembling inside him. “How about I prove that I can use it just fine? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Are you challenging me to a duel? Do you here that? Patrocles? Drevin? The cripple is challenging me to a–”

“Do not call me a cripple, you worthless dog!”

That returned the blow, mirrored the anger. A moment later, and to Patrocles’ dismay, the two boys faced one another with wooden training swords. The sword instructor had made the assumption that Edvin would win overwhelmingly. The noble boy had years, height, weight, and proper training on his side. The only thing tipping the scales in Lucius’ favor was his stigmata, the ability to heal, which to Patrocles was merely the hope that Edvin couldn’t hurt him too badly. The man even entertained the hope that allowing the fight would earn him some favor, for keeping Lucius in the palace longer.

“En guarde!” Edvin barked.

Lucius had no idea what the foreign words meant, but he understood Edvin pointing his sword at him. He put his own own weapon up, just as the noble charged at him with a downward hack. Lucius stepped back, letting the end of Edvin’s stick miss him. He swung back, only to have his weapon nearly knocked from his hand by a zealous parry. Let alone their age difference, one arm was no match for two. Edvin lunged and Lucius twisted out of the way, and their duel went on.

Of the four people there, only Patrocles came to understand what was happening. Lucius, who he had first seen as a dirty mess in an alley, was untouchable, in so far as a duel between children went. Something inside him was broken, after all the pain and suffering he had already gone through. Even the heaviest swings of Edvin’s swords never made him flinch. He never shut his eyes. He watched and reacted. Lucius had no fear of being hit.

Edvin, for all his other advantages, was soft. He jumped away from any riposte. He struck away Lucius’ weapon like he wanted to break bones. His blocks and guards took enormous, twisting lunges to keep the weapons away from him. Within five minutes, Edvin, still in somewhat formal clothes, could barely breathe. His attacks grew ragged and brutal, while Lucius became more and more accustomed to evading those basic cuts Patrocles had drilled into the noble.

“Stop running!” Edvin screamed.

Lucius lunged in, holding his sword like he was going to flick it forward. Just as Edvin swung his stick across to knock away the attack, Lucius pumped it back. The two weapons passed by each other, and then he smashed it forward. The wood cracked against Edvin’s brow, splitting the skin.

“Cease the fight,” Patrocles barked.

It infuriated Edvin. Skill was thrown out the window. With a scream, he waylayed the boy. The moment he closed the distance, he stuck Lucius' blade as hard as he could. Nearly from his hand. It forced an opening and Edvin grabbed hold of Lucius by the hair. Lucius reflexively tried to shove him away, but with his missing arm. He screamed in pain. They fell, Edvin atop him.

The noble brat pummeled down, beating Lucius’ face bloody.

Patrocles didn’t pull him off. He picked up Lucius’ fallen training sword and broke it across Edvin’s chest. The crack struck silence throughout the courtyard, broken by the washboard rasping of the children’s breath. His face was a storm. “Have I taught you nothing?” Patrocles demanded. “Your uncle would be ashamed to hear what you just did!” The knight spat on him as Irina Ashe, Edvin’s mother, made her appearance.

“What is the meaning of this, Sir Patrocles?” the dark haired mother demanded.

“You’ve raised a brute without the wit to know when he’s being advised,” he told her, and he unclasped his cape from his shoulders. Together, with the broach shaped after the family crest, he thrust it into her hands. “I evidently must step down from my post. I’m glad you have found a replacement for me already. May Claire help this family more than I can.”

After that, the Ashe family had a choice, confront their own failings, or grant Lucius’ wish. They tossed him out with a merchant carriage headed west.