The thorny memories of hunger dredged up a thirst in Lucius, and while he told the story to Sammy, and then to Aisha when she joined, he drank until he could no longer taste the bite of alcohol. It caught up with him, drove him to inadvisable sleep, and left him somewhere in the village after a walk for fresh air went awry. The rare blessing of drunks came to his aid however, for his dignity at least, and woke him before the first rays of light.

Some poor villager’s flower garden had become his bed, strewing his woolen cloak with dirt and petals. His only inclination of time past was the parch in his mouth, the pain in his head, and the shift in the stars. It was his fortune that Captain Bodin had to rest and recuperate from the exertion of his stigmata, for the ship still rested at anchor.

He found me at the docks, for the middle of the night was one of the few times I could take off my hood and scarf. It afforded me the opportunity to smoke my pipe, which was pleasant despite the poor quality of the tobacco. “Not quite an adult yet, are you?” I asked as he walked over to me, looking about as though someone might come scold him.

“I’m a good deal more of one than I was.”

I pointed my pipe stem at him. “When you speak, you should take better care to use words that say more than that. When you aren’t engaging in sophistry at least.”

He winced and paced around, eventually taking a seat on the bench beside me. “Did I… do anything I should regret?”

“Only that you didn’t embellish your story properly. You told it too blandly(1). If those two were not already invested in you, they would have been terribly bored. Otherwise, you performed well.”

“Well, at the least there’s that, and my clear head now. I suppose I chose a soft patch of dirt to sleep on as well. Better than the sands.”

“May you never learn what a hangover is.”

He grinned back at me and thumped his chest. “Are you done with the alchemy?”

“The active portion, yes. I’m waiting for the reaction to finish now. If I had a means of controlling the temperature it would be done by now, but the best I could do would be to boil the concoction, and that’s far too hot. I have it sloshing next to the keel, letting the sea mix it.”

To that, he nodded. “So, her plan will work?”

“I can make it work, yes. The question is whether we let it remain her plan.”

Lucius folded his arms and squinted his eyes at the horizon. There was a sliver of darkness that cut between the stars and their reflections of the water. The night had proven to be shockingly bereft of mist, and we could see the northern reaches of the Jarnmark Mountains, the span of coast that snaked all the way to the Ice Sea and on to Skaldheim. “I think it is fine being her idea.”

“It would make you seem to be the clever one, no?”

“I’d rather be a good leader than a clever schemer. Bringing competent people to my side is the most important skill I can have, isn’t it? Let the whole world know I listen to those around me and give them the credit for it.”

“Very good,” I said. I had taught him something at least. “It will fall to you if a whale hunter appears.”

He spun. “If a whale hunter appears, we had better get away from it.”

“Of course, we’ll try to. But, the best way is to stab poison in through the flesh. In the mouth preferably.”

“If I have to get into its mouth to poison it, it will eat me.”

“Bite you.”

“I’ll die!”

“Only temporarily.”

“And what am I to do about regrowing my eye then? Do you propose to stab it out again?”

I paused and smoked my bowl down to cinders, and said, “Alright, you make a fair point. I’ll find another solution. Maybe there is a way to convince it to attack the Aillesterrans? That would be the cleanest solution by far, no?”

“Master, have your plans to pit two enemies against each other ever worked out?”

I frowned at my pupil. “Well, there was the time when–”

“That doesn’t count, and you know it.”

“Oh begone with you, back to the ship. Make yourself useful before the sun comes up. The sailors will be prepping for sail soon enough,” I ordered, and he proceeded down the dock. With a bit of waving and lantern light, he convinced the men to send a rowboat out for him, and take him back to the ship. There, he worked with the disgruntled crew, those who hadn’t been permitted to drink nearly as much as the others had, and learned from them what he could. Knots, fastidiousness, rudimentary judgements of angle and wind catch. By the time the sun came up, and the rest of the crew boarded, he had been thoroughly invigorated.

He greeted us with sweat on his brow and a smile on his face. “They’re still following us,” he said, pointing to our naval stalker.

Aisha glared at him, her hair unbrushed, her eyes bloodshot. I could feel her headache just looking at her. “Well, aren’t you cheerful and chipper.”

“Sorry, I do heal. Alcohol is a poison.”

“A better solvent than a poison, if you ask me,” I said, emerging back to the deck behind two sailors tasked with carrying my cask of poison up. “Careful with that,” I barked at them. “If that drops, it might explode!” That put the fear of the gods in them, though it had no means of combustion. I simply didn’t think it needed stating that the pirates would run us down eventually without it.

“Is that everyone?” Captain Bodin called out as the last rowboat was hauled aboard. We had some newly wealthy villagers wave us goodbye, and cast out the sails. The Sea Bird’s Rest broke free of the anchoring with ease, and once more began a northward travel. There was a good degree of tacking, this way and that, fighting winds that didn’t quite want to oblige our journey, but for as much as it slowed us down, it slowed our pursuers as well.

Around the time the sun reached its zenith, the captain called us to the prow and pointed at a shadowy lump upon the horizon. “That is the Donjon,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, we should make the switch between sea lanes here. There are two docks on that rock, one for visitors, and one for prisoners. On the east and the west. Those to be detained in the Donjon, are brought in circuitously from the west to prevent escape, which means the two lanes are close enough to kiss here, but don’t actually cross. We’ll jaunt over, then use the wizardry to return to our normal course. That way, we’ll hardly lose any time.”

Lucius nodded, not taking his eyes off the dismal prison island. “And your stigmata? Will we be able to sail through the night once more?”

The captain nodded. “I’d prefer it that way. The whale hunters are less active at night. We’ll just take the chance to cross over. I suppose we’ll cause a bit of a stir with the guards, but what are they going to do? Gossip?”

“Excellent.”

The plan seemed to captivate Aisha, who had little else to do on that leg of the journey but to strum some notes for the pleasure of the crew. She kept staring at the growing rock, until the sharp corners and buttresses depicted themselves from the sea mist. “You put prisoners there?”

Lucius had joined her with a pair of bread loaves on the verge of staleness, one of which he handed over. That stopped her music, but the crew couldn’t complain. “Only the very worst.”

“Murderers?”

He laughed. “Revolutionaries. Worst thing you can do is threaten the government. Nobles see it as a knife pointed at their own throat.”

“Does Vassermark have a history of revolution?”

“From the lower classes?” he asked with a gesture at the Donjon. “No, and they want to keep it that way. Why else would I have to go to all this trouble? The only changes in power come from marrying into the royal family… maybe killing all their step-siblings. The rest of the world took a lesson from King Hassa.”

“So you’re saying that if you trip up, you’ll get a one way ticket right back here?”

He struggled to smile after that. The island loomed on the horizon like a tombstone. “That’s right. Especially since they can’t just kill me.”

Sensing a slight emotional misstep, Aisha bade him sit beside her and said, “From what you’ve told me, they could be rid of you by simply convincing you to walk out into the wilderness and be a savage. Worked before, didn’t it?”

He choked down his bread and said, “It worked once, and I learned my lesson.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about it?”

“As I recall, I had just gotten to the good bit, hadn’t I?”

“Meeting Amurabi, yes.”

Before he could begin, the ship was rocked. Something slammed into the hull from beneath, throwing it aside. Aisha shrieked, the sailors bellowed, all hands went to rope and rail to hold on as the Sea Bird’s Rest bobbed and swung. The mast creaked, straining the knots that held it so.

“Did we hit a rock?” Lucius shouted, his attention to the wheel.

“There are no rocks this far south of the Donjon!” Captain Bodin shouted back.

The perpetrator emerged from below, one after another. Great slabs of mottled gray they were. Streaked with wrinkles, dotted with barnacles like any great vessel of the sea. They breached the waves and swam about us, rolling through the crests of water, and one by one they blasted brine into the air.

Aisha screamed and fell. Lucius had to grab her lest she hit the deck or fall overboard again. “Monsters! Sea monsters!”

The sailors all shared a laugh. “That’s the blessing of the sea,” one said to her, as the brine rained down onto her, spattering her clothes and hair.(2)

“Those are whales. Playful, but harmless,” Lucius said, without saying a word about her hammering heart, nor her embarrassed blush. He held her by the shoulders and eased her up, keeping her back to his chest as the pod of sea mammals swam about us. “It’s good luck. They’re smart animals, one of Saphira’s best creations.”

Of course, the presence of whales was nothing but bait to draw their hunters in closer to us. For all that they enjoyed seeing the enormous creatures dance through the waves, and feel the swells from the flaps of their tails, it drew to us worse things than pirates. I thus conspired with Honung to be a bit more liberal with the pouring of my so-called wizardry.

I confess I improved the telling of his story somewhat. Removing the slurred speech was the least of my troubles in recounting. For as much as a whale’s blow is indeed brine, it also contains their mucus. I was perfectly glad to have my scarf over my face. I deigned to not explain this to Aisha, who gaped at the animals like she was seeing a Divine Beast.