Lucius had to be woken up by the arrival of the rescue crew, a pair of hesitantly cheerful sailors on a rowboat, while the Sea Bird’s Rest was anchored nearby. The rocks were dangerous for a large ship for the very same reason they had pulled Lucius from the current. “What? No blood? Did you not get in a fight?” he asked, waving them over. He rose as the sailors nervously chuckled.

He had to dive into the water and swim over. With how hungry he was, grace eluded him. He flopped through the water like a confused dog, but eventually grabbed on and was hauled in. The water in his clothes made up for the weight he had lost in the last day.

“You know,” one of the sailors said as Lucius rolled in the bottom of the boat and caught his breath. “That robed guy, the wizard, he kept saying one ridiculous thing after the next, and then he was right every time.”

“He has a tendency to do that. Helped quite a bit in Rackvidd. Tell me you brought food,” Lucius responded.

They handed him hardtack biscuit, which he didn’t even have the energy to complain about. He barely had enough energy to chew through the so-called nutrients.

“Just row,” the other sailor said. “I say, the sooner we get them to Hearth Bay, the sooner we’re free of this madness and back to normal.” A short time later, a ladder was tossed over the side of the Sea Bird’s Rest. It clattered into the hull and they grabbed on to steady themselves. Lucius went up first, managing to keep his feet and dignity as the crew followed after and hauled the rowboat up too.

It was Aisha who formed the welcoming committee. She stood across from him, pouting with her hands on her hips. She looked him up and down and saw the blood staining through his shirt despite the ocean wash. She stepped over and picked at it, opening up the sliced cloth to look at his flesh. When she saw that it had sealed up with only a little scar, she let out her breath and grabbed onto him. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Thanks for worrying about me,” he said, his mouth lost in her hair as he returned the embrace.

A moment later, some lingering sense of propriety made her push him away. That just made the crew snicker more. “Well, why don’t you tell me about what happened?”

“Over some food, I hope?”

“The captain is going to take us to shore. We’ll have a fire and some proper rest. Can you wait until then?”

“For food? Yes. I’ve gotten a taste for rum though.”

Aisha laughed, her smile infections. “I suppose we can see to that. They’re not out of the stuff yet.”

Lucius was tired, and that dragged his defenses down. He stood no chance against his desire to grin back, to chase her below deck and into the shadows. If he had more strength in his lengs, he might have caught her and carried her off to her cabin to press the moment and see where their desires could go. His foot buckled on a step instead, sending him tumbling and rolling. He banged one body part after another against the ship, rousing the other half of the crew before Aisha could drag him off to the supplies.

The next thing he kissed was the lip of a rum bottle. The liquor burned in the back of his nose and in his belly and he passed it back to her as she sat beside him. He was still wet from the swim, his clothes tacky with water that clung to her dress as she put her back to his shoulder.

Her cabin was further still, and required the momentous task of standing up. The thought of that made him tired, and the next swig of rum loosened his tongue. “Shouldn’t you hate me?”

Aisha bristled, her back muscles tensing. “Why would I hate you?”

“I took advantage of your brother, didn’t I?”

She snatched the bottle back from him. “Were you the one that put a spell on him? Did you put those ideas of grandeur in him?”(1)

“I don’t have that kind of power. I just heal. Nothing more. Sometimes I wonder whether I can even use my tongue well.”

Aisha rolled her head back and rested it against his shoulder. “There’s something to be said for the strong silent type… but, that’s because most men are fools, and a fool can at least pretend to be wise if he keeps his mouth shut.”

“I’m going to keep fighting.”

“Of course you are. What else would you do?”

“No, I mean I’m going to keep fighting my way to the top.”

Aisha twisted to look at him. “The top of what?”

“Everything. I can’t afford to stop, and I’m afraid that at some point, to do that I will have to do some very bad things. I’ll have to kill my enemies, but I’m afraid at some point I’m going to have to betray my allies. I may even have to point my sword at them.”

“You should focus on getting allies you don’t need to betray.”

He reached over and put a hand on her leg. “Those are hard to find, and you don’t always get to choose your allies… sometimes, you end up sailing to a foreign land with someone you barely know because someone is trying to put you to death.”

Aisha laughed. “I think your tongue is working just fine.”

“Well, that’s one worry to put to rest.”

“And the other you should focus on is your stomach. Look at this,” she said as she picked at his hand. “You’re emaciated. Skin and bones. I can see your tendons. Are you a geriatric or something? A prisoner?”

Lucius pulled his hand back, glancing at it in the scant light. “You know, farmers have hands like these, when times are tough.”

“You’re not a farmer, you’re supposed to be a hero. You are supposed to command attention just by walking into a room. You should inspire awe at a glance and right now, the only word to describe you is bedraggled. You need a haircut, you know that?”

“And a doublet or something. I’m not sure what the fashion is in the capital.”

“A shave,” Aisha said with a nod.

“A new sword.”

“Some perfume to not smell like the horse you ride in on.”

“A refresher on all the noble banners and court sycophants.”

“A proper eyepatch.”

Lucius didn’t respond. His mouth hung open, empty of words. When Aisha twisted around again to see why he had stopped their little game, he tore at the rag strapped around his head and prodded at his grisly socket. “Oh, shit.”

That put some strength in him, put his feet beneath him too. He clambered up the nearest ladder and stuck his head above deck. Captain Bodin was already bringing us into a port. In just an hour, according to him, we’d be docked, which had me pondering my pipe out at the prow. I noticed Lucius looking at me. He looked at me with two eyes.

I sucked on my pipe, and in a cloud of exhaled smoke, I said, “Oh, shit.”

The moment he knew I understood the issue, he wrapped the rag around his head once more. He nearly went back to Aisha’s side, but she had vanished into her cabin and shut the door. Instead, he sought out our other companion.

Sammy sat at the back of the ship, playing backgammon with Honung. Lucius didn’t look long enough to see who was winning, they had a messy boardstate, and said, “I need a doctor’s help.”

When it came to Lucius, doctoral help was decidedly unusual, and Sammy had long since figured that out. There was also far less risk of harming the patient than normal. Evidently happy to escape whatever bet he had put down with Honung, he said, “Sure, now? Or after you eat?”

That gave him pause. “Before, I think.”

“Well then, to a cabin?” Sammy said, snatching his silver back from the game board with a grin.

Soon, the three of us sat down beside an oil lamp in my cabin room. Lucius took the bed, sitting over the edge and holding a carving knife like he was an arena better holding his lot. “Don’t you have a painkiller or something?”

I shook my head. Sammy said, “We have rum.”

“How drunk do I have to be for this to not hurt?”

“Drunk enough that you’d probably start healing the poison,” I answered. “You can bite down on your belt. Surgery without painkiller is common on a battlefield.”

“But, we’re not on a battlefield!”

Sammy shrugged. “We kind of are. We got attacked by a sea monster and fought off pirates. You’re the weird one, needing something amputated for show at the court.”

Lucius turned to me. “We could just say it healed after fighting. That is what happened.”

I shook my head. “Better they underestimate you. Means you’re more likely to best them.”

“Well, what if we wait till after we dock? Find an apothecary, drug me up there?”

“And let him spread rumors about why you so urgently needed poppy milk?”

For a moment, it looked like Sammy might propose some alternative solution. Perhaps, a way of purchasing late at night that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. Then he said, “If you just deal with the pain, you can have your meal with Aisha on the shore.”

Lucius bit down on the leather. I pinned his shoulders. The doctor carved out his eye.(2)

Once the pain subsided and we could pull the gag from his clenched teeth, we dabbed up the blood and sent him back to the deck where the sailors were tying the Sea Bird’s Rest off at the dock. Lucius staggered out as drunk as if he had three bottles of rum, but it was nothing more than shock and pain and a bit of bloodloss. He had the blindfold freshly fitted to his face and tried to find Aisha with his good eye, but the redhead was already ashore. Quixotic to say the least.

He had only one thing to do before going out to join her, and that was to dispose of the evidence. So he tossed his eye over the side and into the ocean. It hit the surface and vanished. It should have sank, but it ceased to be the moment it was enveloped by the sea.

That was definitively not a good sign.

She should have confronted me about this, but I think she was afraid to know the answer. Rather than a painkiller, we in fact went the opposite direction and poisoned his eye to blind him before the ocular extraction. This was so he didn’t have to see the knife approaching him.