I hate this, Ako mentally groused as her stomach roiled. She had been on a ship for a few months now, and the moment she had stepped on a ship, she’d hated it. The crew was fine and didn’t bother her nearly as much as she thought they would—the Empress’ connections and money had been more than enough to get them a decent boat and a good crew—but she had hated her life the moment she had stepped on the boat.

There was another ‘gentle wave,’ as the crew called it jokingly, which her stomach didn’t find at all to be gentle. Ako threw up what remained of her breakfast, spewing chunks of eggs and bread that she had eaten a few hours ago over the side.

At least the sunset is pretty, Ako thought, looking at the purple and orange sun that was reflected off the waters. There is beauty to be found, at least.

“Easy,” Jakub’s voice said from behind her, rubbing her back soothingly. Ako hated how much better it made her feel. “Easy, girl.”

“I am not a horse,” Ako grumbled, reaching down to wipe off spittle with the back of her hand.

“I never said you were,” Jakub said, sounding amused. “You’re just not suited for the seas, that’s all. Even your camel is doing better than you.”

“I hate you,” Ako groaned, feeling the nausea well up again. Ako tried to stop it, but within a few moments, she was dry heaving again.

“She doin’ alright?” Captain Vimhet’s voice asked. “She still throwin’ up ‘er breakfast?”

“I don’t think there’s any breakfast left for her to throw up,” Jakub said dryly, clenching her shoulder reassuringly as he looked over the side at her. Ako looked up at him, feeling miserable. “Are you done yet?”

“I hope so,” Ako said. Jakub let go of her, and she stood, wiping her hands on her trousers. She then turned around to face Jakub and the Captain.

The open seas agreed with Jakub. His face was sunburnt, and his lips were dry from the salt, but he had been extremely happy and relieved ever since they had set sail. Somehow, he seemed even more full of energy than before. When she had asked him why, Jakub had mostly waved her off, saying that he had just been worried about their situation. Ako let it go because she had been worried too, but she wondered if that had really been the entire reason or just one of the reasons he was so happy to have left Esai behind.

Maybe he was afraid he would be forced to choose between the Empress and me, Ako thought, saddened at the idea of Jakub leaving her. She had come to depend on him the past few months. He was witty and always full of good humour and had been looking out for her since the beginning. It had been as he had promised, of course, but she had grown up wary of the outside world. She had grown up more than a little afraid of white men who would do whatever they wanted with people to get what they desired. That was all but gone now, at least with Jakub.

“I hope so too!” the Captain boomed, grinning toothily. He was huge, like a bull somehow constrained to human form. He had huge arms, legs, hands, and a big nose and ears. Even as his hair was beginning to grey with age, Ako was half-certain that he could probably pick up the ship and throw it if he were angered enough. That was never a problem, though. He was always laughing. Ako started as Vimhet clapped his meaty hands together and gestured to his cabin on the second level of the ship. “A card game is being played, and Jakub came out when he was told that you were throwing up again,” he said, his grin turning knowing. “Very concerned, he was.”

Jakub shuffled his feet, looking embarrassed. “She’d do the same for me,” he said.

“Good to hear!” the Captain boomed again. “Your loyalty does you credit, old man. I was just about to clean Jakub out, so now he won’t be able to escape.”

“That’s just what I want you to think,” Jakub scoffed, winking at Ako, who could only muster a tired smile in response. “I have you on the ropes. It’s part of my cunning strategy.”

“And now you’ve told me your strategy,” Vimhet said, smirking.

“Maybe that’s what I wanted you to think,” Jakub said. “Maybe I’m telling you that I have a cunning strategy to make you think I have one, so you will misplay your cards, allowing me to reclaim my winnings that you have stolen from me.”

Ako shook her head and immediately regretting the action, as throwing up hurt her neck. “Stop confusing him, Jakub,” Ako said. “In fact, how about you stop talking altogether. It’ll make me feel better.”

Jakub turned to give her such a matter-of-fact look that a smile crept across Ako’s face, but they were interrupted by the Captain, who laughed.

“Stolen?” the Captain asked in a mocking tone. He sounded angry, but he was still grinning. “Stolen?! I won those fair and square, bard.”

“For now,” Jakub allowed. “I have allowed you to take care of my winnings. I will be reclaiming them soon.”

“Bah!” the Captain scoffed, and the two men continued to argue as Ako followed behind them. They always argued. It was constant. They sounded like brothers, even though they had only met a few months ago. Apparently, the Captain was a foreboding soul, someone who took no talking back from anyone. Jakub, though, had taken one look at him and called him fat.

The entire ship had gone quiet, and Ako had immediately closed her eyes and bowed her head in disbelief. It had taken Jakub less than a minute, and they were already in trouble with the most important person that they would be interacting with for the next few months.

Instead, the Captain had then started laughing uproariously.

“You’re so old it must have gone to your brain!” Vimhet had shouted, and everyone around them had erupted with him.

“I may be old, but that doesn’t mean I’m feeble and must bow down to authority,” Jakub had replied. Luckily, the Captain had agreed with him. He had clapped his hands and then yelled in his booming voice that Jakub and Ako were his honoured guests and that everyone should treat them as such.

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That had been an interesting experience that had quickly grown boring over the next few days. The crew had bowed and scraped whenever they saw them, and it had taken Jakub challenging the Captain to an arm-wrestling contest—which he had lost instantly—to get the crew to begin to treat them like one of their own.

Over the last two months, Ako had learned much about herself and the ship she was traveling on. She had scrubbed the deck, manned the lookout post, and done every chore that was possible on the deck. While their trip had been paid for, Ako had wanted to earn it. She had grown up earning her own living, and she did not want that to change anytime soon. The brief experience of living in Esai’s Royal Palace had washed away her preconceptions of living a finer life.

No travel, knives at my back always, and no freedom? I would rather die.

That had been the one thought that had kept Ako from whole-heartedly enjoying herself during her trip. The Empress had continuously tried to get them to go somewhere else, anywhere else. She had hinted that Galegarten or Northerspire were both beautiful as well and had their own rich history and beauty. Both Ako and Jakub hadn’t been swayed, but when alone, Jakub had questioned her, asking if going to Velaire was what she really wanted. Ako had immediately said yes. At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in Velaire that had the Empress of Esai so scared half a world away.

Vimhet threw open the door to his quarters, and Ako blinked and coughed at the smoke that wafted out.

“Enjoy the smell, Ako?” Jakub teased.

“You know I do not!” Ako said sharply, wiping away at her watery eyes with the palm of her hand. “You would think the Captain’s quarters was a bar or something.”

“Who says it isn’t?” the Captain asked, which caused the room to laugh as they stepped in. Ako blinked quickly to adjust her eyes to the sight that she had seen so often recently.

The Captain’s bed could be flipped, an interesting contraption that allowed up to ten people to sit at a table and play cards. Being the middle of the day there weren’t too many there—six, including Vimhet and Jakub. There was Gakmú, the first mate who wore a big floppy hat, Denhume, a white traveling merchant who kept to himself, Bluthe, one of two randomly picked from the crew who snorted when he laughed, and Ngil, whose massive nose rivaled the Captain’s. All were smoking massive cigars that made the room look like a sweatshop.

“At last,” Denhume said, his voice high and snotty. “You took your sweet time coming back.”

“Ako was busy throwing up her breakfast,” Jakub broke in smoothly, sitting down at his spot at the table. Denhume subsided with a grumble as the game began again. He pulled his cards from his pocket and peered down at them. Vimhet sat down as well, pulling out his cards and grimacing down at them. Ako looked around for a chair, grabbed a stool, sat beside Jakub, and looked down at his cards.

Two tricks, Ako thought, frowning down at Jakub’s hand. She put an elbow on her knee and thought quickly as she looked over the table. There were three teams of two, with a maximum of five teams of two in Tunha, the game that was primarily played. A suit of cards was called each hand, with each group trying to coordinate without talking how to best play their cards and win the hand through taking tricks. It usually resulted in loud protestations of cheating and a lot of drinking. Ako supposed that it would have happened no matter what game was being played.

“Pass,” Jakub said, looking over at his partner Ngil meaningfully. Ngil wasn’t looking at Jakub but at his hand, missing whatever important clue Jakub was signalling with his twitching eyebrows.

“Captain, he’s cheating again,” Bluthe complained, sighing. Vimhet turned to him and raised an eyebrow of his own. “You would cheat too if Ngil were your partner,” he said, which caused the whole table to break out into an uproar that had Ako smiling despite herself.

It has been a good few months, Ako thought. Her smile faded as she thought of the travel from Esai to Ghada. That had been a month she never wanted to relive. They had never found out if they were being followed in Esai. Though in Labak and on the way to Ghada, it had certainly felt that way. Nothing concrete, but it had made their journey less whimsical than before, less like a traveling grandfather and granddaughter, more wary and less fun. It was still good, though, as Ako was now living her own life and making her own decisions. Ako learned a lot about the world in the past few months. Jakub had been in his element, telling stories that ranged from tales from the far west—where sailing around was a right of passage—to stories of the far north, where apparently the Tree of Infinity could be found if you were pure of heart.

Still, Ako wished she hadn’t felt forced to leave her homeland. She still loved her family, even though they had wanted to sell her. She just wanted to get away. If it meant she would be throwing up the entire journey to Mesaa, then it would be worth it.

“Are you all right, Ako?” Jakub asked, touching her elbow. The table was settling back down, so for the moment, their conversation was relatively private.

Ako blinked, looking down at Jakub. “I am fine,” Ako said. “I was just thinking of our trip from Esai to Ghada.”

Jakub’s face darkened. “Whoever is following us should no longer concern us,” he said. “Are you still worried?”

“A little,” Ako admitted. “I never thought my family would be so determined to bring me home, if it was them that was following us.”

Jakub said nothing, glowering darkly and shaking his head. “People do strange things for money, even to their own blood,” he said. With visible effort, he turned back to his hand, playing the game. It was clear his heart wasn’t in it anymore as he lost the next hand. Ako felt bad at this, as Jakub had been enjoying himself. His mood always turned sour when Ako spoke of her family and what they had done, which touched Ako but also somewhat annoyed her. I need to stop bringing his mood down.

“I thought you were good at this,” Ako said loudly, bringing the attention of the table to her. She gestured down to Jakub. “None of you would believe the amount of bragging Jakub—”

“I believe you,” Ngil interrupted and then laughed loudly at that. The rest of the table joined him except Jakub, who looked back with a playful scowl. “You don’t think I can win?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Ako said, pointing down to his hand. It wasn’t a great hand, but a good player could easily do some damage with it. “You said you could win anytime you wanted. Prove it.”

Jakub harrumphed, but over the next few hands, his mood improved. A little while later, he was back in the swing of things, laughing as he managed to win a critical hand that won him and Ngil the entire pot.

“I can win whenever I want!” Jakub crowed, pulling in a small pile of coins and tossing one to her. “See, Ako?”

“Until you lose it next game,” Ako responded. Smiling, she caught the coin and rolled it between her fingers, a trick which Jakub had taught her last week.

Ako settled back as the table then started to poke fun at Jakub.

“Oh no, no one beats me three times in a row,” Vimhet loudly proclaimed. He dealt another hand. Not for the first time, Ako reflected. Even though she was with a much older friend and surrounded by strangers while feeling like she was going to throw up again, she felt at peace. She would enjoy that blissful state where the world stopped until they landed in Messa’s port.

That is something to worry about later, Ako thought. Enjoy life now while I can. Another quip from Jakub, but they were words that she wanted to live by.