“Tie her back up again quick!” shouted Captain Sagar, spittle flying from his mouth.

Nobody moved to do so.

“Sir Pirate,” said Nuthea, “if you think for one moment that I am going to allow myself to be detained once more, least of all by a common skypirate such as yourself, you had best think again or your life may be forfeit.” Ryn took a couple of steps backwards so that he was in line with her. “As you can see, I’m a little more experienced with my own elemental powers than my… associate here.” Associate? “If any of you lays so much as a finger on me again, I will turn my lightning on you. Is that quite clear?”

Sagar opened his mouth, then shut it again. His grin was replaced by a deep scowl. After a moment he said, “There’s a lot of us, lady, and only one of you. Do you think you can use your little trick on all of us at once?”

“Do you want to find out?” said Nuthea icily. Ryn guessed she had not enjoyed being slapped.

“Tie them up again, boys!” yelled Sagar.

None of his crew moved.

He looked round at them.

One man, slightly taller and stockier than the rest, who Ryn recognised as the one who had tied them up originally, said, “But Cap’n… you saw what she just did.”

“Yeah,” piped up another, “she must be some kinda witch or something.”

“Bad luck to kidnap a witch,” said another.

“’s’what I heard too.”

“And, Cap’n, you’re the one who just cut their bonds.”

“Yeah! If you want to tie them up again, you do it!”

The captain’s face turned purple as a plum. He jumped up and down on the spot like a petulant child.

“How dare you disobey me!” he yelled. “You just took down an Imperial warship under my command! So what if their lifeboat got away? The Imfisi government will pay us handsomely for this! You owe me! This is mutiny! Tie them up again right now or I’ll throw the lot of you overboard!”

“We’re docked at the moment, Captain, so we’d just land on the ground.”

“It’s not that far to the ground.”

“So it’s not that much of a threat really, to be honest.”

Lifeboat, Ryn thought, noticing something the captain had said. So General Vorr might still be alive…

“It seems that we have reached something of an impasse, Captain,” said Nuthea, holding her head high. “Perhaps there is somewhere we could go to negotiate in private?”

“Ah, you hear that, boys? She wants to negotiate in ‘private’.” His grin was back. What was with this guy? He had gone from throwing a tantrum to making lewd suggestions on the turn of a copper piece.

One of the pirates wolf-whistled.

Another brief fork of lightning flashed out and singed the deck just in front of the captain’s foot.

“Alright, alright!” he said at once, leaping back a step. He clenched his jaw and said more quietly through gritted teeth, “Stop doing that in front of my crew!” He returned his voice to its previous volume. “Fine. By mutual consent, I will speak to you privately inside my cabin. Come with me.” He spun on his heel and walked off. “The rest of you, get back to work!”

“Aye aye, Captain!”

As the crew dispersed, all of them still unashamedly staring at Nuthea and Ryn, the two of them followed the captain through a door in the ship’s stern.

“Alright, stop playing around,” Captain Sagar said once he had shut the door and they were inside a room with a desk and charts. “Where did the two of you really come from?”

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“We told you,” said Nuthea. “The Empire captured us because we have elemental powers.”

“Yes, I can see that in your case. But what about you, Nobody?” He jabbed a finger at Ryn’s face.

“He’s just a bit newer to his powers,” said Nuthea. “But from what he reports, he definitely has them. It makes sense. The Empire wouldn’t have spared his life otherwise.”

“And you’re really just a nobody from some backwater village?” the captain continued.

Ryn nodded.

“Fine, but what about you?” said the captain, switching back to Nuthea. “You don’t look like a nobody from nowhere.” He eyed the golden band that encircled Nuthea’s head. “Where did you come from?”

For a while Nuthea did not reply and her bottom lip disappeared underneath her upper. Then eventually she said, “My name is Princess Nutheanna Kaleutheanna of the Matriarchy of Manolia.”

A princess! “And you are very beautiful,” Ryn remembered himself saying, and grimaced.

The captain’s eyebrows rose. “A princess, you say? The boys will be pleased. What are you doing all the way out here, then? We’re miles away from Manolia!”

Nuthea frowned. “I was on an undercover diplomatic mission in Imfis when the Empire discovered my abilities and captured me.”

“A diplomatic mission? What kind of diplomatic mission?”

“An undercover one.”

“Yeah, but who to? About what?”

“That is my business.”

“Tell me! Tell me or I’ll run you through!”

There was a quiet crackling sound and sparks of electricity played across Nuthea’s fingers. The hairs on the back of Ryn’s neck stood up.

The captain held up his hands. “Alright, alright! This is going to get old quickly… Fine. Well, whatever you were doing, whoever you are, the pair of you sure as hells can’t stay on my ship. I can’t be having you undermining my authority all the time with these lightning shenanigans. You can get off here, or as soon as we put into the next port.”

Ryn breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t like how tensely things had been playing out, and he would be very glad to get back onto solid ground. He had no idea what he would do there of course, but he knew that he preferred solid ground to sky travel.

“I thought you might say that,” said Nuthea. “But I have a different proposition for you.”

“You do?” said the captain.

“You do?” said Ryn.

“I have learned things on my journey that I need to report at home. I demand that you fly me to Manolia as quickly as possible.”

This time the captain actually drew his sword with a ring of steel as his temper flared. Ryn and Nuthea both hopped back. “Look lady, I’m the one who does the demanding around here! I am the captain of this ship and I won’t be bossed around by some arrogant girl, princess or not!”

Electricity crackled around Nuthea again.

“Nuthea…” Ryn said, looking back and forth between them, “please, be careful.” He was tired of violence.

“You can’t rely on your party trick forever, wench!” the captain spat. “I have a few tricks of my own up my sleeve! Even if you kill me before I kill you, my crew will overwhelm you. They’re the fiercest band of cutthroats that you ever laid eyes on. They’ll gang up on you all at once. They’ll overpower you. They’ll murder you in your sleep. And I’ll bet you don’t know how to sail an airship!” he said finally, presumably as a last-ditch attempt to intimidate her into backing down.

Nuthea let out a deep breath and the sparks that had started to crackle around her abated.

“I know… That is why I am offering you a proposition: My homeland is very wealthy, and the royal family are wealthiest of all. Fly me back to Manolia, and I am sure you will be rewarded handsomely. With gold.”

Captain Sagar lowered his sword. “Gold, you say?”

“And gemstones.”

“Gemstones, you say?”

“Gemstones galore.”

“Beautiful women, you say?”

“There are many beautiful women in Manolia.”

I find it hard to believe they’re half as beautiful as you, Ryn thought, but he wasn’t stupid enough to say it out loud this time, especially to a princess.

“I am sure,” Nuthea continued, “that my mother the queen will be very grateful to whoever rescues and returns her lost princess to her.”

The captain’s eyes had gone somewhere else. “Gold… gemstones… beautiful women…” He shook his head and his eyes refocused. “How can I be sure of all of this? What guarantee can you give me?”

“An understandable concern,” said Nuthea. “My power is a guarantee of my word, in more ways than one: Only Manolian royalty are Crystal-touched and can manifest lightning. But I appreciate that this is not common knowledge.”

At this, Nuthea tugged the collar of her faded-white dress, and reached down inside it with her other hand. Ryn felt himself blush and managed to look away. When he looked back, she had produced a very large golden coin—more of a medallion than a coin. Ryn had never seen such a valuable piece of currency before.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to the captain, “take this as a down payment and guarantee of my good will. There will be much more like this when you return me safely to Manolia.”

Sagar stepped towards her and took the coin, holding it up to his face then biting it.

“Gold… gemstones… beautiful women…” he muttered.

He looked at them again.

“You make a persuasive offer. Alright. I’ll do it. I’ll fly you to Manolia.”

“You’ve made the right decision.”

“I know. Could… could you please just do me one favour?”

“What would that be?” Nuthea asked.

“Could you tell the crew that I fought you and tortured you into surrendering to me, then ravished you?”

“Absolutely not. I’ve never heard anything so base and ridiculous in my life. And Ryn’s been here this whole time too.”

“You could say I beat him unconscious?”

“Out of the question.”

“How about I tied him up in the corner and made him watch?”

“No.”

“He cowered in the corner?”

“Look, said Nuthea. “Fine. If only to shut you up, I’ll tell them that you threatened me and that I gave in and offered you a reward if you took me back to Manolia. That’s sort of true, I suppose.”

“Done!” said the captain. “Pleasure doing business with you,” he added as they made their way back out onto the deck.