Though I’d escaped Gerhard’s attention, I wasn’t able to fully relax until we were out at sea.

I spent the time on deck, tensely watching to ensure that Gerhard wasn’t going to follow the Azure beetle.

Yushin had joined me, but it became apparent rather swiftly that Jackson didn’t have any sort of sea legs, and had quickly locked himself away.

I didn’t fully relax until the city of Summerbone, as well as the Summer Hold I’d spent the last decade of my life living in, were entirely out of view.

“We’re safe,” I said, sagging in relief and dispelling my false face spell. Yushin smiled, but it was tighter than mine.

“It is possible an assassin is on board looking to claim the bounty for me, but yes, you are safe.”

I shot her an odd look, since attacking her on the boat seemed like a terrible play. There was no easy way to escape, after all. Yushin simply shrugged, and we took a seat on one of the benches, then started talking about spellcraft.

We had barely begun when the trouble hit.

A cordon of black ships, flying the Dreki flags, was sailing towards the hold, and from what I could tell, they didn’t seem to be parting to allow the Azure Beetle to pass through. The Azure Beetle slowed, as did the lead ship of the Dreki fleet, and within moments, I was casting false face – which despite the name, allowed me to also layer an illusion over my clothes and bod – before slinking behind a corner of the deck, staying within earshot and able to peek at what happened but hopefully out of whichever Dreki might board.

Enshroud was already wrapped around me, but I applied more of my tincture, just in case, while shaping my false face spell to look far older than I was, someone in my forties.

Yushin cast a false face of her own, matching my age, and I passed her my scent-suppressing tincture.

A moment later, we peeked around the corner.

A throng of people was boarding, and our captain and some of her crew had come down, clearing the area of people. I studied the boarding crew.

Mostly humans, all of them very pretty. A harem, perhaps? I knew several of my siblings liked to collect people as if they were rare gemstones, though I’d always found the practice distasteful. Not that there was anything wrong with polyamory, but what my siblings did was distinctly dehumanizing.

Or maybe it was a show of strength in numbers, and I was lucky enough to have run into a group of regular members of the island, with nobody from the family on board with them?

As the group parted, I had to stop myself from sighing.

I couldn’t have been so lucky.

I didn’t recognize which of my sisters or cousins or whatever she was, but she definitely was a family member.

A was a few generations ahead of me, but not as old as Gerhard. A member of the fourteenth generation, if I remembered right.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Dreki?” the captain asked, extending a hand to her. She shook it and let out a laugh.

“So polite… If you were twenty years younger, I’d add you to my collection. But no, this isn’t a pleasure trip.”

An aura exploded out of her, and I saw the crew stagger back. The captain shook for a moment, and Yushin stiffened. It wasn’t as bad as Gerhard's aura, but from the smell, she was tapping into our bloodline to enhance it, while he hadn’t been.

“Captain, hand over all the food and water from your vessel, as well as any trade goods, and we’ll let you live. Resist, and I’ll personally slaughter every last person on board.”

“You can’t do that!” the captain protested. “That would be an act of war between the Dreki island and the hold. The high king would–”

My relative again empowered her bloodline, causing smoke to rise off of her body.

I could smell it – she was using her power. The smoke might have been sloppiness, or it might have been an intimidation tactic. I couldn't tell.

But she didn’t fuel her aura this time. She slapped him, and the blow took his head off.

“Of course it means war, idiot,” she told the corpse as it slumped to the ground. “Mother and the High King already discussed the rules of war, not that it matters. I’m winning, and I’ll be taking the Summer Hold for the Dreki family.”

She kicked the body and it sailed out and into the ocean.

“Alright, who’s the new captain?” she asked, and a tall woman with a spellbook or grimoire tied around her waist stepped forwards.

“I am, ma’am,” the new captain said, bowing. My family member nodded and started flirting with her, while Yushin and I exchanged a look.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“What can we do? I assume the ships will be making a blockade around most of the hold.”

I grimaced, but nodded, then felt an inkling of a plan form in the back of my head. My family was prideful. Stubborn. Arrogant. Cruel.

And good to their word.

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I spun my hand and tapped my ether pool, then began to chant words of power.

A shield spell shimmered into life, and I squinted at it. If it was shimmering, then it was wasting ether. With a sharp focus of my will, I reinforced the spell within my spirit, making sure no ether leaked out, and the shield obligingly turned invisible, before being joined by a second, and then a third.

I began spinning the last of my ether pool into another spell, and fished out a strip of leather looped around an iron buckle from the pouches around my belt. I tapped the component to my forehead, then over my heart, then on top of my gut.

The last of my ether surged out of me, layering into arcane armor.

That would have to be enough.

I straightened and stepped around the corner.

“Wow,” I said. “I had heard that the Dreki family was nothing without their bloodline, but to see it in action?”

The entire deck practically whipped their heads around to stare at me.

“What did you say?” the Dreki woman said, her voice deadly sharp and serious.

I waved my hand lazily at her.

“Oh, come on. You couldn’t even kill someone without billowing as much smoke as a smith’s forge.”

She exploded across the space between us, trailing smoke as she did, and her hand lashed out, ready to rip the heart right out of my chest.

It slammed into the first shield and shattered it, continuing its momentum to smash through the second, at which point it slowed, barely breaking through the third, and then, finally, cracked against his armor.

“Kill me with your bloodline and it just proves me right,” I spat out in the second it bought me. The Dreki had pulled her hand back to strike again and kill me, but froze.

“If you kill me with your bloodline, you’re just proving me right, that the Dreki family is nothing without it,” I repeated.

“Yeah, well… You cheated. Your magic stopped me from killing you.”

Given the fact I was out of ether, her words actually relieved me, but I didn’t allow a hint of it to show on my false face.

“Fair point. So how about a duel? You suppress your bloodline. I don’t use magic.”

The woman paused, considering it, and I begged that she was just as much of a victim to pride as the rest of my family – myself included.

“Fine. A fight till one of us is knocked overboard, killed, blacks out, or surrenders. If you win, I’ll let your ship go through the blockade, with only handing over a thousand silver from the ship’s cargo. If I win… I own the ship and everything on it.”

“Owned for ten years, and it’s a deal,” the new captain interjected from the sidelines.

“And if you’re forced to use your bloodline power, it counts as a win for me,” I added.

“Hmmm. Most of you humans will be ugly in ten years, and you’ll stop being in prime work condition. Fine.”

She gave me a wide, maniacal smile.

“What’s your name? I’m Greta Dreki.”

“Alastor Sinclair, graduate of the Sinclair sword school” I said, lying confidently. That was an actual sword school, and I’d briefly been taught by one of its members during a teenage tryst, but I was certainly no master of their style. My sword fighting experience came from time on the road, defending myself, not from any great mastery.

Greta turned and snapped.

“Swords.”

Immediately, one of her retinue began moving, shifting around and heading back to their own boat. I acted up my role, pausing and stuttering slightly.

“Right now?”

“Of course,” she said, her smirk clearly indicating that she thought this would be a breeze.

One of her attendants, a pretty woman who definitely had a drop of something inhuman in her – angelus, maybe? – hurried forwards and presented a pair of swords. They were standard Dreki military blades, and I picked it up, spinning it gently in my hands. Greta mirrored my motion, and people cleared away, giving us a space on the deck.

I watched her movements as she started circling me, her power suppressed, and I felt a touch of confidence enter me.

Greta was still moving faster and more fluidly than a normal human, but so was I. But her motions weren't as smooth and clean as they had been before.

Greta was used to having her bloodline power freely running through her, even if she wasn’t actively fueling any of the abilities it bestowed. She wasn’t entirely certain of how much, or how little, strength she was actually working with.

I, on the other hand, had kept my bloodline suppressed for the better part of a decade. I knew exactly where my limits were, and how much strength I could exert without needing to let its power flow through me or actively drawing on it.

Greta darted forwards, stumbling slightly when she didn’t move as fast as she expected, and a moment flashed before me. I could put my sword through her eye, and even with the strength of our mutual bloodline, while she was suppressed like this, it would kill her. That was one of the conditions of winning.

But if there were any other Dreki in the other ships, subordinates, friends, or allies, they might turn around and kill me, rather than accept the deal that had been made.

I lunged in anyways, but allowed her to evade the strike before it landed in her eye.

I had to play this carefully. I had to win, obviously, but if I won too easily or through a killing blow, the other Dreki family or servants might attack me, hunt me down, or put a bounty on my head. But I still had to win, and it had to be through skill, not luck.

I flicked my blade to knock her attack to the side, then stepped into her guard, driving the sword at her at a speed just barely within normal human limits. That proved to be an error as she lashed out with a palm-strike, sending me back several steps, and I was forced to shed several more blows from her sword.

I couldn’t let her do that, either. If I won by anything that could be seen as a trick, or not a clear win, then she could claim I was cheating or use the excuse to unleash her bloodline powers onto me.

I let myself speed up a bit as I shed four of her rapid strikes, then counterattacked with a series of quick jabs, which she barely blocked.

“You’re better… than I expected…” she said, sweat forming on her brow as she danced back.

“Perhaps my words were rash,” I said as I spun out of the way of her powerful lunging blow. “The Dreki family clearly trained you well. There is more than just your bloodline. But I am still better.”

She growled and performed another lunge, this one relying on strength she didn’t have. I swept her foot out from under her, then stomped down on her chest, blade at her throat.

“Surrender,” I said.

She threw her sword at me, but to her credit, there was no smoke or hint of bloodline power in it. I dodged slightly to the side, and she used it to shift and throw my foot off her, then she leapt at me, trying to tackle me to the ground.

I threw my sword to the side and met her in a rush, intentionally letting her push me back with her strength, since if I matched her, it would become far too apparent that I had a bloodline that enhanced my strength of some sort, much more so than just exchanging sword blows.

Strength boosting bloodlines were a dime a dozen, and even many people who thought they were purely mundane had a weak amount of a bloodline like that, but it was still too much of a risk.

Rather, I let her push me back and dodged a few blows, until she overextended again, then I struck, landing a blow with just a whisper more force than she would expect me to have against her side.

When she lost her footing, unable to rely on preternatural grace to steady herself, I pressed the advantage, layering blows to her temple, which would have dropped and possibly killed a human.

My first strike didn’t get her to surrender, but by the fifth, she staggered back.

“Fine! I surrender.”

She took in a ragged breath, and smoke rolled off of her. For a moment, I was afraid that she was going to attack, deal or no deal, but instead she used it to enforce her voice, and bellowed out.

“Let it not be said that the Dreki family is without honor! I have been challenged and learned there is more to learn in the art of sword and fist. Turn over the pittance of a fortune, and we will allow you to sail in peace.”

I practically sagged in relief.