“Myrrir, you are in no shape to enter a tournament.”

Myrrir paced back and forth across the afterdeck of his ship, trying to think of solutions. His first mate, Tye, leaned against the railing.

The Skyclash Tournament could be exactly what Myrrir needed. Even if he didn’t win, there were prizes for nearly everyone in the top thirty contestants—between magical treasures and elixirs and pills, he was nearly guaranteed something useful.

Most importantly, he could prove his strength. All the Gods would be watching, and that included his father.

“I am in perfect shape!” Myrrir snapped. He stopped pacing just beside his ship’s—the Hyovao, an old pirate junk—mizzenmast. The gossamyr sail fluttered overhead and Stream water rushed past, and he had to yell so his first mate could hear him. But not just so. “Tye, I regressed. When they examine my spirit, I’ll appear as a Captain. They’ll let me into the tournament.”

“That is exactly what I’m worried about.” Tye stood up and placed a hand on Myrrir’s shoulder. “Between the spiritual damage from Nathariel’s attacks and the shame of your continued failures, your spirit is unstable. And how about your soul?”

Admittedly, his jump between Captain and Commodore had been rushed. And…it would be the perfect excuse. “It’s just because my last advancement was unsteady. I have my spirit under control, and no more Arcara is burning away.”

“You have six months until registration for the tournament begins,” Tye said. “And we have much work to do if we want to keep moving.” He began to strike the palm of his hand with his finger. “More than half of the crew is dead, and the ship needs repairs. We are sailing at a quarter of our normal Streamrunning speed. If we keep this up, the fins will fall off, and we’ll be even slower. We need to stop and recover.” He stopped tapping his hand and walked past Myrrir. “Your spirit is still burnt, Myrrir. You need to recover as well.”

Myrrir shut his eyes and examined his channels—for what felt like the hundredth time this past few weeks. His channels felt like they were clogged with ash when he tried to cycle, and everything stung still.

“You’re not a God-heir,” Myrrir commented, taken aback by the correctness of Tye’s comment. “How do you know?”

“I don’t need to be a God-heir to know that having your Arcara channels set aflame by an Admiral will leave lasting damage,” Tye said. “But you don’t hide everything as well as you think you do.”

Myrrir sighed. “I see.” He turned around and followed Tye down the afterdeck stairs to the quarterdeck. “I would ask what business of yours it is, but I doubt that would matter.”

“I do care, Myrrir,” Tye said as they walked across the quarterdeck. The coxswains held tight to the ship’s tiller, but they had long black bags under their eyes. The entire crew had to work double shifts just to keep the ship seaworthy.

Myrrir and Tye took the next flight of stairs down to the main deck—where they would be most useful. Myrrir could help with repairs and give the mainmast a little bracing with gunpowder.

“I had a daughter once,” Tye said. “She died in a bluecoat raid, and I couldn’t stop it.”

“I’m not a very good replacement child.” There was no point in dodging the matter.

“I’ve known you for half my life,” Tye said. “A father doesn’t give up.”

“And I’ve known you for just over a tenth of my life,” Myrrir replied. “You’re not my father, no matter how much you might fancy yourself as one.”

“You saved my life.”

Myrrir shut his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That was a non-sequitur.” But he didn’t open his eyes again.

For a brief instant, he stood in the hall of Piratedeep, presenting the captured crew of the Hyovao—a ship of a rebellious pirate clan—to his father. A memory. He had just advanced to Captain, and as was tradition for those on his Path, he had been sent to capture a ship for himself.

He had begged his father to spare the crew and let him command them. He hadn’t used that wording, though.

“It would be a more suitable punishment,” Myrrir had said. “Let them suffer with the agony of serving under the pirate who bested them. And I will make it agony.”

His father had agreed.

Since that day, most of the crew had been killed or replaced, but Tye and a few others still remained.

“You did make it agonizing,” Tye said, wrenching Myrrir out of his own mind. Myrrir’s eyes snapped open. “But not in the way you think.”

Myrrir snapped, “I’m glad I kept my promise.” He didn’t try to recall the venom from his voice; there was no point.

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“If you hadn’t, I’d be dead,” Tye said. “In that way, I owe you a life debt.”

Myrrir pulled the plug off his powder flask and cycled his Arcara. He drew the gunpowder out of the pouch, then wrapped it around the damaged base of the mainmast. The wood groaned for a second, but then the mast stopped creaking and swaying.

His spirit groaned even worse. Empty pain spread every time he clenched his gut, and it flared whenever he inhaled. It felt like it came from inside his bones, no matter how much he knew that to be untrue.

But he held the technique.

“Full sail!” he called. “She can hold for a few hours, and it’ll give us a little more distance.”

“Myrrir, where are we heading?” Tye whispered. His tone was unusually harsh.

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Somewhere out of the way.”

Myrrir suspected that the question had a few more layers than that, but he didn’t want to think about it deeply.

“I don’t envy the position of a God-heir, trying to come to terms with every mortal they have ever known dying and disappearing. It’s no wonder some of them end up like your father—or grandfather, for that matter. But you’re not gone yet.”

“That sounds like a man coping with his mortality.”

“Why should I be upset? I would never have been immortal, no matter what.”

Myrrir growled under his breath and clenched his teeth. Another surge of pain blasted through his spirit. He should have been stronger, but the conversation wasn’t helping. It was time to redirect. “You’re making my life harder—hardly making good on your life debt.”

“What ‘helps you the most’ isn’t necessarily what you want to hear.”

“You—” Myrrir cut himself off before he lashed out. “You are frustrating me a great deal, Tye. I would strongly advise you to pick your next words very carefully.”

“When we met, you were a brother to me. Now, you could be my son by appearances alone.” Tye took a few steps back, until he was standing well behind Myrrir. “But I will be whatever you need me to be—and maybe that’s just a first mate. I advise you to rest and recover in safety. There is a star system just east of here, which I know very well, where we could rest and repair the ship.”

“Alright.” Myrrir nodded. “Set the charts and turn the ship.”

“Very good, sir.” Tye dipped his head and clomped his feet together, then spun and marched back to the quarterdeck. “Soon, sir, you will have a path forwards.”

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_2bcdeab6626a49c1bc2fa21d230a67c6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_560,h_281,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/ship%20better.png]

The Hyovao arrived at the Kamoro system a day later. Everything about it was plain and unassuming. Five planets, with only one inhabitable. The inhabitable one was average in all respects: biomes of all sorts, and vast salty oceans. In the end, the planet was an uninteresting ball of blues and greens and tans blooming on the edge of the Stream.

The Hyovao descended down to the surface as fast as it could. They never got fast enough to risk setting the prow aflame—that was the last thing they needed.

Myrrir climbed up the quarterdeck stairs as they descended. He met Tye at the top. “What’s with this world, then?” he asked.

“It was where I grew up,” Tye answered, holding a map up to the coxswain and tapping the corner. “As an inconsequential planet along the Line of Battle, it happens to have only one branch of the Stream connecting to it, and from the Elderworld side. There’s never been much fighting here, and there’s only a small bluecoat garrison. It’s the best you’ll find in lightyears.”

“Your entire old crew came from here, too?”

“Not all of them, but most of them. We joined the Redband Pirate Clan after we had enough men. My old captain was one of the Moro-Ka Warriors, and that jade sword”—Tye tilted his head to the blade hanging at Myrrir’s hip—“is a traditional weapon of theirs.”

Myrrir had taken the sword from the old captain. It lined up.

As they spoke, the Hyovao broke through the atmosphere. Moisture clung to the sails and railings, making the deck slippery, but Myrrir widened his stance, making himself unshakable. “Tye, what happened to your daughter?”

“A bluecoat killed her.”

“That’s it…?”

“That’s it.” Tye set down his map. “She went to the city on Teros, a nearby system, looking for a life of wealth and glory. On the first day, a bluecoat decided she had looked at him the wrong way. Or so I was told. Perhaps there were more gruesome details that my old captain sought to spare me from.”

“I’m sorry, Tye.” Maybe that would make up for his snappiness the day before.

“You have bigger things to be sorry about.”

Myrrir snorted. “Alright, then.” He crossed his arm. “Your homeworld? Think you can show us some places to get wood and patch the hull? Maybe some more gossamyr and cotton to repair the sheets?”

“If you’ve got money.”

They were short on that, of course. Between hiring bounty hunters and previous repairs, and supplies and munitions? Their gold was running awfully low. He briefly entertained the idea of piracy, but in the state they were in, they couldn’t go starting fights.

“That Moro-Ka sword of yours is called a Jai,” Tye said. “It will fetch a pretty price here, if any of the locals still know its significance.”

With a gasp, Myrrir stepped back. “It was the first blade I ever captured, from the commander of the first ship I ever captured. To give it up would be a great dishonour to my entire family. Or at least, my lineage, depending on how Stellacovan code would see it.”

“Then we’re in a bit of a bind, aren’t we?”

Myrrir ran his hand along the ring-shaped pommel of the sword. The Hyovao slid into the planetary sea gently, and now, it approached an enormous archipelago of islands. From the upper atmosphere, they had seemed much smaller than they did now. They filled the horizon like a new landmass. Snow-capped mountains lined the shore, as did thick pine forests.

“Just take us in to the port,” Myrrir said. “I’ll figure out the rest when we reach the shore.”

“Remember, Myrrir,” Tye said. “You are not as strong as you’re used to.”

“I’m not going to start any fights.” He set his hand on the pommel of his sword. “But I won’t lose if someone else starts one.”