Meeting Fish was a true fluke. It was a dreary day at the start of the summer. Revel was nearly broke, at the end of a long string of snubbings. In the whole Quartiere, only El Sha La was on his side, but he’d sooner die than ask her for a loan.

That morning, he attempted to collect a small debt from an old friend in the Mercant. Without a name, Revel could not enforce payment, and his former friend knew it. Just as the door slammed in Revel’s face, it began to rain.

Sodden, he plodded down the slanted streets of the Fringe with a vague plan to throw himself into the bay. The maudlin thoughts were interrupted by trouble ahead. From behind an overturned oxcart, a crew of stewed hooligans tossed onions at passersby.

What a relief!

Revel’s hand shot to his sword. He could scarcely wait to wade in and beat the stuffing out of the ruffians. Then, he remembered, he was not the watchmaster any longer. The Guarda Mercanta would not heed his call. Ten thugs against one nameless, friendless wretch. All he could do was slink across the street to avoid them.

As he did, Revel noticed a hooded stranger shuffling toward the danger.

“Watch out, old man,” Revel warned.

“Fuck off, young dunce,” the drunk snapped back. Rain ran off his hood. Beneath, his gray eyes blazed with wrath. Revel had never met the man, but he guessed this must be Fish the Drifter. The old man was reputed to be a brutal fighter. The watchmen knew him well, he was in some new, bloody dispute every week.

Revel swallowed the insult, held his tongue, and slowed his step. All the better to watch the rotten old geezer take the pelting he so richly deserved. Fish approached the cart. The thugs threw a salvo of onions, and all missed. Fish threw back his cloak and drew a rapier.

“Come and get stung, cowards!” Fish challenged.

The rowdies roared with laughter. There were ten of them under the awning. Four drew swords and sauntered out to meet Fish. They’d been waiting for this.

Revel drew his own blade and dashed forward. Rude as he’d been, Revel couldn’t let this Fish get carved up four to one. Before Revel could close the distance, Fish was on them, a steel blur in the rain. Fish danced around their clumsy slashes and jabbed again and again. His point dipped past parries and slipped through ribs.

The first man dropped, pierced in three places. The second fell swiftly after. The third dropped his sword and clutched at a slashed throat. The fourth turned and ran. Fish lunged and ran him through like an hors d’oeuvre. The whole thing took ten seconds. The rest cried out and ran off into the rain. They left their friends to bleed out in the street.

“Thought so,” Fish said. He bent over each dying man, slit his throat, and went through his coat. Revel realized this was his plan all along.

“Sir!” Revel cried.

“You, too?” Fish raised his sword when he saw Revel’s blade was out.

“No!”

“Stop gawking, then. It’s their fault. They threw first.”

“Sir! Will you teach me how to fight like that?”

“Pah! No. You weren’t much help to me there.”

“I meant to aid you. Please. There are assassins after me. I want to fight like that.”

Fish jutted his lip and considered it.

“Help me roll this fat fucker over,” he ordered. It was the big man he’d skewered as he ran, right through the heart. Revel helped flip him over, and Fish rifled his pockets.

“Can you pay?” Fish asked.

“Of course. Just not immediately.”

“Hah! No. Do you know how to row?”

“Row? Like a boat?”

“No, like caviar. Of course, a boat, you oaf. Can you work a set of oars or not?”

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“Of course, I can.”

“Then, you’ll do. Meet me at the Gray Quay at dawn. Come ready to labor for your lessons. If you make me wait, you’ll share their fate.” Fish pointed at the four corpses.

Revel was there well before dawn. He regretted it almost immediately. Fish’s labor turned out to be an all-day, back-breaking tribulation. True to his name, Fish spent all day casting his line while Revel rowed his leaky dinghy all over Moriccone Bay. It was two hours of hard rowing from the sun-silvered docks of Tinkerton to the crab-infested Pelikle Archipelago.

Fish kept him hopping. Revel tried to ask him questions, but the drifter only stared at him as if he was an idiot. As the day waned, Revel began to wonder if the whole thing was a lark. At last, Fish directed Revel to row over to a bare atoll ringed with shoals.

Revel had no clue how he would come to loathe that accursed stretch of sand.

Their first lesson began. Revel found his arms were spent; he could barely raise the training blade. Vicious Fish set upon Revel like a wolf on a lamed sheep. Revel was struck for every slip and bruised for every blunder. When the lesson ended, he was contused from head to toe. Fish still made him row the whole way home.

It went on that way all summer. Every morning, he crept to the docks, suspecting a knife in every shadow. Every day, Revel worked the oars like a galley slave. Fish never helped. When he wasn’t fishing, he leaned idle against the bow and looked out to the deep lake, lost in thought. The only time he moved was to step onto the shoals so Revel could lug the wretched skiff over. They moved all over the reefs in search of the glittering vents where gelten eel laired.

It took all afternoon to hook one of the wily bastards. The gold-flecked flesh fetched a princely price in the Mercant. The money fell to Fish, the gutting, scaling, and rowing home fell on Revel. He ended each day blistered, burnt, and battered.

As the summer burned on, Revel swallowed his pride a hundred times. Before the duel, he’d never truly lost in his life. Now, every day was a new defeat. All the strength and stamina he gained didn’t matter, he couldn’t hit Fish. After three months of sweat and suffering, Revel still lost every exchange. The old man fought like a fiend from Hell.

Still, he was on the dock before dawn, every day. He learned never to talk back, never to question. There was only one response the old man would accept.

“Again,” Revel said.

They set to for another try. To anyone watching, it would have seemed a comical mismatch. Revel V Ramos was a head taller and a hundred pounds heavier than his adversary. He was educated and literate. Even his smile was white and perfect, a rich man’s mouth. He wasn’t smiling now.

Sweat ran from Revel’s brow in rivers as Fish backed him toward the shore. There was no shade on this desolate spit of sand. Fish was maneuvering to get the sun in his eyes again. Revel improvised a half-step feint and tried to get under Fish’s guard.

Fish was never fooled. He drove the dull training rapier right into the bruise he’d left on Revel’s thigh the try before.

“Open your eyes! Wake up! The stroke that kills is the one you don’t see coming. Strike fast, strike first!”

Fish had a hundred maxims on swordplay and Revel had heard each a hundred times. Every other word out of his crooked grin was an admonishment or an insult. No one had ever dared to speak to Revel this way. And no one had ever beaten him so badly at anything. At last, he’d had it. His temper broke, and he threw the dull blade aside.

“That touch is nothing! It wouldn’t pierce armor. You’d be wide open after. I could take your head off!” Revel shouted.

Fish didn’t flinch.

“Oh? My mistake. Didn’t realize you had armor on.”

Fish’s shoulder twitched. Revel ducked, expecting a clout from the pommel. Instead, Fish’s boot shot up and kicked him square in the stones. Revel keeled over and curled into a tight ball of misery.

That lakey gray bastard!

Fish loomed over him and laughed.

“Might want to adjust your armor. Codpiece is on wrong.”

Revel spit out sand.

“I’ll kill you!” he hissed.

The mariner’s grin evaporated. The dull point was suddenly an inch from the tip of Revel’s nose.

“Did you just threaten my life?”

“I-I didn’t mean it,” Revel coughed.

“That’s a relief. Had you meant it, I’d have to defend myself. Afterward, I’d row off and leave you stranded upon this sorry isle.”

Revel held his breath. The old man’s eyes never left him. They were cold and uncaring, an inane gray. There was no telling what he would do.

Fish drew the dull rapier back and kicked sand in Revel’s face.

“How long would you last? No food, no shelter. Not many come out this far. Ship to Khaz was yesterday, and there won’t be another for a week. I think you’d be done in a day. Maybe that horse-faced sorceress you’re screwing will beg her wizard daddy to come rescue you.”

Revel flushed with fury. Fish stared back, daring him to speak.

“Arath isn’t even back yet, is he?”

“No,” Revel croaked.

“You know what’s coming, don’t you? When Arath’s done mopping up your mess in Terhaljatan? He’s bound to find out the duke’s disgrace spent all summer despoiling his stuck-up daughter. Ten-to-two, he turns you inside-out. What do you think about that, you cocksucking, kick-ducking shant?”

Revel clenched his jaw. There was nothing he could do but take it. Fish laughed at his own wit.

“Kick-ducker! That’s rich. Wait ‘til I tell the boys back at the bar about this. The Most High smiles upon you today, wretch. I’ll spare your worthless life. But you won’t forget this, will you? Never threaten me again until you’re ready to kill me or die yourself.”

“I won’t forget,” Revel promised.

A cloud stole the sun, and a cold wind blew. Sparring was through. They climbed back into the boat. Revel’s bits were so battered he could barely sit. He set off toward the vents, but Fish stopped him.

“No fishing tonight, and no rowin’ on the ‘morrow. Head back on the double. Shipbreaker’s brewing.”

A chevron of lakebirds flew overhead, bound inland. Out in the west, the horizon grew grim. Revel turned south and dug in his oars to bring them home. He winced with every stroke.