The clouds had parted during the raid, and now a silver moon hung in the sky, mirrored on the black waves. Araam’s raedrs greeted him with proud gazes as he climbed aboard his ship.

“Come about,” Araam ordered as if he were not about to burst apart at the seams. “Full canvas home.”

As the men set to work, Araam listened to Ruell’s report of the battle abovedeck. Then the plunder had to be inspected and each sword taken declared as belonging to the man who had won it. Thankfully, there were no disputed prizes that night to slow the proceedings. After a quick check of the stars to make certain of their heading, Araam dispersed the pearls from the bride’s bribery among Mehet’s new crew.

Finally, with the last of the ship’s business handled, Araam turned the helm over to Uelaat and went below in search of his wife.

Raiding ships like Haelbringr were not meant for the long-term berth of a full crew, and so did not have a crew quarters. Raedrs kept permanent cabins on their tribe’s greatships. The raed commander and his wife alone lived on the smallship.

Araam found Mehet in the cabin, inspecting her new home.

He stopped on the threshold. The breath stuck in his lungs.

She was turned away from him. She’d changed from her wet wedding garments into the daily silks of a chieftainess, but she had yet to re-cover her face and head.

Even sodden and bedraggled by the swim, her hair was the color of a late summer sun. The women of Araam’s tribe could hardly dream of a gold so pure to craft. It seemed to fill every inch of the cabin, to edge out her new loom and push back the desk and his cases of charts and books, to consume and reflect the light from the stormlamp she’d lit.

Where Raen women were known for their goldsmithing, Mehet’s tribeswomen were weavers. Most of the silks and linens that he had stocked had probably come from the Hael in the first place, so those were sure to meet with her approval. As they were going into winter, however, he’d also added several of the best furs he’d taken in his childhood raids.

She ran a long-fingered hand over their softness, still not facing him, though she must have heard the cabin door open.

Araam swallowed. When he had taken them, he thought those furs were a treasure; now he wasn’t so certain. He’d been a child then. His immature ideas of wealth might have led him to see pearl dust where there was only white sand.

He stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind him.

“Is Haelbringr to your liking?” he asked. If not, he would rebuild her. It wasn’t unheard of for a raed commander to reconstruct the entire ship if his new wife found it lacking. At the moment, that seemed like a meager price to pay to please his bride.

“She is a vessel well worthy of the ocean,” Mehet said.

“But is she worthy of her mistress?”

Mehet turned, her face lit with a smile.

She was more beautiful than he had imagined. High, proud cheekbones kissed gold by the sun; thick, dark lips; teeth as white as a coconut heart. The thin gold nose chain he’d sent as a betrothal promise dangled from one delicate nostril to the shell of her ear.

Until Mehet replied, Araam had forgotten he’d asked her a question.

“The vessel is as worthy as the man who built her, but sporting considerably more finery than he does.” The golden chain swayed against her cheek when she spoke, and her brilliant teal eyes sparkled as she studied him.

Araam had a vague idea what he looked like, having spied himself in calm waters and in his mother’s silvered mirror when he was a child. He remembered gray-green eyes, sandy brown hair streaked lighter in places by sun and salt, and lately, brown whiskers that had yet to spread past his upper lip and chin.

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He had never given much thought to these features, but suppose she approved of the ship and not of its raed commander?

Mehet smoothed a hand over the breast of his drying roughspun shirt. Practical clothing for building a ship or leading a raid, but perhaps not for welcoming home a beautiful woman accustomed to the finest ornamentation.

She reached up and touched the hair he had only recently been allowed to start growing out. Her finger traced the gold rings piercing the top of his ear, each lovingly crafted by his mother. One for his naming, one for his first successful navigation, one for his first raid. When they returned to the greatship and he presented his wife, his mother would add the fourth ring, signifying his first successful command.

Araam had dreamed of earning this earring since childhood, but a few simple trinkets of braided gold must look like nothing to a daughter of the Hael, where the men decorated themselves as gaudily as the women and jingled with every breeze.

“A wife has much influence over her husband’s dress and bearing,” he said. “A woman as gifted as the one who wove Haelbringr’s sails could easily improve a man to her liking.”

“If I had wanted a decorative husband, I would have married within my own tribe.” She rubbed her thumb over his chin, testing the rasp of his whiskers. “It was a raedr I sought and a raedr I caught.”

Alone with his wife, in the privacy of their quarters, it was acceptable to show a small measure of the joy billowing through his soul. Grinning, he swept her from the floor and pressed his lips to hers.

***

“Raen greatship on the horizon!”

The cry brought man and wife reluctantly from below.

Among the Ocean Rovers, it was the duty of every raed commander’s wife to assess the vessels they approached, whether for war or profit, and Mehet did so with an eye as quick and clever as her weaver’s fingers.

The night had cleared enough to give her a superb view of the greatship’s soaring sextuple masts, powerful bowsprit rammer, and handsome trailboard. In the storm season, the greatship and her crew would rest at Cryst’holm, that great floating refuge. During the raiding season, as it was now, the massive vessel housed the Raen tribe’s raedrs, and if they were childless or their children were grown, their wives as well. A raedr never sailed without his woman if he could help it.

The waters surrounding the greatship were populated by twenty… thirty… forty… forty-two smallships laying by. Forty-three counting Haelbringr. Even assuming that some vessels were absent on other raids, they well outnumbered her tribe’s two dozen auxiliary crafts, but none were as dark, sleek, or beautiful as the predator she stood aboard, the ship outfitted with sheets she’d woven herself.

Mehet realized that, out of habit, she had called the Hael her tribe. She was Raen now. The Raen’s ships were her ships, their plunder was her plunder. Beneath her silken scarves, she smiled. She had chosen a husband who would one day command this formidable fleet. On that day, she would become Mehet, Chieftainess of the Raen, First Tribe of the Ocean Rovers.

All this passed through her thoughts in an instant.

It was not until the next moment that she saw the unseasonable storm clouds rolling in from the direction of the land.

She frowned. Those clouds were not clouds. They raced against the wind, toward the Raen fleet, a wall of black smoke, devoid of lightning or billow.

“Raed Commander, silence your men,” she said, gripping his arm.

Araam signed the order. The shouts of men bringing them to the field of smallships turned seamlessly to gestures. Half the crew continued their work, while the other half stood with weapons ready, watching the advancing wall of smoke.

Through the veil of perfumed silk, Mehet smelled a stench that pushed back the clean salt breeze. The wrinkling of her husband’s nose said he’d caught a whiff of the same stink. Filth. Blood.

Dirters.

Araam read the signals as she gave them. Unnatural. Danger. Blood magic.

Wasting no time, Araam drew his cutlass and signaled to his helmsman to guide Haelbringr wide of the greatship. The dirters would focus their efforts on the largest target, and when they did, the smallships would tear them apart from the flanks. He sent four raedrs plunging overboard to fan out and spread the word of the attack through the fleet.

Mehet grabbed Araam’s sleeve and pulled him back to look at her signals.

This attack had none of the marks of the chaser ships the dirters sent after them along the coast. They were well into Raen waters, where none of the land-loving blood drinkers dared to stray.

Mehet gestured to the coming cloud of black. It stretched from one horizon to the other and was quickly cinching inward like a looped thread pulling tight. This was magic on a scale not leveled against them since that legendary era when the Twelfth Tribe was lost.

Araam pressed the hilt of his swordbreaker into her palm until, bewildered, she took it.

We are Raen, he told her. We do not fear death or dirters.

The First Tribe held the most dangerous waters as their territory for a reason. The blood drinkers had long ago given up any hope of ever stomping out the Ocean Rovers because of the Raen’s mighty warriors. Renewed warfare was the dirters’ folly.

We are Raen, he had said.

We.

It was a raedr she had sought, and a raedr she had caught—and so, a raedr’s wife she must be.

Mehet released her husband, switching the swordbreaker into her non-signing hand, and gave him a silent command to send the dirters to the ocean floor.