The lightning forked into at least thirty branches as it reached out from the darkly roiling heavens to shatter the forward port mast of the Kestrel.
None of the hydra-like lapping tongues of destruction ever made contact with the rigging of the Kestrel, however. Kette stood on the deck of the swaying ship, blind to most of the world about her as she kept her eyes closed and concentrated upon the flowing energies that moved over and through the ship as it made its way through the raging storm.
Three officers stood at the prow near her, their hands clasping one another and the railing of the ship as they did the difficult work of Smoothing the ship’s motions through the waves and keeping the great hulk slicing along the rough waters off of the coast of Blasilma. Mate Kette had been tasked by the captain with keeping the lightning from destroying the rigging, and errant wind gusts from diverting the beautiful ship from its course.
At shouted commands occasional sailors scampered from one mast to the next securing lines, trimming the sails, and ensuring the safety lines tied to various officers were secure.
The first time she had served on the deck during a storm like this one, she had thrown up all of her lunch, and most of what she had eaten in the previous year by her own estimation. It had been her first time getting sick aboard the Kestrel, and she had burned with the shame of it for a full day before she had noticed that the crew members who had up to that point been holding her at arms distance, or in some cases being openly hostile toward her, now treated her as a respected member of the crew.
Some had begun treating Kette like a part of the family now. She hadn’t been certain of how to take this shift in their behavior, until the tall, sharp featured Marine Privateer, Captain Rahl, had told her that she had been “too perfect” up to that point.
“What?” Kette had spluttered her tea at his remark.
“The crew, any crew, like to know you are human. New people who are too good at their jobs are looked at with suspicion.” He smiled broadly at her around his morning cup of tea as they had sat across from one another in the galley. “You come here from who knows where, and you are the BEST at everything!” He laughed then, a rich, rolling sound that made his scarred Ocre face look more handsome than dangerous. “There are too many dangerous tales of agents from hostile nations being sent to infiltrate a ship, and then dragging the crew into slavery in Selmet, or Kharrit.”
Kette had been gobsmacked by the very idea. She knew Selmet had a slave economy, and anyone with the Talent was chained at best, and made into one of the mindless Horva slaves, and sold off to foreign armies to use as weapons. She had not known that Kharrit had the same reputation, though.
It must have shown on her face, because the imposing form of Captain Rahl let loose a belly laugh loud enough to make Mate Hoggart look up grumpily from where he rolled out another batch of his biscuits. The man hated hardtack for all his worth, and tried to keep from ever breaking the seals on a single barrel of the hard, dry, torturous things. “Kharrit sells more of its children to slavers in other countries than it sometimes actually has. Anyone not a Piincar found in one of its cities that cannot afford protection will often find themselves waking up in the hull of a ‘trader’ with a chain about their neck.” He paused a moment, looking down at the young woman. “You are mixed. Not a ‘pure Piincar.’ You would be sold off as soon as someone thought they could take you prisoner.”
In the bitter cold of the driving rain that sluiced from her face where she stood on deck, Kette smiled at the memory. They had both laughed at the idea of someone with as strong a Talent as hers being ‘taken’ by anyone.
The next peel of thunder assaulted her from the south, rolling across the deck of the elegant ship in a set of triple waves of deeply thrumming vibrations. Kette could feel the center of the storm moving slowly to the south of their path, and slightly behind to the east.
They had fought this storm for six hours now, and with this latest thunder crack, Kette sent her thoughts out into the turbulence of the tempest to assure herself that the Kestrel had finally come through the battering beast of ill weather. While watching the roiling heart of the storm churn from the inside, she turned away several more lances of lightning where it had darted down to the deck of the ship or tried to dance in its rigging. Each attempt was sent around the ship to the surface of the sea in a halo of destructive blue-white light.
With her Talent and an effort of Will she felt up through the aether as the energies danced, and triwled, and swirled about the storm, and when Kette noticed that deadly tug, that hint of pressure moving toward the Kestrel, she would then twine her will around that spike, and draw the deadly lance of electric force down to the sea beyond the bounds of the deck of the Kestrel. Some moments the lightning came down in such profusion, the ship almost looked like it was traveling in a grand corridor made from the anger of the Heavens themselves.
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It made her wonder how Six was doing. He had been a master of Galvanic spells. Well, he had been a master of any destructive spells, really. But, it was training with him that had made her the perfect Talent to ward off lightning strikes during this storm.
The Kestrel’s Captain, Nahvi, had tested her several times on redirecting Galvanic attacks since she had become an officer, and now she had spent two solid Bells on deck during a raging blow defending the lives of the crew and the body of the Kestrel from harm.
She wanted a hot tea, maybe some warm bread, and to sleep.
For at least until the New Moon rose in a twelve-day.
At the last Bell, a mate had come along the deck, and clumsily pushed a thin necked bottle of hot, bitter tea into her hands. She had downed it in a single go. Then she had held out the bottle, which the mate had taken, and they had shoved a waxed cloth with a warm bun in it. She had, without opening her eyes nor breaking her concentration, wolfed down the warm, meat and cabbage filled bun, and held out the empty wax-cloth for the mate to take with them along with the empty bottle.
Captain Nahvi had come by not long after on his way to the triad of officers working to Smooth the Way for the Kestrel. He had made certain she was able to continue, and then briskly moved on to his next task.
Back into her own head, she shook herself at the effort the Delving had taken. Then, in a strident voice, she called out to the deck crew, “ALL AWARE! ALL AWARE!! STORM IS NOW MOVING SOUTH AND EAST!”
She waited three beats.
“ALL AWARE! ALL AWARE!! STORM IS NOW MOVING SOUTH AND EAST!”
As she stood, mind solidly on her task of deflecting the lightning, she could hear her call taken up by the deck crew, before it was called back from the Wheel.
“Northwest Heading! Aye Aye!” The call came back down the deck in the joint voices of Captain Nahvi and the Navigator, Ghillit Kamar. Like Nahvi, Kamar was a dark skinned Ocre man, though much older, and stooped with age to the point where some days Kette had been shocked the old man could stand a watch, he looked so frail.
Kamar had a daughter who Kette could see walking on the fo'castle, straightening lines.
His daughter, Dowden, worked aboard, and often worked the same Bell rotation as her father. It may have been because of her father’s frail figure that she was often nearby.
Some on board said she was being groomed to replace her father as the ship’s navigator, but having talked to her on several occasions, Kette was dubious. Like her father, Dowden had a spark of the Talent. Like her father, she was well trained in piloting the Kestrel.
Unlike her father, the woman didn’t seem to take any joy in her work here on the Kestrel. She got on well enough with the crew. She got on well enough with the hired marines, even. But, and Kette was just guessing by the woman’s actions and attitude, her heart wasn’t here.
Talking to her one night after a shared duty rotation, Dowden had been amazed that Kette had come from (a lie Kette had used based on her looks and her ability to speak the tongue) the exotic and magical northern Kingdom of Kjolte.
Kette had assured her that the small coastal town she had lived in was nothing compared to any of the ports they had visited so far on their trading voyage. But the young woman couldn’t hear her as Kette described the life of a poor girl living in a small fishing village. Ketter had stolen much of the details of her supposed early life from a book one of the infantry officers had let her borrow three years prior.
Still, her eyes lit up with the idea of living in a house that didn’t “rock to every breeze, and dip madly whenever the waves get bad.”
Kette had heard the phrase “The Next Port is Always the Better One” many times since coming aboard. Dowden, it seemed, lived this idea.
She could feel the storm moving rapidly away, even as the Kestrel majestically swung her prow toward the landmass to the northwest. Nahvi had negotiated a very lucrative set of contracts to transport goods and few people, a group or traders, between the port city of Yhod in Jheddo and the port of Socar in Hamuria. And now they were on their second trip from Socar back to Yhod, their hold packed to the ribs with bulging sacks of grain and broad barrels of dried fruit from somewhere in central Hamuria.
The Jheddo traders had been a visually beautiful group of petite men to Kette. Golden skinned, most with red hair and beards, though many had hair as dark as midnight, they had each been delightful little peacocks, dressed in splendor and so heavily bejeweled to Kette they looked like Solstice Holiday gifts.
The fact that none of them were taller than her was amazing to Kette. She had never seen such uniformly little people. And unlike most petite men she had met in her life, briefs she would admit to it being thus far, none of them had the “Badger Attitudes” that short Ghorma, Piincar, or Ocre men usually had. They saw no need to justify their limited size with outsized aggression.
It was incredible to see.
As the rain slackened, and some little hints of the rising sun teased her from behind cloudy horizons, she thought about their lyrical accents, and fine features.
It was just as she had begun to let her mind drift from her duties that the call of “SAILS FROM THE NORTH! SAILS FROM SHORE!! THREE SAILS!! THREE SAILS!! DUE NORTH!!” from a lookout sharpened her wit, made her heart race, and snapped her eyes back open.