‘Ship to port, Captain!’ the lookout above them shouted from the crow’s nest.

‘Aye! First Mate, lower lines!’ El Alera called out.

The wind howled across the deck of the ship, the cold cutting through clothes and chilling the men of the Ralaria. El Alera looked out across the deck of the small cutter. It was sleek and fast, made for darting between islands, a small fish designed to be faster than the prey she would outrun.

The Ralarians had been on the sea as long as their history was recorded. They were one with the sea. El Alera could remember the first time he’d set his feet on deck—he felt like he’d belonged. A lowly deck boy, now a captain of the fleet.

He took a deep breath as he had watched the small rowboat, a distant speck of light at first, growing larger as it grew closer in the darkness. The light bobbed up and down as it moved across the shallow bay the Ralarians had  moored in.

Men scurried across the deck; El Alera watched as ropes flew down to the rowboat, the men below tying her up.

The ropes creaked, the rowboat clattering against the side of the Ralaria.

‘Ease the lines!’ El Alera called out before his first mate could.

His first mate gave him a look of apology, to which El Alera shook his head.

These newcomers were obviously flat footers with no sense of the sea. They didn’t know how much slack to give the lines. El Alera knew The Ralaria could take it. The little row boat on the other hand? Their boat would take a beating against his cutter without slack in the lines. He didn’t want to rescue them when their boat began to sink.

Ralarians pulled on lines to help the passengers make the deck.

The first two up were barrel-chested and broad-shouldered with long dark beards and hair braided in the Eastern fashion. El Alera spotted the bulge of daggers hidden beneath their leather vests with empty sheathes at their sides.

He smiled. They underestimated him. The deal had been brokered, no weapons to be brought aboard. This slight was forgivable, but now he knew that they did not respect him and didn’t think he was smart enough to spot it.

The third man, much smaller than the first two, was hauled up and over the rail. He was covered in a dark cloak, black, and heavy. He sported a cane, slight but well crafted.

El Alera walked towards the three, swaying with the boat.

The three looked to be fish out of water, hanging onto the deck, bucking the swells.

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‘Sirs, welcome aboard the Ralaria!’ El Alera welcomed them with a bow on the deck.

‘Captain,’ the third man greeted him, impatient and without a bow.

‘What brings you here tonight?’ El Alera asked.

The third man sneered, moving forward with his cane.

Click, click, click.

The man approached El Alera, coming within arm’s distance of him, almost falling as the ship tilted to the port side.

He steadied himself with his cane. ‘Captain, what say you to our proposal?’

El Alera met the man’s gaze. ‘I took this meeting out of respect for Kassar. He has served me well as a broker in the past.’

‘You took this meeting because you are a pirate and I offer gold for your ships.’

El Alera said nothing.

The third man narrowed his eyes and looked around. ‘You know the terms?’

El Alera nodded.

‘I offer you gold. I need twenty ships, and I need them for a voyage across the Eastern Sea and back.’

‘What is the cargo?’ El Alera asked.

The smaller man fixed him with a stare. ‘Kassar agreed that the terms were no questions.’

El Alera nodded. ‘You come to me because you need ships to move men, no? Kassar says cargo, but no one needs twenty ships to move cargo. They need twenty ships to move an army.’

El Alera’s first mate took a step forward.

The two Easterners did the same, their hands buried in their vests.

El Alera put his hand up. ‘Enough.’

‘We had a deal,’ the little man spit out.

‘No, we agreed to meet. To hear you out. But the Ralarians do not interfere with the business of flatlanders.’

The little man took another step forward, towards El Alera. ‘No questions. That was the deal. What do you care what you take across the seas?’

‘The blood you are going to spill will color the seas. We will have no part in chumming the waters.’

‘Bloody pirate!’ the slight man brandished his cane as if it was a sword.

El Alera spit on the deck of his ship. ‘You insult me and bring weapons aboard my ship. We will not work with those who do not honor the terms of a deal.’

‘I offer you more gold than you could carry in your hold. And you spit on our deal?’

El Alera put his hand up to stay his men. The Ralarians had circled the two Easterners and now were forming a ring around El Alera and the slight man in the black coat. ‘Leave. We will have nothing to do with you.’

The man’s eyes bulged, his face turning red. ‘You’ll regret this. Pirate.’

El Alera said nothing, motioning for the man to leave, to get off his ship.

The three men returned to the port side of the ship and lowered themselves over its side. The two larger men helped the slight man over and down to the rowboat and followed behind.

None of the Ralarians moved to help them.

‘Cast off!’ could be heard from below.

The Ralarians pulled their lines back up onto deck, coiling the ropes at the deck rail.

El Alera nodded to his first mate, and walked away from the main deck.

El Alera was not a man of the land, he was of the sea, of the wind and the salt spray, a man of the Ralarian Islands. But he knew full well that what this dark man had proposed would rock the world of men and the lands from one sea to another.

‘What of it, Captain?’ his first mate said quietly as they walked to the bow of the ship.

El Alera let out a long breath, one he hadn’t known he was holding.

‘We are men of the seas. We do not concern ourselves with what happens on land,’ El Alera said to him.

The first mate nodded. ‘Aye, Captain.’

They watched the small rowboat push off their bow and make for the dark cove to the west. Its small torch flickered in the night, a beacon in the inky blackness. The waves rocked it to and fro, The Ralaria a mirror in the swells.

El Alera cursed.

‘What is it, Captain?’

El Alera turned and made for the wheel of the ship. He put his hand to his mouth. ‘Raise anchor, make ready the mainsail!’

He turned to his first mate and cursed again. ‘We should have killed that man. He will bring the Pit down on all of us.’

‘It is for the flatfooted to decide, it does not concern us,’ the first mate said, referring to the men on land.

‘Ah, but war, she spills to the seas, and they turn red with the blood that soaks the earth,’ El Alera said, quoting his own father. ‘You tell the men, no one speaks of this. Not in the ports, not in their lover’s arms. Not a word.’

El Alera gave his first mate a look. He needed him to understand that they were playing with fire.

‘Zufier save us,’ the first mate whispered to himself.

The cutter began to move in the night, the anchor pulling the Ralaria out of her prison at the sea’s floor. The ship rolling as she cut through the surf provided comfort to El Alera. The sea’s winds blew in his face, breathing life into his sails.