The seas are the domain of Auberon’s third queen, Melusine, and she is dangerous as a sudden storm, beautiful as sunrise over the water. All sea captains love her, in their own way, and it is why they can never truly be satisfied with a life on land.

* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne

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17th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Clarisant shivered in the spray from the prow of the Perce-Pierre. The horrible white ring in the sky did hardly anything to warm days which should have been the height of summer, and the wind off the sea chilled her fingers. Overhead, the constellations scattered across the heavens shone as clearly as on a moonless night, and she traced the arm of The Hunter to the North Star of Abatur, at the center of his scales. North, then west around the coast of Skandia, lay their route.

“Here, m’lady.” Clarisant accepted the cloth from Dame Etoile, who stood with one hand on the rail next to her, wearing a loose linen shirt and breeches.

“Thank you,” Claire said, and wiped her mouth. “Being at sea makes it worse, I think. Or perhaps the other way around. I was never sick when Gareth took me out on the harbor.”

“The harbor isn’t the open ocean,” Etoile pointed out, turning around to lean her back against the rail. “And you’re at the worst time for it. My mother always said once you started to show, the sickness got better.”

“I look forward to it, then,” Claire admitted, and tucked the cloth away to be cleaned later. “Seven more months of this would be too much.”

“You’re certain about when it happened, then?” Etoile asked. “Certain enough to count, at least?”

“Aye. We were wed on the 23rd of the Planting Moon,” Claire explained. “And then I didn’t see him again until the first day of New Summer. By then I’d already missed my cycle.”

“You were wed for the first time five days earlier,” the blonde knight pointed out, keeping her voice low enough that none of the sailors bustling about with the ropes would be able to hear. “Some people might wonder which husband the child belongs to.”

“Those people would be fools,” Claire shot back. “And cruel, besides. Are you one of them?”

“No,” Etoile said, shaking her head. “In truth, m’lady, I believe you. But I have to ask, because one day I might need to champion your honor.”

“In Raetia?” Claire frowned. “I doubt anyone we’ll meet there will be familiar with the complications of my marriage. I can hardly see it coming up.”

“You might be surprised. I’ve sat in on enough negotiations, guarding your father, to see how any weakness can be used against someone. But that isn’t what I’m talking about. I wondered, m’lady, if you might be willing to accept my service, after this is all over. Assuming we win, of course.” Etoile grinned.

“Your service? Are you no longer satisfied serving my father?” Claire couldn’t help but let her surprise show in her voice.

“Your father I would follow to the end of the world,” Etoile explained. “But it won’t be your father forever, now will it? It’s your brother who comes after him, when Baron Urien passes. And it was Gareth who didn’t bother to evacuate Camaret-à-Arden - not to mention Havre de Paix, or any of the other villages north of the city. If he’s so quick to abandon his people in time of war, how easily will he throw away the lives of his knights?”

“My brother is a good man,” Claire protested. “He may have read a bit too much Aurelius, I think. To him, everything is about the numbers. I suspect Gareth would argue that he sacrificed a small number of people to save the larger population.”

“It may be the smart choice,” Etoile argued. “But it wasn’t the right choice. I want to serve the people who make the right choices. I think your father would release me to your service, but I doubt Sir Gareth would. So I’d rather do this now, before the years pass. If you’ll have me.”

“Are you certain this has nothing to do with Henry’s cooking?” Claire asked her, with a grin.

“Well, I wouldn’t say nothing,” the burly woman answered. “It would be a crime to never taste that man’s rabbit stew again. And that chowder he made last night? I thought the ship’s cook was about to start smoking out the ears.”

“It was good,” Claire admitted. “If it’s truly what you want, and my father will release you, then yes, I would be happy to have you, Ettie. You saved my life in the cathedral. I won’t ever forget that.”

“Good. You can repay me by never using that nickname where anyone else can hear it. You think the kid’s awake?”

“Yaél? We’ll probably have to roust her out of bed,” Claire said with a snort.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“One last thing before we do, then,” Dame Etoile said. “She told me you thought you saw Trist, yesterday.”

“Standing right there.” Claire pointed at a spot on the deck. “Clear as the sky on a still day. “I had Yaél’s sword belt in my hand, because she was leaning over the rail like a fool, and he spoke to me. ‘Do not let her drag you over too,’ he said. That’s what made me turn. He was there for just a moment, and then gone. But-”

“What?” Etoile asked. “I’ve already told you I believe you about the other thing. I’m not going to call you a liar over this, m’lady. The man’s an Exarch. The things I’ve seen him do, I never would have believed. If you say he was standing on deck, he was standing on the deck.”

“Thank you,” Claire said. “But there was something I didn’t tell Yaél, because I didn’t want to frighten her. He was hurt, Ettie. His face was pale and thin, like he hadn’t slept or eaten in days, and there was a cloth wrapped around his eyes. Like the kind a blind beggar would wear.”

“You were right to keep this to yourself, I think,” Etoile said. “Though we might tell Granger and Henry. M’lady, we don’t know where your husband is, or what’s happened to him. And we won’t know for certain until he returns, in the flesh. If he’s hurt, is there anything you can do for him now?”

“No.” Claire shook her head.

“And there’s nothing Yaél can do for him either. She’d work herself into nervous wreck over it,” Etoile guessed. “She worships him. And she’s only ten. She’s had a hard life, but - children aren’t know for their patience, or their ability to put things in perspective. And she needs to focus on her swordplay.”

“She needs to focus on her reading,” Claire countered. “Come along. Let’s get her out of bed.” They walked across the deck to the stairs, and Claire tried to put it out of her mind, but she couldn’t help worrying.

☀

Claire sat on deck, back to the forecastle, the Marian Codex open in her lap, a lantern hanging overhead to light her reading. If she was being honest, the lanterns were probably not actually for her, but for the sailors who needed to see what they were doing, but she was using it. Perhaps fifteen feet away, John Granger was drilling Yaél on how to best break different guards. The names, at least, were familiar: they were the same as in the fencing manual Claire had found in her husband’s bed chamber, after Trist had gone to war.

“Good,” Granger said, after the ring of steel on steel paused for a moment. “The young lord taught you the basics, and he did a good job of it. Henry tells me you’ve even killed a man.”

“One that I know of,” Yaél said, panting. Etoile walked to her side and offered a wineskin. “Killed one of those Kimmerians at the edge of the Ardenwood. Cut another on the way into Rocher de la Garde, but I didn’t see what happened to him.”

“Which puts you already a step ahead of many squires your age,” Granger pointed out, giving the girl a chance to get a second wind. “You won’t hesitate or freeze up on the battlefield. Now we just need to hone your technique, until it is instinct. In a real fight, when it’s life or death, we descend to the level of our training.”

“Trist said that,” Yaél commented, with a grin, and passed the wineskin back.

“Who do you think the boy got it from?” Granger shot back with a scowl. “Now, show me your Fool’s Guard.”

“Sail!” a man’s voice called down from atop the main mast. “Sail ahead!”

Claire shut the Codex, stood, and tucked it under one arm.

“Will it be trouble?” Yaél asked.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Claire replied, and set out for the wheel, with Dame Etoile shadowing her. There, she found Captain Morrel, a man of exceptional height, now somewhat stooped with age. She recalled him from her youth as a man often employed in construction or repair by her father, who had retired with enough money to maintain a sailing ship for his own pleasure. Now, he was peering through a brass looking glass of Caliphate make. “What do you see, Captain?” she asked, coming to a halt at his side.

“Lady Claire,” Morrel said, slowly lowering his glass. “I hope that you are well today. I wish I had an apricot in my pocket for you.”

“I’m not six anymore,” Claire reminded him, with a smile. “And I doubt we’ll find any in Raetia. But perhaps when we get back we can share one. The sail?”

“A Skandian ship, I would say.” Morrel raised the glass again, then passed it to her. “Take a look. She’s been hit by something. They’re bailing water over the side. We will stop to render aid, if we can.”

“It could be a trap,” Claire pointed out, raising the glass to her eye. The distant ship jumped into focus, and she could clearly see men working with buckets. One of the masts was snapped off, and some of the sails were ripped.

“Well, you brought a knight, a master-at-arms, and a squire,” Morrel said. “And don’t you worry, my men know how to fight as well. We’ll just get close enough to shout over.”

That, it turned out, was the work of some delicacy, with sails being taken in, and all sorts of nautical goings on that were beyond Claire’s limited experience of rowing along the shore with her older brother.

“Get yourselves ready to fight,” she told Granger, Henry and Yaél, once she’d gotten back to them. “Just in case.” Dame Etoile and the squire went below first, and once they’d returned to the deck armed and armored, it was the turn of the master-at-arms. By the time Claire joined Captain Morrel at the rail, it was with three trained fighters at her back, and an archer in the rigging.

“Ho, the ship!” cried Morrel, raising a hand to cup his mouth. A man opposite them shouted back in Skandian, to which Morrel replied easily. Claire frowned; it was not a language she was practiced in, but she resolved to change that as soon as she could.

“What does he say,” she asked the captain at a pause in the exchange. “Was it pirates? Kimmerians?”

Morrel shook his head. “He says it was a great serpent,” the captain translated. “It reared up out of the water and plucked two men off his deck in its jaws, and swallowed them whole. Tore their sails, then, after one of his men threw a harpoon at it, stove their starboard side in with a butt of its head, like a great whale.”

Forneus, Claire thought, but she was cautious enough she wouldn’t be saying the name out loud. “We need to move,” she told the captain, instead. “It’s the leviathan my husband fought at Rocher de la Garde.”

“The one that broke the docks and wrecked the ships,” Captain Morrel recalled, nodding his head. “Hoist sail!” he shouted. “We need to be out of these waters before the daemon returns! All sail, and bring us round!” The old sailor shook his head. “The Skandians will have to get themselves to shore.”