Shit.

“Hi.” I said.

The person on the other side of the window gave me a dead-eyed stare.

“Urp.” She said.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m...”

She pushed my head out of the way, leaning out the window.

“Hey!” I said, scrambling to maintain my grip on the outside of the boat.

She dry-heaved, a small trail of spittle freeing itself from her mouth and disappearing below.

“I’m great.” She said, “Why are you on the outside of the boat?”

“I was hungry.”

“I see.”

“Can I come inside?”

She frowned at me, looking miserable.

“No.” The girl said.

I frowned back. She looked a bit older than me, and had light-brown hair that was tied behind her head in a short ponytail. Her dark olive skin suggested that she was local. She had a bruise that marked her chin and cheek, cutting diagonally across her face to just below the outside of her right eye. Her clothing was simple, made of the same coarse materials I’d seen on seafaring folk all my life, but her build did not match it; she was lacking the muscle of those used to hoisting sails.

The boat leaned once more, creaking with menace.

I looked down at the ocean, and then back at the new acquaintance.

“Please?” I stressed.

She stuck her head out the side, looking at the rope attached to my torso.

“You’ll be fine if you fall.” She said.

“No I won’t. It’ll hurt.”

“Maybe it would teach you to not climb the outsides of boats.”

I heard the sound of fumbled keys from the other end of the room. The girl turned as I ducked out of view of the window once more.

“Food.” A voice said.

The girl didn’t reply.

The sound of the door closing once more came from beyond, and then footsteps back in my direction.

Before she made it back, I swung my leg around and through the opening, sliding into the room.

“Sorry.” I said, quietly. It wouldn’t do to bring the one who delivered the food back. “Fingers were cramping.”

She gave me a displeased look, and then ran to the window, heaving once more. I jumped out of the way before getting some resistance from the rope pulling on the corner of the window. Annoyed, I unwrapped it from my body and tied it in a loose knot around her bedpost.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

The girl just groaned.

“Watch the horizon.” I said. “Sea sickness is caused by your mind thinking that you’re moving in one direction, while your body says another. You need a point of reference.”

She didn’t respond, but I watched her eyes flick up and away from the water below.

“So.” I tested.

Silence.

“Captain’s daughter?”

Nothing.

“Another orphan? To be used as a political... something?” I tried.

“What do you want?” She said as she turned to scowl.

Her face went green and she quickly looked back towards the window. I glanced at the untouched tray on the bedside table.

“Some lunch would be nice.” I said.

The girl gave a resigned gesture in the direction of the plate of food on the bedside table. I grinned and swiped a piece of dried cheese.

“Prisoner.” She said eventually.

“Nice to meet you, Prisoner.” I said. “You can call me Stowaway.”

Something clicked in my mind, finally making the connection.

“Oh, that prisoner. The one Mister Purple grabbed in the market.”

“Mister Purple?”

“The Ambassador.”

“You’re calling someone who directly answers to the Emperor Mister Purple.”

I shrugged.

“I’m calling a girl I just met Prisoner. My dad used to know a sailor named Meatchunks. There are worse names.”

“Diana is mine.” She relented. “Don’t make up any more names, please.”

“Gedric. Sorry about barging into your room like an assassin.”

“Noisy for an assassin.”

“Still working on the quiet part. Why are you in here instead of a cell, anyway?”

“This is a cruise ship. I assume this was the closest thing they had to one.” She said, “What kind of party boat has jail cells?”

“The kind with fun parties.”

She scoffed. “Aren’t you a little young to know about such things?”

“I’m fourteen. I know what the inside of a brothel looks like. Do you?”

Okay, I only knew because I had gone to peep, but she didn’t need to know that.

“No, but I hardly want to know about such a thing if creeps like you go there.”

“Ouch. Fair play, though. I literally crawled through your window.”

“Yeah, still not really over that.” Diana said. “But the tip for the seasickness is helping, so thanks.”

“No problem.”

I tore off a chunk of the salted meat from the tray of food. Pork, it seemed.

“Why are you imprisoned?” I asked. “You don’t seem like the type.”

“I...” Diana stilled in her chair at the window.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but she sat unusually straight in her chair. She had a posture that looked trained in, though I don’t think it was conscious.

“I don’t know.” She said, voice shaking. “They gave my brother a bag and told us to leave. Then the house was on fire-”

She suppressed a choking noise, and then heaved out the window once more.

Wide-eyed, I had no idea how to handle the situation. Hell, I don’t even know what to do with my hands. I wasn’t the best shoulder to cry on when I was just a stranger who was eating her lunch.

So I let her cry, sitting awkwardly on her bed.

I realized that she reminded me of myself when I first lost Mom and Dad. We were staying with a family friend who had agreed to watch over us while our parents were out. Then word first came back about the Vanishing.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Some went to Chalia to check the city for themselves. Others tried to put an expedition together to find the lost ships, or chose the city’s ruling Bloodline as the target of their anger, expressing their displeasure with riots or protests against perceived inaction.

Our guardian of the time, a young woman in the local guard who used to work under my mother, panicked. She dumped us at the orphanage only a day after word came back, apologizing profusely and crying. I’d looked for her since, but she’d left Byras shortly after. There was an edge to the unknown that frayed sanity faster than any known tragedy could. I could see that unravelling happening to Diana, now.

“Have you seen my brother?” She asked.

I shook my head.

“I haven’t. He was the other one at the market with you?”

Diana nodded. “He looks like me. His hair has a part in the middle, and he has a freckle near his left nostril. His name is August.”

“Nope, haven’t seen anyone like that. Sorry.”

She deflated, sinking into a sad, seasick puddle.

Oh no. I was going to regret this, wasn’t I?

“Do you want me to look for him?”

Diana perked up immediately, like she had been waiting for the response. I heard her stomach churn.

“Please. Would you?” She said.

It struck me that I might be being manipulated, but I grinned anyway.

“I suppose I do owe you.” I said. I gestured at the plate of food that was now half eaten, which I was one hundred percent referring to. Not the fact that I stole her coin purse in the marketplace yesterday.

For the first time since I’d met Diana less than an hour ago, she made a face that was less than half a frown. I couldn’t call it a smile, it wasn’t that. More like the shadow of hope. My heart skipped a beat.

Ah, shit. I was going to get caught for a pretty face, wasn’t I?

----------------------------------------

The journey back up the side of the ship was both harder and easier than the way down. Easier because I had a clearer view of what to grab next. Harder because, well, up. Still, I managed to make it back up to the guest floor without any major hiccups.

This floor was as empty as the last time I’d been on it. I almost stumbled into a pair of guards coming up from the floor below, but had managed to duck around a corner near the end the viewing platform before they noticed me. I assumed it was the same guards who I’d seen playing cards near what I now knew was the door to Diana’s room.

A shift change, maybe.

I noted the position of the sun through the window to the balcony, just in case they kept a tight schedule.

The rest of the way back to our room was uneventful. The rope I deposited back in Hetis’s pack. My back and fingers ached from the climbing, so I flopped onto the bed and stretched.

It was time to figure out a plan for finding Diana’s brother. I had asked if she knew which room he was in, but apparently he had been brought down first.

I recalled the ship’s structure to my mind as I closed my eyes.

The deck was a floor up from here, which was an unlikely location for him. There was the area that housed the Ambassador’s office and that dining room up there, but it didn’t seem like a place to hold a prisoner. The more obvious thing I’d expect in that roofed part of the ship was the kitchen - less need to pipe smoke up and out of the vessel if it was already at the top.

Still, that was all conjecture. Maybe he was up there right next to the Ambassador, under close watch of a man who was one of the most powerful Hemomancers in the Empire.

That would suck.

This floor, on the other hand, was basically deserted from what I’d seen. Empty cabins spanned the edges of the entire boat. It was like they were reserved for non-crewmembers, which seemed a bit silly to me. A comfortable cabin would be a great reward for a well performing sailor. It was strange they weren’t using them, but it wasn’t my problem. It helped the reconnaissance to have a floor to myself.

There was one door I hadn’t checked that had the word “Suite” written in squiggly script, but I was positive that wouldn’t be where Diana’s brother was stored. It was near the front of the ship, and spanned the entirety of the width of the vessel. It seemed like the place the Ambassador would sleep - his room, so to speak. Since the man could punch through walls, that would be the final place to look.

That left the bottom two floors. I still assumed the one below Diana’s floor was storage. The boxes and racks I had seen on my first peek were nowhere enough to feed an entire crew, even for a journey that wouldn’t take much more than a week like ours.

Which left the other doors I had seen on Diana’s floor. The door I’d seen that separated the stairs from the front half of the ship was likely entirely dedicated to the crew, which meant the dude had to be stashed in one of the rooms in the back half of the ship.

But which one?

I massaged my temples. There was no way I was going for another climb right now, not when my arms still ached from the last excursion. Tomorrow’s lunch seemed like the safest option.

Still, I’d be cutting it close. I’d have to talk to Hetis about how long it would take for us to land in Selio. It was a day and a half trip, from what I remembered, so I’d have to time it so that we weren’t pulling into port while I’m hanging off the side of the ship.

The rest of my time before Hetis came back was spent in futility as I tried to remember the sensation I’d felt during Katherine’s Hemomancy test. I even repeated the words she had given us to speak, but nothing seemed to cause the feeling once more.

Eventually, my brother returned. He looked like he’d been awake for hours, long bags beneath his eyes.

“Move over.” He demanded, indicating my legs. I did as requested, and he faceplated into the cushion.

“That bad?”

“Two forks. Two forks. Why? Apparently it matters which goes on the outside, too.”

“That doesn’t sound that bad.”

“We can trade places, if you want.” Hetis offered.

“I’ll pass.”

Hetis just groaned into the mattress.

“I didn’t manage to sneak anything for you.” He said. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I found some stuff.”

Hetis just sighed. “Of course you’ve left the room already.”

I returned the statement with a small, sheepish grin.

“Look, I know we both knew you were going to leave, but we’ve been on the boat for less than a day. Maybe chill out a bit?” He said.

“I can’t.” I said. “Not now. I was given a task.”

“By who? You weren’t supposed to meet anyone, much less receive quests from them.”

I began to regale my brother with the tale of my afternoon. About the meeting with Diana, and my now received mission to find her brother on the ship and check on him.

“This is a terrible idea.” Hetis remarked.

I nodded, contemplating. “She is cute, though.”

“And too old for you.”

“Too old for me maybe. Big difference.”

“Gedric, that’s... Never mind. It’s not really worth the risk, in my opinion.”

“I think she might be rich.” I mentioned, almost offhand.

Hetis’s head snapped my direction.

“How rich?”

“You saw the coin pouch, right? Back in Byras? I don’t think she stole it, after all.”

I explained how I noticed her posture while eating her lunch. How the clothes she wore back when we first saw her in Jirou didn’t match what she was wearing now, that they were much nicer in Byras. The way she didn’t understand why she was taken prisoner.

“Maybe... Wait, Gedric, you think that’s her Bloodline name?”

“I didn’t ask, but, yeah. That’s what I was thinking too.”

I recalled Wet Riley’s words after he drowned the pouch in the bay.

That’s property of the Jirou Bloodline, you idiots.

“So, you’re thinking that she’ll reward us, if we help her out.” Hetis said.

“That’s what I think, yeah.”

“Just one more thing, then.”

“Hm?”

“If she’s got the last name Jirou, that means her family works for the Empire. No, more than that - her family IS the Empire. One seventh of it.”

“That’s right.” I replied.

“Then why,” Hetis said, “Is she a prisoner?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

----------------------------------------

The rest of the night came and went. Hetis had returned from dinner with a full tray of food, saying he wasn’t that hungry while he was upstairs. He had agreed to help, so long as I confirmed that there would be a reward from Diana. I put him to work.

I’d asked him to find out what time we would be landing tomorrow, and he had delivered. Sundown tomorrow seemed to be the estimated time of arrival, to my relief. If I did my search tomorrow at lunch, we wouldn’t be landing for a few hours more.

Hetis had offered to help, mentioning that we could search more tonight for the missing prisoner, but I had cautioned against it. Doing a mission like this at night would be foolhardy. Even if the guards were half asleep, every noise made, every bump in the night became something worth checking on. Success was dependent on my ability to climb on the outside of the boat without being noticed.

I didn’t say that just because I wanted an excuse to eat Diana’s lunch again. Not at all.

And so the night came and went, with me collapsing myself into the closet like a wooden folding chair. It was hard to find sleep, at first, but the sloshing of the waves led me to its embrace soon after I started listening to them.

I woke to something poking my nose. Someone, I corrected.

“Morning.” Hetis said. “I’m going to breakfast, and you’re snoring. Stay out of trouble until lunch. Don’t get caught.”

“Try and see if it looks like he’s up there.” I said.

I was concerned that the ship had more hiding spots for Diana’s brother than I’d already found, especially with the deck remaining entirely a mystery to me outside our one trip in Byras. If he wasn’t, then that was good, because it meant there was only one other place he could realistically be: on Diana’s floor.

Still, ever since what Hetis had said the night previous, I’d been getting a sense of dread whenever thinking about finding Diana’s sibling. If he was who we thought he was, that made him Important, with a capital I. More than that, if the Jirou family was in trouble with the Emperor, to the point where they were being captured in the street while they tried to flee? That meant Jirou’s Domain was in for some changes on a much larger scale.

By extension: if they were getting arrested on the spot, what would happen to me, if it was found out I was helping them?

It was a question I didn’t want to think about too hard, so I didn’t. I was getting paid to check up on a sibling by a cute girl. Nothing to worry about.

Hetis returned after some time.

“Here.” he said, tossing me an orange.

“Nice.” I said appreciatively. “Any new information?”

“Poop quarter is basically what you expected. The galley, the Ambassador’s office, the dining room we saw before. There were two other rooms up there, also. One was full of maps. The other was closed, but could be just a closet. I didn’t see any windows on the outside.”

Trying not to give a juvenile giggle at what was, officially, the name of the enclosed area that was level with the deck, I thanked my brother for his scouting. We spent the rest of the time before Het had to leave for his... lessons coming up with more and more outlandish reasons why the Jirou family might be in custody of an Ambassador.

My personal favorite theory was that the Emperor had declared their Sigil lame, and that anyone carrying something embroidered with a rhino was to be arrested on the spot.

And then, the time came. Hetis gave me an encouraging slap on the back.

“Don’t mess up.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve never failed a heist I’ve spent more than three days on.” I responded.

“And learn to count.” He quipped. “We’ve only been on the boat for a day.”