Once HMS Northwind had moved out of the confines of the Channel into the wide Atlantic Ocean, the three cavalry officers had retreated inside the war-sloop. Ensign Manning did not look as pale as the other two, but it was clear that none of them was going to be fit for some time.

Jonas kept expecting some status to appear or anything, but nothing. The sea was rolling and the sky was even more overcast than at Portsmouth, but outside of the unusual motion of the ship, he might as well have been on the ground or in some carriage crossing land.

“You have your sea legs like all of them, I see,” the voice of the ship’s captain came from behind.

“Like all of them? Had lots of Professionals around, captain Boyle?” Jonas replied.

“Never until this year. Don’t think there’s many of them travelling across the Atlantic. But I had bunches of them last summer. Landlubbers usually take time to acclimate themselves to the sea on their trips. That lot? Didn’t faze at all.”

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to either.”

“We’ll see if we get a good squall going, but I doubt either,” the captain added, looking as unconvinced as possible.

“I hope my companions haven’t heard you wishing them misfortune,” Jonas replied good-naturedly.

“To be honest, I have no idea that’s some Professional thing,” he then added. “I might be a natural seaman after all. It’s not as if I was with the merchantmen in London to see if I was fit to be at sea.”

“That man in seaman-style uniform said it was agility. Like, any high-rank Professional had natural moves or something.”

“Ah, Agility,” Jonas corrected, putting an instinctive emphasis on the Professional-specific potential. “I guess so. I might not be high tier, but I do have more than any non-Professional would ever have. It would fit.”

“You’re not high… something? I was told I was transporting some very important Professional for a mission in the Colonies,” Boyle asked, surprised.

“High tier. That’s… different from being important, I guess. Being important is about what you’re doing. High tier is about… how powerful, personally, as a Professional, you are. People might consider me important, but that’s despite not being a high tier, not because of it.”

“So they were high tier? Probably, I guess. They did feel… different from you.”

“Different? In what way?”

“I don’t know. Different. Like you’re looking at not-people. When they’re around, it’s like you’re seeing the world differently, because they’re there. I can’t really explain.”

Jonas frowned, then realized what the seaman might be talking about.

“Well, we have… what’s called Presence. Another of the Professional way of measuring things. It’s a bit like what everyone has when you notice them going and talking and things like that. Like when the King is there, and everyone pays attention. But in the case of a Professional, that’s a potential quality that can be grown by the Labyrinth. In my case… as the Labyrinth measures things, it’s more than double the most imposing presence a non-Professional could even have. That’s big, but not as big as a real high tier has. Mine is in the mid-forties. A high tier might have hundreds. Or even a thousand, if they are in a Profession that revolves around it.”

“I admit I have no idea what you’re talking about, and whether or not this forty-hundred-thousand is something special. But yea. You don’t feel odd. I mean, you’re the first person I noticed around coming up on the bridge – and I usually watch out for my second to relieve him. So I notice you’re there hanging around, but it’s not as if you don’t really belong to the world.”

“I hope so, captain.”

Jonas turned back toward the chopping sea, then asked a different question.

“How fast are we going? I have no idea how long it really takes to cross the Atlantic. It’s something I’ve never considered every doing in my life.”

“Well, the Northwind is a fine ship. One of the newer models. Got command when it came out of the drydocks four years ago. It’s probably the last one of its kind to have sail masts,” the captain said, pointing back toward the two mastheads in the middle of the war-sloop.

“Oh?”

“Yea. New ships don’t use sails. I still try to train my sailors on properly rigging the ship, but it’s more like make-up work rather than real sailor’s work. Them Crystal engines are better.”

“Ah. Labyrinth technology.”

“Yes. The naval engineers, they made a spiral-thing that you put under your keel. It’s only a bit better than going on full sail, but the funny thing is that it keeps going. Does not matter how hard you’re against the wind, you keep pushing as if you had the best wind behind your sails. And you don’t risk breaking your mast.”

He spat out in the wind, surprising Jonas.

“Sometimes, I feel like it’s cheating. But when I was starting in the Navy, long before I got my own ship, my captain used to say, if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.”

“Your Navy must have changed a lot with the Labyrinth now,” Jonas replied.

“It has. I remember back when we went to support the Haitians against the French. If it weren’t for us, maybe that L’Overture guy would have failed to kick out the French, and they’d have won their colony back.”

“You fought against the French?”

“A few times, yea. I didn’t see any French back in 1803, but the thing was a mess, and we got them Haitians started and all. They’re a good protectorate of the British Empire now, even if they picked their own leaders, and the French never succeeded in taking them back. It was much better than the battles around the peninsula and later in the Mediterranean.”

The man leaned back on his heels, deep in remembrance of his younger days.

“I was second in command aboard the Centaur then. No fancy Labyrinth spirals then, just plain ships. We could bombard the shores, and the French couldn’t do anything about it. But then, they didn’t need to. They just conquered the interior, and that was that.”

The man spat again, this time in obvious disgust.

Jonas turned again to watch the sea.

“I’ll relieve my second then.”

“And I’ll stay there for a while. I won’t inflict my staff’s misery by showing up like that,” Jonas replied.

Stolen story; please report.

“If you have a problem sleeping around them later, you can come to my cabin and we’ll share a drink. I usually stay late to finish the logs and the rest.”

“Maybe I will, captain. I’m a light sleeper anyway.”

“Do you hold fire in your hand as that lady did?” a voice came out from behind, distracting Jonas from his contemplation of endless waves.

“Uh? Oh no. Not the right skill sphere,” he replied, before realizing that maybe the sailor would have no idea what a skill sphere was.

There were three of them going around the ship, checking the ropes and various knots holding things, under the watchful eyes of the captain standing at the rear of the ship. The man who had talked was looking at Jonas with curiosity.

“Heard about the different kind of Professionals. So you’re like the other with robes then, mebbe? At least you look normal.”

“Well, I’m wearing my robe because it’s a bit like a uniform. It shows who I am, at least for a Professional,” Jonas explained.

“Yea, all of them wore all kind of weird clothes. And even armour like a knight from the stories. The flame hand lady was kind of normal, but the other, it was like an empty robe. Never saw flesh. Even his hands did not came out.”

The description looked… familiar to Jonas, so he had to ask.

“Oh? Who were they? Five? A woman in plate armour, a grey-blue robe blonde, a monkish guy, one in green leather…”

“Yea, that’s the group. You know them? We brought them to the Colonies last summer, but they never came back. Instead, on our next run, we picked a different woman coming from them Colonies. She wore normal skirts and clothes, but you knew she was one of you. Somehow.”

“That was Cowen’s team. Cowen’s the team leader, the woman with all the plate and a big sword with lightning. The one with the robe that you never see, that was Habborlain.”

“Is that a guy or a woman? We never saw anything, and we never heard any sound. Some of my friends, they thought it was some ghost from the Labyrinth, a tame creature from there. Told them they were silly, but… that was a strange one.”

Jonas thought for a moment. He’d heard Habborlain speaking but… the voice was a broken thing. It sounded somewhat male to his ears, but that actually could be anything. Maybe a woman whose throat had been damaged long before the Labyrinth, and it had somehow never healed the damage. Was that a thing?

“I think he’s a man. But I’m not sure myself,” he finally replied.

“So it’s not a special creature from the Labyrinth?” the sailor asked, somewhat suspicious.

“No. Creatures from the Labyrinth can’t leave it. They can’t even leave the zone they come from. If you try to bring one across a Gate, they immediately die,” Jonas reassured him.

“Stop bothering our passenger, mister Coombs,” came the voice of the captain from his rear position. “We’re heading into storm season, you’ve got work to do, and I’m not about to lose my first cargo ball on a trip because you want to see someone’s fire tricks.”

The man quickly scrambled back, leaving Jonas with a slight amusement twitching his lips.

The ship was going up and down in the heavy sea, and Jonas moved across the passage, trusting his perception in the dimly lighted ship’s interior. He might have Labyrinth sea-legs, but even he wasn’t about to risk himself on top in this storm. Not with a top deck covered in water.

The squall expected by Captain Boyle had finally materialized on the fifth day, and it sounded hard. The sailors had shrugged it as a “good one”, but the ship was battered by wind and sleet – a heavy mix of rain and semi-melting snow.

The three cavalry officers who had been slowly recovering were sequestering themselves again with a bucket each, and Jonas had left them to suffer in peace. For tonight, he thought he’d finally use the captain’s open invitation for cabin chat.

He knocked.

“Come in. Ah, that’s you, Sir Sims? Take a seat.”

The captain was seated at the back of the room, but there was a young boy seated at a desk to the side, trying to write on a large ledger while the ship rolled in the squall.

“Thanks, Captain.”

“You’re welcome. And this young gentleman here is my officer’s servant, who’s trying to get midshipman next year. Arthur Woolahan.”

The youngster hastily bobbed his head before focusing back on the thick tome.

“And I’m Jonas.”

“At sea, you’re Knight Commander Sims. It’d be different if we were at Portsmouth admiralty and you were buying the drink, but formal is the way we work. Keep the habits going.”

“My apologies, Captain.”

“Apologies accepted. You’re a Professional after all, not Navy.”

“I’ve only been a Professional for six months, though,” Jonas explained.

The captain sounded surprised.

“And you got decorated? So fast? When you said something about tier three, I expected you to be an experienced man.”

“Circumstances, captain. I got lucky. I and the rest of my team, we were at exactly the right place at the right instant, and we got lucky. Even if, for a while, we did not exactly think of ourselves lucky.”

“Nonsense. There’s no such thing as luck. Good men make their luck. There have been people who kept saying that Nelson made it only because he was lucky, but anyone who’d seen him commanding at sea knows the man knew what he did, and he did well.”

“Didn’t he die, though?”

“The last time the French managed to threaten the Navy. And they lost that one, thanks to the man. The Navy remembers.”

The Captain grabbed a small bottle and drew a glass in honour of his old Admiral. Then he excused himself profusely.

“Oh, and here I’m missing on my hospitality.”

The ship’s boy quickly turned, fished a glass from a chest nearby and handed it, while the captain poured some of his bottle for Jonas. He brought it to his lips, expecting a strong drink, but was surprised to taste port. He raised his glass in appreciation.

“To Nelson, then.”

“If he had what we do now, he’d have sunk them without a scratch. Take one, Woolahan,” he ordered.

The boy quickly acquiesced and brought out another glass, which Boyle filled as well. Then all three drank together, emptying their glasses.

“Six months still. You must be good then, to get foreign missions and whatever that tier three means for Professionals,” the captain said.

Jonas started narrating the unusual circumstances that had opened up the Labyrinth for him.

“And nobody else qualified for Professional?” Arthur asked again. Half of the question from the officer’s servant had been around that one. The midshipman-to-be had confessed of having a measured Fortitude of seventeen, which was tested again a few months ago, in case of measurement errors. But he didn’t qualify, and thus, he remained headed to the Navy career.

“No. We even got a double dose of the Adjustment, because one of my team still did not qualify after the first,” Jonas explained.

“And now, you have powers even the rest do not. It’s as God said, the last will be the first.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, I worked well as a leatherworker. Never thought of myself being last.”

“But you prove me right,” the captain said. “You were thrown into the Labyrinth unprepared, and you made yourself strong. And you came and saved the Empire because you could. Maybe you couldn’t predict you’d be a Professional, but once you did, you raised yourself, like a true gentleman.”

“I wish I could meet all of you, though,” the youngster said again. “What are they doing at the moment? A different mission?”

“Well, they have their own work. I don’t worry about that.”

Not really.

“Laura! Guss! Welcome! I didn’t see you last week. Where’s Jonas?” O’Hagan asked.

“Away and busy. Something our boss concocted, to make use of our special abilities,” the Calculating Grinder replied, grasping the Planner’s wrist.

“That’s what you get from having a real boss instead of us with fake ones.”

Then the man did a double-take, realizing the new lines on the descriptor.

“Wow. Tier three? How can… ah yes. Forgot the whole Adaptation thing. It… increased?”

“It does at every new Profession. And before you ask, we don’t wish that on anyone. You pay in growing pains that one,” she replied.

“Well, that means you’re the first tier three around. I keep trying to convince some teams to come, but they don’t believe you can swap any useful stuff. If you’re 80 and tier three… does that mean you run higher lairs yet?”

“Not yet, but that will probably change. But I still have got a big one,” she replied.

Braided Leather Band

Head

Quality equipment

Requires: Level 77

Provides: 15 defence rating, +107 endurance, +101 health

“Where did you get that?”

“The Bank, actually.”

“The Bank? Is that a new lair, or you’re talking ’bout the First Bank?” Odhran O’Hogan inquired.

“The latter. We got carried through lairs back before re-opening the Gate, and they let us keep the loot since there was nothing tier six would need. That’s how I got my famous trousers. I had that one stashed for when I got 77, but it has no Strength on it, and I got a piece with it later. It’s nice and gives a lot, but I’d rather have… something more useful. So I’m bringing it to the faire,”

“Well, I know defenders who’d wear it. A bit low on defence, but it’s good otherwise. But no one’s going to have anything to match that.”

“We’ll see. Worst case, we dangle it in front of your tier three groups? Think they’d be interested?”

“Ooooh, yesss,” O’Hogan smiled.