After the disastrous robbery, Omir and Zahra travelled quietly and cautiously as two hares, passing under the attention of border guards and rangers alike. Omir was sure that by now the news of the young lord’s death had grown beyond them, making any chance encounter a gamble he would not risk. They had lost the bulk of the loot, everything except the jewel that Zahra had hidden away. The problem was fencing it. They would need somewhere of ill-repute, someone with hard currency, and somewhere beyond the eyes and ears of House Tyndall, who would soon be hunting them relentlessly.

They travelled the Northern road, towards the coast, to a small fishing village. A few coins allowed them transport on a vessel that was destined for Kove, a settlement on the edge of the Gerighur peninsula, across the wild blue waters of Shirland's Bay.

The dock creaked under their footsteps, a rickety construction that was slick with the guts and trodden-in entrails of the catch of the day. A fat, bearded man with a greasy salt-and-pepper moustache worked methodically, snatching a trout in one hand and slitting its belly with the knife sweeping lazily in the other. Slug-like insides were scraped out in less than a second, the action made automatic by repetition. The fisherman dropped it into the barrel with a wet 'thwack' and moved onto the next, and the next. They would be sold on fresh at the markets, or preserved with salt harvested from boiling sea water.

Zahra almost choked as they passed an obscene, shuddering pile, as wobbly and rank as ill-made Vesper shanty houses, wood stacked upon sod, a dozen stories high, the death-traps that were first to burn in a city fire and first to collapse in a summer storm. A heron screeched in rage as they passed, dropping the scrap in its beak before being caught in the net of a sailor boy. He shook the net, delighting in the angry cries of the bird.

"Got us some supper, lads!" said the sailor. "Can't stand fish."

He swung the net overhead before bashing it to the deck twice, three times, until the bag stopped trembling. Zahra watched in fascination, until she heard a call from the end of the dock. Omir had already reached the end of the jetty. She quickly followed, snorting the rotten scent from her lungs.

Omir portrayed himself as a travelling merchant, Zahra as his apprentice. As luck would have it, there was a ship to arrive later in the day, due to head back to Gerighur the following dawn. For a few coins they would be far beyond the reach of Tyndall bounty hunters. The voyage would take a long fortnight across Shirland's Bay, depending on the wind—more than enough time to rest from their hasty departure across Vesper's woodland.

***

Zahra was happy to find that she wasn't prone to seasickness. Though the waters were relatively calm, every movement creaked ill-fitting floorboards and Zahra struggled with her poise as the boat danced upon the waves. "You don't take to it as easily as easy as you do sneaking through the forest, eh?" Omir laughed. "Never mind, they say you're either born with sea legs or you're not. We'll be on dry land soon enough."

They had a small cabin in the hold—two hammocks and a small table and chair that were bolted down to the floor. On the second night of their journey, Omir went to the table and told Zahra to sit, taking a roll of parchment and ink pencils from his own backpack.

“You know how to read? Write?” he asked.

Zahra shrugged. It had never seemed that important to her. What was she going to do, become a scribe? It was work for mesereo, the painted merchants, not usefs like her. Usefs wielded the plough, shovel and axe.

Omir sucked air between his teeth, frowning at her. “Well, now's the time to learn. I'm not having any apprentice of mine living as a cretin. You don't know just how useful it is, not before you learn.” Zahra wasn't so convinced. “Say you're caught prowling in the merchant district looking for easy coin, and a guard wants to record your identity? You won't even know where to sign on the parchment, he'll know you're not what you're disguised as, and you're screwed. If you can write, you can fake your way through all that. You can't get through everything with speed and quick-thinking, you know. Sometimes you have to learn the proper skills. Be a bit more professional. Plus, there's a lot of books you can learn from, and I won't be around all the time to coddle you. So, gather your wits about you, my apprentice, and let's begin!”

Zahra made a face at him, wondering if Omir hoped that if he was enthusiastic enough, that would spread to her. But she didn’t want to disappoint him, and so joined her mentor at the table. The sounds from the deck were muffled in the tiny cabin and the boat rocked leisurely.

"There's three scripts in Sarkoth," he explained. "Classic script has its roots in the savages that lived here before the Empire formed. It has a completely different alphabet, though some scribes keep trying to unify it with the others. You'll see it mostly in old tomes, though they use it casually in certain provinces, including Gerighur, where we're headed. It's also the preferred script for communications between thieves and spies across Centra, except the pronunciation is a little shifted. It's even used to write songs, but such things hurt the ears unless they're spoken in the old tongue."

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Zahra's eyes glazed over as she tried to imagine a world before the Empire. A world of darkness, conquest and bad poetry. A world without kings or nobles.

"The others, as you know, are songscript and highscript. Songscript is used mostly in-"

"-In Vesper," Zahra interrupted.

"That's right." said Omir. "Do you know why?"

"Uh..." she wondered. "Something about the merchants, or..."

"Aye, you're half-right. Though highscript is preferred for regular correspondence, songscript is still used for trading ledgers, shop fronts, everything else. In Vesper they even use it to write the justice rolls, though there's still a backup in highscript."

The girl felt her head getting fuzzy at all the history. When were they going to learn something?

A piece of parchment was put just under her nose. Three sentences, one below the other. Meaningless squiggles and angular scratchings.

"Copy them out," he said. "Once you get used to the rune sets, we'll start on their sounds. Some you should know already, but these other ones-"

His voice faded into the background as Zahra focused on making her hand complete the necessary movements. She yawned as Omir lit another candle. It was going to be a long night.

***

In the first few days of teaching, Omir gave her pages of notes that she was to learn to read and copy out in a scrawl. After that Zahra began her own shaky writing, copying the rune set, then moving on to simple words. Numbers, objects, words used to describe. At first it seemed a hopeless waste of time, the scrawl barely legible, the act making as much sense to her as the soothsayers who tried to read the future in entrails.

Yet, slowly, she began to recognize the symbols, and words danced together in her dreams as she slept. Her mentor gave her a skin-bound tome—a dark tale recounting the Conquest of Ara'Nihe. Soon, enthusiasm came from wanting to read the book herself, and she remembered a dim and early memory of someone reading to her as a child. She couldn't remember who. Maybe she was remembering it wrong, as no one she had known in Vesper had understood how to read or write. Literacy was a rare skill even among usefs with a trade, never mind those who lived in the shanty of Old Town. Her brother knew as much as any - an understanding of shop symbols, of signing his name with a cross, but not enough to teach. Asking those who could write for their help had only ended in their laughter, or worse. No one wanted to give their skills away for free, and the ability to turn marks upon parchment into knowledge was a highly valued one, a skill that separated whole echelons of Empire society.

In relatively little time, understanding of the three scripts began to click neatly into place. Omir wasn't a half-bad teacher, she decided, tolerant of her failures and patient with her questions. Though the late nights made her yawn, she began to look forward to the lessons, having little else to do on the boat. Zahra disliked the hammocks and the sway of the boat at night. It distracted her and she found it hard to sleep. Instead, she spent most of the wee hours sneaking around the ship, preferring to sleep on the deck under the sun during the day. She preferred the open space, the wide sky, and the sea. Sleeping in the dingy cabin made her feel suffocated. A few times the deck boy had chased her with a mop for napping among the crates, but she’d got him back. A strategically-tipped bucket of fish-guts was all that was necessary, tipped right into his sleeping hammock. It served him right, after all.

The evenings passed swiftly. They had gotten into a routine where Omir would present several sheets of runes for her to copy out, and thereafter dictated some lesson to her that she would need to write while absorbing the information. After lighting a candle and shuttering it safely inside the glass lantern, Zahra turned to the page, and blinked.

"What is this?" She asked. "I thought you taught me all of the three scripts."

"Ah," said Omir theatrically. "There is always more to learn, and I think you are competent enough now to learn something beyond simple writing. These are alchemical symbols. You will need to learn the new names for chemicals, ones only those versed in potion-making can understand. It is not taught to everyone—the knowledge can be dangerous, and is usually forbidden to usefs. Imagine if every roguish half-wit could produce deadly poison, a curtain of smoke, or even lightning just by mixing a few ingredients into a bottle? I've known men hanged for even dabbling in it. The King does not like to share his magic, but if you are to be useful to me, you must learn. The names for wood-ash, red brimstone, white liquor and water metal. Only by using their true names can you harness their power, their spirit. I hope you are well rested, my apprentice. We have a long night ahead of us."

Zahra nodded, tracing the runes with her finger.

***

"Stay out of the way of the captain," said Omir, as they ate a meal of fresh fish and ship's biscuit—bread baked so hard it was liable to crack a tooth—on the sailboat deck. "She looks the sort to hand out a whipping."

"She can do that?" asked Zahra.

Omir shrugged, picking at the small bones that had lodged themselves between his teeth, washing it down with dark liquid from a wooden mug. "Her ship, her law. Just do what I say and try not to get into too much trouble, alright?"

Zahra nodded at him, wringing her hands. Omir wouldn't allow her any of the rum that was ladled out into mugs at every meal, muttering something about “gut-rot” and "shatters". Curious, she had tapped a barrel for herself, only to spit out the burning liquid with horrified distaste. The other sailors seemed to delight in the drink, turning to merriment as the sun retreated below the waves. When the merriment got out of hand, Omir was proved right about the captain, who struck one of the deckhands bloody, the spray almost black under the dim light of the moon. As tradition, all of the crew and its passengers were to watch the punishment—the only way to ensure order on a craft where discipline was essential to bringing the ship back into safe harbour.