Tseetsaa glanced up from her paper as Nuliyaa stepped under the shade of the tarp. Maarp had ruined so many of her sketches back at the market and she was trying to salvage what she could. If nothing else, the ruined bits were useful for practice.

Something appeared in the distance, moving fast in their direction. Another sailboat. They’d adjust their course in a moment and the other boat would pass by just as so many others had in the past few days. Traveling was not as exciting as Tseetsaa had imagined it would be. Except…

“That boat is going fast, isn’t it?”

“They all seem to go so fast,” Nuliyaa replied as she started to settle back down on her blanket.

Nuliyaa never paid attention to anything she said. Tseetsaa kept watching. She was trying to get the look of the sails right, which meant paying attention to every sailboat that passed.

“It’s slowing down,” she said, pressing the charcoal back down to begin a line. But she kept watching because the way the boat was slowing down didn’t seem right. “Why is it turning?”

“What?” Nuliyaa looked up from her book, then jumped to her feet.

“Pirates!” someone yelled.

The barge went silent and frozen for a heartbeat, then “Everyone to the oars!” the barger called.

Tseetsaa scrambled up. “Miyt, hide,” she whispered.

Her mother turned wide eyes on her. “And what do you think you will do?”

“You’ll help me.” Sinchach grabbed Tseetsaa’s hand and tugged her along with him to the back of the boat.

“How is she going to help you?” Tajak demanded. He held a massive shield. Where had that come from? Had that been stored in Sinchach’s pocket? How had they gotten it out?

“You can draw.” Sinchach shoved a pile of papers at her that made Tseetsaa want to clutch them and hide them somewhere he would never find them. She’d never touched such fine paper in her life, even from her father’s scribe work. “Draw this—” he sketched a symbol across the top paper “—exactly like that, as fast as you can.”

“I’m not—I didn’t see—”

He made an exasperated noise and drew another, slower this time and she made out the order of each stroke. “Do you understand it now?”

“Yes, I think.” She clutched her charcoal and started one.

“No, reverse these lines—that one should be shorter—yes, there. Make as many as you can!” He stood up and moved a few steps away. Tajak hesitated, as though he wasn’t sure who he should follow.

“Stay with her!” Sinchach snapped. “Make sure she doesn’t get hurt. I can’t draw sigils and do spells at the same time.”

“He doesn’t understand how bodyguarding works,” Tajak growled as he stepped in front of Tseetsaa.

The boat was getting so big. Tseetsaa’s eyes wanted to stare at the stained sail that was filling the sky as each moment passed. She forced herself to go back to drawing. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her ears. Drawing. She needed to focus on the drawing. That was something she knew. Something she was good at.

“What is she doing up here?” Cheeyt snapped as she appeared the crates with a crossbow in hand. Singmij was right behind her with another one.

“Drawing sigils,” Sinchach answered. He whispered something to the sigil he had drawn, pulled his arm back, and threw it.

If it was ordinary paper, it would have just fluttered about a bit, maybe spiraled around if the wind caught it. But this paper flew straight toward the pirates’ boat and exploded over the water. Tseetsaa stumbled at the crack of sound, her charcoal sliding across the paper and destroying sigil. She tossed it aside and started a new one.

“They’re not in range yet,” Singmij said. “Save your magic.”

“I was hoping they’d turn back when they saw magic.” Sinchach’s hands tightened on the next sigil and he’d gone pale.

“That is good thinking,” Cheeyt said. She didn’t sound like she thought Sinchach capable of it.

“We were taught to open every engagement with a warning,” Sinchach replied.

The pirate ship came closer. Closer. Closer.

“Keep breathing,” Tajak said. “In, out. In, out.”

Tseetsaa thought he was speaking to Sinchach, who was still paler than normal, but when she looked up, she realized his focus was on her. And that he was right—she was holding her breath. He nodded at her. “In, out.” She sucked in a breath.

“Keep talking, Tseetsaa,” Cheeyt said suddenly. “That’ll keep you thinking and not panicking.”

Talking, talking. What to say? It wasn’t like she and Cheeyt talked reguarly before now. “Where’s Kachaark?” was what she finally came up with.

“Back there. He’s got a little bit of a surprise for the pirates.” Cheeyt sounded like she was actually enjoying herself.

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“Nice to have a minotaur around for moments like these.” Singmij did, too.

Maybe she was right. Maybe Tseetssa, Nuliyaa, and Miyt didn’t belong here.

“What about Nuliyaa?”

“I think she’s rowing.”

Tseetsaa desperately wanted to turn around and see that, but she had to focus on the sigils.

“Almost there, almost there,” Cheeyt murmured.

“It’s been a while since I did this,” Singmij said.

“Not exciting enough in the chancery for you?”

Was Cheeyt actually teasing Singmij? She thought they couldn’t stand each other.

She had to stop drawing to wipe her hand against her tunic. She was sweating so much, she was going to smear the sigils.

“There!” Cheeyt cried.

And sound ripped from the pirates’ boat. Like the explosion from Sinchach’s sigil, but bigger and many times over.

He made a sound and threw his arms out. Fire roiled across the air, stopping about fifteen feet from the edge of the barge. Heat slapped Tseetsaa across the face, making her skin feel too tight.

“Sinchach!” Tajak lurched forward.

“Stay with her!” Sinchach snapped back.

The sound erupted again. “What is that?” Cheeyt demanded.

“Spell launchers,” Sinchach gritted out. “They have more than one. I don’t know where they are.”

More heat, another roar, a wave of heat again. Sinchach had been knocked back a step by the last time. His face, neck, and hands were horribly red.

“Fifteen seconds between blasts,” Cheeyt said. “Can you hold for one more, Sinchach?”

“Yes.”

“Ready, Kachaark?”

“Yes.”

Tseetsaa had been so focused on her drawing, she hadn’t seen the minotaur arrive. She looked over and almost jumped away. A massive weapon that looked like a giant’s version of Cheeyt and Singmij’s crossbows was set up on a crate.

Another roar screamed through the air and heat scalded against Tseetsaa’s face. “Drop, Sinchach!” Cheeyt ordered.

The mage collapsed. Tseetsaa flinched away from the sound that Kachaark’s weapon made when he shot it. She felt the barge’s deck jump underneath her. Then she heard snapping wood.

“Got them,” Kachaark said with satisfaction, his words almost lost in the sound of Cheeyt and Singmij shooting their crossbows. He pulled out another of those huge bolts and reloaded.

Another roar came and Sinchach jerked back up. He staggered, but he held the shield. Tajak looked helpless as he watched.

“Tseetsaa, Tajak,” Sinchach said. “Hold the sigil, repeat the spell, and think of the sigils exploding on the pirate boat, then throw them.” He said a few words Tseetsaa didn’t understand.

“What?” He wanted her to do magc? She wasn’t a mage!

“I’m going to drop the shield! Throw the sigils!” A pause, then, “Please! I can’t do both!”

Tajak was reaching for her hand. Why—? Oh, the sigils. She passed him a paper as she repeated the words of the spell, hearing Tajak’s voice echoing her own.

“Yes. Now throw!”

She pulled her arm back, said the spell, and threw, watching the piece of paper arc through the air toward the pirates’ boat. Tajak had gotten his into the air first and it flew true until an arrow from the pirates stabbed through it. But Tseetsaa’s landed, sending pirates scrambling as the spell exploded. Bile scorched her throat as one of the pirates tipped off the boat, the back of his tunic aflame.

Then Tajak’s face was in her own and she blinked at him as she jerked away. “Again!” he said as he reached for the papers in her hand. “We have to throw again!”

So she did. And then another, before that awful sound came from the pirates’ spell launcher again and Sinchach had to jerk the shield up again.

“Drop it!” Kachaark barked out after the wave of heat passed over them again.

Sinchach didn’t so much deliberately lower the shield as fall to the deck. Tajak dropped beside Sinchach, digging in his own pocket with his head ducked.

The sound of Kachaark’s weapon split the air again. A larger crack followed almost immediately. The other boat’s sail shuddered before tipping, slow at first, then building speed as it crashed through all the ropes and wood in its way.

“Good aim!” Cheeyt crowed. “You got the mast!” Kachaark gave her a fierce grin.

And then they were pulling away. The barge was moving far faster than it had before. “Keep going!” Cheeyt called over to Tseetsaa, she and Singmij both firing again with their crossbows.

It wasn’t until her last sigil hit the water instead of the boat that Cheeyt said, “Weapons down!”

The boat was getting smaller behind them and most of the pirates had turned their attention to the burning that had resulted from the sigils’ explosions. Tseetsaa forced her eyes off them and that was when she saw Cheeyt and Singmij hadn’t always been aiming at the boat. A few still bodies bobbed on the river between the barge and the sailboat.

Kachaark reached out an arm and she pressed against his side, her face against his tunic. “River pirates try to swim underwater to the vessels they want to board,” he explained. “If they had made it across, they would have killed us and our rowers. You don’t want that.”

“No,” she agreed. Of course they would have. It was still awful.

Nuliyaa and Miyt rushed over and crushed her between them. “Oh, my child,” Miyt breathed out as she held Tseetsaa against her.

“What was Sinchach thinking?” Nuliyaa demanded. She stepped back and surveyed Tseetsaa before wrapping her arms around her again. “He’s the mage!”

Tajak’s head jerked up as he glared at Nuliyaa. Tseetsaa pushed away from her mother and sister as she realized Sinchach was still crumpled on the deck. Hurrying to his and Tajak’s sides, she dropped to her knees. “What is wrong with him?” He looked as still as the bodies on the water, his face skin red and shiny in a way that told her there would be blisters.

There! His chest moved. He was still breathing.

“He exhausted himself keeping all of us alive,” Tajak snapped.

Singmij crouched down on Sinchach’s other side. “Do you have mage-root?” she asked.

Tajak held up a small bottle. “Already gave him some.”

“Then let’s get him out of the sun before he overheats more.”

Kachaark gently shouldered everyone out of the way, then leaned down and lifted the mage, studying his face. “We need to cool him down.”

“We have some.” Without the anger, Tajak just looked scared.

“Then, Miyt and Tseetsaa, you help Tajak take care of our mage. Nuliyaa, Singmij, let’s go help row us away from here.”

Nuliyaa looked at both shorelines, not that there was much to see at the moment. The Bakfathi side was just tall grass sticking out of the water and the other was a cliff over their heads topped by trees. “I thought there weren’t any more pirates.”

Singmij’s expression had gone grim. “The focus on Tewmisyu has probably made someone feel very bold. The barger will report the attack when we reach Riverport, but there’s not much else to do. Bakfathi isn’t going to do anything unless one of their own vessels is endangered.”

“Speaking of the barger,” Cheeyt said as the barrel-chested man appeared between the crates. “I wonder if he’ll waive the rest of the fee for our ride?” She walked over to intercept him. Nuliyaa looked thoughtful and hurried to join her.

Tseetsaa moved to follow Kachaark and Tajak, but slowed when Miyt came up to her side. “You were very brave,” Miyt said, sliding her arm around Tseetsaa’s back. “My heart wishes you were not, but you are.”

“I was so scared,” she whispered. “I only did what Cheeyt and Sinchach told me to do.”

Miyt looked at her. “When all is quiet again, ask Cheeyt if she was scared today. Or Kachaark. I think you will be surprised by what they tell you.”