Amanda woke the next morning to find Sirius up and gone from the room. Even his black coat was no longer on the chair. In it’s place were some clean clothes from her room and a note.

‘Didn’t want to wake you. I’ll be in the wheelhouse. Maybe later we can go for a ride? X - S’

It was short and to the point but written with the most beautiful swirly handwriting. Not the sort of handwriting she would have expected him to have. She fingered the X fondly and found the ink was still a little wet.

With a smile, she put the note down, got dressed, and made her way up to the wheelhouse.

The boat rocked heavily underfoot, and she bumped into the wall several times on her way up to the main deck. Outside it was dreary and dry but perhaps not for much longer. The wind whipped her hair back and made her wrap her arms about herself. She shivered.

She dashed inside the welcome shelter of the wheelhouse. The door slammed unintentionally behind her.

Sirius glanced up as she entered. He smiled fondly at her. He wasn’t driving. He was sitting at the map table and observing Sonny, the one who had scraped the reef earlier on their journey. Sonny was an intimidating looking man with a shaven head and an excessive quantity of tattoos and earrings, but looks were deceiving, and Amanda had quickly found Sonny to be one of the more soft-spoken men on the ship, eager to please and very polite.

Sirius nodded at one of the other chairs.

As Amanda took a seat he remarked, “We might want to take that ride this morning if we’re going to at all today. I don’t think that weather’s going to get better.”

Amanda followed his gaze. The sea was choppy and mountainous. The worst she’d seen so far and nothing like her first few days aboard. Sirius and Sonny didn’t seem too worried though and Amanda wondered if maybe Shiv was right and she had no idea of what the sea could really be like. It seemed to change so fast too. She wondered if they knew what they were sailing into or if they were as surprised by the change in weather as she.

Outside on the deck she could see men adjusting some of the sails and ropes and Shiv yelling at someone who wasn’t doing their job right. The wind pushed at the sails with all her force, occasionally shifting direction and causing the sails to ripple violently and the mast and ship to groan like an old man.

As much as Amanda wanted to ride the pegasus, there were rules about flying them in strong winds. She bit her lip for a moment and then shook her head. “I think it might be too windy. It’s probably better if we don’t today.”

She met his gaze and he nodded, looking a little disappointed but accepting of her answer.

She peered back out the window again. “Is it going to get worse?” she asked.

“Probably,” Sirius replied but he didn’t sound worried. “Have you had breakfast?”

She shook her head.

“You should go have some. I’ll probably be here for a few hours.”

“Have you had yours?”

His turn to shake his head.

“Well, how about I bring some up here. You want anything Sonny?”

“Mmm, maybe a raw egg,” Sonny replied.

“A raw egg?” Amanda repeated.

Sirius smiled. “Don’t ask.”

Amanda shrugged and went of to fetch them all breakfast.

Bruce was in the kitchen.

“Hey Bruce.”

“Oh! Hey Amanda! What can I do ya for?”

“Breakfast for me and Sirius, and a raw egg for Sonny.”

“Coming right up.” Bruce disappeared into the kitchen.

“Oi!” the chef’s voice called out. “No more eggs for Sonny. Them’s for eating not for spellworking. I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a dozen times.”

“He uses them for spells?” Amanda whispered to Bruce as he returned with her request.

Bruce turned back toward the rest of the kitchen and called, “It’s for the lights Kip. We need em for reading and getting dressed.”

“Bah!” came the reply. “What do you need light for in a cabin? Cabin’s for sleeping not for lazing about with silly stories and if you can’t figure out how to put pants on in the dark then ye got no business being out at sea.”

Bruce looked at Amanda a rolled his eyes. Then he asked, “He did say it’s for the lights right?”

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Amanda shook her head. “He just said he wanted a raw egg. He didn’t say what for, although Sirius implied that I wouldn’t want to know.”

Bruce thought on it. “He’s probably just teasing. He’s got a sense of humor the captain, not that you’d think that at first. Although sometimes they do other spells too.”

“I thought you needed infusement magic itself to do spells?” Amanda inquired. She wasn’t sure if she should poke around too much. Would her knowledge of spells get her in trouble? Although, if they were already doing them perhaps it was fine, besides the things about infusements was common knowledge.

Bruce didn’t seem to notice either way. He nodded. “Oh we do have an infuser, Fallon. And Sonny’s a luminary so together Fallon and Sonny make the lamps. Not sure how it works but if it means I get to read at night then it's alright with me. Nothing hard mind you. I kinda learned a bit late. Sirius gives me lessons sometimes. He knows a lot of words and other things. The captain’s basically like an encyclopedia.”

They had an infuser on the ship? Amanda’s blood went cold as she tried to remember which one Fallon was. If she’d used her powers near him, like back when they’d been fighting the beetles, then he’d know what she was and if he was really good he might even be able to read her magic without her having to use her powers. “Which one’s Fallon?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know if you’ve met him. He’s mostly been with Sable who’s keeping those spider things all nice and locked away. They’re um... they’re really good friends.”

Amanda relaxed. So he probably didn’t know what her powers were then. “Uhh, Bruce,” Amanda started as she noticed something slither along the edge of one of the kitchen benches, “Is that one of the carpet pythons?”

Bruce turned to look. “That’s Anne.”

“Anne?”

“Crick’s pet. He’s busy on the rigging at the moment so I’m looking after her for him. Michael said they haven’t been sold yet so Crick wants to buy one.”

“I see. Hey Bruce, how come all the lights are different? There’s the infused lights in the cabins, the caterpillars in the hallways, and then electric lights in the galley, mess, and wheelhouse.”

Bruce gave a shiver. “Ugh yeah the caterpillars. I wish they’d get rid of them. They creep me out. Waay too many legs. And they’re poisonous to touch too you know? Did anyone tell you that?”

She nodded.

He continued. “Well the captain’s got this rule about no fire you see. The caterpillars are pretty cheap, you can get bags of moths for nearly nothing, and they stay on, even underwater. They’re like amphibious or something but they’re not very bright so for the wheelhouse, galley, mess, and library we use electric. Electric’s too expensive for the cabins though and the wiring’s a pain. You gotta keep it waterproof. But we don’t need bright lights for the cabins, just low light is fine, and you don’t want them on all the time like the hall lights. Fallon’s not a great infuser so the lamps he makes aren’t top tier or anything but they’re cheap enough and good for reading and things.”

“Why not do the halls with infused lamps as well?”

Bruce shrugged. “It’s been suggested, but it’s already a lot of lights and the hall ones are on all the time. He’s basically continually topping the cabin ones up and it uses the eggs. I asked him how once and he started talking about blood sacrifices.” Bruce shivered. “That’s getting like dark magic that, sorcerer stuff you know, or warlocks I guess. I don’t really know the difference. I don’t really want to. But since he uses eggs I figure that’s okay, maybe.” He shrugged. “I like it more than the caterpillars anyway. I don’t want one of them sleeping above me you know?.”

Amanda nodded. That all made sense to her. Spells required considerably more energy than raw magic. When she’d messed about with it in her childhood she’d seen many spells whose casting required animal sacrifices or worse. She’d learnt pretty quickly that it wasn’t so much about the specific animal but about the blood. If a spell listed cat, as many did for some reason, it often didn’t make too much difference if a rabbit was used instead. Well at least they still seemed to work as expected. Amanda hadn’t had the heart to ever actually try one with a cat but her friend had been plenty good at catching rabbits and since the rabbits dug holes in the paddocks which endangered the horses and also ate all the veges in her mother’ garden she hadn’t felt so bad about using them in spells.

“So, I assume the no fire rule also extends to firestarters?” Amanda asked casually.

“Oh, shit yeah. Hell if we ever found a firestarter on this boat he’d be put in a dingy and pushed out to sea no questions asked. That’s a dangerous power to have, but we don’t really ship people... at least not anymore…” He trailed off as if he’d said too much.

Amanda was grateful though, at least it stopped him wondering why she’d asked. She decided not to press him too hard about the slavery stuff, after all the Sirius had said that had been under the old captain and Bruce would have been only fourteen. She tried to imagine living and working on a ship at fourteen. She’d heard the stories from the others about how Bruce had grown up at sea on a different ship. How he’d been found by a crew of scavengers, as just a young lad, drifting among the wreck of that same ship. The only survivor. They’d rescued him, fed him, clothed him, and now he was one of them.

Amanda didn’t want to leave him with thoughts of the old days though so she tried a quip. One that might give her a little more information on the fire thing. “No open flames, but dragons are fine.”

Bruce’s eyes widened. “Oh! Those eggs! Sirius was furious and I heard Shiv wanted to toss them in the sea. Makes sense though. Shiv in particular hates fire. That’s how he lost his family. But you said they won’t hatch right? And they’re super valuable.”

Amanda nodded. “That’s right. They need heat and a lot of it, plus they’re not ready. They’ll get bigger before that happens. They were a lot better packaged than Silver’s stuff though. Someone knew what they were doing there… hey what was that about Shiv’s family?”

“Uh…” Bruce hesitated and suddenly looked guilty again. “Well, Shiv’s always been a sailor. He grew up around ships and on them but eventually he settled down, just worked the docks, in Scarlett. That’s where he’s from originally. He had a wife and two kids, boys I think. There’s a bit of an elemental feud there though. A lot of water elementals live in Scarlett for some reason and they got beef with some islands to the south, mostly firestarters. I don’t really know the history of it but there was an attack. A firestarter set some buildings on fire and well, one of them was Shiv’s place. He was out at the time but his family wasn’t. He joined us not too long after that.”

Amanda just stared at him with a kind of horrified look on her face. She couldn’t think of anything to say to that. She was quiet so long that eventually Bruce awkwardly reminded her, “Um, your food’s getting cold.”

“Right… right! I should get back up. Thanks Bruce.” She tried to give him a smile but she knew it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Whether Bruce noticed or not she would never know. He’d probably assume that it was because what he’d told her about Shiv’s family was horrifying, and that was at least partly true, but there was another reason too. After what Bruce had just told her it was no wonder that fire was prohibited, on this ship even more than some others. And fire was one thing, but in light of what had happened to Shiv’s family, her being a firestarter suddenly looked a whole lot worse.