It wasn't until evening the next day after a few hours' sleep and a bath aboard the Black Swan that Aldo, Mailyn, and I were escorted in to speak with Herrick the Hawk in his boardroom beneath the ship's forecastle. The crew of the Black Swan had already swarmed over the Auspicio, picking it clean of most items of value, but they still had to set the sails Florian style and repair the minor damage inflicted by the battle - most of that work was done by the Auspicio's original crew, now being press-ganged into working under a different flag. Interestingly, among the passengers of the ship, the Perditan crew didn't touch a tollo, much less threaten prosecution. The passengers would be responsible for arranging and financing their own passage to whatever destination they liked but, as far as Perditan justice was concerned, they had done no wrong and their possessions were their own. Their only crime was sailing aboard the wrong Gionian ship. As I've said, we are not pirates.

Among the crew of the Auspicio, each was allowed to keep one change of clothes (beyond those on their back) and one item of value, either personal or monetary, and the rest was fair game for the Hawk's crew - for most of them, that meant holding onto a single silver kronetta, the largest denomination in their possession. In short order, the prisoners in the chattel hold were freed and allowed to venture above decks just in time to see the incipient dawn.

Herrick the Hawk assembled the former prisoners on the deck, most of them free of chains for the first time in a week or more, since before boarding the ship. There was quite a bit of confusion and at least a little fear - we Perditans do not have a good reputation across most of the world. We are pirates, thieves, and charlatans… scarcely civilized - or so the propaganda of Gionia's high society would have you believe. Many of these freed prisoners had been lifelong loyal subjects to High Prince Karlo until mere weeks ago, but they had been imprisoned by their duke, separated from their families, deprived of their hard-earned property, sentenced to years (and in many cases a lifetime) of toil and servitude, and forcibly sent across the sea to be auctioned off to future masters. A dozen among their number were now dead. Now, the survivors were in the hands of Perditan 'barbarians'.

The Hawk stood atop the Auspicio's forecastle to address them, Rose Argent standing by his side, her dark hair glittering with the facets of a dozen purloined jewels. The Hawk's pet hawk, Praedjeri (Predator in Perditalog) perched upon his shoulder, sleek and black as onyx in the morning sun. The Hawk stroked Praedjeri's beak, raised his hand in a fist, and the muttering crowd lapsed into silence.

"In the name of Nurass, I declare whatever sentence or edict you were imprisoned under to be absolved. There are no prisons in Floria, and we are all free men and women. You are free!" This drew a considerable cheer from the crowd - though there was some grumbling, and the Hawk noticed it. "I understand your concern: you are free, but you are cast adrift in a land that is not your home, left on your own with naught but rags. Breathe easy, friends. For those of you with a trade, we'll arrange to have you speak with a guild representative. Most of them will speak Gionian but, for those who don't, we can find a translator. Every third or fourth person in Floria speaks your language…"

"They speak Selenic?" somebody shouted.

The Hawk cleared his throat. "Eh… no. You are Gionians, are you not?" One would hope so - he was speaking in Gionian, after all. Most of the crowd nodded, albeit perhaps with less certainty than the Hawk would have liked. "We accept your Gionian currency as our own, and our cultures are kissing cousins. For those without a trade, we have workhouses where you can stay and be fed at no cost - though you will be expected to work, and a portion of your wages will go to support the house. Every tollo you earn after that? You can use as you see fit - including saving for passage wherever you wish to journey. Be warned, though, that many who find themselves temporarily stranded in Floria decide to stay there in perpetuity. Floria is my home, and I think many of you will like it. What else would you like to know that will ease your concerns?"

"What does your Nurass think of Selenites?" a woman called out.

"Ah… yes. I suppose that explains it. I thought you lot looked a bit too familial for it to be random. You're all Selenites, are you? To be honest, I have no idea what my lord thinks of Selenites, and nor do I care, and nor should you. A hundred faiths are practiced in Floria - none are favored, and the only ones that are forbidden are the ones that disturb our peace. If the Selenite people are as affable and hard-working as the rumors suggest, then I suspect you'll have a much easier time of things than in 'fair' Gionia."

"We won't have to worship the shadow?" a man asked.

"To the best of my knowledge, nobody worships 'the shadow'. I have no idea where that rumor got started." The Hawk reached into his shirt and pulled out two small pendants - one with the seven-pointed darkstar in garnet and amethyst and one with the circle of the Avatar in gold and pearl. "To us, the darkstar is like your Winter Rose of Gionika. I have pledged fealty to my Tyrant, but I follow the path of the Avatar, as so many in your country do. But I'll not proselytize to you and will assign sail duty to any member of my crew who tries to do so. Now… if you've got further questions, Lieutenant Argent will take them."

"What?!" Rose gasped. The Hawk hopped down and slipped through the crowd as they gathered around Rose, a hundred more questions fast on their lips.

A firm hand gripped my shoulder, and I nearly panicked as visions of being captured once again flashed through my mind. I stepped away, spun around, and drew in a healthy breath to scream…

"M- Mrs. Sealie?"

Our temporary guardian nodded to me, looking a good deal less seasick than the day before. Perhaps Perditans are just better sailors, but I suspect the crew of the Black Swan had given her something for her illness - a two-octavo alchemical mixture in Portogarra probably costs ten tollos in Mini Gionika.

"I've given an introduction letter to the crew of the Black Swan, and so you must meet with their captain," she said primly, offering not a shred of apology for having locked us in our bunk to begin with. If she hadn't, it's quite possible we wouldn't have gone to the extremes we had and gotten ourselves convicted, imprisoned, and nearly killed. But then we'd never have lit up the deck of the Auspicio and fired off the mage-cannon… we'd likely have gotten to Isil Filar safely and wouldn't have freed all the prisoners, so I suppose the outcome was good enough.

"We get to meet Mister the Hawk?" Mailyn asked excitedly

"So it would seem. We're going to the Black Swan to get you bathed and clothed so you can make a good impression."

In retrospect, it's a bit ridiculous - the Hawk couldn't care less about the state of dress or cleanliness of three incoming Scamps. But I have learned that, since Perdita has no nobility, folks are wont to project that rarefied status upon Shadows (and I suppose the Greycloaks would be lesser nobles). In Mrs. Sealie's eyes, going to meet Herrick the Hawk was akin to attending a meeting with Duke Orsino himself, and I get the impression that Sealie put a great deal of stake in propriety.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Why d'we need a bath?" Aldo asked.

"Are you kidding?" I said, aghast. "We're filthy! And you've got blood all over your shirt!"

"Didn't say I wasn't gonna change my shirt," he muttered.

"Come along, children get in the boat," Mrs. Sealie said.

"I don't reckon you get to tell us what to do, on account of locking us in our bunk and all," Mailyn huffed.

"That…" Mrs. Sealie flustered. "That was only supposed to be for a few hours. If I'd have known I'd get that ill… look, I will overlook the fact that you broke into every stateroom in the ship if you don't mention that to Captain Hawk…"

"That's a deal!" Aldo said. He stuck out his hand, but Mrs. Sealie refused to take it since it was so bloody and otherwise filthy, like the rest of him.

We boarded a rowboat manned by two of the Hawk's enlisted crew, a man and a woman. I have to admit I first gawped at the sight of a woman sailor, even if her clothes were neat and in good repair and her tattoos not lewd in the least. Women just don't become sailors in Gionia, certainly not Selenite ladies of good breeding, but we make up around forty percent of Perdita's navy and privateer forces. She rowed every bit as hard as the lanky sailor to her left, joking good-naturedly as they rowed us across to the Black Swan.

"So you three are going to the Collegium, are you?" she asked in slightly-accented but perfectly fluent Gionian - it's one of the four languages every Scamp learns in their first few years.

"Yep!" I said quickly. "I'm going to be a Shadow, just like Captain Hawk!"

The other sailor chuckled. "Iron-heel and me were both Collegium, too, though we never made it past Sneak." He shrugged. "Most folks don't, so that's okay…"

"Who's Iron-heel?" Aldo asked.

"Why I am," the woman said. She thumped her brown boot against the bottom of the rowboat, and I noted that her heels were, indeed, plated in some sort of metal. Iron, I would presume. "Wouldn't want me stomping on you with these, would you?"

"No, Miss Iron-heel," I said.

The two ships were about fifty yards apart - not far at all, but both were tacking at about fifteen knots, toward Mizzen which is about average for Perditan ships. I imagine Iron-heel and her friend were using some sort of special technique to keep up with the larger ships, though I didn't take note of it at the time.

I looked out over the open expanse of ocean between the two ships, looking for anything of note but seeing nothing but an endless expanse of ocean fading into ocean haze on the horizon. My head dipped low and brushed against Mailyn's shoulder, but she didn't say anything about it. For the first time in what felt like ages, I felt the weariness of the past two days slowly bearing down on me like a great somniac blanket.

"Tired?" Iron-heel chuckled.

I nodded - I'd been up all night, and much of that had been too exciting for a merchant's daughter. "A little…"

"Ever had coffee?" the man asked.

I shrugged. "What is it?"

"A drink they like in Mouldevica. The Hawk calls it his wake-up juice. We've always got a lot on board."

"Is his real name The Hawk?" Aldo asked.

"His real name is Herrick. Hawk's what everybody calls him," Iron -heel said. "Who wants to see how we knot up the boat for a lift?"

I nodded, but the gentle rock of the water and the warm press of the sun already had me drifting off. I think I passed out on Mailyn's shoulder, and when I awoke I was splayed out in the Black Swan's bath with Mailyn and Aldo practically piled on top of me, and I can only guess we'd been left there for two or three hours to catch a little sleep, because it was already late afternoon.

We took turns bathing, with Mailyn and Aldo chatting excitedly through their individual baths while I stood scandalized and facing the wall at the amount of nudity happening in the same room as me. Selenites are about the opposite of Perditans when it comes to nudity - even when I was a young child, my mother bathed me from behind an opaque cloth to protect my virtue, and now I'd discovered that my only two friends were practically, scandalously nudists. I tried to leave the bath, but somebody had locked the door for our privacy and I didn't have the key. When it was my turn to bathe, I was quite insistent:

"You guys have to look at the wall. You can't look!" I insisted.

"They got stuff in the bath that bubbles right up," Mailyn said. "It's nice, and you can't even see nothing."

"Why'd I even want to look?" Aldo asked. "You got a gross birthmark or something?"

"What? No! Just… just you can't look. Okay?"

"Avatar's ashes, we're not gonna look!"

Based on the intermittent giggling, I'm fairly certain they each looked once or twice, just to spite me… but the ship's bath did provide a reasonably translucent murk that was only strengthened by the sailor-class soap they'd provided in big, lumpy cakes.

Afterward, insisting that it was not yet time for the giggling Mailyn and Aldo to turn around yet, I donned my only remaining change of clothes, a plain brown tunic dress that my mother would have been aghast to see even the servants wear. I'm not sure what they did with the nice forest-green dress I'd been wearing for the past two days. I can only hope they tossed it into the Pelagic Ocean.

We pounded on the door for a good five minutes before anybody bothered to let us out of the bath room, at which point we were escorted across the deck to the Hawk's stateroom.

The Black Swan was a bit smaller than the Auspicio, a sleek and dark Wext-style clipper. While the Wext would call it a 'midline ship', we call them frigates in Floria, fast and maneuverable ships meant for patrolling coastal waters and harassing larger, slower ships on the open seas. It boasted mage-cannons on the fore and aft of the ship and five alchemical cannons on either side right below the main deck. It was somewhat faster than the Auspicio and much more maneuverable - it could have blown her out of the water twice before Second Mage Awis'le even got a shot off. The Black Swan wasn't particularly faster or better-armed than the midline ships of the Gionian fleet (which is a good fleet), but it could have taken on two of them at once and won - the big difference was the crew. Perditan ships do not have a position for a ship's mage because every officer and a good fraction of the enlisted are capable mages for the simple fact that, for three centuries now, the Tyrant of Floria, has been recruiting magical talent from around the world.

Earlier, when Herrick the Hawk gave his sales pitch for Floria to the desperate Selenite refugees, he'd overlooked one tiny detail often overlooked by the magically-gifted: if any of the freed Selenites on the Auspicio had practiced magical professions - artificers, alchemists, seers, and (of course) garden variety mages - most could at best become assistants in Floria, where magical talent is as common as toadstools. Two-thirds of Floria's native residents have at least some amount of magical talent. You can buy used glowglobe filaments on street corners for three tollos and every neighborhood has an alchemist's shop. But there's always demand for more talent, and Aldo, Mailyn, and I had been selected to be part of the next generation of Nurass's grand experiment.

We were escorted to the Hawk's boardroom by a young officer who'd introduced herself as Oumaa Dead-Eyes - she had the milky, glazed-over eyes of a corpse, but could 'see' well enough to amble about the Black Swan's deck without her bare feet stepping on so much as an errant splinter. Shells and bangles rattled in her dreadlocked hair as she went.

"I knew something important would happen today, but the bones did not divulge what," she said off-handedly.

"Is it us?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Time will tell, child. Come."

As an island set between two busy continents and suspended in history, Perdita's people are diverse and the Collegium is even more so. For instance, Rose Argent was as pale as sculpted alabaster while Oumaa Dead-Eyes was so dark, her skin seemed to drink in the sunlight. From Arkavy to Izilkar, every corner of Terre was represented on the Black Swan. The only things they had in common were a common purpose and an easy competence at seeing that purpose through.

We made our way to the boardroom. I couldn't help but notice that there wasn’t a spot of dirt or a speck of grime on the ship. I'd have thought it fresh out of the shipyard if it wasn't for the slight fading where sunlight had faintly bleached the exposed parts of the deck. Even the sails, taut in the evening breeze and glittering with the faint sheen of glimsilk, looked untouched by the elements.

"Here we are," Oumaa said. "No matter what transpires within, please try not to cry."

"W-why would we cry?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Children often cry and tears may interfere with my divination."