We're sailing o'er to Floria

to get our fortune made,

We're hauling 'cross the Perditos,

the isles of Brother Shade,

and ain't no captain furl our mast,

nor calm, nor storm, nor beast avast,

we'll sail to Floria,

across to Floria.

-Traditional privateer song, 'Sailing to Floria'

"Hey, I think I see a whale!" Aldo shouted.

"That ain't a whale, it's a wave," Mailyn replied.

"I bet there are whales out here, though," I said.

After receiving the patronage of Second Mage Awis'le, the sailors let us do as we pleased as long as we didn't get in anybody's way. Somehow, amazingly, Mrs. Sealie hadn't realized we were up to no good, and I was reluctant to second-guess that windfall of luck. The three of us, meanwhile, were quite enjoying our utterly unsupervised voyage to Floria.

As incoming recruits to the Perdita Free Collegium - the oft-maligned 'School for Shadows' - the three of us could hardly have been more different. I was the daughter of wealthy merchants. Not exorbitantly wealthy, but wealthy enough that a dozen of Barsoa's minor noble houses cast envious glances our way, right up until the night Duke Orso seized all of our wealth, which he justified on account of us believing in a different One True God than he did and wearing funny clothes on Saintsdays. Yes, we Selenites have a long and proud tradition of getting shat upon by the nations of Slartibarica.

Aldo, on the other hand, was what is called in the vernacular a street rat - the boy never knew his father, his mother was a Vieli Street prostitute and, when she mysteriously disappeared (presumed fled or dead) when he was six years old, the bordello tossed him out into the streets. Aldo could count on one hand the number of times he'd ventured outside the poorer quarters of Portogarra, and it would take all day for him to count the number of times he'd stolen food. He got the pale scar over his lips when a grown man stabbed him in the face for half a loaf of rye bread. If there was a stereotypical incoming student at the Collegium, Aldo fit the bill - he was a master thief in the making.

And Mailyn? She was a country girl. As you might guess from her auburn hair, her parents were from northern Wexland, but she wasn't quite sure how they'd found themselves on Barsoa. They were sharecroppers, as so many immigrants to Gionia are, and she'd lived on a farm her whole life. Her family managed to get by up until the estate they farmed on changed hands around a year ago and the new bosswoman decided that she didn't care to have foreigners cropping her land. They traveled to the coast and found work in Portogarra, but it wasn't very good work - what did they know of living in the city? In their hour of dark desperation, Mailyn's parents sold their youngest daughter to Rook the Shadowbroker for five octavos, which was about five weeks of wages for the exploited foreign laborers of Portogarra. Mailyn was sold to secure the rest of the family a few months of steady meals.

The only thing the three of us had in common was that we were driven into Rook's hands by forces beyond our control. And we were all supremely lucky - how many destitute orphans dream of being whisked away to a place where they'll have food and shelter… and where somebody will teach them magic, actual magic! Yes, we'd struck it rich in the cosmic lottery, even if it wasn't quite the future I'd dreamt of for myself. That future would have involved a happy family… that and me being a princess. I divulged my childhood dream to my two companions as we kicked about the deck.

"I always thought I might be a princess," I told the other two. My fantasy was that some stranger from distant lands would show up at the manse one day and tell me that I was secretly a Selenite princess who'd been safeguarded with a loyalist family until the liberation of their homeland and, now that the day was at hand, I was to be whisked away to the palace to oversee our people's moment of glory. Of course, I loved my real parents very much, but princess fantasies are a very potent elixir to little girls in the mercantile gentry. "They say there were once kings and queens of Selen, and that one day Asuna will bless our chosen and our people will rise again. For all I know, my great-great-great grandmother was queen there, so maybe I could be a… hmm… I wonder if Floria's got any princesses?"

Aldo shrugged. "Could be? I don't know squat 'bout Floria. But you ain't a princess, Vix."

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"I know that, obviously," I said, though my mind was not entirely convinced.

"I always dreamed of being a proper witch," Mailyn said. She'd opened up quite a bit over the past few days. She was more taciturn than me, but not by much. "My sister said I got the gift on account of whenever I'm sad or ornery, I get the sparks 'n flickers, and she figured it might be magic. I thought that maybe some witches from the magic school would show up and take me off to learn witchery…"

"Witchcraft," I corrected.

"The academy don't take girls. Least that's what I read," Aldo added.

"How? You can barely read," I observed.

"Well I heard it from somebody who read it," he huffed. "No girls allowed in the fancy mage school - at least not the one in Barsoa."

"Well that's cow plop," Mailyn said.

"That is stupid," I agreed. "I bet girls are as good at magic as boys."

"Even better, prolly," Mailyn mused.

"Yeah!"

"Yeah, well… we'll see, won't we?" Aldo compromised.

In point of fact, if there is a difference in intellect or magical ability between men and women, it is subtle enough that no scholar has yet detected it. The reason the Gionika Royal Academy does not accept female students is simple enough: they never have, and things are going swimmingly, so why should they start now? And the reason that the Perdita Free Collegium accepts any talented child is equally simple: the world ignores exceptional talent at its own peril.

Over the first few days of our voyage, Aldo, Mailyn, and I explored the ship, and the sailors were surprisingly accommodating because the ship's mage liked us. He might not have taken a liking if he'd known we were headed for the Collegium - in fact, the whole island of Perdita was not well-regarded in Gionia. But Rook had been pretty clear that our true destination was to be kept between us and Mrs. Sealie, and the three of us weren't going to tell anybody. And Mrs. Sealie certainly wasn't.

There was a reason our 'guardian' had never managed to discover we'd skipped the bunk - the woman had become terribly seasick and had barely been off her cot except to vomit and rehydrate. The three of us agreed, it was a very good thing that none of us had got stuck bunking with her because you could smell the sick all the way out in the hallway, even when the door was closed. I like to think that, if we hadn't picked the lock and secured wandering rights over most of the ship, somebody would have let the three of us out on occasion to relieve ourselves and get food and drink. If not, there would have been a very smelly room containing three dead children at the end of the Auspicio's journey. I was still a bit peeved at the woman, but the fact that she was suffering for her sins soothed my ire somewhat.

Mrs. Sealie's illness aside, I'd have thought that somebody would have taken exception to the three audaciously unsupervised children running about a slave ship, but success breeds complacency. After numerous successful tours shuttling goods, slaves, and passengers to the Gionian colonies or Turan Free State, the crew of the Auspicio was relaxed in their routine and already looking forward to our first port of call. As with most trade ships, we would stop in Isil Filar just north of the Perditos to drop off goods and passangers and resupply, at which point Mrs. Sealie would probably arrange for passage from Isil Filar to Floria for the second leg of our journey. I can only guess that this is what Rook's plan was, because obviously that's not what happened.

"Hey, want to see if we can get into some of the locked rooms?" Aldo asked.

"That's a stupid question," Mailyn said.

"Yes, obviously," I clarified.

"Want to start up above or down below?"

I pondered that for a moment before responding, "Let's start with the rich people's rooms! We just have to make sure they aren't in at the time."

In truth, I doubt whether any of the 'rich' people on the Auspicio were as wealthy as my family had been. On the rare occasions that my parents needed to travel, they would charter a small ship through the Theriquan Interest, a now-defunct consortium of Gionian-Selenite traders. And the fabulously wealthy and titled nobles, of course, take their own ships. The Auspicio's first-class passengers likely straddled the petty mercantile class and the professional gentry - that is prosperous shopkeepers, yeoman farmers, doctors, thaumaturgical professionals, retired officers, and so on.

Finding out whether these almost-wealthy passengers were in was easy enough: give the door a few good bangs. If somebody answered, we'd claim we thought this was our auntie's room, make our apologies, and scamper off. If there was no answer, then Mailyn and I would act as lookouts while Aldo got to work on the lock. I observed him at work when I could - lock-picking would be an invaluable skill to pick up, no doubt - but there's only so much you can learn without getting in and working the lock yourself. Already, I could tell Aldo's skills were improving.

"I'm in!" he whispered.

Mailyn pushed past me. "I wanna see! I bet they got a fancy bed!"

I slipped in last, my breath hot in my chest, and closed the door behind me. Sneaking around was fun!