Kanick and Bera were conveyed to the docks the following morning, in the company of a group of armed and armoured battlemages. They walked through the streets, since transporting the horses on the ship would be too bothersome - Kanick had told the stables to tell the High-Mage that they were a gift from the Great Temple.

He was somewhat regretting the decision, walking through the streets and seeing the sullen faces and hearing resentful whispers from the townsfolk they passed on the street made Kanick wish for the tall reassurance of a horse. Not that it would help, boxed in as they were in narrow streets, if the sulking mob became a violent one.

"Why are they looking at us like that?" Bera asked with a whisper.

"Remember I told you about places not well disposed to mages? Well, we're in one and the resentment here is more immediate," he told his apprentice while weighing up Marya's words in his mind. He had doubted her, but seeing, in the faces of the people they passed, the rage that was evident, he thought about how she had described it; a kingdom waiting to boil over. "Just keep close, and keep your hand away from your sword," Kanick counselled, "no matter the provocation."

The street opened out onto a busy wharf, the ships anchored there swayed with the rise and ebb of the sea. Clustered away at one end of the dock was a small fleet of galleys and cogs, their hulls darker than the rest and sporting purple sails. Kanick immediately recognised them as ships of the Order's small navy.

Once, he had considered that as a life for himself; the crews of the ships were nominally of the order of the Battlemages though most Battlemages in the fleet, as well as those on land, tended to ignore this fact. In the end it had been the glory that swayed him, like a fool; there was simply less for the fleet to do.

Their party headed towards the collection of ships, the sea of people parting before them. They stopped at a tall timber building – a former warehouse judging from how the upper floors leaned over the ground floor to aid the winching of goods. A sign hanging from the eaves naming the building as The Sea Dog's Head marked it out as an Inn.

"This is the place," the head of their guard, a short but stocky battlemage, replied curtly. "Captain Saed will meet you here." He yelled an order to his battlemages and they marched off, leaving Kanick and Bera feeling slightly exposed on the street.

"What was his problem?" Bera asked.

"Politics between the Great Temple and the Western," Kanick said dismissively. "Come, we have a ship to catch."

The light of the day penetrated only weakly into the inn. With a glance Kanick ascertained it was due to the grubbiness of the windows, rather than any stain applied purposefully to the glass. The air reeked of tobacco, alcohol and sweat but none of the numerous patrons paid them any attention as they entered. Kanick scanned the room, through a haze of smoke, and spotted a group of men and women laughing, tankards of ale set upon the table by the window.

One of them, a wiry dark-skinned man with close shorn hair, was wearing the robes of a battlemage though Kanick could see no armour beneath them.

"Captain Saed," Kanick called out, addressing the man as their guard had styled him.

The laughter stopped, but the atmosphere remained jovial.

"That is, I," the man replied. "You must be Kanick, deHeyes told me to expect you." Saed gestured at an empty stool. "Please, sit." Kanick and Bera sat as room was made around the table for them. "I could tell it was you, though I don't suppose you remember me?"

Kanick studied the man's features, trying to place them. He was handsome, with a large nose and wide jaw and his face seemed to suit the lines around his eyes and the grey in his hair. Kanick put him of an age with himself. "I'm afraid I don't, sorry."

"I did my acolytate here in Aaton, a few classes below you." Saed smiled. "Did you really get moved to Parras for setting the gardens on fire?"

"Ha, no." Kanick laughed, remembering his last night in Aaton with Regius and Areonis. "They don't kick you out for that! Though I was drunk, and thought we were lost. Areonis was much worse and decided lighting a beacon would be the best way of attracting attention. He was right." Kanick added with a smile.

"Ha, that would be the current Arch-Mage," Saed grinned, taking a long draught from his ale as Kanick nodded.

"Did deHeyes explain what we need?" Kanick asked, leaning forward.

"He did," Saed replied. "I understand the High-Mage isn't pleased, but there's nothing we can do, you have a writ from the Arch-Mage." He shrugged. "Besides, we have been kept close to port for so long, I'm actually looking forward to putting to sea."

"Excellent, when will you be ready to go?"

"You have no luggage?"

"Only what we can carry. We had horses but we decided it was best not to risk them on the ship."

"I find horses troublesome beasts," Saed nodded in agreement. "In that case, we can leave on the evening tide," he declared, finishing his ale.

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Kanick relished the tangy salt-smell of the sea and enjoyed the graceful rise and fall of the ship as Windwitch calmly dipped or climbed the swell. Kanick amused himself by timing his breath to coincide with the ship.

Saed was out on deck, overseeing his crew, but neither Bera nor himself were expected to perform any duties. That was a blessing, Kanick thought as he spied his apprentice, or rather his backside, as he leaned over the gunwale to spew noisily into the mostly placid ocean.

"It's this constant, gentle rocking," he declared weakly as Kanick sided up to him. "At least in a storm there would be some variety!"

"A storm would have us cooped up below deck and we wouldn't have this beautiful view," Kanick declared. It was their third morning on the ship, and the view was clear to the horizon, where sea met sky. Behind him were green and brown cliffs, topped with trees and framed by gulls swooping for their breakfast. Much to his disappointment, however, they would not leave sight of land and head for the deep waters.

Bera looked up from the slap of water against the hull to take in the view. It must have been less to his liking because, with a wobbly moan he shoved his face back towards the surface of the sea and began throwing up again.

Kanick left his apprentice to his new-found morning ritual and, reminded by the triumphant call of the gulls, went in search of breakfast. He settled down onto the long benches in the galley, filling a plate with hard bread – more like a biscuit – and taking a bowl of lemon juice to soften it. Biscuits and lemons were all they had, Saed had explained on their first day. The voyage was to be as utilitarian as possible. "Feel sorry for us, we have to eat this on our way back, too."

The rest of Kanick's time was spent in the quarters he shared with Bera, though usually alone, since his apprentice had decided puking on deck was preferable to puking in his hammock. He pulled open one of the books Xixi had given them, which indeed proved much more up to date than Creatures of Power, even containing a section on Palregon's Demons. For the Beastmen, and other creatures of lower cunning, Kanick was gratified to read, his approach had been correct; a mark of domination followed by a command of unravelling.

He moved onto the section of blood curses. He knew that a number of mages had willingly subjected themselves to magical augmentation – runes carved into their skin, or worse. He was just finishing a chapter on the Revenantic curse – a truly horrible form of necromancy where mages were ritually revived and given a taste for flesh and an aversion to sunlight, in return for incredible strength, a powerful affinity for dominating magic and eternal youth. Marks of domination, the book warned, could easily rebound upon the caster in this case.

Instead the book made one singular recommendation: fire and sunlight.

Kanick had just resolved to finish the chapter on what made Palregon's wraiths different from those usually created by a necromancer, when Bera walked through the door, looking pale but steady on his feet.

"You should read this," Kanick said, holding the book up. "It's very up to date and has a good example of a domination mark to be used against Beastmen."

Bera blanched at the thought of reading anything. "I will try, master," he promised, "as soon as we are free from this wooden hell."

Kanick nodded. He had hoped to teach Bera some more magic while they had this time at sea. Once they reached Woodbend, his apprentice's education would in all likelihood take on a more practical edge. "How is your arm?" Kanick asked.

Bera rubbed where the beastman had slashed at him, nearly taking his life. "It still hurts, if I touch it," Bera said, "But it looks as though it's beginning to heal."

"Palregon's legacies are still drawing blood all over the kingdom," Kanick responded. "You should read this book," he repeated. "Half of it is about Palregon's creatures."

Bera opened his mouth as though he had something to say, but then closed it again with a sheepish look on his face.

"You have something to say?" Kanick asked. When his apprentice didn't answer he said, "speak your mind. You are no good to me if you feel like you can't."

"When I was in the infirmary," he began, "Xixi said I shouldn't accept... that is, I shouldn't-"

"Shouldn't accept substandard tutelage from a famous teacher," Kanick finished for him. "She told me the same," he explained in response to Bera's confused glance.

"Yes, well, I've been wondering. What are you famous for? Was it to do with the war?"

Kanick sat up in his hammock, closing Agents of Chaos. "What do you know of the end of the Palregon War?"

He shrugged. "Not much," Bera admitted, "only what they teach us. The order created a powerful spell and used it against Palregon. The spell obliterated Palregon, his main army and created the Scar. It also split the Bergarm in two."

"That's close," Kanick told him. "The spell was crafted by my friend, Regius Elath, whose death we now go to investigate." Kanick smiled. "It truly was a feat of spellcraft, too powerful for any normal vessel, and so Regius hit upon the idea to have two vessels, which would be combined to hold the spell. We really had no idea it would be so powerful."

Understanding dawned on Bera's face. "You mean..."

"I wielded the spell that day," Kanick told him. "It was a heavy burden, I don't like to talk about it."

"I'm sorry master," Bera mumbled.

"No." He shook his head. "The deaths that day are my responsibility. I do the people who died in the scar a disservice with my silence." He held up a gloved hand. "Of course, such power comes at a cost. By rights, I should have died. It was only because of Regius that I didn't." Kanick didn't feel like talking about the Primordial Sanqia. Instead, he began to remove the glove.

"This is why I've been unable to teach you many runes – why those I have taught you have been carved in the ground, rather than traced with a quill. I have no feeling in my hands, and the fine movements for tracing a rune with a quill are beyond me."

They shared in a moment of silence. Bera had a strange look on his face. Fear? Reverence? Was he going to vomit, Kanick wondered? After a moment Kanick realised he was studying the scars. "Could the healers do nothing?" He asked.

"Regius tried, in the immediate aftermath. His spells probably kept me alive, but the damage was too extensive. He travelled to Zhura and spoke with a master in healing at the Eastern Temple, but there was nothing to be done."

Bera looked strangely sad. "I'm sorry about your friend," he offered.

Kanick closed his eyes and smiled, though he was trying to blink away a tear.

"It's a curious thing," he began. "We hadn't kept in contact, not since he travelled to Zhura in vain. Apart from a few letters, we have barely communicated for twenty years. I don't know that I've thought of him much in the past decade. And yet," Kanick sucked in a breath, and focussed on the wall just behind Bera, "and yet, I miss him more now that I know he's gone." He forced himself out of the hammock,quickly. "Anyway, I think I will head to the galley. I don't want to miss my evening's biscuits and lemon."