“You definitely cheated,” Aisha said.

“Did not.”

“Did too. They didn’t know you were unkillable, did they?”

“I fail to see the relevance.”

Aisha stared back at him until he couldn’t meet her gaze. “You know,” she said, “you have a habit of doing those kinds of things, don’t you? You bet my brother would survive because you knew he would already, didn’t you?”

“That is an unfounded accusation with no evidence behind it.”

“And if I go ask Amurabi?”

“He’d talk you in circles and leave you more confused than when you first arrived.” Not an unfounded claim, but a tad hurtful all the same.

Aisha shoved off the railing with a sigh. “I need more wine, I think,” she said, and strolled below deck. After a moment’s hesitation, Lucius followed behind her with a hope that he had seen a momentary glance over her shoulder. The ladder down was like a portal to the veil, to the shadowy realm of the dead. Nothing but scant lines of swaying light cast upon unfamiliar crates and struts. The fairy light of a lantern bobbing in her hand ahead as she traversed the crew quarters. She had the grace to avoid the sleeping forms, but not Lucius. He bumped and stumbled and missed his chance at her cabin door.

She had wineskins within her cabin room, but he could only bring himself to stand in wait for so long. Eventually, he was sure something else had occupied her attention. Rather than meekly walk back to the ladder, he pretended his true purpose had been the other cabin, and in short order the two of us were sat across from one another.

“You haven’t forgotten your etiquette, have you?” I asked him, one hand on the tome I had been reading. Not that it was something indecent to read, but to keep the aged pages from flipping. Teaching the doctor had me surprisingly busy re-learning certain pieces of medicine.

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. Besides, I’ll be treating with a king, not a queen. It’s much easier.”

“King Arandall is a one of the wisest kings I’ve ever met. He has a very shrewd eye.”

“He can’t be too wise if you aren’t using him,” Lucius said, perusing the spines of my other books. He had already read most of them.

I cracked a smile at him. “Who said I’m not using him? The mere thing is, you never quite know when a king is going to die. By my estimation, the king doesn’t have much longer. He should have taken a Vassish wife if he wanted a long rule.”

He didn’t smile back. “Is that supposed to be a warning?”

Defensiveness born of youth, quite tiring. “In a sense, yes. You are of the nobility for now. You need to be thinking within your station. Above it even. By no means am I saying drive her away, but she should be nothing more than a mistress. It’s not a matter of affection, but inheritance and property. Allegiances even.”

“Is the nobility even going to survive the next few years? It’s not going to matter in the long run.”

I turned up my hands with a shrug. “Once you’re the king, you can do whatever you wish. I must advise you until then.”

He held his tongue and let the conversation die. When he spoke again, he asked, “What do you think my reward will be?”

“King Arandall is going to send you back into the fray. A war hero is best used in a war. He might use you to drag off one of his problems as well. Fracturing your enemy’s resources is the key to keeping power.”

“Well, there’s no war in the east, so it will either be to the north or the south. Skaldheim or Aillesterra.”

“Hope for Aillesterra. They’ll be much easier to crush. It takes action to triumph, no matter your own capacity, and those barbarians don’t tend to do anything overt. They’ve become crafty after fighting the trolls for so long. They’ve cultivated their economy too much. Built up an armory of cunning. I don’t think we’ll have a flareup with them for years.”

“Unless we cause one.”

“Unless we cause one.”

“But we wouldn’t,” he said.

I grinned. “Not yet. The scope of our activities is far too small, and Vassermark is not prepared for fighting Skaldheim. They would bleed dry. First, the imperial coffers must be filled, and all other theaters of war must be closed. Do not get ahead of yourself, my boy. You don’t need to worry about the distant future, only the present.”

He nodded and relaxed. Then his gaze moved across the books once more. “Which did you bring?” At such an innocuous invite, we soon fell into a lecture and discourse regarding the introduction of organic material, bone powder, to the metallurgical process to strengthen castings. The King’s endeavors with ley cannons had been blowing the back-caps off from the force reaction, and new steel was needed. Lucius already understood the applications of force and momentum equations, so the conversation dwelled primarily on that nebulous realm of metal crystallization, which I could only speculate on. We knew that the quench rate dictated the material performance, but no optical lens had yet been produced that would allow us to study the microstructure and study it. For many decades, we could only work off past knowledge and guess work.

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We fell into a discussion regarding the potential applications of cannons, what could be done to make them more maneuverable in an offensive capacity, and so on. The most frustrating aspect of the tools were how heavy the launching munitions were at the time. A modern cannon can be compressed to such a size than an infantry soldier can walk around with it, but back then, in the infantile days, it took barrels and barrels of shafts of ley to utilize it. Such things could hardly be brought forward to pound down a city wall. Erdro Karekale’s stigmata was still much preferable.

We might have sat there the entire evening, if not for a warning bell. Another ship had been sighted, and not a Vassish ship. All who heard it rushed to the deck. The thing could be seen upon the horizon. Thin and black, like an assassin’s dagger, it glided across the horizon with three triangular sails. “Pirates,” Captain Bodin declared when Lucius and I arrived. “Long way from home too. From Aillesterra.”

“How do you know? The sails? The color?” Lucius asked, shading his eyes.

“Aye, both. They’re tracking us. Maybe not to attack, but to learn a way north.”

“If they’re following us, should we do something?”

Captain Bodin said, “Not much we can do, m’lord. While my crew are no pushovers, we aren’t exactly an armed fighting force. Doing battle with them would be risky, and we have no means of fighting except to board them and fight it out.”

I thought Lucius would volunteer himself to do the boarding, but rather he said, “A shame we don’t have even a single cannon to mount at the back of the ship. We could punch a hole through their hull and sink them without a fight.”

The captain’s brow furrowed until he unraveled the idea, then he blinked. “That would be nice. Imagine the shock that would give the Cyclops. But for now, I suggest all we do is sail through the night. I don’t think we’d be able to sleep ashore with pirates at our heels. Mayhaps we can lose them.”

I stroked my beard, tugging on the hairs and twisting them around my fingers, but had no answer. “How do you propose to navigate at night? Won’t you have to cast an anchor?”

Captain Bodin grinned wide enough we could see several teeth replaced with silver. “That’s my specialty, courtesy of the gods. Can’t do it two nights in a row however.”

“Who’s the Cyclops?” Lucius asked, wiping the smug from the captain’s face.

“The commander of the Aillesterran navy. No one knows much about them, just that they’re called the Cyclops and aren’t from Aillesterra. Those religious nuts put a foreigner in charge, and the pirates have been more brazen than ever.”

“Pirates? Are they being paid by Aillesterra?”

“Probably. No way to be sure of course,” Captain Bodin said. “Either way, I have no plan to fight this ship. We’re running away and hoping the sea monsters get them.”

“Well, we’ll have to see if they can keep up with us. I suppose that means a cold dinner tonight.”

“Aye, m’lord. Now, if I’m to be awake all night, it’s best I bed down until then. If you’ll excuse me,” Captain Bodin said, and vanished below deck to retire to his cabin. His first mate took the wheel and kept charge. I took my leave as well, retiring to my cabin to ponder the problem.

To Lucius’ dismay, it wasn’t Aisha who eventually emerged to join him on the rear deck, but the doctor. “Heard about the ship,” the boy said, squinting his one remaining eye at the foreign predator. “Are you worried?”

“We have a plan to deal with it,” Lucius said.

“I hear they use slaves for the rowing. Makes them much faster than Vassish ships. If they catch up with us, do you think you could fight them off?”

“Perhaps, but it’s not something I want to risk.”

Sammy scoffed. “What risk would it be to you?”

“If I fall in the water while unconscious, I may never revive. I’d be down there, on the bottom, drowning forever.”

The two of them stood there in silence, glancing about the sea until Sammy forced out of himself, “Oh, I see. I understand your predicament now.”

“Care for a game of trireme?”

“Only if it comes with more wine. I’ve got a hangover setting in, and the sun is still up.” The ensuing game proved far less linguistically involved than the earlier parlance of backgammon. They sat down with the board, a seafaring variant with slots and pegs to hold the pieces lest an errant wave throw the game, and grappled with one another mentally till Sammy at last mused, “Curious how in the game, you can only sink a ship by coming at it sideways, and yet we’re pursued from behind right now.” He was at the time, holding up a piece of his that Lucius had just eliminated.

Lucius kept his eyes on the board. “The game is supposed to be naval combat, not a chase. They don’t need to sink us at all, but to follow us in and remember the way. If we don’t lose them in the night, I may well have to go over there and kill them all. I can't be the man who brought pirates to Hearth Bay.”

“Hearth Bay won’t be threatened by one ship. Not unless they had an emissary of the gods aboard. Even then, the capital is protected by angels,” the young doctor said as he watched Lucius make his next play. He sighed as another of his avenues were cut off.

Lucius waved his hand and glanced at the distant pirates. “It’s not about threat, but optics. There are people who would use it against me, would pressure the king to not reward me for Rackvidd. Better to not give them that fodder.”

“I thought you were afraid of getting killed on the sea?”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t go fight. Besides, Amurabi will save me if it comes to that.”

Sammy made a furtive, defensive play. It did nothing but delay the inevitable. “You know, this is a problem.”

“What is?” Lucius asked, taking another of the doctor’s pieces.

“You’re too good at games. The man they sent down to Giordana lost nearly every game and gamble he made.”

That stayed Lucius’ hand. He blinked and stared at the board state, the careful avenues of pursuit like a spider’s web closing around Sammy’s final ship. “But… gaming skill is often used by nobles to demonstrate their wit and cunning!”

Sammy stared at him. “And what? You spent your entire stay in Puerto Faro playing games? I guess that would at least be accurate.”

Lucius folded his arms and scowled. “Alright, point taken, but are you conceding or what?”

Sammy grumbled and packed in his pieces, admitting defeat. “You know,” he said as they were both trying to spot a chef walking out food for the crew. “If you’re worried about how you’ll be seen when you arrive, shouldn’t you be worried about bringing in the sister of the enemy leader?”

Lucius frowned and looked back down at the barren board. He didn’t have an answer for that, his emotions to tied up and entangled with what he knew had truly happened and what he knew he would have to do in the future. Before words could be forced from him however, a shadow passed over the two of them. Against the setting son, Aisha had emerged from below deck. The wind cast her hair and dress dancing beside her as she looked at Lucius with bloodshot eyes.

“Tell me what that writer Jacque told you,” she demanded.