Captain Lina Maringal barked an order to tack hard into the swordwinds, loud enough to be heard over the thunder of cannons barely five hundred yards behind. The twin masts of the Queen Marie leaned larboard in time for a pair of spinning chains to whip past the outer edge of her mainsail.

Lina’s eyes were closed, not from fear, but from concentration. There was a leyline not too far beyond the horizon, and Lina could feel it calling to her like a second heartbeat thrumming deep in her chest. Where there was a leyline, there were ships, and where there were ships, there might be help. There might also be more Commonwealth. It was a gamble she would take on the Andallan side of the Arc.

She took a breath, the smell of sulfur lingering heavy over the sprays of salt. The pirates—”privateers” as they fancied themselves—were exactly 503 yards behind her own ship, the Queen Marie, and gaining. She could feel this distance from the waves underfoot, and worse, she could feel the pursuing ship’s weight pressing into the sea as if it were a rock digging into her own flesh. The other ship was bigger than the Queen Marie, flying three masts as opposed to the Queen’s two, and sported two decks of guns as opposed to the Queen’s none. Lina could hear the shouts of her hunters’ bow gunners, and she listened for the rattle of chains that would indicate another shot was coming. Wait, didn’t the enemy have four chasers? Lina felt a telltale flicker of warmth at the back of her neck.

“BRACE!”

No sooner than Lina had ducked did a another pair of cannonballs whip overhead. She heard a monstrous crash intermingled with screams as the Queen’s rigging exploded into great splinters of wood and snapping lines over everyone’s head. She knew it was the mainmast before she opened her eyes, yet it pained her even more once she did. Lina’s head swam. Could they have loaded the second pair of chase guns while the first pair distracted her on puprose?

The Queen Marie’s mainmast was seconds from splitting and falling starboard, length of chain and lead bitten into its midpoint. At the foot of the wooden shaft lay what looked like Mr. Tasa; at least Lina thought it to be Mr. Tasa given that half his head was missing. Lina locked eyes with Mr. Girsang as he scrambled down, then turned away as she could feel the inevitable cracking in her bones. Mr. Girsang screamed as the tangle of wood and rope and sail took him into the sea. Lina stifled vomit.

“Get those ropes cut, or we’re all dead!” Lina recognized the rough growl of her bosun, Cedro Dilaw.

“Wait!” Lina said, rushing to the side of the ship. She looked among the wreckage for any sign of Mr. Girsang, hoping, praying every prayer she could think that the man could be saved, even though she felt no sign of struggle from the waves lapping at the side of the Queen Marie.

“Belay the captain’s orders, keep cutting,” Cedro said, his gruff voice complementing his gruff mood. “Ma’am, we can’t wait. You can feel the Queen keeling as better than I, and with this drag we’ll never get away.”

“Even with the mainmast, theirs was the faster ship.” Lina sighed. “Raise the white.”

Lina stood on the port gunwale and watched as the pirates drew closer. No, not pirates. Privateers. Over their personal standard—a simple golden crown—they flew another flag showing a red field with a diagonal blue cross and yellow sun in the center. The Commonwealth of Oronya. The sailors of the approaching ship weren’t killing on a whim; they were commissioned by the damned Commonwealth to harass ships of the newly declared Andalla Republic. To keep the pretense of a just empire, the Commonwealth didn’t send their armada and called the alternative a mercy. Nothing to do with ongoing war with the Saraqet Empire, they said, as if as soon as the war was won—probably within the next few years-—they wouldn’t turn the full force of the navy this way. Lina’s grip tightened on the gunwale.

Bastards.

The sun had fallen below the horizon, and cloudfall was well on its way. The privateers held no urgency in their approach; by the time their ship was alongside the Queen Marie, thick grey clouds had already crawled across half the sky. Lina felt the wind through her hair and estimated only twenty minutes before cloudfall was complete, and another fifteen until pitch black night enveloped the world. Lina nodded to Cedro, and the man waved some of the less nervous crew members down to light the deck lanterns. Lina didn’t take her eyes off the other ship.

The privateers came to a short stop alongside the Queen Marie, the size difference even more exaggerated now that it was close. The privateer crew began lobbing grappling hooks across the water down onto the Queen’s deck, and neither Lina nor Cedro made any move to instruct the crew to help tie them off. It was a petty act—the hooks for the most part held fast and the privateer ship heaved closer—but what respect was due to someone below even a soldier of fortune?

The sailors on the privateer ship stood at lazy attention, flintlocks pointed in no particular direction. The Queen Marie’s crew had disarmed themselves. She was a merchant ship, and her sailors simple traders, not fighters. An act of spite such as bearing arms was not worth their lives.

As the other ship drew closer, Lina’s attention was drawn to a middle-aged man standing with a leg raised on the gunwale, though as sure-footed as if he had been carved from the same wood that made the ship. He was perhaps in his late thirties, though so sun-baked as to look like he was in his forties. His skin was a darker brown than even Lina’s, though the mane of hair framing his face was a nearly white blonde, not black. He stared directly at Lina, a dangerous grin on his face.

“Well met, my friends!” the man called out. His voice was higher than Lina had imagined. She made no move to return his greeting. The man simply grinned wider.

Once the gap between ships had shrunken enough, some of the man’s crew dropped a length of wood to bridge the two vessels. The man, strode across confidently, followed by a dozen ruffians, all waving their weapons in an obvious attempt to intimidate.

“My name is Flynn Locke, captain of the Crown of Gold,” the man said. In one hand he held a writ with an official seal, presumably his privateering license. He extended his other hand.

His name’s Flynn Locke? Really? Lina kept her hands behind her back and her jaw square. “Captain Lina Maringal of the—”

“—of the Queen Marie, yes, yes.” Locke chuckled, or at least made some throaty sound approximating a chuckle. “You’ve got that name plastered along your ship’s hull as if you can afford to have it repainted at every port.”

“No pretense about preying on a merchant ship you assume with riches, then?” Lina spat at him. “The manifest is in my quarters; take whatever you want and begone with you.”

“Quite the temper there, Ms. Maringal.” Locke faked a pout to accompany his unsubtle sleight. He nodded to a sharp-nosed woman behind himself who then stalked toward the quarterdeck. “And I admit no such thing. Surely a ship sailing so far from the nearest leyline would raise your suspicions as well. It is our duty to protect these waters from pirates, smugglers, and more. It says so right on this paper.”

The men behind Locke laughed.

“So tell me, why were you and yours so far from the leyline?”

“We lost sight of the Line of Caracal after the last storm,” Lina lied. As a rule, humans could not count themselves amongst the many creatures naturally attracted to leylines. Instead, they had to wait for nightfall to see the glowing clouds of sprites that swam over the lines. However, perhaps one in a thousand was born a Reader and could feel the leylines’ pull. Fewer still had the Sight like Lina, the ability to feel the world around them as if the ocean were an extention of the body. Locke was not incorrect in his suspicion of a ship sailing far from the leylines; the Queen Marie was indeed smuggling food and supplies to an openly rebellious region of Andalla.

The man let out a loud guffaw. “Lost sight? My Reader tells me the Line of Caracal is in the direction our ships are pointed this very moment, and you want to tell me that you just happened to go in that direction as soon as you saw us on the horizon? I’ll admit that the promise of taking some cargo from some storm-swallowed smuggler intrigued me, but finding out there was another Reader on board?”

Lina clenched her hands harder behind her back to hold back their waver, but she kept her eyes steady with Locke’s. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do. Tell me, Ms. Maringal, do you know how hard it is to track a Reader?”

Lina just glared.

“Very,” Locke said, his white smile looking more like a predator ready to strike rather than a bemused man. “A Reader doesn’t need to stay near leylines like us common folk, clinging to them like a babe to a teat. With that kind of freedom, the seas are a vast, vast place, and ships are so very small. But every ship has a destination and every captain has his quirks, my friend, and that is something that a common man with wit and intelligence can use to find, predict, and in the end, hunt.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that my friends and I have spent a good deal of time and capital hunting Readers because it is a difficult endeavour, and the Commonwealth pays handsomely for this particular kind of difficult endeavour. Enough crowns for each man aboard my ship to be a glutton for an entire year. Knowing that, Ms. Maringal, do you know how hard it is to catch a Reader?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.” Lina hoped that the man didn’t hear the quiver in her voice.

“Not particularly hard. Disable their sails, find them drunk in a tavern; at the end of the day, Readers are just men who happen to be good at directions. Windseers, on the other hand…”

Lina didn’t like where he was going with this.

“Windseers are wily. Always seem to know when you’re coming up behind them. You fire at their ship, and they just happen to turn before your cannons blow. Would you like to know how many cannonballs I wasted on the Queen Marie?”

Lina’s stomach dropped. How could he have known? She had been so careful about concealing her abilities.

Locke laughed. “There are currently 158 men serving aboard the Crown of Gold yet the bounty on bringing in a Windseer can still set me and my crew up for quite a long time… but the look on a captain’s face when they’ve been found out is really why I do this. There are always rumors surrounding an ability so rare, but isn’t it exciting to confirm them, my friends?”

The ruffians behind Locke made sounds of genuine appreciation. Lina’s own crew stayed silent.

Lina heard footsteps coming from behind, and despite herself, she broke eye contact with Locke to turn around. The sharp-nosed woman was approaching holding a large tome of a book: the ship’s manifest.

“Thank you, Ms. Ibon,” Locke said, taking the book. He didn’t bother to open it, seemingly content to tap his finger on the cover for several heartbeats. “I have a proposition, Ms. Maringal.”

“It’s ‘captain’, and I’m not interested.”

“Oh, it’s not just for you, but for the entire crew of this ship.” Locke turned and raised his voice. “I would like to make an offer to the Windseer aboard this ship to join the Commonwealth navy. You know how rare you are, so you know how well you’ll be paid. As an added bonus, if you come with us, we’ll leave the rest of the crew and the entirety of your cargo untouched.”

Lina’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t respond. Unsurprisingly, the rest of her crew stayed silent as well as there wasn’t another soul who could claim to be a Reader.

Locke sighed dramatically. “No one? Well, our writ also explicitly tells me to detain any Readers I find, so I am legally allowed—really, obliged—to find the Windseer on this ship and take them, even if it means killing the lot of you.”

This caused a murmur. Damn him.

“But! If any of you would kindly just tell me who the Windseer is, you’ll all get the same offer: me and mine just walk away with just a single member of this ship, and you all are free to continue on with whatever distasteful business you were on.”

Lina spoke through gritted teeth, staring down Locke with restrained fury. “We. Have. No. Wind—”

“It’s her.”

What?

Lina blinked and broke her gaze from Locke, head darting toward whoever had spoken. She found Cedro’s outstretched finger, though his eyes were pointed at the deck.

“Sorry, ma’am. Our lives aren’t worth it.” Cedro turned to look at Locke. “Captain Locke, Captain Maringal is our Windseer. We don’t want any more trouble. We’ve given you what you want, so leave us in peace. We’ve dead to put to rest and repairs to make.”

“Cedro…”

“Think of the crew, ma’am.”

Lina began to lunge at Cedro, but almost as soon as she moved, the sharp-nosed woman had her arm painfully twisted behind her back.

“Thank you, my good friend.” Locke jerked Lina’s arm downward and grabbed her other. She felt manacles bite around her wrists. “Well, I believe our business is concluded and we’ll be off. Until next time, my friends.”

Locke gave a mock salute then shoved Lina toward gangplank. She struggled against his push only for someone to knock her in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. Pain flashed through Lina’s vision like canonfire. Her body slumped, and more arms came to drag her onto the Crown of Gold.

As Lina’s vision faded, she let her eyes droop shut and her senses expand. The sudden sensory overload—the musty smell of wood and sweat, the damp chill of the evening mists, the strong taste of salt—of the world around her was like a shock to her system, and she managed to regain some of her composure with a shudder. Lina took another breath and noticed something else. No… someone else.

In the darkness below the lantern light but above the waterline, someone crawled out one of the Queen Marie’s portholes and silently jumped onto the Crown of Gold’s hull, slipping into one of the ship’s open gun ports. Lina did not recognize their smell as someone from her own ship.

The privateers were not particularly gentle when they dropped Lina on the Crown of Gold’s deck. With her arms behind her back, Lina had to awkwardly contort her body so she wouldn’t hit the sea-soaked wood face first. She landed on her shoulder with a heavy thud, then with some effort, rolled onto her side so she could see the rest of the deck.

Lina did not have use her Sight to feel the that the Crown of Gold had unhooked herself from the Queen Marie and began drifting away. The wind did tell her that someone unusually quiet was coming up from below deck. As predicted, a figure came up a ladder onto the deck. He—at least Lina thought it was a man, though his lithe frame made it hard to tell—was dressed in all black, loose fabric around his limbs. He doffed his hood and face cloth, revealing high cheekbones and pale skin. His eyes betrayed nothing, but with her Sight and him standing only feet away, Lina could sense that his clothes reeked of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter.

“Lord Apollon,” Locke said, his grin wide and toothy, “I think you’ll like our haul.”

The man, Lord Apollon, simply nodded. The Crown of Gold continued to drift away from Lina’s  home and charge, and as the wind shifted again, Lina thought she heard a hiss on the breeze. No. Lina felt a telltale flicker of heat at the back of her neck coming from the Queen Marie’s direction followed by a roar of flame deafened the heavens.

The sky over Dagat faded from fiery orange to roiling grey with the setting sun as it did for as long as history could remember. Not long after thick clouds enveloped the western horizon did pitch black night fall over the land. This did not come as a surprise to Dagat’s oceanlife; the smallest of them began to glow soft blues and greens, inexplicably drawn to the leylines that criss-crossed from horizon to horizon across the seas. The black night was also not particularly noteworthy to the people living in and around the Daanan Archipelago; candles, lanterns, and lamps in the humblest homes of the smallest villages to the sprawling manors in the largest cities had already been lit during cloudfall and were well ready to burn away the encroaching darkness.

In the port city of Simulan, one of these lanterns burned above a tavern called the Oak and Ale, and just outside its circle of light and the main throng of the evening crowds, Jasna de la Plata sat cross-legged in the dirt asking any passerby for something to eat. She was as thin as her begging implied, with dark brown skin and short dark hair—hardly notable amongst the other street urchins besides not being so offensive as to scare away any patrons to the Oak and Ale. Jas had seen the other boys’ and girls’ more confrontational acts with the sailors and merchants that frequented the tavern, and she had seen the thickset proprietor beat them away with his broom. To her, however, the man had simply turned up his nose. Most others did the same.

Jas liked that. Being invisible was good. It was easier to lift a purse when no one could see you past their chin.

The crowd inside the Oak and Ale was lively. Voices in conversation and hints of song spilled out of the rows of open doors that made up the facade of the tavern. Despite the pitch black darkness, the air was still thick with heat and moisture. Jas slapped a mosquito on her shoulder before it could bite her then turned her attention back to the crowd.

The Oak and Ale was clean, though it had no airs about it, and was located only a few roads from the harbor, so the clientele was as expected: sailors from the nicer merchant ships rather than the rough and tumble types. Most paid no attention to the beggar as they walked into the establishment, and more paid no attention as they stumbled out. It was the latter set of people that Jas paid attention, though she was not so foolish as to stare at them; just last week, the proprietor chased away a pair of younger boys doing just that.

Instead, Jas kept her eyes on the ground and made a show of politely asking people who had already walked past the Oak and Ale’s doors for a bite to eat. Those people never stopped to give Jas the time of day, so while she said the words and held her hand out, she could close her eyes and focus at the edge of her senses to feel when the time was right to pick a distracted drunk’s pocket.

Jas heard footsteps tapping from around the corner down an alleyway—and she couldn’t say why, but she felt like it must have been someone who had just finished relieving themselves. Jas stole a glance at a sailor stepping out of the Oak and Ale with his arm around a handsome young man that the girl recognized from three buildings down. The girl thought for a second: if she was right, the two parties would collide a few feet to her right. She scooted over, making it look like she was just standing up to stretch.

In just a few moments, the scene played out as Jas had thought it might: some dockhand had walked out of the alleyway just as the two drunk men stumbled forward, colliding. There was a moment of confusion, chest beating, apologies, and finally everyone going about their business as if nothing had happened. Of course, something had happened: Jas was now richer by one sailor’s coin pouch. She tested the weight of the purse while holding it behind her back. Twenty two copper chips; almost an entire stack! Jas stifled a grin and slipped the pouch into a pocket she had stitched inside the back of her trousers.

With a copper stack, she’d be able to feed herself for a week, even buy some cloth to fix the holes in her shirt, but the girl decided to stick around and try her luck a bit longer. There was nowhere else to go, after all. Jas had nowhere to truly call her home. Most nights, she slept above a stable a few blocks away in a spot shielded from the season’s rains by the awning next door and out of reach from stray dogs. But it was still too early to go there; people were still awake and might catch her sneaking up. Jas’ stomach grumbled as if it wanted her to find food immediately now that there was money, but the markets had already closed before cloudfall, and with the evening crowds not yet beginning to thin, no tavern would waste their time with a dirty urchin girl.

Jas sat back down and went back to her act. She hunched her shoulders and held up a hand, keeping her eyes downcast. A pair of slim leather boots, worn but well-oiled, and held up with a few more buckles than strictly necessary entered Jas’ vision. “Excuse me, ate, spare a bite to eat?”

Jas was in the middle of instinctively drawing her hand back when she noticed that the boots had stopped walking and were now turned toward at the girl. There was the vague sound of a chuckle. “I have a feeling I’m too old to be your ate. What’s your name, girl?”

Jas was taken aback for a moment. It was rare that anyone stopped to even acknowledge the girl, let alone talk to her. She shook herself from her surprise so she could look up. “Miss?”

In the dim lamp light, Jas could make out sharp cheek bones framing a soft smile. The barest web of lines highlighted the dark skin around her eyes and brow. The woman squatted down slowly, getting eye level with the girl. She had the faint smell of charcoal. “Something tells me that ‘Miss’ isn’t your name.”

“Um. Jasna. My name’s Jasna. Or Jas”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jas. My name is Lys. Would you care to join me for dinner?”

Jas had been confused, but now she was worried. This had to be some kind of trap. Was this woman an enforcer, and had she caught Jas stealing? Or maybe was it worse: what if she was a slaver? Jas pulled back and shook her head.

Lys cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You did just ask me for food.”

“I, um—” Jas sputtered. “I’m not hungry just now. I, uh, just want some bread for later.”

“Right.” Lys smiled despite the incredulity in her voice. “Well, give me a moment.”

The woman stood up and strode into the Oak and Ale. Jas’ eyes darted around, searching the surrounding crowds. Maybe this was part of the trap, and an accomplice would snatch her. After many tense heartbeats, Jas was fairly sure there was no one. Something in her gut told her, and in the years she’d been on the streets, her sense for danger was rarely wrong. The thought of running anyway crossed her mind.

After she was extra sure no one was coming toward her, Jas peeked into the Oak and Ale. She saw Lys handing a pair of coppers to the big man behind the counter, who in turn handed her an oval loaf of brown bread the size of her full hand. Jas watched as the woman strode back outside and came back to her.

“Expensive bread here.” Lys chuckled, then handed the entire loaf to Jas. It was still soft. Jas could barely remember the last time she had bread this soft.

“I, um… thank you, miss,” Jas said.

“You’re very welcome. Well, my ship is anchored here for another few days. If we happen to cross paths again, the offer stands.”

Jas didn’t say anything. Lys simply smiled, then walked off. Almost as soon as the woman had turned her back, Jas ducked into an alleyway and sprinted away.