by Jean Johnson
“A clever use of your resources. So what are you doing on board the Slack Sails, if you command the Jetta’s Pride?” Ellett asked. Now that they were headed south into deeper waters, the ship was starting to rock harder underfoot, forcing him to ease his knees and sway with the rolling of the deck.
She smirked. “All Jettan ships are black with white sails, and very sleek and similar-looking in build. All it takes is just a few minutes to swap out the bow and aft boards on which our ship names are carved and painted, and a few minutes more for my crew to change from all-black shirts to all-white. Or any other color we choose.”
“And with your faces covered, your identities are further obscured,” he agreed. “That explains why I haven’t heard of the Slack Sails ever docking in Jetta Freeport.”
“Yes. You annoyed me and angered my crew when you took off my scarves,” she added. A frown pinched her brow. “How did you move? No one can move during a Duel Arcane! You stand there and you throw everything you have into it!”
It was Ellett’s turn to smirk. “That’s a secret of the Royal Guard.”
She pouted slightly. “Oh, but I must know.”
He suspected it was deliberate, because she looked too lovely doing so not to have practiced such a perfect look of pleading disappointment. Mulling it over, he rubbed at his chin, feeling the slight scratch of a day’s worth of stubble forming across his skin. “I suppose I could teach you ... in exchange for mage lessons from you in things you can do well. So long as you understand that learning how to move during a Duel Arcane does not give you the liberty to attack your opponent. Physical attacks negate the outcome, after all.”
That widened her eyes. “So you cheated!”
“Ah, but I didn’t attack you,” he countered, smiling. “A ‘physical attack’ in a Duel Arcane is one which harms the opposing spellcaster. Even by the broadest definition, a kiss does not harm anyone—distractions are allowable in a duel, so long as they cause no physical harm.”
She narrowed her eyes again, but the corner of her generous mouth curved up. “So you are a law-sayer in disguise.”
That made him laugh. “That,” he agreed, “or I just found your mouth irresistible.”
The look Mita leveled at him was dubious at best. “Maybe I should make you repeat that while holding this Truth Stone. I am well aware, Captain Ellett, how large my lips are, how tall my frame, and how unfeminine my hands. I am not a beauty, and I do not need for you to pretend that I am.”
Giving her a chiding look, Ellett crossed the space between them. Plucking the Truth Stone from her fingers, he gripped it firmly. “I think you are a beauty. That you are lovely in my eyes.” Uncurling his fingers, he showed her the all-white marble. She stared at it, taken aback. “As we say in Aurul, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I behold a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman when I look upon you.”
One step closer would have allowed the swaying of the rainstorm-driven ship to brush their bodies together. Her bits of leather armor wouldn’t have been comfortable, however. Dropping his gaze to her tooled leather pauldrons and breastplate, he smiled.
“You have some interesting battle runes, too. Of course, I’d also like to see you in something more comfortable, since that armor isn’t necessary around me anymore.”
“Oh, it isn’t, is it?” she challenged, hands shifting to her hips.
Reaching past her, Ellett set the marble disc on the rail-guarded surface of her desk. It slid a bit as the ship bobbed through the waves, but he didn’t care. The movement had brought their bodies close enough for his next attack. “You don’t need to be protected from this.”
This time, though the movement of the ship did brush their lips together, more of it was from his own effort. Bringing his hands up, he cupped her head, sliding his fingers through her thick, auburn hair. At the same time, he sucked on her lower lip. A soft sound escaped her, then Mita slipped her arms around his back. As expected, her armored body wasn’t the most comfortable thing to embrace, but she did know how to kiss.
A knock on the door was followed by an increase in the hissing of the rain and a voice calling out, “Captain, First Officer Peany wants ... What are you doing with our captain?”
Mita, he saw as he pulled back, looked a little flustered by the interruption and accusation. He was more amused than embarrassed, himself. Turning to face what looked like the bo’sun of this ship, Ellett gave him a calm, firm reply. “Anything she wants me to do.”
That earned him a scowl from the middle-aged man. Mita stepped around him. “Peany wants what, Jukol?”
“He wants you to strengthen the rigging, Captain. The weight of the rain accumulating in the sheets and sails has him worried. The crew also wants to know what to do with this thing,” the bo’sun added, lifting his chin at Ellett.
“Milord Ellett is our guest. Tell the crew we sail for Jetta,” she added. “He has things to say which we as a people need to hear. I’ll be out as soon as I’ve shed my armor.”
From the look the bo’sun gave him, Ellett guessed the man wanted to order him out of the cabin. Instead of complying with that unspoken glare, he lifted his fingers to the most worn-looking buckles holding the tooled breast and back plates in place; their condition told him they were ones she used the most to get into and out of her armor.
The bo’sun bristled at his efforts, though Mita merely turned and lifted her arm a little, giving Ellett better access. She unbuckled her vambraces and elbow cops herself, calloused fingers making short work of the task. The sailor stepped fully into the cabin, letting the door swing shut behind him in time with the rolling of the ship. “You don’t need to be doing that, man! You won’t be touching her—and if I had my way, you’d be sleeping in the deeps for all you’ve done!”
“Enough, Jukol. Go tell the crew I’ll be out in a few moments.”
Grumbling under his breath, the bo’sun left.
“For ‘all’ I have done?” Ellett asked mildly, unfastening the straps that attached the breastplate to her pauldrons next.
“You did cost us a ship filled with rare timber and spices,” Mita reminded him, slipping sideways out of her upper armor. Lifting a knee to one of the lower railings bracing the legs of her desk, she unbuckled her greaves and knee cops, and lifted her chin toward an armor rack bolted to the wall dividing her cabin from the rest of the ship. “You can hang that over there.”
“The advantages I can bring to your future far outweigh the loss of a single prize in the present,” Ellett reminded her, before carrying her upper gear to the wooden rods waiting for it. Re-fastening one shoulder strap to secure it in place, he turned back in time to accept the leggings. Once they were secured as well, he turned back to the redheaded captain. “Are the rest of your crew going to dislike me as much as your bo’sun Jukol apparently does?”
She shrugged, re-buckling her belt and its daggers around her hips. “Until they think they can trust you? Probably.”
“Can I trust them to leave me alone in my sleep?” Ellett asked her next. “I can fend them off without injuring anyone if I’m awake, but if they attack me in my sleep ... well, I can’t guarantee their safety if they try. Do you think I’d be safe if I slept in the crow’s nest?”
She eyed him thoughtfully. Finally, Mita nodded. “I’ll have Jukol bring you a hammock. You can set it up in the corner by the door, there. Normally I’d have a cabin girl in that spot, but I don’t take younglings when I know we’re going to ... you know.”
“Defend your people aggressively?” Ellett finished for her. “Mind if I follow you and watch how you strengthen the rigging? I’m sure you know far more ship-based spells than I do.”
Mita laughed at that. “A land-bound man like you? I’m surprised you even have sea legs with your background.”
“I wouldn’t, if I hadn’t just sailed around the entire sea four whole times, and then some,” Ellett grumbled. “You could have shown up a bit earlier, you know. I was growing rather bored.”
> “You could have loaded a more worthwhile cargo, before now—a cargo you still owe us, in recompense for the plundering of the Island Maid,” she retorted. “And I’ll give you a whole lot more to worry about than being bored if your people don’t stop bothering ours!”
“The Island Maid?” Ellett asked, following her out to the middeck. “When did this happen, and where?”
“It happened last week, and it happened just south of the Keket border—you may think you’re so clever, attacking us so far from Aurulan waters, and using plain white sails instead of all those colorful ones, but you forgot to repaint the water-line something other than Aurulan purple,” she accused, facing him. It forced her to squint into the rain, but she ignored it. “Or maybe not you, personally, if you’ve been on board the Parrot’s Ride long enough to circle the sea four or more times. But it’s been either an Aurulan merchanter with the bright-colored sails or an Aurulan warship trying to disguise itself without them. Sails can be swapped and different uniforms donned, but everyone knows that Aurulan warships are painted purple below the water-line, and the last two ships have been purple!”
Ellett caught her elbow when she turned away again. He was conscious of the crewmen, many of them clad in oiled, eta-like rain jackets, nearby, straining to hear their argument. “I swear to you that there were no warships unaccounted for in the last five months, never mind last week. If anything, the more I hear about this ‘Lord Stelled’ and these purported warship attacks, the more inclined I am to believe they’re an elaborate ruse. Hulls can be enchanted to look purple—or even repainted if need be, and then covered with an illusion whenever they need to look normal in port. We have no reason, as a nation, to pick a fight with you!”
“Ha!” she retorted. “You’ve always looked down on us!”
“Milady Mita, we didn’t care enough about Jetta to pick a fight with you,” Ellett argued. “First of all, the Aurulan nation is wealthy in its own right. We don’t need to steal from others—look to the south-lands for that, since they’re resource-poor compared to us. Second, the whole kingdom’s been wrapped up in the news that the Seer King’s bride had finally been foreseen, and then in waiting for her to arrive, which she has. Now that they’ve wed, the whole kingdom is waiting breathlessly for her to produce the next potential heir.
“Or rather, I should say the government is waiting, as well as the average citizen,” he allowed, glancing around as some of the other crew moved closer, skepticism warring with interest in their expressions. “If this is the work of any Aurulan, then it is a private group under the direction of some madman—I would suspect your false ‘Lord Stelled’ of masterminding it, if no one else.
“The first rule of battle is, what is the enemy’s motivation for attacking? And the first rule of politics is, what does anyone stand to gain by a particular action? Jetta Freeport and the Jenodan Isles have no value to my people, therefore, no motivation ... and our government has nothing to gain by attacking your merchanting ships. Nothing could be gained but war, and war isn’t on our list of things to do this decade,” he told her, wincing as the wind shifted direction a little. It wasn’t enough to need the sails adjusted, but it did drive some of those cold droplets of rain into his ear. “Randomly picking off Aurulan ships simply because you suspect Aurulan attacks makes as little sense as Aurulans picking off random Jettan ships.”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly as if we could talk with you about it, since you didn’t care enough to open real diplomatic relations with us,” Mita retorted.
“Well, you and I are talking now, aren’t we?” Mindful of the storm, he released her arm. “We have, what, five days of sailing to get to the freeport? That should be plenty of time to go over every attack you know about, and see if there’s a pattern. And I can mirror-scry my own contacts in the Aurulan navy, and get every scrap of information I can about any domestic ships with port manifests that match the attacks, or those of foreign ships which could pass closely enough to masquerade as an Aurulan vessel.”
“Four days, if these winds stay steady—and if the rigging is going to hold, I have to get to work.” Turning, she strode away. Then she stopped, turned, and swept her hand toward the foredeck, giving him a pointed look. “... Well? You said you wanted to learn more about nautical spells. Move it, sailor!”
“Aye, Captain.” Glad this was just a mildly windy rainfall and not a true storm, Ellett followed her carefully across the bobbing, sloping deck. He wiped the water from his face and muttered a warming charm as he did so, but he followed.
FOUR
The sharp jolt woke him from his sleep. Ellett didn’t have time to process it, however, for it was immediately followed by the hard crack of his skull hitting something immovably solid, and the bruising thump of the rest of him following suit. An expletive escaped him, and he curled up protectively onto his side, arms sheltering his aching head from the rocking of the hard surface under his body.
Light bloomed as the door to the inner cabin flung open, dazzling his eyes.
“What’s going on in here?—Ellett? What are you doing on the deck?” Clad in a white, loosely gathered shirt that contrasted with her suntanned limbs, Mita crossed to his side.
Half blinded by the bright white light of the small globe in her hand, Ellett winced and blinked. He started to say something, but she crouched right next to his head ... giving him a second dazzling shock, this time from what he saw, thanks to the way her hem had shifted position. By the Eyes of Ruul ... she’s not wearing any undergarments!
Her hand touched his face, tilting his head away from that stunning view. She pried back his eyelids while he struggled with that second—if much more pleasant—blow, and held the miniature light-globe up to his face. “Well ... you don’t look like you’re heavily concussed ... but you’re not exactly responding. Ellett, are you all right?”
Her crisp, hard demand broke through some of his daze. In a flash of insight, he realized this was an opportunity not to be missed. Injuries garner sympathies, after all. Affecting more of a stunned demeanor than he felt, he wittily responded, “... Uh?”
Not that it gained him much in the way of immediate sympathy. With a disgusted sigh, she rose and padded away, taking that lovely, inadvertent view with her. The light bobbled behind him, casting her shadow in a weird dance across the rest of the cabin. “Well. It seems my bo’sun picked out the oldest, most dry-rotted hammock he could find for you. I’m sure you were too much of a land-man to know what to look for, and I didn’t check it myself.”
She returned to his side, crouching behind his back. As much as he wanted to roll over and see if the view were the same, he didn’t dare. Her fingers probed gently at the back of his head, making him hiss in pain when they encountered the very real bruise.
“Well, I don’t think your skull is cracked ... but you’re definitely out of it. Come on, wake up!” She tapped him on the shoulder. Ellett obligingly rolled onto his back and blinked up at her, not quite focusing on her face. “You fell on your head, Captain. It’s knocked some of the sense out of you. Come on, respond.”
Mita brought the light near his eyes. Lifting his arm to ward off the too-white glow, Ellett groaned. “Owww ... what ... what happened?”
“Your hammock broke. Come on, sit up, so I can see how bad it is—but if you cast up, you’re holystoning the whole deck in here.”
With her help, he managed to curl upright. Nausea did well up inside of him at the shift in position, but thankfully not enough to make his stomach protest violently. “Ugh ... Gods ... I just want to lie down again.”
She brought the light close to his eyes, prying them open a second time when he winced away. “Nope, you’re not concussed. I can see your pupils dilating. But you’re shocked from the blow, I’m sure. Sleeping on a hard deck won’t do you any good, and I wouldn’t trust any other hammock the crew might find in the middle of the night. Particularly with how they feel about you.”
Ha, sympathy is working. Ellett carefully kept
his expression vague. He blinked and focused on her face. “It’s ... okay. I don’t want to ... to put you to any trouble. I can sleep on the ground. Done it before ...”
“And have you getting sick from all the rolling, and cast up all over my cabin?” She snorted and traced a rune on his forehead. “You need a stable, unmoving bed. If I can’t trust a hammock, it’ll have to be my own bed.”
Maybe a little too well, he thought, realizing that he hadn’t exactly thought through to what kind of sympathy she might give him, or where it might lead. “No ... I’ll be all right. I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”
She snorted again and hooked her arm under his, hauling him to his feet with surprising strength. Ellett allowed her to drape his arm over her shoulders and guide him toward the door to her cabin. “Trust me, that bed is big enough for a small orgy. More important, it’s spell-stabilized. Just because you don’t look concussed doesn’t mean you automatically aren’t. My healing spells are more geared toward rope burns and battle wounds, but I do know I need to keep an eye on you for the next few hours ... and I don’t think I can trust the ship’s healer.”
“Why not?” Ellett asked, wincing as she bumped him into the doorframe in the effort to get the panel open and the two of them through. He could have helped her, but he was enjoying the feel of her linen-clad body snug against his. A pity that he was wearing sleeping trousers; his chest might have been bare, and most of her legs, but their flesh only touched in a scant few places.
“Because he’s the bo’sun’s brother, and they think too much alike to trust him with you right now. Into the bed with you,” she added, lowering him to the broad, wood-framed mattress taking up the back of the small cabin. Its covers were rumpled from her hasty exit, and she quickly shoved them out of his way. “Completely into the bed with you, so I can turn on the stabilization spell. It’s odd, but the only time I ever get seasick is when I’m lying down. So I spent a week mastering the spells necessary to craft a stabilization warding, since I love everything else about sailing.”
