This is a story written specifically for a contest on Gaiaonline, the characters Sabin Duvert and Ambrose Maurlias and their associated backgrounds belong to Jenny Biggs, a.k.a Arania. All other characters and settings belong to me. This is a work in progress, I will be posting the chapters raw, and having them edited after being posted here. Any reviews will be appreciated and considered with due thought.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright

DREAMLAND - Edgar Allen Poe (1844)

A gust of wind licked along the outside of his muddied coat, finding with ease the place where his pale fists clutched at the edges and forcing its way inside. A slight frown marred his smooth brow and the wind ceased its assault, dying down peacefully to merely ruffle his sandy brown hair as he trudged along the beaten road.

Mere meters away the tempest was still strong enough to catch and blow away the teasing comment of one of his companions, but he nodded and laughed none the less. They were good folk, his fellow travellers, mostly musicians and dancers on their way home from the summer festivals. They’d been with him almost since Havana, treating kindly the “poor French boy” who had so innocently joined their campfire one night, and he could not help but feel regret now that their time for parting had come.

The wind was still pushing at their winter cloaks as they stood at the crossroads and said their farewells, promising to save him a fine Spanish wench if he ever showed his face in Gibara. His destination was a fair bit closer than the sheltered port city, less than an hour down this dirt track and he would supposedly find one of the most dangerous and debauched ports in all the known world.

The French man doubted this, having seen many of the world’s infamous dens of sin in his travels, and most of them had much better road access than this one for a start. Even Grenoble, the largest town near his birthplace, stood a better chance of bacchanalia than this coastal dump.

His mind turned inwards while his feet still carefully walked the sludgy ground, remembering with fondness some of the more interesting cities he had visited in his quest for knowledge. It was almost funny to think how it had all started, back in the tiny village of Saint Laurent Du Pont. Not even there really, his family had been so introverted as to live ten miles out of town in near total seclusion.

Small wonder that he should have been afflicted with such great wanderlust, an isolated childhood such as his would give any man the desire to travel. Perhaps not so far nor so long as the grey eyed youth had gone, certainly not halfway around the world. Sabin himself had almost been surprised when he found himself in St Augustine, thousands of miles from home and still ready to explore the Caribbean.

He had taken nearly two months to do so, loitering in the north during the warm summer months, waiting for an interesting tale to catch his ear. Until one finally did. By then it was almost too late to hope that a ship would be leaving this far into the storm season, as no sailor with a jot of common sense would risk his livelihood so foolishly. But Sabin Duvert had never been one to let common sense interfere with his plans.

So it was that he found himself turning the final corner on the twisting path, sturdy English made boots sinking into the soft mud of the main street. All his dismal assumptions had been correct; this tiny port was no doubt a hive of illegal activity when the less honest merchants tied at its considerably large docks in summer, but though the temperatures were still relatively warm (Sabin compared them to the snowed in days of his youth and smiled) most ships were moored in safer bays this time of year.

A smirk still twisted his lips upwards as strolled down the “street” towards what was obviously the best tavern in town, judging by the chorus of cracked voices floating out the open door. Sabin let his strides slow to a leisurely pace as he mentally recounted the myriad stories he’d heard of this town, filled with inhuman creatures, devilry and witchcraft, clearly tales designed to spook authorities away from the small time smugglers that made trade here. Then he fell in a puddle.

Wiping the grey muck from his face (mildly surprised that a puddle could be so deep), the French man got quickly to his feet and headed directly for the warmth of the tavern. Neither the conversation nor the singing stopped as he entered the dim room, indicating that every single scar puckered face in the room had noticed him and was subtly trying to discern his purpose. In a town filled with smugglers and pirates, he could hardly expect less.

Trying to drip as unobtrusively as possible, Sabin found an empty table and settled in as best he could. No serving maids were in sight, so he simply got straight down to staring at the tavern’s patrons, considering the information that had first brought him here.

Monsters. Not just any monsters, Sabin Duvert was a connoisseur of the supernatural and was after something a little more exotic than a caged merman or performing elf. The rumour that had led him to this town was that of whispered nightmares, creatures of pure dreamstuff that haunted the Shadow Coast of legend.

The Shadow Coast itself was a fascinating subject, said to exist only when it wanted to and accessible only by a ship leaving from this particular bay, crewed by fearless men willing to feast upon their own souls and become their worst fears. For all the fabled horrors that inhabited it, the Shadow Coast was a popular destination for greedy adventurers, apparently having shores lined with grains of pure gold, wealth beyond imagining accrued by the hoarding monsters that lived there.

Sabin doubted the shores of gold part, though some lesser spirits were known for stealing shiny objects, and he rather suspected the feasting upon one’s soul bit was simply a cautionary tale. Nevertheless, his storm grey eyes had read many accounts of travellers to that realm and creatures that originated from it, so he had faith enough to strike up conversation with a burly man and slip the Shadow Coast into an anecdote about an octopus and a pair of bagpipes.

The reaction was not quite the shifty eyes and furtive hints he’d imagined.

“The Shadow coast?! You want to know about the SHADOW COAST?” The wine reddened face erupted into loud laughter. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all week – no, all month! Maybe even all year! No, probably just this month actually. There was that one guy with the -” whistling noise “– problem at Easter. Hey Nobbin, come over here and get an earful of this guy!”

Several free drinks and a small army of drinking buddies later, Sabin’s head was buried in his arms. The conversations had ranged from humour to outright disgust at his ‘foolhardy ideas’, and not one had yet offered up any information as to possible creatures from the mythical place, let alone actual ships leaving for it.

He was eying the dark wood inches from his nose philosophically when a rough shove to his shoulder caused him to start upright, mutter a German curse and masterfully slop cheap beer all over himself. Turning to face his attacker, Sabin was confronted with the cheery visage of a pale faced boy under a mop of matted brown hair. No, it was a girl. But then the nose suggested a lad… with the cheekbones of a woman. The generously curved lips belched companionably. Definitely a boy.

He opened his own finely crafted mouth to enquire as to the boy’s desires for physical punishment, when he was interrupted by a decidedly feminine voice from the very same lad.

“I understand you’re after a bogeyman.”

Sabin was puzzled, beer fogging his usually sharp mind. “Bogeyman?”

The girl rolled her mud-dark eyes, swiping his mug and drinking the remains. “You know. demon, ghoul, boggart, spectre. A dark creature. From the Shadow Coast. Where you want to go.”

He felt that she was being rather too free with his information (and alcohol) but fortunately had enough common sense (or alcohol) to remain seated. He grudgingly realized that this ridiculously upbeat child was the source he had been looking for. Straightening up, he directed a quick line of subtle questions at her.

After a few minutes of nodding to thisand that , she stood up and offered her hand. “Look, the Quite Jovial Adam is leaving for the Shadow Coast with the dawn tide. You’re an able looking fellow. You get a quarter share of all loot if you sign on as a ship’s boy, plus 50 doubloons for any loss of limb. Sound fair?”

He stared at the dirty outstretched palm. Mortal peril awaited him should he take it. Dangers beyond the earthly planes. The ship was probably dealing illegal goods on the side. Any future at all aboard it was uncertain.

He grasped her hand firmly. “Isn’t it bad luck to call a boat by a man’s name?”

A scant hour later, Sabin found himself extremely bored of the seafaring life. So far they’d visited three hovels and a grubby furniture shop, apparently trading small lumps of wood for pieces of a heavy gold plated dinner set. When he dared to ask what in god’s name they were doing, his new employer simply said “supplies” with a small shrug.

They had exchanged introductions shortly after leaving the tavern, the girl wrinkling her nose over the foreign syllables and Sabin wondering if ‘Katherine Kruel’ was actually born with that name. She was certainly outlandish enough to create her own moniker, nattering endlessly about trivial subjects, randomly bursting into song mid sentence and even skipping when the mood apparently took her. Sabin suspected she’d had a good deal more to drink than he had, but politely tried to keep up his half of the conversation (when she was talking to him and not some invisible companion) anyway.

At length, they turned another grimy corner and beheld the astonishing vista that was the docks. Rotten planking stretched out miles into the bay itself, creating what would have been decent mooring if not for the fact that the headlands sheered off abruptly at the beach, leaving virtually no protection from the weather. The few large ships that were brave or desperate enough to dock here were anchored close together in the small shelter granted by a generous rock formation further out in the bay.

The jetty itself was littered with nets, barrels and assorted maritime detritus, which Katherine crunched through carelessly and Sabin nimbly picked his way around. As they passed each intimidating hull, Sabin expected to be led up any of the narrow gangways, but the dark haired girl simply walked on past frigate after sloop after barque.

Suddenly Katherine stopped and shouted. Sabin, having once more retreated into his mental pathways was startled at this outburst. A tense moment later an answering shout floated down through the night air, proving that his companion was neither injured nor mad, so Sabin could relax.

The shout had apparently come from the decks of an aging brig, smaller than most of its model and with a few interesting renovations. Sabin’s untrained eye didn’t catch this for several weeks, all he saw on his first impression was a hulking derelict of a ship, too small to possibly make a months long voyage and not looking seaworthy enough to make a trip about the bay.

His desperate hopes for a mere friendly greeting to a trading partner were dashing when a rope ladder was thrown over the side, Katherine scrambling up it in her inimitable graceless style. When she reached the top and gestured for him to toss his bag up, he could barely suppress the heartfelt groan that the prospect of travelling aboard the wallowing vessel brought to his lips.

The minute he was dragged unceremoniously over the lip of the splintering rail, Sabin was bombarded with commands from a muscle bound giant of a man with almost no teeth. Not feeling particularly suicidal that day, he jumped to obey the lisped orders, grabbing his finely woven travel bag and stowing it under a wooden crate.

He didn’t see it again for three hours, when he was finally granted a break from loading and securing cargo to catch a brief snatch of sleep before they sailed. As he wearily plodded below decks after Katherine’s still jaunty footsteps, he wondered exactly what a ‘peaceful exploration mission’ as she’d put it was going to do with all the barrels of gunpowder he’d helped store in the hold.

Sabin assumed that Katherine had already cleared him with whoever was in charge, while he was working with the many diverse crewmen he had never once been challenged or given a second look. Clearly new faces were not uncommon aboard the Quite Jovial Adam, suggesting a higher turnover rate of employment than the French man was quite comfortable with.

The dingy crew quarters were simply a cleared space in the cargo hold with hooks in the low hanging beams for hammocks. They had passed a few staterooms on their way down, but those were clearly reserved for higher ranking or merely more physically imposing crewmembers. Sabin had observed during his stint as a forklift that the hierarchy on board was a fascist system of the strong ruling the weak. Katherine was not particularly strong but clearly held some other function that allowed her a certain leeway with the supervising bosun.

As she enthusiastically hung him a hammock clearly not far from her own, Sabin asked he exactly what her position was.

“I’m a repair boy. Girl. Person.” she said with a grin. “I report to the ship’s carpenter.”

Sabin nodded sagely, this explained the hunks of wood she’d made him carry. “Are you good with your hands then?” he asked, extracting his bedding and trying to assemble it in the swinging canvas.

She gave him an appraising look, scouring his body with her dark eyes from head to toe. “Only if you’re good with giving out gold.” She replied succinctly.

Sabin floundered, face red, trying to grasp a way out of this embarrassing conversation. He was saved by Katherine’s boisterous laughter as she hopped effortlessly into her own hammock, snuggling into a comfortable position in minutes.

“You’d best be getting some shut eye, Sabby, I wasn’t fooling about the sailing with the dawn thing.”

Hiding his irritation at the irreverent mangling of his name, Sabin struggled for a good ten minutes longer before he could arrange his hammock adequately for sleeping purposes. Katherine was already fast asleep and snoring atrociously, ‘probably solely to annoy me’ he though uncharitably, and so he forewent the goodnights and settled in himself.

He fell into the familiar realm of dreams to the oddly comforting sound of water slapping against the hull.

*** Chapter 2 ***

Sabin was awoken roughly by a sudden lurching motion. Thinking it was merely the rocking of his hammock, he grasped for the trailing edges of sleep for a few moments before another, bigger lurch rolled him out onto the floor.

Struggling to reorient himself as he dressed and made his way to the forward hatch, Sabin realized the ship itself was in motion. Which meant they were already under sail. Which explained why there was not a soul below decks.

He emerged onto the deck, expecting bright morning light and squinting against it, disappointed when a dark sky and a shower of rain greeted his brown haired head. Much to his surprise, the second he stepped onto the rain slick decks he was struggling for balance as the world swayed from side to side.

Sabin had travelled by boat before, but never on a ship small enough to really feel the ocean swell and toss its passengers about like the Quite Jovial Adam was currently doing. He had nearly mastered the trick of standing still with his legs spread when he was smote from behind by a great fist. As he skittered forward, he heard the booming tones of the bosun and realized the blow was supposed to be an encouraging shove forward.

The bosun was a giant of a man, ham fisted and strong enough to bash six heads together at once (which he was often called on to do, as acting second mate), though his threatening persona was undermined by his essentially amiable personality and gummy smile. Of course, there was also his name. Sabin had at first taken it for a joke when a one eyed deckhand related their superior’s names, but had quickly learned that anyone who questioned “Becky” soon became as gap-toothed as the owner of the name.

Becky’s helpful hand had sent Sabin in the general direction of Katherine, who grinned and handed him a line with an indication to start pulling. Between the steadily rising wind, pattering of rain and shouted commands of sailors, he didn’t have any chance to ask exactly why they were leaving in what seemed to be the dead of night during a storm.

By the time the sail they were helping to raise was up and a series of other brute strength tasks assigned to them were completed, the sun was peering through the dismal clouds and the rain had died off to a baby’s enthusiastic dribble.

Katherine’s mop of dark curls was bent over a hunk of fresh bread when he finally sat down long enough to talk to her. He was beginning to doubt the sanity of his decision to join this particular crew, and some of his mood showed through.

“Why in god’s name did we have to leave in the middle of a storm?”

Katherine blinked at him. “It was just a squall, pretty boy. We’re bound to see much worse than a pissing of rain before we reach the Turk islands.”

“We’re heading for the Turk islands then?” He asked, only frowning slightly at her comment on his looks.

This earned another blink, accompanied by what he was beginning to recognize as her how-can-anyone-possibly-be-this-stupid-unless-they-were-dropped-on-their-head-as-a-child-wait-did-that-happen-to-you look.

“Of course we are. How else do ye get to the Shadow Coast? On foot?”

He pressed his lips together. In preparation for this journey Sabin had studied many accounts of the Shadow Coast itself, but few had been detailed on the exact coordinates one needed to follow in order to get there. Clearly local knowledge was superior in this aspect. He was about to enquire further as to their travel plans when a merfolk man walked directly by them.

Katherine scrambled back against the bulwark as the grey skinned man passed by, careful to keep any part of her body or clothing from touching the webbed feet. Sabin was surprised by the sight of the merfolk as well, having seen only a few from afar and none at all the night before during loading. He surmised that the fish eyed creature had been elsewhere, perhaps collecting supplies or running some other essential errand. Or perhaps he had been avoiding reactions such as Katherine’s.

Sabin was somewhat surprised by his companion’s apparent distaste for the aquatic man. While prejudice against non-humans wasn’t uncommon, he had been told that sailors were a diverse folk, well used to accepting those would otherwise be misfits and outcasts, as those who sailed the sea were themselves on the fringes of society.

Then again, seafaring people were often given to superstition, having to trust their lives and livelihoods to the capricious nature of the vast oceans. Sabin wondered if Katherine’s dislike was just particular to merfolk, non-humans or all “unnatural” things, as his mother had been. He wondered if this included magic.

He watched the rest of the crew’s attitude to the merfolk, noting that there were almost no other non-humans among them (unless they were hiding it cleverly, as they were wont to do these days) and few had a friendly word for their web-fingered shipmate.

Sabin was just pondering a way to gently broach the subject when Katherine appeared to get over her spooking and stood up, briskly brushing down crumbs uncharacteristically for such a messy person.

“Best be to work then, first sailing day is always the most troublesome – everyone’s waiting for something to break while we can still swim to shore.” This chance to upset Sabin’s peace of mind seemed to restore her mood, and she offered him a hand up.

Smoothly ignoring the proffered hand (still a tad miffed about where it had gotten him last time), Sabin stood by himself, tossing the heel of his breakfast to the gulls. “What are we supposed to be doing? More grunt work?”

Katherine grinned at him gleefully. “Oh no, we’re quite done with that. I’m going to go help with the stuck door in the galley, and you, lucky thing, get to report to the mate. He’ll decide what to do with you.”

“The mate?” He questioned with some suspicion, knowing that whatever chore awaiting him could not be pleasant.

“First mate Maurlias. Pointy ears, can’t miss him. Oh yes, he’s a frenchy too. I have a feeling the two of you will get along like wenches and whalebone.” This last was said with such suppressed mirth that Sabin’s sense of foreboding hightened to a painful cramping in his gut.

Katherine had already shown a sadistic streak when she earlier laughed at the misfortune of a fellow deckhand who got his finger caught and near shredded by a flying line. As she swaggered aft, Sabin couldn’t help but glare at her brightly clothed back before stalking off himself.

Sabin eventually found the first mate on the foredeck, observing the well ordered chaos of the crew with enough haughty disdain to float an armada, holding his blonde head high enough to support a crown. Sabin suddenly had the distinct impression that this was a private ambition of the mate’s.

Unsure of shipboard decorum, Sabin waited patiently to the side and waited for the elf to address him. For indeed, the tightly pulled back hair displayed proudly the two damning marks of the rare elvish species: finely pointed ears. Sabin spent several minutes mentally speculating on just how good the first mate had to be to gain and hold such a position, especially over a crew almost entirely comprised of humans.

He had almost exhausted this line of thought (he really didn’t believe such a man would do that to a melon for a rank) when the first mate finally saw fit to break the silence.

“So. Another hapless deckhand. You’re late to report.” The disdain carried through the cultured accent with surprising sharpness, given that the voice was so soft.

Sabin stared at the elf’s back. “I’m sorry. I—“

“I did not give you permission to speak.” The reprimand masked in genteel tones was as strong as a backhand in a silk glove (which, Sabin noticed, the first mate was wearing).

Then, as inevitably as a cresting wave, the elvish first mate turned to fix Sabin with a contemptuous stare. The icy blue eyes seemed to hold an ethereal power to freeze his soul in its tracks, and for a moment Sabin believed every fantastical story he’d ever heard about elves.

“You are a deckhand. Your station is so far below mine that should I wish it, you would lick the dirt from my boots and be grateful for my gift of sustenance.” His fine lips curled, then smoothed suddenly. “Go. You report to Becky, tell him you requested to swab the decks until sunset.”

And with that, the first mate turned his well proportioned back and effectively ended the conversation. Sabin cursed those pointed ears every time he bent to scrub a determined stain from the planking that day.

As the first stars twinkled their way onto the velvet painting of the evening sky, Sabin collapsed onto the well-scrubbed decks with a deep sigh. Every muscle in his body ached, including some he had never suspected he possessed. Who knew cleaning could be so backbreaking? The grey eyed French man had a new respect for his mother.

He was seriously considering just falling asleep where he was, as his hammock in the hold seemed continents away to his weary body. Lids nearly closing on sleep-fogged eyes, he had almost a second’s warning before Katherine’s small but powerful fist impacted with his shoulder.

“aargh.” He said tiredly.

“Good evening to you too, good sir. How do you fare this fine evening?” Katherine had affected what he supposed she must think was an imitation of his accent. He closed his eyes once more.

A sharp jab to the ribs was his reward. “Wake up, you have work to do.” Back to normal tones, but the words themselves were still horrifying enough to rouse Sabin’s anger.

“C’est une blague ou quoi? How can there possibly be more work? I scrubbed every plank on this godforsaken ship. You could eat off these decks!” He cried.

“You’re on watch with me tonight. Orders from above.” She grinned and offered him a hand up.

Not really having a choice about taking it this time as he was unsure whether he could stand on his own, Sabin took it. “What did I do to get in his bad books so quickly? I barely talked to the man for a minute!”

Katherine started walking towards the foredeck, gesturing for him to follow. She talked over her shoulder, still failing to hide her amusement. “With the first, you don’t have to do anything. He’s just like that. A right royal bastard who runs the ship like a naval man-o-war.”

As they reached a ladder she again offered him a hand up. Sabin took it gratefully.

“So it’s not just me then. You don’t like him either?” he asked.

Katherine let out a raucous laugh that echoed off the night waters. “I don’t think anyone aboard likes him. Not even the captain. We might be daft buggers to be sailing for the Shadow Coast, but we’re not stupid enough to trust an elf.”

Sabin carefully ignored the last remark and the derisive snort that accompanied it, focusing instead on the mention of the elusive captain. Despite having been aboard for almost a full day now, Sabin had seen neither hide nor hair of the man who supposedly owned the ship he was sailing on.

“What’s the captain like, then? Is he an elf too?” he enquired politely.

“Captain Roberts? Oh lord above, no! The poor fool couldn’t find his own rear end with two hands and a map, let alone double cross you like a pointy eared bastard would.” She laughed softly, almost fondly. “No, he’s an alright fellow, our captain is. Not the best sailor, but he has his priorities straight.”

Sabin nodded as if he understood the association of elves with treachery. He’d only met a handful of the handsome folk in his travels, but they had seemed trustworthy enough.

“So why did the captain decide to sail for the Shadow Coast?” He asked, unable to hide his curiosity.

She shrugged, leaning on the bow rail, looking out into the invisible horizon. “Same reason ever sailor does, I suppose. Treasure, adventure. Mostly treasure.” The wistful look on her plain face suggested other motivations for herself, but Sabin did not press.

Before he could ask another question, Katherine shook herself and began the real work of watch duty. “Right then, do you know how to use a sextant? No? Bloody useless things anyway. Just pick that up and do what I do.”

The next few days passed in an uneventful manner, the first mate’s wrath steadily guiding Sabin’s chores but not taking any form that could truly be considered unfair. He was assigned to many mindless tasks, mostly involving cleaning, but instead of slacking off and doing them sloppily as the mate probably expected, Sabin made it his goal to accomplish every minor duty with perfection.

This was mostly to annoy the blonde elf as he strutted along the poop deck, calmly issuing orders and inspecting Sabin’s polishing jobs, but also because he was certain that Becky would not hesitate to break a finger or two if Sabin looked the least bit relaxed.

Rough calluses formed on his delicate writer’s fingers, previously accustomed to ink stains and soft gloves. He developed rather severe sunburn across his cheeks and nose before Katherine took pity on him (not without a great deal of mockery first) and gave him a bright red bandana to cover his head. He wasn’t sure how this worked, but the burning ceased and his skin returned to normal, if a few shades darker.

Katherine herself was his near constant companion, always finding convenient jobs that required her to be in the same area as he was. She mostly insulted him and made rude implications about his relationship with the bosun, but he found that her casual assumption of friendship allowed him to let these things slip and he bantered back with equal humour. She talked to him as if they were old friends, and sometimes it was hard to remember that they had met less than a week ago.

One bright afternoon, almost a day since land had been visible, Sabin was laboriously rubbing oil into a block so that the lines would run more smoothly. Katherine sat above him, carving lumps of rose hued wood with a small knife and keeping up a running commentary on the rigging rats’ physical appeal.

He was just congratulating himself on ducking one of her swinging feet when a lump of wood clonked him in the head. He didn’t bother to ask why she’d thrown it, she either wouldn’t have a reason or she’d have some deep philosophical rant prepared about the nature of wooden lumps.

Rubbing his head, he picked up the small wooden shape and examined it. It looked… like a lump of wood that had been savagely attacked with a knife.

“What exactly is this supposed to be?” He asked her, honestly curious.

She shrugged, still swinging her feet. “Oh, nothing really. Mattias just wants me to practice.”

As it turned out, Katherine was not particularly good with her hands at all. She had secured the position of repair boy with a mixture of charm, bribery and blackmail. Her handiwork around the ship was easily told by its poor quality, but another telltale was the rude words and images frequently carved into it.

Sabin had just picked up his oil rag again when another lump smote his head. He cursed in French and turned to give the little brat a piece of his mind. But to his surprise she wasn’t grinning down mischievously at him, instead her attention was focused somewhere out to starboard where the foremast blocked his view.

He couldn’t believe she was actually taking the innocent tactic. It wasn’t as if there were neither any other malicious repair boys around nor any birds who conveniently shat wood. He was still staring incredulously at her when her voice was once more directed at him.

“A ship! South-east, about three furlongs from here. No, five. Maybe ten. Hell I don’t know, but it’s a ship!”

Sabin stared up at her in confusion, thinking that surely if such a thing were true that the lookouts would have spotted it already. A moment later he realized that the lookouts had been shouting excitedly for several minutes, but having no ability to understand the jargon of their constant calls, he had developed instead an ability to fade out their long shouts. He listened closely now, but could still not decipher what the commotion was about.

Katherine, however, seemed to have no trouble comprehending them, and noting his puzzlement related the information to him with barely constrained glee. “It’s a merchant, Dutch by the looks of it. Coming from Saint Kitts, loaded with sugar!”

Sabin nodded, then paused. “Why are you interested in its cargo?”

There was a sudden silence in the space between them. Katherine became intensely fascinated with her swinging toes.

“This is a pirate ship, isn’t it?”

The curly head nodded.

This only confirmed his growing suspicions. No “free trader” carried as many cannons as the Quite Jovial Adam did, and no mere sailors wore three bared blades a piece. Then there was the constant talk of looting and pillaging. That was sort of a big hint.

Sabin heaved a sigh. He didn’t really mind on a moral level, but it would have been nice to be clued in before the killing and the dying started.

“Alright, but do I have to fight?”

Katherine grinned.

*** Chapter 3 ***

Sabin’s grip on time loosened after the merchant was sighted. It must have taken at least a half hour for the Quite Jovial Adam to catch and out manouver the smaller Dutch vessel, but the minutes passed in a blur to Sabin until he found himself holding the rough hemp of a grappling line in his hand.

Katherine stood next to him, holding her own line in one hand and a disproportionately large axe in the other. He didn’t ponder too long on the logistics of such a weapon in close quarters, instead pulling his own dagger from its hidden sheath in his boot. He was absurdly glad that he had yet to take Katherine’s advice about no boots on deck, as he wasn’t sure he would have remembered about the small blade otherwise.

He tried to focus on the approaching hull of their prey, but the bloodthirsty shouts of both his own crewmates and the terrified Dutchmen kept distracting him. It took a long moment for him to realize that Katherine was saying something.

“What are you going to do with that pig-sticker? Threaten to poke them mercilessly?” The laughter in her voice was oddly disturbing when she was holding a sharp object.

“I… it’s all I’ve ever needed.” He replied simply. Sabin had only used the small dagger - well, kitchen knife really – once before on a particularly determined thief. He’d left a pretty serious looking cut on the young man, and at the time he’d been proud of his mad skillz.

Katherine scoffed. “Lets find you something that might actually leave a scratch. Manny! We need a sword over here!”

There was no discernable reply to this, though Katherine’s own shout had nearly been lost in the din so it was doubtful that they would have heard the master-at-arm’s response anyway.

They waited patiently for the Spanish man to appear. Sabin had encountered his brusque nature before, so while he waited he mentally prepared himself for angry shouting and perhaps physical assault for the horrible crime of asking a weapon of the weapon-keeper.

He was very surprised when a blade came whirling out of the throng straight past his nose and buried itself in the mast behind him.

Sabin was still struggling for breath when Katherine tugged it free of the wood, cursing about gouges and sanding. She placed it in the hand that had until seconds ago been holding a dagger, pressing his fingers around it when they refused to grip.

“Here.” She said comfortingly. “You just stick the blunt end in the soft bits.”

“Don’t you mean the sharp end?” He asked warily.

She shrugged. “Whatever works for you.”

With this reassuring thought, she turned to watch the fast oncoming battle. A moment later she turned back again.

“You might want to take the braid out. I was wrong, it doesn’t make you look more manful and scary.”

Then she was over the side and gone.

Sabin raised a hand to his hair, tied into a braid by Katherine not less then ten minutes ago. At the time she had all sorts of good reasons, like not being mistaken for a wench and raped, but he had been rather distracted and hadn’t really considered them.

He was just trying to figure out how to hold the sword and untie the thick plait at the same time when Becky’s mighty hand once more clapped him on the shoulder and sent him staggering forward. Sabin really had no choice once he was pressed against the bulwark with twenty men behind him screaming for their chance at violence, so he swung across into the fray with no further protest.

The battle was nothing like he expected. There were no elegant sword manoeuvres or daring rallies as the stories told. It was just blood and confusion, and blood. So much blood.

The crew of the Dutch ship were obviously at a disadvantage, even to Sabin’s untrained eye. While the Quite Jovial Adam’s crew charged at the frightened merchants with vicious enthusiasm, they still displayed some small amount of skill, if skill could be the word used to describe the efficient dismantling of a living body. The Dutch sailors had no such talent, wielding their improvised weapons ineptly with trembling hands.

Sabin briefly saw people he recognized, Katherine swinging her not-so-ridiculous axe, Becky using his meaty hands as brutal weapons in themselves, the first mate watching with a cool eye.

But all of them were transformed by the battle. There was no time to consider the ethics of slaughtering innocent men for the wealth they were transporting, only a breath between dodging a flailing sword and throwing up your own in defence.

Sabin was horrified when his notched blade accidentally caught an aging man in the eye as he spun around. The gurgling scream that issued from the man’s lips was so inhuman that Sabin mindlessly dropped his sword and turned to run.

He ran right into the path of a trio of bulky Dutch sailors. Sabin cursed his luck, he must’ve found the only sailors on the entire merchant vessel to know their way around a sword. And a crossbow too, he noted with some dismay.

As the middle man raised his bow to eye level and the other two hefted their swords, Sabin did the only thing he could think of.

He raised his hand.

Straight out from his body, palm outstretched as if the pale flesh alone could stop the descending blades. He wished it were true, that his hand was made of iron, he wished that the swords were made of butter, he wished that he had never signed up for this stupid quest, he wished that he didn’t have such an idiotic obsession with monsters and the Shadow Coast that held them.

Sabin closed his eyes, and wished.

When the roaring in his ears had stopped, he heard the metallic clang of two swords dropping to the deck, followed by the more wooden clatter of a crossbow.

He opened his eyes to find the deck in front of him bare of anything but a smear of gore and shredded clothing. He quickly turned to scan the rest of the ship, expecting everyone to have witnessed the horror of the past few moments. But no one had. The battle continued unabated, away from his little bubble of obscenity.

Sabin turned the corner of the wheelhouse and huddled down in the shelter behind it. He closed his eyes and ears to the violence outside and let his head rest on his knees.

He hadn’t used that spell since he left home. That spell was the reason he left home. His promises to never use it again had meant nothing to his distraught mother, and clearly they had meant even less to him.

He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and waited for the screaming to stop.

Years, or maybe just hours later he jerked awake to the feel of something on his shoulder. After a few moments of blind panic wherein it was the hand of a deceased Dutch sailor, Sabin woke up enough for the colours swimming in front of his eyes to resolve into the familiar shape of Katherine’s face.

Katherine’s very concerned face. He had no idea how to handle the softness in her look, so he just sat there as she reached out to stroke his face. The tenderness and pity in the gesture was enough to make him close his eyes again.

“Don’t worry, my pretty boy. It happens to the best of us the first time.” Her voice broke through his eyelid barrier nonetheless, irritating in its reassuring tones. “Why, when I first bloodied my blade I nearly fainted on the spot. Poor Becky had to half drown me with a bucket of bilge water before I could get my wobbly knees walking again.”

Her harsh laughter fell hollowly on his ears. In it he heard the echoes of the rushing wind and wished she would just stop talking. He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t.

“Alright then. Sulk. But at least come sulk with the rest of us so it looks like you’re crying because the rum’s so good. Can’t have you ruining your manly image now can we?”

At this, Sabin’s eyes flicked open. “Rum?”

Katherine smirked. “Knew that’d get you. Boozehound.”

Sabin didn’t have time for her petty insults right now. “Rum? Is there rum?”

She rolled her eyes but held her hand out to help him up nevertheless. “Yes, there is. Two extra thumbs for every hand, three if you managed to gut more than five Dutch bastards. It’s the Captain’s way of celebrating the haul we brought in.”

Sabin really didn’t care enough about the politics of accepting a hand up once more, he just wanted to drink something that would make him stop thinking. He knew from experience that rum was more than sufficient for this task.

As he turned to follow Katherine’s swaggering steps, cramped muscles protesting, he concentrated on not looking at the carnage left in the wake of the battle. Not looking not looking not looking.

He couldn’t help but notice the significant lean in deck underfoot though, and asked Katherine about it.

“Oh yes, it appears our silly trader decided to scuttle his boat rather than let pirates have it. The fool did a half-arse job though, so it’s still seaworthy. We won’t be taking her with us though because Mr Pointy Ears declared it was too much effort for ‘too little gain’. Bastard.”

She then went on to describe the nature of the prize they were keeping, which equated to a three pound sack of sugar each. Sabin ignored her rapturous chatter in favour of focusing the gangplank they were crossing to the Quite Jovial Adam. He had little interest right now in the rewards of murder.

He crossed to the other ship in a haze, being led to one of Katherine’s preferred nooks and made to settle on a barrel. He barely noticed when a tin cup was pressed into his hand.

“If you aren’t going to drink that, give it here.”

Sabin was about to protest this when Katherine dunked a small strip of cloth into his rum without asking further permission. Baffled, he watched in confusion as she knelt before him and gestured for him to take his shirt off.

“I don’t…what are you doing?” he rasped.

“Oh don’t fear for your virtue pretty boy, I’m just gonna fix up that there hole in yer carcass.”

Sabin looked down in surprise. Indeed, there was a spreading blotch of red over his chest. Bemused, he didn’t struggle when Katherine yanked his linen shirt over his head and proceeded to inspect the wound site with her fingers. He did yelp when she prodded it with a fingernail though.

“’s just a scratch, quit yer bitchin.” She said, mangling the words a bit. It occurred to Sabin that some people’s accents became more pronounced when they were in their cups, and he wondered just how much Katherine had already had to drink. He was suddenly not so sure about having her poke at his injury.

Heedless of his worries, Katherine picked up the rag and slapped it directly onto the cut.

Sabin cried out in surprise.

Eying him with a mixture of shock and amusement, Katherine dabbed more gently with the alcohol soaked cloth. “Where did ye learn to screech like a girl? Paris? I hear they ‘ave plenty of funny-boys over there who’d be right jealous for a set of pipes like that.”

Sabin scowled, bearing the stinging of the rum manfully now that he’d managed to drink a sip or two as well. “I’ve never even been to Paris. I’m from Grenoble.”

Katherine shrugged. “’s all the same t’me. Paroble, Grenis. Funny places with girly men and too much perfume.”

Sabin hissed as she dabbed a ragged edge of both the cut and his pride. “They’re completely different. My village was a place of natural beauty, we knew nothing of society. We never had any perfume but the scent of the wildflowers.” Sabin knew he was verging on the dangerously cliché, but couldn’t stop. “We never had to strut about like the Parisian peacocks, we knew how to appreciate the wonderment that surrounded us.”

Katherine raised a brow. “’f it was so poetically inspiring, why’d ye leave it for this shithole?” she asked, a hint of honest interest in her voice.

Sabin frowned, taking a moment to swallow down the rest of his rum. Katherine had never before asked about his past and though he had been dying of curiosity himself, he had never asked about hers.

Clearly he had misunderstood the unspoken rules of their friendship. Perhaps there were no unspoken rules of their friendship. It was likely that Katherine had just forgotten to ask until now.

He shrugged, stepping out into the abyss. “All my life I wanted to see a monster.”

Sabin thought this would have been explanation enough, but Katherine’s puzzled face suggested otherwise. He sighed. “I was interested in the unknown. Magic, monsters, mythical places.” He noticed her face turning sour at the mention of magic and quickly continued. “I wanted to see other cities too, go to the places I’d read about in books. One day I just decided to go. My father was a traveller you know. Guess it’s in the blood.”

Katherine was silent for a long moment after this, and Sabin began to feel uncomfortable about his little speech. He decided it was only fair to ask the same of her. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

He rolled his eyes. Then rolled them again because the sky looked so amazing when it whirled like that. “Why did you leave home?”

“Felt like it.”

“When did you leave?”

“When I felt like it.”

“Why did you become a sailor? A pirate, even?”

She shrugged. “Felt like it.”

Sabin frowned, irritated now. “Pour l’amour de dieu, just tell me something real! Where did you come from, what was your family like, why do you hate magic so much? Anything!” he snapped, breathing more harshly than he’d like.

Katherine glared at him, and then continued ‘cleaning’ his forgotten wound with renewed vigour. “I’m from Cheapside, London, England. I had one younger sister and four older brothers. I hate witchcraft because it is an abomination unto the lord and my father taught me better than that. He was a priest in the Church of England.”

Stunned at the barrage of information, Sabin was quiet for a moment. Then the rum got the better of him again. “Aren’t priests supposed to be celibate?”

“Yes.” Came the short reply.

“Then how—“

“Seeing as we’re sharing like old biddies,” she cut him off, “how old are you really?”

Sabin sat back, baffled. “Well, I left home when I was sixteen and I’ve been travelling for four years.”

Katherine squinted for a moment, then nodded sagely. “Ah, a lad of eighteen then. Not too far from that meself.”

He squinted back at her. She had clearly learned her mathematics too at the knee of her father. “How old are you then?”

She grinned, mischievous mood restored. “I left home when I was fifteen and I’ve been travelling for a year and a half.”

Sabin quickly did the arithmetic. “Sixteen then?”

Katherine gave him the so-stupid look again. “Don’t be daft. I’m seventeen and a quarter.” She chucked the rag at his head and stood up while he sat in confusion once more. “I’m going to pinch another round off the lads in the galley. Are ye with me?”

Sabin rose on unsteady legs and tried to nod his consent. When his head nearly fell off with the effort, he merely grunted instead and wobbled after her.

*** Chapter 4 ***

Thunder boomed through his head like a chorus of the dead, crushing thought and dream alike, leaving nothing but devastated wasteland behind. Nausea rose in his stomach, the taste in his mouth like that of a nine day old corpse left to bloat in the sun. He tilted his aching head and the pain was like a thousand bloodthirsty barbarians driving their spears into his temples at once.

“Oh stop being such a drama queen.” Katherine’s chipper voice was nearly enough to provoke Sabin to murder. Or it would have been, if his eyeballs weren’t melting out of his skull. For some god-cursed reason Katherine was apparently immune to hangovers. Sabin was not.

She had awoken him early that morning with a swift jab to the ribs and a cheerful command to get up off the capstan before they decided he’d make a good anchor. He had responded in kind by vomiting on her bare feet.

He had thought that would have put her off, but she’d simply dumped a bucket of water on her feet, incidentally catching Sabin in the face with a few cupfuls too. Since then Katherine had been merciless in her enthusiasm, forcing him to wash and dress like any other day, though thankfully Becky appeared to be suffering from the same fate and had eased up on morning duties.

They sat now, for a mid-morning breakfast on some spinning clicky things that Sabin honestly couldn’t be bothered recalling the name for nor dared asking it of the abominably happy Katherine.

She had tried to force some sugar laden porridge on him but he had neither the stomach nor the patience for food right now, instead he sat very still, enduring the sunlight and Katherine’s mean-spirited commentary on the crew’s behaviour last night.

He was finally curious enough to interrupt her joyful recounting of the surgeon’s high stake gambling to ask a question. “I didn’t… do anything really stupid, did I?”

She gave him a look. He sighed. “I mean more than usual.”

“Oh no, not at all. Unless you consider that touching rendition of the French national anthem to be embarrassing. I thought the accompanying dance was quite inspired, myself.”

Sabin groaned.

“Yes, all the rigging boys agreed that you have quite a pleasant baritone. I think you’d be a hit in the London opera house, if you could stop hiccoughing.” She tried to keep a straight face as she said this, but failed miserably.

Sabin buried his head in his hands. The day could not possibly get any worse.

A pair of familiar highly polished boots stepped into his line of sight. Except that it just had.

“Duvert. I saw you fighting yesterday. Meet me on the afterdeck at noon.” The crisp tone of the first mate sent shivers down Sabin’s spine. Did he mean he’d seen the spell?

He lifted his eyes to divine the answer from the mate’s eyes, but the blonde elf was already gone.

“ooooohumumum. Somebody’s in trouble.” Katherine chanted like a small child, complete with silly grin and feet swinging.

Sabin glared at her. Sometimes he felt that though Katherine was a good friend and a fine sailor, public execution would be too kind a fate for her.

Two hours later, Sabin’s mood had not improved much. He thought his headache may have actually gotten worse.

He skulked his way past a crew that all seemed to be enjoying his impending doom, and though Sabin had never made much of an effort to befriend them he felt that they owed him slightly more comradeship than this.

He finally reached the appointed place, cursing the sun that glinted off the coin-bright hair of the first mate. Of course he would be punctual.

“You’re late. Do they not have time-telling devices where you come from or are you just ignorant as well as lazy?”

For once, Sabin kept his mouth shut in reply. He couldn’t stop himself from grinding his teeth though, despite the magnified ache it produced.

“I see you didn’t even bring your sword. Pathetic.”

Sabin blinked. “My sword?”

The taller elf sneered. “What did you think you were going to use in a fighting lesson?

Your hands?”

Sabin bristled at both the insulting tone and the possible implication that the first mate had witnessed his magic. “I wasn’t aware this was a lesson, sir.”

“Of course you weren’t.” The first mate snorted. “You have potential, more than the other half-wits that crew this tub. Potential to be, if not a great swordsman, at least not a terrible one. Here, catch. If you can.”

Sabin barely caught the sword as it came spinning out of nowhere towards him. Stunned at the backhanded compliment to his previously non-existent skills, he stared down blankly at the shining blade.

“I prefer the rapier, but we’ll be using cutlasses for obvious reasons. Then again, they may not be so obvious to you. Do you know why the blade is curved?”

Sabin shrugged. He already looked like a fool, he had no pride left to salvage. “Aesthetics?”

The blonde elf’s expression became even more derisive. “Oh yes, it’s very pretty. But you have clearly never tried to wield a broadsword correctly on a ship. Or land, for that matter.”

He drew a long, finely made rapier from the decorated sheath at his side to demonstrate. The hilt was of platinum and the blade of very high grade steel, even to Sabin’s eye. The first mate swung it lazily through the air in broad strokes, the singing blade declaring its quality as loudly as the practiced ease of the elf’s handling displayed his skill.

Sabin was so entranced by the shining sword that he was slightly startled when the first mate spoke up again. This time his voice was softer, a French lilt showing through as affection for swordplay showed through. “What do you notice about this, other than how beautiful Imperion is?”

Sabin ignored the pretentious notion of naming one’s sword and watched for a few moments more as the aimless strokes continued. “It… takes up a lot of space.”

The blonde head nodded in approval. “Very good. Do you see now the advantage of a shorter blade?”

Sabin nodded, turning his gaze now to the curved cutlass in his hand. He waved it through the air a few times experimentally, noticing for the first time how useful it would be in the cramped confines of a shipboard battle. Even with his arm fully extended it would not catch in the lowest of riggings.

A disgusted noise from his superior caught his attention and he lowered the blade uncertainly.

“No, not like that. Like this.” The elf repeated his earlier motions, slowing them down and simplifying them so that Sabin could catch on. Once Sabin was moving his own sword in time with the movements of the longer Imperion, the first mate nodded and stopped.

Sabin stopped too, drawing his brows together in confusion as the elf sheathed his sword and walked past Sabin to leave.

When Sabin stilled his own sword motions, the first mate gestured for him to continue.

“Keep going, I expect you to learn something you know.”

Sabin gaped. “But I thought you were going to duel with me? Or at least teach me something…”

The first mate snorted. “Don’t be stupid, you don’t have the muscle for it. You couldn’t hold your sword long enough to raise it against me, boy. Keep doing that for an hour and tomorrow we shall see about learning some forms.”

Sabin glared at the elf. The cutlass did not seem particularly heavy to him at all. Nevertheless, he raised it defiantly and continued to slice at the air with the curved blade.

Smirking, the first mate nodded at him and walked off. Sabin cursed him and took an empty satisfaction from pretending the slight breeze was the blonde elf as he stabbed at it.

Much to Sabin’s dismay, the next week and a half was more of the same. He awoke early every morning to cram all his allotted chores into the morning hours, as neither Becky nor the first mate were willing to ease his schedule, only to practice swordplay for an excruciating hour after noon.

Well, it was officially only an hour, but first mate Maurlias was so obsessed with perfection that if Sabin did not achieve every exercise with absolute accuracy, he had to do it twice over. This often resulted in Sabin getting to bed well past dusk, covered in sweat and aching from head to toe.

In fact, Sabin found that since starting his ‘lessons’ he had become better acquainted with muscle pain than he had ever thought possible. Worse, it was all from endless swinging of a blunted blade at the air, or perhaps a wooden dummy if the first mate felt that Sabin was having a productive day.

Still, Sabin refused to give the blonde elf the satisfaction of seeing him quit. Sabin wasn’t entirely sure that he’d even be allowed to quit, so for now he thought of it as a matter of pride. Pride that the elf had in spades, and Sabin was determined to match.

It was during one such lesson that Sabin first saw a crack in the icy elf’s demeanour. Sabin had been hacking at a dummy in the same agonizing pattern of attacks for well over an hour, finally completing the routine and looking to his surperior for approval.

He didn’t get it. The haughty tones of the first mate rang out in the swifty cooling evening air, “You’re still forgetting the second followup strike to that motion in the third pass. If that had been a real foe you’d be split from nose to navel.”

Sabin glared at the first mate, not missing the slight upward curve of the elf’s lips. He’d grown accustomed to reading the nuances of the first mate’s body language, they were far more subtle than most people’s expansive gestures, but they told the moods that the pale lips would never spill.

Right now, the first mate was amused enough to be laughing outright, if he had been any other man. The slight smirk was enough to set Sabin fuming though, as bad as if he had been insulted to his face. He turned back to the dummy with renewed vigour, attacking it with enough force to leave deep gashes in the straw padding that had once protected it, even gouging the wood below once or twice.

Almost as soon as he had started the first mate moved forward to stop him, dangerously stepping into Sabin’s strike area.

“Now you’re just hacking at it like a child. Enthusiasm does not make up for a lack of finesse.”

Sabin groaned, leaning forward to rest his hands on his thighs. Sweat dripped off his bared chest, the combination of blazing tropical sun and physical exertion having proved too much for him hours ago. The first mate was, of course, still fully clothed in his shirt and frock coat.

Sabin growled under his breath. He was tried of the heat, tired of training and tired of the constant derogatory remarks. “Finesse does not make up for a lack of breaks. Surely your teachers never worked you this hard when you were learning the sword?”

The mate snorted. “When I was a student I was a child, and therefore could afford the luxuries of both breaks and mistakes. You are a man, or so you claim. Your physique and constant whining suggest otherwise.”

The sneering look down the aquiline nose that accompanied this derisive comment was almost too much for Sabin to bear. He straightened up, glaring directly into the glacial blue eyes of the first mate, his own eyes sparking with defiance. Such a direct insult to his masculinity was not to be borne.

He stepped closer to the first mate, encroaching on the elf’s personal space and charging the small space between them with violence.

“If I am such a child why are you so afraid to fight me? Even the dummies have more balls than you.” He ground out angrily, knowing even as he did that such an insult could well cost him his life.

First mate Maurlias leaned in close, cool breath mingling with Sabin’s own heavy pants. “Because I would no more fight a child than sleep with one. Real men have honour enough to overcome their juvenile instincts.”

They held each others gazes for a long moment, pure hatred dancing between them. Just when Sabin was sure the mate was going to stab him in the chest, the blonde elf smirked and walked away.

Sabin stared after him, bewildered. He couldn’t believe that he would get off scott free after directly defying the first mate.

“Oh, and Duvert –“ the elf called over his shoulder, “you aren’t leaving this deck until you’ve completed that exercise another fifty times. Perfectly. Becky will keep watch.”

Sabin cursed, knowing very well that once again, he would not see his bed before well after dark.

*** Chapter 5 ***

The thought that first mate Maurlias knew of Sabin’s magic haunted the young Frenchman day and night. Every look, every offhand phrase was cause for suspicion. He lay awake for hours at night imagining scenarios of the first mate’s reaction. Being an elf, the mate should be sympathetic to a mage, but it was hard to be certain in such intolerant times as this.

Childhood friends had turned on Sabin when they had discovered his natural talent at hide and seek was more than just a knack for finding good hiding places. The horrified look on Renee’s face when he offered her a rose painstakingly crafted of pure shadow still plagued Sabin’s dreams. The tide was turning against those who were not entirely human, and Sabin often felt that he was right beneath a cresting wave of hatred, simply because he was not as others were.

Sabin rolled over in his hammock, seeking to turn physically away from his thoughts even as he did so mentally. Of late he was finding that despite the exhaustion the constant swordplay wrought in his body, sleep was often elusive. On the rare occasions when he did find his way to the arms of Morpheus, Sabin fell into a deep slumber that was stalked by strange shadows and was curiously difficult to wake from.

Shadows were no stranger to Sabin, but he had never felt such… fear when faced by them before. While he often gave the darkness the appearance of life, never before had he felt it staring back at him. Watching him with sinister red eyes.

Shrugging it off as merely the peculiarity of dreams, Sabin gave up his quest for sleep for the night and rolled out of his hammock. A good stroll in the night breeze would clear his head of the clinging shadows and make the night watch think he was being enthusiastic in his duties.

As his bare feet thudded against the pleasantly cool planks of the upper decks, Sabin breathed in deeply the scent of sea life. Tarred ropes, oiled winches and piles of drying fish made for a pungent undertone, but the tropical breeze swept their strength away, leaving only the more delicate smells of sealed wood, damp hemp and the all pervasive tang of sea salt. There was something to be said for getting away from the industrial stench of the cities. Good for the soul, to smell something fresh for once.

When a one eyed deckhand started giving him strange looks indeed Sabin realized he’d been standing there whiffing for slightly too long and hurriedly walked aft, trying to look like he had a destination in mind. In truth, he wandered aimlessly around the decks for a good half hour before settling down in a nook that the watchmen were unlikely to check, but offered a good view of the night time scenery.

The stars swirled across the deep purple of the sky like a swath of richest fabric from the finest markets in Persia. The way they reflected on the pitch depths of the open ocean put Sabin in mind of the symphonies he’d heard In London, one of the finer points of civilization that he would always cherish.

He was just poised on the brink of a poignant observation, possibly even a really deep thought when the shuffle of boots on wood startled him enough to force a slight squeek from his throat.

The amused chuckle that issued from finely curved lips placed Sabin in no doubt at to the intruder’s identity. Just his luck that he should be busted by the one man aboard most likely to whip him for no particular reason. Sabin was frantically plotting his escape when the first mate’s lilting voice filled the night air.

“What are you doing awake at this hour, my young apprentice? Don’t you have duties to fulfil in the morning?”

Stunned at both the warmth in the elf’s tone and the odd reference to Sabin being his apprentice, of all things, it took Sabin a minute to find his own voice.

“I… I couldn’t sleep.” He gave himself a mental slap for such an inarticulate response. Expecting a barbed reply, Sabin eyed the moonlit figure with trepidation.

“Might as well toss and turn out here as below, eh?” the tone was companionable, and the first mate nodded absently rather than directing any sort of glare at Sabin.

Sabin was speechless. Had the first mate finally gone mad? Had all those endless sword exercises been as wearing on his mental welfare as it was on Sabin’s? Perhaps the blonde elf had simply been drinking. A lot.

Treading carefully so as not to wake the sleeping beast of the elf’s personality, Sabin leaned against the rail and followed the mate’s gaze out to sea. “You don’t get much sleep either?”

The elf’s head shook, moonlight making a sculpture out of the planes of his face. “Not on nights like this. When the moon is out like this it seems as though the devil himself lurks beneath these waters, waiting to drag us down to live with the merfolk.”

Sabin didn’t reply, not daring to break the spell of comradeship that seemed to have been woven without his notice.

“Do you believe in that sort of thing, Sabin? Magic, I mean?”

The glint in the elf’s shining eyes could have been moonlight or suspicion, but both set Sabin on edge. He turned his own eyes firmly to the water and shook his head, affecting a disinterested air, in blatant contrast to his true feelings on the matter.

“I believe in it, sure. But I don’t much care for it. They don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.”

The first mate’s tone was eerily flat as he replied. “Them. Yes, them. Magic users and non-humans. Merfolk, dragon-kin, elves. Others.”

Curious as to whether or not the lack of emotion expressed in the elf’s tone would carry on to his expression, Sabin once more looked up. Only to see the first mate standing curiously still, as if trying to be in truth the statue that the moonlight made of him.

As though he was completely unaware of Sabin’s presence, the first mate continued in the disconnected voice.

“They burn them you know. In France. They drag them screaming from their homes and they burn them in the street. They burn us.” The icy blue eyes turned on Sabin then, seeming to burn themselves with an unearthly inner fire. “But you would know that, wouldn’t you, Mr Duvert.”

Sabin froze. The moment spun away from him, the first mate’s icy gaze holding him in place, knowing, accusing. He reached frantically for a reply, even as they both knew he had taken too long to think of one for it to be truth.

“It’s true I’m from France, but I never saw anything like that.” The silence stretched out, the elf letting the fallacy of Sabin’s deliberate misunderstanding settle in like an enormous white elephant.

Desperately trying to redirect the first mate’s glacial scrutiny, Sabin spoke up again. “I am sorry for your loss, if you were witness to such things.”

It was a terrible thing to say, but thankfully it closed off both the moment and the elf’s face, the situation diffusing as the first mate turned away.

“Yes, I was. My brother… he never screamed.” The devastating nature of the statement was belied by the dead look in the elf’s eye, and Sabin once again did not know what to say. He was only pitifully grateful that he would not have to face revelation that night.

The quiet stretched and was broken, the first mate seemingly breathing in vitality as he turned once more to Sabin. “Best be getting to bed then, yes? We’ll be in the Turk islands by dawn. Does not the prospect of fine wine and women excite you, Duvert?”

“Yes first mate Maurlias, it does.” He replied warily.

“Oh come now, no need for two such as us to stand on formality. Call me Ambrose, and I shall call you Sabin. At least when we are alone.” With a wink and a grin, he was gone.

Sabin stood stunned and confused for another long while, pondering the sudden changes in the first mate’s personality. Ambrose’s personality. That alone was enough cause to call the ship’s surgeon on complaint of hallucinations.

Shaking his head, Sabin retired to his hammock for the evening, for once tired enough to sleep without dreaming.

.o.

The day dawned clear, if not bright. Overcast skies dimmed the lookout’s line of vision, but once the islands were spotted nothing could dim the crew’s excitement. Being in port after so many weeks was a wondrous prospect, and all hands went to their tasks with enthusiasm, the better to bring the Quite Jovial Adam in sooner.

Katherine, free of duties for the day (or merely ignoring them), stood precariously on the prow and occasionally shouted back descriptions to Sabin, who was laboriously splicing lines on the foredeck. She couldn’t possibly be able to see the half naked women dancing on coals from this far out, so Sabin assumed that she’d visited the islands before.

Even Sabin had to admit that the port market on Grand Turk sounded interesting, with all the fines wares first being sold here as the great ships crossed the ocean. Prices were always low, due to the produce being unable to be sold elsewhere; either because of cargoes going bad or being stolen property that would be refused in more ethical locations. For pirates carrying a large shipment of sugar, Grand Turk island was an ideal port of call.

Sabin didn’t have time to think in the brief scurry as they docked, he was too busy being yelled at and hauling lines to stare in wonderment at the lush vegetation that stretched almost to the wharf itself. The tropical atmosphere that permeated all of the Caribbean was in full swing here, even so far into the cooler season.

Less than an hour later Sabin was clomping along the dirt street that fronted the docks, his feet feeling uncomfortably squished in his finely made boots after so long in the open. He would have stopped to check for blisters had not his eyes been occupied with gaping at the street vendors.

Heavily tanned merchants hawked their wares at the top of their voices in several different languages, promising fine silks, fresh fruit, exotic perfumes, delicious nuts, exquisite jewelry and all so many other tantalizing prospects that Sabin was overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities.

He had considered himself a well traveled man, and used to such spectacles as this, but never had Sabin witnessed a market that while founded on shady dealings, practically throbbed with vitality. A child ran up to him, tumbling over her own feet and babbling incomprehensibly, and in that moment Sabin was filled with the joy that seemed to fill the island, the joy of being alive.

He was jolted out of his reverie by Katherine’s light smack across the child’s hand, which had somehow wormed its way into Sabin’s pocket.

“Lay off, we don’t have anything yet. Come back once we’ve been to the produce markets.” She said, hefting her bag to demonstrate.

The child made a face and let out a stream of what where presumably curse words, judging by Katherine’s responding gesture to its retreating back. Then again, the child might have been apologizing and Katherine might just be making rude gestures for the fun of it.

The exchange reminded Sabin that he had his own sugar to sell, which he then realized he’d left on the ship. With a sigh, he turned to Katherine. “I’m going to have to back to the Adam, I’ve left my sack of sugar aboard.”

Katherine blinked. “Don’t be silly, Becky will take care of it. See, I left our sugar with him and he gave us our share of the profits in advance.” She opened the bag this time, revealing that not only had Sabin been wrong about the contents but that she’d lied to the child about how much gold they were carrying. Which was a fair amount, if Sabin had any eye for it.

He gaped at her. Leaving their well earned loot with a pirate, let alone one that was not known for his counting skills? She must be even more mad than usual. “Are you sure that’s the wisest idea?” he enquired politely.

“On any normal ship, it’d be bloody stupid. But,” she cut him off before he could agree, “that bastard elf runs a tight ship. He’s a real stickler for rules and all that rubbish, even though he’s a thieving elf.”

Sabin ignored this contradictory statement in favor of sighing heavily. Katherine had already been compensated for their sugar, however incorrectly, and he really didn’t feel like challenging Becky or the first mate, no matter how strange the latter had been acting.

“Alright then, how much of that is mine? I want to get some new clothes while we’re here.” Sabin firmly ignored the snorted response to that, his conservative city clothes had long been the source of much mockery from Katherine, and she would no doubt delight in seeing him dressed like a ‘real buccaneer’.

“Enough.” She replied primly. “I’ll give you whatever’s left when I come back from the pleasure markets.”

“There won’t be anything left when you come back!”

“So?”

Sabin glared at her impish brown eyes. He frequently felt that he was dealing with a toddler rather than an almost grown woman. A toddler with a worldly appetite, he mentally amended as he considered Katherine’s destination.

The curly headed girl had spent well over an hour that morning expounding on the various hedonistic experiences that Grand Turk’s pleasure markets offered. In addition to such simple things as exotic drugs and alcohols, the vast number of slaves being trafficked through these islands meant that the brothels were a veritable smorgasbord of sinful delights.

The keen light that came into Katherine’s eyes when she mentioned them belied her actual age, and set Sabin’s mind to wondering. Shrugging off the distracting thoughts, Sabin stretched out his hand expectantly towards Katherine.

She ignored it for a full minute, examining a passing sailor with convincing interest, but eventually caved in and filled his hand with shining coins. When he didn’t immediately pull his hand away, she snarled and dumped a further pile of coins in his hand.

“Happy now?” she asked with no small amount of resentment.

“Very.” He replied with an equal amount of satisfaction. She still had enough in the bag to please herself, but not enough to go completely overboard. Sabin considered that she’d still probably try, and the thought of budget whoring amused him long enough for Katherine to have vanished when he next looked up.

With a shrug, he set his aching feet down a new road and let himself get lost in the wonders of the market.

.o.

*** Chapter 6 ***

During his travels, Sabin had discovered that marketplaces all over the world had one thing in common: smell. Whether it was the heavy perfumes of the upper-class London shopping districts masking the stench of the sewage surrounding it, or the crisp scent of fresh produce on market day in st-Laurent-du-Pont, every vendor had an aroma. The markets on Grand Turk island were a full on nasal assault.

As he wandered from booth to booth, Sabin’s nose was caught and intrigued by scent after scent; the tantalizing smell of warm bread led him to the rich fragrance of eastern oils, the pungent tang of metal being worked in the open mixed with the languid sweetness of over-ripe fruit, and the fresh burst of local vegetables overlaid the more subtle traces of pipe-smoked opium.

It was however the heady aroma of hot food and strong spirits that led him to the door of what appeared to be a very popular tavern. All the talents of a one legged cook could not make hardtack and dried fish the equal of fresh vegetables and roasted meat. Sabin was in the door and ordering a meal before he even had time to read the name of the place.

As he generously laid out gold to encourage faster serving, Sabin deduced that the name of the roiling pub would most likely be something along the lines of The Fighting Cockerel or The Raging Bull, if anything could be judged by the clientele.

As he examined the surly brutes that made up the majority of those hulking over tables in the smoky common room, Sabin realized that more than a few of the weathered sailors were his shipmates. Just his luck that the first chance he had to see some fresh faces, he winds up in the Quite Jovial’s favourite watering hole.

Sabin was just turning his soured attention back to the impending arrival of the serving girl when a glimpse of familiar green-grey flesh made him jerk his head back up. There, sitting alone in a dark corner of the tavern was the merfolk that had been his elusive sailing companion these past weeks.

Sabin stared in wonder; it wasn’t often that one saw a single non-human in such a crowded public place, especially a tavern such as this. He caught himself thinking there must be other gathering places for their kind and gave himself a mental slap. These days it was becoming more and more clear that Sabin was of their kind and would be treated as such should he reveal his abilities.

Deciding to have some moral backbone for once, Sabin stood up and signalled to the serving girl that he was switching tables. He could feel countless eyes on him as he traversed the endless distance to the other side of the room, and though the noise level did not raise or drop, Sabin was sure they were whispering about him.

He was so sure that all attention was on him that it took several minutes once he reached the merfolk’s table for him to figure out that the gilled man was actually unaware of his presence. Several awkward coughs and long silences later, Sabin had been offered a seat and a place to rest his now full plate. After that, the silence stretched.

“What do you want?”

The oddly burbled voice caught him by surprise. Trying not to stare at the webbed fingers toying with a mug of ale, Sabin gathered his courage to reply. “I just wanted to be friendly.”

“Friendly? To a non-human? Perhaps you are in need of a surgeon, not a fish-man.” The watery voice carried the chill of arctic flows, the carelessly spoken slur jangling harshly between them.

“There’s nothing wrong with being friendly to a… to a non-human. Sabin ignored the blank look, “I have met many of our differently specied brethren in my travels, and they have all been just as fair or foul company as any red blooded human.”

The too-round eyes narrowed shrewdly.” Then why did you pick me to harass, if I’m no different from them?”

Sabin scrambled for reply that wouldn’t offend the prickly merfolk and settled on an old strategy that his father had inadvertently taught him while dealing with his mother. The best defence is a good offence. Leaning close, he whispered theatrically in the spined ear, “Honestly, I couldn’t stomach the smell.”

He accompanied this by waving his hand in front of his face in the childhood gesture of stench. There was a long moment in which Sabin was sure his lame ploy would fall flat in the face of the merfolk’s cool fish-eyed gaze.

Then a strangely choked gurgling sound erupted from the merfolk’s slitted throat and Sabin was terrified that he had killed the man or worse – invoked some sort of bizarre war cry.

His puzzlement lasted a fair moment longer, until the webbed fists banging on the table finally clued Sabin into the fact that the merfolk was helpless not with rage, but with mirth. He tentatively smiled, then with an unsure grin joined in the laughter. This only caused the merfolk to clutch his stomach and cackle harder.

Sabin thought the green-skinned man probably would have been crying with hilarity if not for the fact that merfolk could not shed tears. Or at least, that was what the legends told. Sabin was suddenly intensely curious as to whether it was true or not, and let his laughter trail off as he studied the merfolk’s face for traces of salt water.

The merfolk didn’t seem to notice this, and when his laughter eventually died down he held out a hand for Sabin to take. Sabin did so heartily, ignoring the unnerving sensation of holding a snake and the clammy stickyness of the webbing between the other man’s fingers.

“I cannot tell whether you are the most simpleminded or most arrogant fool ever to walk the mother’s shores, but either way you have some enormous balls! You’re crazy, but where I come from we can admire that. I am Kaimana, and you are Sabin Duvert.”

“Ah, so I’m famous.” Sabin recovered from the sudden change in the merfolk’s personality by taking a deep drink from his mug. Who knew saying something stupid could so endear one to a merfolk.

An odd look came into Kaimana’s flat eyes before he responded, making them seem even more foreign than before. “More than you know. Far more than you know.”

Sabin raised a brow and was about to reply when Kaimana spoke up again, loudly calling for another round of drinks for his ‘friend’.

He chattered aimlessly until the drinks arrived, burbling voice now warmed in odd contrast to his earlier coolness. Sabin played along with the banter, curious enough about merfolk to let himself be drawn into conversation.

It turned out that Kaimana was something of a traveller himself, though he took the more aquatic routes to many of his destinations. Sabin eagerly traded tales of his land bound adventures for those of the deep, as Sabin had never had the luxury of gills in order to explore the ocean and no merfolk had ever been comfortable on dry land.

As they talked Sabin satisfied his ever growing curiosity about non-humans, and Kaimana seemed to gain some special pleasure from their exchange. Sabin reflected later that it was unlikely that the merfolk had much of a chance for companionship aboard the ship, and his conversation with Sabin was probably the first pleasant interaction he’d had since the voyage began.

What had earlier been a tempting array of steaming food had turned into a congealed mess of leftovers by the time the tavern started to empty, but though Sabin’s appetite had been left for dead the conversation between he and Kaimana was still lively.

When the proprietor came around with a stern look and a big stick, the pair paid their bills and quietly stumbled out into the street. Sabin was feeling on the tipsy side of pleasant from the cheap beer, and he had no way of gauging the merfolk’s sobriety but Kaimana seemed happy enough.

Most of the stalls were closed for the night, and the street echoed oddly as Sabin’s booted feet clopped down on it, Kaimana’s bare webbing providing a slapping counterpoint. The tropical breeze had taken a cooler turn, and it helped blow away some of the alcohol induced haze in Sabin’s head. It only made him walk instead of staggering.

At length they came to the wharf (though not without many wrong turns) and after getting angrily booted off the decks of two fishing boats and a barge, found the Quite Jovial Adam. More than a few figures were coming back from the day’s carousing, at least half of which were in much the same state as Sabin, if not worse.

Squinting blearily at the gangway, Sabin realized that there were rather more people going aboard than he recalled coming ashore. Some of the men shuffling aboard looked very suspicious indeed, uniformly shrouded in heavy clothing and one or two walking with and odd gait.

Suspecting foul play, Sabin stopped in his tracks and nudged Kaimana sharply.

“Mother of all! What’s your problem, landlegs--“

Sabin ignored Kaimana’s moaning and leaned in to whisper. “Do you recognize any of the men boarding the Adam?”

Kaimana’s luminous eyes narrowed at Sabin. “No. Nor do I care.” he replied, clutching his ribs sulkily.

“You don’t care?” Sabin exclaimed, “What if they’re robbers or worse, come to raid us in the night?”

The merfolk rolled his eyes – a little too far back to be normal – and continued walking. “They’re just new recruits. Maurlias probably hired them to fill in for those killed in the battle.”

Sabin attempted a quick shuffling-walk to catch up, attempting to look inconspicuous while still matching Kaimana’s swift pace. “I don’t remember that many deaths. Surely there was some ceremony for them…?”

Kaimana only shrugged and continued walking. “Piracy is a tough game. The sea takes its dead, and we do not fuss over what is rightfully hers. If the first mate wants to fill out the ranks a little before we face the dark lands, then who is blame him?”

“And the captain approves of this?” Sabin questioned, doubt colouring his tone.

Kaimana actually laughed, this time less raucously than in the bar so Sabin could tell it easily for what it was. “What does it matter if he approves or not? Captain Roberts has about as much authority as the figurehead on this ship. Less actually, I heard Grimy Pete drank a gallon of his own piss one night on watch duty, because he said he heard the figurehead tell him to.”

Sabin shook his head, too preoccupied with his suspicions to laugh at the tale. Knitting his brow, he spoke up again. “But doesn’t it seem odd to you? They all look a bit, well, shifty don’t they? Untrustworthy.”

Kaimana stopped abruptly then, turning to give Sabin the full benefit of his incredulous fish-eyed stare. “Pirates. You do know what that means, yes? You know that you are one yourself?”

Sabin sighed and was about to give in, when a painful shove caught him in the side and sent him skittering forward. When he’d caught his balance, he turned to give Kaimana and earful of his wrath for such uncalled for shoving. Much to his surprise, it was Katherine’s angry visage that met his blue-grey eyes.

“What in Christ’s holy name are ye thinking, abandoning me for a watercorpse? Is my company really that awful that you’d rather be tainted by a fish-man?!”

The outrage in her voice caught Sabin completely off guard. Sputtering, he tried to figure out where exactly he had wronged her. A well muscled lad hung behind her unsurely, clearly he had been anticipating a much different sort of encounter when he followed her back from whatever tavern they’d been in.

“Nothing to say, eh?” She poked his chest angrily, “Ye were supposed to meet me at the sign of the Dancing Donkey at sundown! Instead ye was out consorting with creatures o’ the night!”

At this, Sabin blinked in confusion. “No, I wasn’t. You never said anything about a Dancing Donkey.”

Katherine glared at him for a moment, then softened in confusion. “Are ye sure about that?”

“Quite.” He replied dryly, noting her thickened accent and realizing she was a fair bit worse for drink.

Katherine was quiet for a long minute. Then she seemed to gather herself, puffing on the embers of her anger. “Still! Ye should know better than to hang about with the likes o’ him!” She pointed a quivering finger at Kaimana, who had backed off during the confrontation to stand quietly.

Now he raised his hands in a universal gesture of surrender. “It’s quite alright Duvert, I should be getting some rest anyway. We have an early rise tomorrow, wouldn’t want to get in the first mate’s bad books by waking late.”

Before Sabin could get another word in he was gone, Katherine glaring at his back until it was lost in the darkness.

Turning to face her Sabin