“Anyone you find playing at dice or cards along your way, tell them to get to work. A ship this size always has shirkers.” Pasha Mustafa’s smile did not reach his eyes.

  I bobbed my head obediently but not deeply, as the weight of the chest made a bow impractical. “Yes, Your Excellency.” Hastening away, I headed aft into the dark opening beneath the gun deck, opening the fourth door that I found on my right and pushing my chest in ahead of myself into the nook that I supposed counted as a cabin. It was long but narrow, feeling little larger than a closet, with the luxury of a small round window open to the air—a porthole—and a pair of canvas hammocks, one stowed in the left-hand corner next to the door and the other stowed in the right-hand corner next to the porthole, a pair of vacant hooks fixed into each wall halfway in between.

  Whether or not I would have a bunkmate was an open question; since I had not brought Helena as a leman, the room was theoretically under capacity, though in such close quarters I expected that even Helena would quickly lose patience with me in spite of her usual fondness for me. The cabin was sparsely furnished with a hinged piece of wood secured to the wall with another pair of sliding brass bars, likely intended as a desk or table; a sturdy chest like the one I had brought could serve as a chair.

  Still, it was luxury compared to being packed belowdecks, as there was at least a source of fresh air. The cover to the porthole was dangling open, a thick wooden plug attached to the wall with a short rope. A sliding brass bar mounted on the wall next to the opening would be used to fix the plug in place. When I poked my head out of the porthole, I could see at close hand the lead sheathing that protected the hull of the ship. As the cabin was below the bombard deck, the outer wall of the cabin was flush against the ship’s hull, presenting a sheer vertical climb for would-be boarders interested in trying to contest control of the wheelboat’s main artillery battery.

  Having inspected the ship and the room, I turned my gaze to the city, hoping that I could see and recognize the roof of the little house I had gotten for Helena, formerly the residence of a fisherman (since deceased) and purchased from his sister, an elderly widow, on the condition that she could continue to live there. While I was not sure I had spotted the house, I did see a brown-haired figure standing on the docks and looking back at me, a hunchbacked figure in a drab dark cloak. I waved at her, and she waved back at me before scurrying away out of my sight.

  Having given my goodbye to the only person in the city I felt true affection for, I stepped back from the porthole. It was time for me to see to my duties and prove myself to Pasha Mustafa. I had not been inside a steamer’s engine room before, but I knew that heat in general and steam in particular rose, which suggested to me that the engine room would be at least partly below the axis of the singular great wheel aft of the ship. The engine room would be a deck or two lower and near the aft end of the ship. Thus oriented on first principles, I left my cabin, walking to the end of the corridor to where ladders granted access below or above.

  Climbing down one level, I soon found a dice game in progress, several scruffy seamen huddled in a supply room lit by a caged sprite. Remembering Pasha Mustafa’s order, I cleared my throat loudly and spoke. “Get to work,” I said.

  Sour looks turned my way. “Who are you?” The man who spoke had a scar on his face that, though a truly ugly scar, nevertheless improved his appearance by the law of mathematical averaging. The other faces turned in my direction were less exceptional, though they all deviated from a noble appearance in a similar direction.

  “What matters is that in saying that, I spoke with the voice of His Excellency Pasha Mustafa,” I said, thinking back to the way that Pasha Mustafa’s smile had not reached his eyes. “Not my own voice.”

  “What’s yer own voice say, then?” The second man to speak was the most handsome of the company, resembling a pinched weasel, but a healthy pinched weasel. “Boat ain’t started going anywhere yet.”

  “I could perhaps drop a pair of knucklebones once or twice,” I said, affecting affability. “Since Pasha Mustafa is still on deck.”

  “Bid on in, then,” said the scar-faced man, gesturing at a tray resembling a boat with small numbered chambers. It was filled with small silver coins, most of them on the seven spot, though the slow rocking of the boat made stacking up a mast impractical.

  Silently, I thanked the astrologer for his instruction, fishing three akcheh out of a pouch tucked inside of my doublet. “I can’t play for too long. A couple of rounds, maybe?” I said, showing the three coins in my hand before placing a coin on the seven spot by way of a late ante.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The weasel passed me the dice. “On with it,” he said.

  I cast the dice, and they came up double ones. “Ah, a pig,” I said, collecting the scattered coins out of the boat all around the mast. “Lucky me.”

  “Lucky indeed,” the scar-faced man said, picking up the dice. “Come on, king me…” The dice did not obey him, coming up five and one instead, and he laid a coin on the freshly emptied six spot.

  The dice worked around to me again, and I rolled double threes, picking up the scar-faced man’s coin from the six spot. The weasel gave me a curious look as the scar-faced man rolled a seven, making the mast richer. A few rolls later, the dice came back to me, and I held the dice up to speak without rolling. I could feel the weight of the iron cuffs around my wrists, concealed by the sleeves of my doublet, and was reminded that mystery was my ally. Common sailors would not know who I was, whether or not I had magic to go along with my noble bearing, or that I wore cuffs that would suck my magic out to turn it against me if I tried to use it.

  “I have rolled twice—a pig, then a six divided into double threes. Though I would love to give you the opportunity to take the handful of coins I have won back from me, it is time for this game to end. Shall I see if I can end it by rolling sixes doubled for a third double in a row, or would you rather divide the pot amongst yourselves evenly and get to your duty stations?” I tossed the dice in my hand a couple of times, as if feeling the weight of their luck. “I’ve been told my horoscope looks favorable for dicing this day.”

  The weasel looked at me nervously before conferring with his comrades, a fierce whispered negotiation that passed quite quickly in what sounded like an Illyrian dialect, then held out his hand for the dice. “Sounds like they need me in the engine room,” he said, grabbing what might have been his fair share out of the tray before shouldering past me.

  From the frown on the scar-faced man’s face as he began to count the remaining silver coins, he had doubts about the fairness of the sudden division of the pot, but as the engine room was also my eventual destination, I followed the weasel rather than linger to learn if the others felt short-changed. We traveled down another deck into the very bowels of the ship, hot and damp, the corridors and hatches uncomfortable for a man with my length of limb. Once I stepped inside the engine room itself, though, I was able to stand up straight and stretch my arms; the engine room had a high ceiling, spanning the full height of both lower decks.

  “Mirko—there you are. I want the firebox scoured.” The chief engineer was a stout, brawny man who looked too thick to squeeze through the long, narrow aperture of the great firebox that sat beneath a row of boilers. “It’s rare we have it cool enough for a good scouring, and I doubt the pasha will give us long before he demands we set off. He must be still waiting for his astrologer and the princeling.”

  The weasel—who I now knew was named Mirko—sullenly took up a scouring brush in one hand and a polishing cloth with the other and crawled into the firebox. Indirectly named by the chief engineer, I did not speak, but I nevertheless responded by moving, clasping my hands behind my back.

  “Who are you? Are you a wizard?” The chief engineer looked hopeful. “Hopefully, you’re a better one than Kemal; I don’t think he is able to open the firebox’s portal all the way. We haven’t matched our design cruising speed in months, not without kicking in the auxiliaries and burning coal.”

  “No,” I said, suddenly aware of the iron cuffs under my sleeves, cold against my skin. “Pasha Mustafa sent me down here—I am to act as a junior officer on this expedition.”

  “Hm. Training, then. Well, stay out of the way and watch closely,” the chief engineer said.

  This proved more difficult than I had expected. It was a crowded, dirty, and busy place, even if it had felt spacious with the high ceiling and was brightly lit with a perpetual light—an extravagance, but an extravagance that would not put a stray open flame near coal dust—and there was no wasted space. Although I did not participate in any of the scrubbing, cleaning, and tidying that the chief engineer felt was important to accomplish while the engines were cold in the hours before the ship launched, nor in the ritual to reactivate the firebox, nor in the loading of the auxiliary coal burners, I emerged from the engine room hours with stains of ash and coal on my clothes.

  The astrologer met me on the gun deck as the ship steamed through the strait at a slow cruise, the auxiliary burners quiet and the land to either side looming as dark, threatening masses. Half a dozen galleys trailed in our wake under oar power, oarsmen straining to keep up with the relentless elemental power churning the paddlewheel. Our ultimate destination had still not been announced, and we had not launched until full dark. Instead of following the coastline as we exited the strait, we continued straight into open waters some distance before stopping, a beacon dangled off the aft end of the gun deck.

  “Why are we stopping?” I asked. “And where are we going?”

  The astrologer shrugged. “For the first—probably, it is time to start towing the galleys. The oarsmen will be tired by now, and we are out of easy sight of land. For the second—the stars make it clear enough we have gone north into the Axine Sea. So, what do you think?”

  A rumble from below announced the firing of the auxiliary burners, and I could smell a whiff of coal smoke. Even towing the galleys, the steam cruiser could cross the Axine Sea in short order.

  “We are striking at the Golden Empire, then, before the emperor receives the sultan’s reply.” I looked expectantly at the astrologer, his face illuminated by the flickering beacon.

  “I think Pasha Mustafa would say that we are the sultan’s reply,” the astrologer said.

  Reject Human, Become Demon: