“I think Pasha Mustafa would say that we are the sultan’s reply,” the astrologer said.
Glancing back at the pair of galleys that had lined up to attach tow lines to either side of the rigid frame that held the axle of the steamer’s paddlewheel and the other two pairs of galleys lining up behind them, I reflected for a brief moment on the fact that a diplomatic reply only required a single ship for transmission and that the steamer would be able to deliver any diplomatic missive more quickly if it was not engaged in towing.
“A forceful reply is intended, then.” I did not feel enthusiastic about the prospect of fighting and killing for the Sultanate, even if rising in the ranks of the Sultanate’s military was my only obvious method of improving my future prospects. Nor did I have confidence that I would necessarily survive such service; soldiers have been known to die in an untimely manner in battles.
The astrologer nodded. “That is the essence of our mission. The pasha will naturally have some latitude in where and how he chooses to apply force. The sultan is young, his attention is divided, and his orders reached the pasha indirectly, through the intermediary of the vizier.”
The astrologer’s logic seemed sound to me. I could remember easily enough the diffused disarray of responsibility and obedience that had played out between Pasha Mustafa and Pasha Halil when the latter had been vizier and the former was delegated to organizing the ill-fated company of princes. The effective length of Mustafa’s leash had, in the end, resulted in Helena entering my life, so I could not complain too strenuously about the consequences of Mustafa’s interpretations; however, it was quite clear those orders had been stretched to include Radu and me in what was little better than a suicide mission.
After a long moment of silence between the two of us, during which I, deep in thought, said nothing in reply, the astrologer cleared his throat, holding up a folded packet of paper. “I have the account of General Turhan’s second contest against your father.”
“Thank you,” I said, bowing politely. “I look forward to reading it.”
The ordinary speed of travel between the Strait of Constantinople and the Cimmerian Strait is about three weeks with decent winds because the normal route between the two sees about three hundred leagues of coastline—well over a thousand miles. The deeper parts of the Axine Sea, like any great sea, are reputed to be the home of fantastical and dangerous monsters—not merely the ordinary dangers of sharks and mermaids, but leviathans, krakens, and serpents.
Indeed, the great purple leviathan that terrorized Constantinople in Justinian’s time is said to have come from the hidden depths of the Axine Sea, stirred from his home by a greedy trader who wished to make a short trip directly between the two straits. A more mundane risk is getting lost or becalmed; navigation on the high seas is a slippery affair, at least if one does not have a skilled diviner on board.
Pasha Mustafa wished to arrive at his destination swiftly, directly, and without warning. He had brought the court’s most skilled astrologer and was not concerned about the possibility of awakening a new purple leviathan with the rumbling of a steamship. Accordingly, he ordered us to take a direct route from strait to strait, a distance of perhaps as little as one hundred leagues. With a steam engine turning a powerful paddlewheel, we could traverse a league of open ocean per hour regardless of the state of wind or wave—although, thanks to the burden of towing half a dozen galleys, generating sufficient force to overcome the resistance would require running the auxiliary burners constantly.
It is not customary in the Osman navy to run a steamship’s complement in full-strength shifts to drive its engines at full flank power day and night—a firebox-fueled nighttime cruising speed requires substantially less shoveling of coal—but Pasha Mustafa was insistent. After our first night of traveling, I slept half the morning, spent the day taking a redundant inventory of our supply of bombards, arquebuses, mech-portable field guns, and associated powder and munitions—then had a shift supervising the engine room, after which I staggered wearily to my cabin.
I stank of coal dust and ash. A quick tap of a phoenix stone and I had lit my lamp; then I barred the door for privacy, stripped my clothes, and opened the porthole with the intention of shaking my clothing out so that it would not be deeply stained and dingy.
“That coal dust gets everywhere,” I muttered angrily as I looked down at my bare body, seeing streaks of black and gray. “I need a proper bath.”
I grabbed my hose and stuck my arm out of the porthole, shaking vigorously in the night air to try to get the worst of it out. Then, suddenly, there was the sound of a soprano voice from outside the ship.
“Nice hose,” the voice said. “Have you also nice legs to suit?”
Startled, I let go of the hose, then stuck my head out of the porthole. Below, I could see a woman’s head bobbing in the water, her hand holding onto my hose as she cut through the water, easily keeping up with the ship.
“I like to think so,” I replied, the vanity of youth surfacing without deliberate thought.
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The smile that split her face was wide enough that I could see her pearl-white teeth gleam by moonlight, and she wiggled to bring her chest out of the surface, giving me a kindly complete view of feminine attributes that had been previously concealed beneath the dark nighttime waters of the Axine Sea. I briefly saw the tip of an inhuman tail breach the water behind her, fluttering quickly.
“Come on down and I’ll give them back to you,” said the mermaid playfully.
“I can hardly fit myself through the porthole,” I said. “Nor would I have such an easy time climbing back up. Please toss them back up.”
The mermaid sighed, the deep breath causing her chest to heave in a fashion that tended to draw attention away from her face. “Surely you could come for a swim? You did say you needed a proper bath.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not going swimming.” While I could not deny there was a certain instinctive appeal, swimming with iron weights around my wrists enchanted to provide me with sudden bouts of weakness if I lost control of my magic seemed a very bad idea. “You’re very lovely, but…”
For a long moment, I paused in thought.
“But?” The mermaid prompted. “Do you not know how to swim?”
I shook my head, seizing on the best excuse I could come up with. “But without my hose, I cannot leave my cabin—I will be embarrassed.”
“Are your legs so skinny and bony that the other sailors will make fun of you?” The mermaid’s mouth screwed sideways with visible distaste.
“No!” My pride answered before I had a chance to think. Even though the woman I was speaking with was not entirely human, I felt the need to impress her in proportion to her beauty, which was considerable. “I… um… I have mighty thews, but I do not want to make the other sailors feel bad about how inadequate their own legs are in comparison. My legs must be dressed in hose to avoid jealousy from my fellow sailors. Exposing them would be immodest, and modesty is a virtue.”
“Oh,” she said, licking her lips. “And if I toss the hose up, you will come swim with me? I mean, do you promise to swim with me by…” She hesitated, glancing around at the ship. “By the esteem in which you hold the prophet sacred to the great Osman sultans?”
“I would rather swim with you than worship the prophet sacred to the Osman sultans,” I said, and she flung the hose up at me before I had finished speaking. Catching in my extended arm the wad of soggy fabric, I shook my head. “The latter I will never do, not in a hundred years. You are lovely—but I shall not swim with you tonight.”
The mermaid frowned. “But you are on an Osman ship. You do not worship their prophet?”
Two other heads popped out of the water behind her, dark hair flowing in the water behind them as they, too, kept an easy pace alongside the moving steamer that few human swimmers could match. The one on the left breached the water to expose her own chest before she spoke, framed by glorious long tresses that covered her shoulders and trailed behind her in the water. “We sisters of the water are so lonely for men, so far from the land. A man like you with mighty thews could satisfy all three of us all by himself, I am sure. Don’t you want to come for a swim?”
I shook my head firmly. “No.”
Shutting the porthole to end the increasingly awkward conversation, I hung the hose out to dry over the spare hammock, put out the lamp, and went to sleep in my hammock.
“And that’s how Ladon got the scar on his face,” Mirko said, his face looking even more like a weasel than usual.
The young janissary sitting directly across from him looked over at the scar-faced man, winced, and then spoke. “That must have hurt.”
The scar-faced man—Ladon—glanced over at his friend, biting his lip before shrugging wordlessly.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Mirko added hastily. “Sorry for bringing up the bad memories, Ladon, but I had to let the landsmen know what kind of dangers haunt the center of the Axine Sea this far from land. Not just sharks—not just purple leviathans—but serpents and krakens!”
“Krakens, too?” The janissary’s eyes widened; so did the eyes of his comrades sitting to either side.
“And mermaids,” I interjected.
Mirko rolled his eyes. “Don’t listen to him; he’s new—there are no such things as mermaids. I’ve sailed the seven seas and seen all kinds of things, but never a mermaid.”
“I met three of them last night,” I said. “Quite friendly and eager for company. They wanted to go for a swim.”
Mirko just rolled his eyes. “Liar,” he said. “You’ve not seen a mermaid, much less three of them—I’ve never seen a mermaid.”
“You’re just jealous,” I said. “They don’t like men with skinny legs. Probably took one look at you when you were on deck and dove back down. When it was just me sticking my head out of the porthole, though, then they were ready to talk.”
Ladon rubbed his muscular thighs unconsciously. “Were they pretty?”
Mirko let out an exasperated sigh as he shook his head.
“Very pretty,” I said. “Faces like angels.” I made a cupping gesture in front of my chest, my intent directed as much at antagonizing Mirko as answering the question. “And ample assets. But you’ll have to leave Mirko behind if you want to talk to them—clearly they’d rather avoid him, since he’s been everywhere without seeing them.”
Ladon nodded as Mirko rolled his eyes.
“Well,” I said. “It’s time for Mirko and me to report to the engine room for the next shift. No need for us to waste more of your time arguing over mermaids.”
That third night was the last either of us saw of Ladon. On the fourth night, Mirko refused to talk with me at all, carrying out my orders in the engine room with sullen silence; the fifth night I was off shift and allowed time to rest, but then land was sighted, a piece of the Taurican coastline a little bit to the west of the Cimmerian Strait, and there was an early wake-up call.
It was time for us to deliver the sultan’s reply to the Golden Emperor.
Translator’s note: The word used here literally means “cord” rather than “league,” but to avoid confusion in this Loegrian translation, I have chosen to translate to a Loegrian unit of crudely comparable length to avoid confusion with the well-known customary Loegrian unit corresponding to the standard length of a surveyor’s cord, i.e., one eightieth of a mile.
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