The boat that Tam, Eli, and Lord Harris had stolen, turned out to be stocked for a journey of seven days.

  However, it was a journey of seven days for approximately fifty men as opposed to three adults and a child. So there was a favorable chance that they would be able to make the supposed three week trip to Gondol without having to worry about any restocking. Though the summer storms that occasionally plagued the land were known to add complications to even the best planned voyages. Particularly along the mountain range that cluttered the eastern side of Zinfera’s shores.

  Knowing that there was a great deal to strategize not only in terms of sailing, but also when it came to food and water, Tam and Eli were taking inventory of the ship’s cargo, while Harris manned the helm. The pair were attempting to work through the crates hastily, as the duke was very clear about the fact that he expected both Tam and Eli to come up to learn so that they could all take turns in shifts.

  Eli nodded as she lifted the last crate lid up. “Beets in this one.”

  “Beets? Again? Those don’t even grow here in Zinfera, do they?” Tam speculated while carefully moving a box of moonshine back in place. In total they had found five crates worth of the root vegetable.

  “They don’t, but they keep a long time. So even if they received these in Troivack, it makes sense to have them aboard a ship.”

  “Hm. Given how much there are, I guess I’ll make some beets for dinner. Do we have any perishables I should cook sooner rather than later?”

  Eli turned back to Tam, opening her mouth to respond, when Luca’s pounding steps echoed down to them.

  “Girl!”

  The couple glanced toward the doorway of the hold, and saw Luca panting heavily, doubled over. He must have been exploring the ship.

  “There’s a girl! In a cage! A human girl!” Luca gasped, lifting his face to them.

  Tam and Eli looked at each other in alarm.

  “A girl? How old is she? Is she alive?” Eli burst out worriedly.

  “Where is she, Luca?” Tam added more gently.

  “Captain’s… room!” Luca panted.

  Tam and Eli shared a look of tenuous dread, then both moved in sync toward the door.

  “Luca, please show us where this room is,” Tam ordered seriously.

  Nodding his head, Luca turned and tried to resume running, but his steps were heavy and sluggish.

  Eli caught up easily to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You haven’t fully recovered from your cold. Don’t push yourself.”

  Luca slouched. “But I feel fine!”

  Eli cast a stern look down, making him groan in exasperation. Regardless, he did listen and trudged onward.

  To get to the captain’s quarters they had to climb back up through the vessel, the heat rising as they did so, making Tam and Eli break out in sweat as the summer heat outside roasted them.

  When they reached the end of a particular passageway with the doorway framed in ornate Zinferan style carvings of sharp angles, Tam and Eli signaled Luca to wait outside. Tam took the lead, and gently eased open the door that opened quietly on well oiled hinges.

  The Zinferan pirate’s room, despite it not being on a particularly large vessel, still sported three walls of windows overlooking the water. There was a large comfortable bed, and a heavy carved desk ladened with papers and gold bobbles. Built just below the windows were bookcases squared away tidily with rolled up parchment and maps as well as some navigational devices. To add a touch of comfort to the space was a thick carpet with blue flowers and silvery thread outlining flourishing designs. It could have been a stylish cabin for a wealthy captain of a respectable ship…

  But there, in the far left corner, just as Luca had said, was a cage. A cage holding a little girl with her knees pulled up to her chest.

  Blood roared in Tam’s ears and he wished he had pummeled the pirate captain a few more times for good measure before ending his life.

  “Gods,” Eli breathed the word while Tam rushed over to the desk, grabbed a silver tipped quill and a backstaff, then hurried over to the cage.

  “Hi there, are you alright? What’s your name?” he asked quickly while identifying the heavy lock.

  The little girl raised wide brown eyes to Tam, then to Eli, but she said nothing.

  She had black hair, and tan skin…

  She was Troivackian, and she looked malnourished.

  Tam pressed his mouth together and tried to swallow past the emotion that rose in him when he observed the hollowness behind the girl’s eyes. He refocused his attention on picking the lock to help take his mind off of the palpable pain surrounding the girl.

  Luckily, despite the rocking ship, the lock wasn’t tricky, just large and awkward, and so with two satisfying clicks a moment later, he was able to yank it free and throw open the top door to the cage.

  “Come on out,” Eli coaxed, her voice soft.

  The little girl stood, revealing a dirty shapeless long dress or tunic—it was hard to discern which— but she kept her hands clasped in front of herself and didn’t take a step out of the cage.

  Her hair was straight, but while a little mussed, was not matted, and she had a freckle a couple of inches below her right eye.

  Tam crouched down so that he was lower than she was, and seeing this, Eli followed suit; it would seem less intimidating that way.

  “My name is Tam, and this is Eli, we are…. Borrowing this ship, and we are heading to Gondol in Zinfera. Where are you from?” Tam proceeded to ask using his gentlest, friendliest tone.

  The little girl’s eyes moved to Tam, but she didn’t respond.

  “If you have family, we can try to find them,” Eli said while making her expressions as serene as possible.

  The little girl’s gaze shifted to Eli, but otherwise she didn’t move.

  Luca suddenly charged in, bolted right up to the little girl with a steamed bun in his hand. “Here! It’s good!”

  The little girl’s eyebrows twitched at the sight of the food, then slowly drifted to Luca’s beaming face.

  He tilted his head.

  Tam opened his mouth to calmly tell Luca to maybe take a step or two back to give her some space, when she gingerly reached out and accepted the food.

  As the little girl took a tentative bite of the bun, Tam watched the way her eyes lit up, and she proceeded to scarf down the rest of the bun without much trouble thereafter.

  “Thank you for bringing that, Luca.” Tam smiled at his son, who gave his father a thumbs up in response with a grin of his own.

  “What’s your name? I told you my name’s Luca before when I first found you! I’m seven. You look younger than me. Are you younger?” Luca chattered excitedly while the little girl wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “My dad says I should make friends my own age, but we haven’t met a lot of kids. Do you want to be friends? I mean, I do have a friend. Jeong! But he’s grown up. He can grow a beard. He’s pretty great, but he had to go home. Where is your home?”

  The girl’s eyes moved to Tam. The look on her face was oddly mature, and it said ‘what do I say to this kid?’.

  “Do you have a name? I could give you a name! My dad gave me a name! After an astronomer! Or an astrologer? Which one, Dad?”

  “Erm. Technically, he was both.”

  “That’s even better!”

  The girl seemed to realize that if she didn’t start talking she was going to be subjected to more of Luca’s rambling mixed with questions, and so she finally spoke.

  “I’m Penelope.”

  “Can I call you Penny?” Luca asked brightly.

  “No.”

  “Oh… But your name is long. It’s not short like mine is. Though I guess I could be called Lou…”

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  “Penelope,” Eli interrupted while lightly grasping Luca’s arm and pulling him back toward her. “You look like you’re from Troivack. Are you aware you are in Zinfera?”

  Penelope let out an irritated huff. “I guessed as much. That captain was Zinferan. Even if he was in Troivack when I met him.”

  “I see. Penelope, do you know where your mother or father are…?” Tam ventured carefully.

  “My father’s dead.”

  “Oh. I’m very sorry to hear that. That’s really—”

  “He died three years ago. It’s fine.”

  The quickness of her words as she cut Tam off paired with the tightness in her tone told Tam it was not at all fine.

  “And your mother?” Eli proceeded to ask regardless of this.

  “Probably dead. She was sick the last time I saw her.” There was a shiftiness to the girl that hinted at a half truth there or maybe just pure discomfort…

  “Well, we can try and find her or your other family members if you like. We’re heading to Gondol like I mentioned.”

  “You stole a boat. You aren’t really trustworthy,” Penelope pointed out with an appropriate amount of dubiousness.

  “Well, uh… I mean… We stole the boat from the bad person who put you in the cage if that makes any difference,” Tam offered bashfully. The little girl had the same directness and steadiness that put him on the spot the same way his mother could.

  “You’re still criminals.”

  “Well, that is technically true… We are more the kind of criminals who just wanted to be left alone and found ourselves wrapped up in a bunch of trouble,” Tam knew he had done a terrible job of explaining that, and yet remarkably, the young girl seemed to understand perfectly as she gave a slight shrug of her left shoulder and a tilt of her head.

  “Are you still hungry? Want me to go get more buns?” Luca offered while squirming under Eli’s touch. He was impatient to move again.

  “I… guess I could eat anoth—”

  “Wait. Luca, where did you get that bun?” Eli asked sharply.

  Luca turned and smiled freely up at her. “The galley! The men that were on the ship before had some left out!”

  “You don’t eat other people’s food! Especially bad people!” Eli lectured.

  “I didn’t eat it though! She did!” Luca defended while pointing back at Penelope.

  “That’s worse!” Eli chastised, then realized Penelope was staring at the two of them like they had started meowing at each other and she hadn’t a clue what was happening. Which, in fairness, she probably didn’t.

  “Penelope, I will lift the tub out and fill it with water and leave you alone if you’d like a bath. Eli, would you be able to help her?” Tam turned to Eli who was still staring in exasperation at Luca.

  “I don’t need help! I’m eight!” the girl exploded indignantly.

  “Eight?” Luca looked utterly crestfallen. “Awe. I thought I was older… You look younger! Are you making it up?”

  “No!” Penelope then folded her skinny arms and rolled her eyes while giving her head a bit of a toss.

  Tam looked at Eli, and the two barely managed to suppress a laugh at the child’s attitude. She must have started to feel safe and trust them a little whether she realized it or not if she was willing to act out.

  Ideally they could continue easing her into talking more with more patience and kindness. They didn’t have any clue as to why she was there in a cage, or why she was aboard the ship, or how long she’d been there.

  Neither Tam nor Eli needed to communicate this joint feeling, and so they proceeded to set to work.

  “Penelope, can you climb out of the cage by yourself?” Eli offered her hand. “I know it’s hard to move when you’ve been cramped like that for a while.”

  The momentary lightening of the atmosphere dissipated at the reminder that Eli would’ve been treated similarly, and Tam was once again in a blackened mood as he experienced more violent, vengeful urges…

  Until the sound of cracking knuckles had Tam looking down at Luca who was scowling as he balled his right hand into a fist, his left palm easing the cracks free from his small knuckles while he stared off at nothing. He, too, appeared to be having some serious qualms about what he’d just heard.

  Torn between proud and concerned right about now… Tam thought to himself wryly.

  Unaware of what was happening behind her, Eli proceeded to carefully help Penelope clamber out of the cage, the little girl winced as she did so.

  “I wasn’t in there all the time,” Penelope explained. “It’s just when they go ashore that they put me in there so I don’t cause trouble. Usually I’m washing dishes.”

  It wasn’t exactly positive news, but it was better than many alternatives at least.

  “Washing dishes is awful!” Luca declared seriously. “Back with my mother—not my mom here—” he gestured toward Eli. “My mother in Daxaria, she would make me do dishes a lot. Sometimes my hands would bleed and they’d get really dry.”

  “And there are always more dishes,” Penelope lamented with a sigh that someone many years her senior could’ve issued. She didn’t comment on the oddity of Luca’s history with his mother.

  “Always! Just when you think it’s done, oh no, there’s a fork! There’s a frigg– stupid glass!” Luca caught himself and cast a sheepish look in Eli’s direction as she was already looking at him in warning.

  Putting his hands on his hips, Tam decided to stop the runaway dialogue before the two children wandered out of the cabin. “Alright, kids, let’s go get some food. Afterward, Penelope I’ll get the bath ready for you so you can wash alone. When I do that, we can let Harris know that we have another passenger.”

  Eli gave a bob of her head in understanding. Luca and Penelope gave vague nods of understanding before continuing their conversation.

  Amazingly, Luca’s experience as a dishwasher back at his mother’s pub had earned some begrudging camaraderie from Penelope, and so the two proceeded to walk out of the cabin talking.

  “Cheese that was melted then hardened is the worst,” Penelope said with great exasperation.

  “Not as bad as a forgotten bread dough bowl where parts of it are still dough and other parts crust!”

  “What about burnt cheese—”

  When the two children had moved far enough ahead that they couldn’t hear the grown ups, Tam looked at Eli as she took in a long breath. “Tam, do you think that you might have a jinx? Or an odd fate that makes it so you always find abandoned children whenever you travel on a boat?”

  Tam stopped in his tracks. “Huh. Two times in a row… That is strange… Penelope isn’t mine though!”

  “Mm, she wasn’t entirely forthcoming about her parentage, so…”

  “Oy!” Tam exclaimed in mock offense. “I don’t casually go around—”

  “Aren’t you the one telling me all the time how you aren’t as pure as you seem?”

  “Well that’s different!”

  “It isn’t.”

  “I haven’t slept with any Troivackian women!” Tam at last declared.

  Eli stared at him flatly. Her thoughts weren’t a mystery. “Dare I ask every nationality, as well as the number…?”

  Tam felt himself turn a decadent shade of ripe strawberry red. “Do I… Do I have to answer?”

  Eli’s jaw fell open.

  And just when Tam realized how his words could’ve been interpreted, Eli turned and stalked off.

  “Wait! That’s not what I meant! It isn’t a lot! Really! Only like… two? I think.” Tam paused. Then once again, very belatedly, realized how that sounded. “It’s bad that I’m not certain, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It is!” Eli shouted back.

  Tam grimaced.

  And to think, he had presumed that the rest of the day following a battle with pirates, setting one ship on fire and stealing another would, literally, be smooth sailing…