The shiny black stains on the deck would flash red highlights every time the deck pitched, and the angle of the lantern light shifted and turned. The large puddle closest to where Kette stood raced toward her booted foot as the pitched to starboard, but then slunk forlornly away as the ship swayed back to port, the ichor flowing back toward the spot where a raider had been torn asunder when he had ventured too close to the young officer. Kette had watched the puddle slip forward and back several times as the Kestrel rocked on the swells, seeing the shining liquid run, pool, and then flee before ever actually reaching the edge of her soles.

  Watching the murky mess crawl about on the deck as the ship rocked and swayed on the waves in the pre dawn light made her miss the years she had spent in central Hamuria. Grasslands rarely dipped and swayed beneath one’s feet, and this morning was the first time she had truly felt any homesickness for the kingdom, and its service, since she and her siblings had fled.

  Kette stood on the raised quarter deck, a set of ropes wound about her waist and tied to a section of the gunnel that had survived both the storm they had been forced to sail through and the attack in the early hours they had repelled.

  Officer Kette, once simply called “Four” as a member of a Hamurian Pride of Apprentices employed by the crown in their war with neighboring country of Velspe, watched as the wrapped bodies were piled onto the hastily built bier in the dim, starlit light that heralded the coming sunrise. Several members of the private Marine unit Captain Nahvi employed stood guard around the deck in the predawn light while their commander, Major Rahl helped to bind the wounds on one of the younger crewmen who had been cut badly during the attempted boarding action several hours ago.

  Kette had been relieved of duty a bell past now, but had insisted on staying on deck to help oversee some of the repairs and to help steady the ship. There was damage to the forward starboard hull where one of the raiders had gotten too close with their sloop. Now Kette and three other Talented officers used the “Smoothing” spell that usually aided The Kestrel in easing its path across the wave. Now they worked together to ease the waves past the break in the hull while crew members worked to patch the rent in the planking.

  The spell, once she had learned it, was comically simple to Kette, though only the captain and two other officers aboard knew just how simple it was for Kette to use. Having not slept in the last day and a half was the excuse that Captain Nahvi had used to convince her to take the help of the other two officers in completing the spell. It may have been an indication of her fatigue that Kette agreed so readily.

  As she stood by the broken posts of the gunnel on the quarter deck, she watched the marines wrapping the last body to go onto the bier. The sailcloth they used had been scavenged from one of the three sloops used by the pirates who had attempted to take the ship. Along with the lumber used to make the bier itself.

  One sloop had been sunk on approach as its crew had loosed a barrage of arrows at the deck crew of the Kestrel in an attempt to sweep the decks clear of resistance. Kett had been on duty, and had sent all of those arrows into the brine with a flexing of her Talent, a push of Will and an uttered incantation. She knew her former masters of the Golden Tower in Hamuria would cringe to have seen her utter the spell components, but sometimes it was easier for Kette to get better results from her spells when she actually said the words.

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  …not everyone can call down the entire sky as easily as putting on a hat… her mind tossed up to her consciousness, thinking of her overpowered sibling, Six. He had been the single scariest Apprentice the Golden Tower had ever seen, according to what she had overheard from some of the Masters, and Kette had believed it.

  Had he been here, she wouldn’t have had to watch as twelve members of the crew, nine hands and three marines, had died last night. Their navigator, who had the helm during the attack, Ghillit Kamar, had been the first to die at the hands of the pirates. A single arrow had come from far astern, taking the man in the back as he stood at the wheel. His daughter, Dowden had screamed when she saw his frail old body drop away from the wheel, she ran to him just in time to take another arrow or her own.

  From her vantage point where she stood by the gunnels, still wearing the straps that had allowed her to stand through the storm, Kett had acted without conscious thought, and brought a broad arm of lightning down on the sloop that held the archer, its giant galvanic fist shattering the sleek, fast moving little ship.

  The slow, metered movements of both the crew and the marines about the deck now, cleaning up bodies and doing repairs, was a ridiculous, balletic parody of their fast frantic movements of mere hours prior. Several marines now moved with an equal number of crewmembers to put one of the ship’s boats over the side. Under the command of Lieutenant Harkey, the Harpy, they were on their way over to the remaining sloop. Taken as plunder by the Captain and Crew of the Kestrel, it would be sold to help pay for proper repairs to the ship.

  There may even be a bounty. The raiders, themselves, may have warrants out for their capture as well, and from the dark lumps tied to the gunnel across from her on the main deck, Kette would have guessed at least twenty of the pirates had survived this encounter. They would probably be set to hard labor, sold as slaves, or just hung; this entirely depended upon what town or city, in which country, the Kestrel was able to put in at.

  Turning her head to the north, she could see the dark silhouette of the coastline. She wasn’t certain of where they were currently, aside from somewhere between Makab along the coast of Selmet, and Crinche, along the coast of Blasilma.

  “GAH!” She started as a hand landed on her shoulder. “What in Orranat’s Sons is your problem!?”

  Kette wasn’t one to curse or invoke the gods’ names in the normal course of the day. These last two days, however, had been so much less than normal for Kette and the crew of the Kestrel. Major Rahl now loomed over her where she leaned against the gunnels.

  “Apologies, Mate Kette,” the deep-voiced marine commander raised an eyebrow at her outburst and addressed her with a quietly polite attitude. “Captain Nahvi suggested that you and the other officers can stop ‘easing’ the Kestrel. The repair crew has done what they can. For now.”

  He stood, watching her. His eyebrow remained raised, his handsome if scarred, face poised with what she assumed were unasked questions. She stared back for longer than she would have otherwise, the fatigue was making her thoughts sluggish.Blinking for what felt like the first time in hours, Kette took a deep breath, and slowly released her spell.

  And with a start, she realized it was, indeed, “her spell.” The two other officers had dropped their thirds of the spell and she had not even noticed. She had been Easing the Kestrel by herself for who knew how long now.

  With a gravel voiced, “Thank you, major.” She began untying herself from the gunnels, her fingers slipping on the damp hemp. A large hand reached past her, doing the job of releasing her from her bondage in seconds.

  She nodded her thanks to the marine, and walked toward the cabin she shared with Harkey and Rhea Herat, the ship’s surgeon. Kette knew Rhea would be busy for hours still, and that with the Harpy captaining the sloop they had taken, the room would be quiet and empty.

  She smiled to herself slightly. Shamefully selfish, and not caring, as she walked into the companionway of the ship as if she fled from the light of the coming dawn.