We officially have a cabin in Posca’s ship now. He has it prepared quickly, and we lay Arcadia on its bed to rest. She’s breathing, but hasn’t regained consciousness yet. Posca cleaned and bandaged the wound on her head himself, surprising me with his skills in the process. He and his men decided to bring down as much of the wreckage of that machine as they could find. At this moment it’s sitting up on the deck of the ship.

I’m down below, with the other survivors.

Posca happened to have a couple of sturdy cages on hand, big ones, the kind suited for transporting large animals. We put the man in one, and the girl, Cadie, in the other. I pushed them far enough apart to ensure they can’t reach for each other, or pass any kind of tool that might be used to pick the locks. But close enough for them to see what I’m about to do to them.

I’m standing in front of Cadie’s cage. She’s huddled in the corner of it, eyes averted, shivering with fear.

“Did the Empress send you,” I ask her, my tone flat.

Cadie turns her eyes toward me, breathing hard, her lank red hair plastered to her head by sweat and dirt. She spits in my face, and my hand shoots through the bars to crush her throat.

That gets the attention of her comrade. “Have mercy on her, please,” he says.

Cadie claws at my wrist impotently, choking and convulsing as my hand slowly tightens around her neck. I turn my gaze to the man, regarding him calmly.

“Mercy? Like the mercy you showed us?”

He has no answer. The way he looks at me makes it plain that he’s accepted his fate. I’ve seen that same, profoundly sullen face on other men due for execution.

The cage shakes when Cadie kicks at it, but I don’t let her go. “None. That’s right. So maybe you should watch her die.”

“She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me,” says the man. “I needed her.”

Cadie’s grip on my wrist is going slack. I feel her breath weakening. I could let her expire right now, but instead I release her neck. As she collapses to the floor, I shove the cage, send it skidding back a few feet to strike the wall of the cargo hold. Cadie tumbles onto her face, curls up again, her choked breath mingling with dry, broken sobs.

“What was your price,” I say, as I turn to face him, stepping close to his cage. “What did the Empress promise you.”

He doesn’t flinch from me. He’s calm, like a soldier. “The Empress didn’t send me.”

“Who, then? Why are you here?”

His pale blue eyes meet mine, unwavering. “I’m here of my own volition, to stop the tyranny of Magi before it can begin anew.”

Just looking at him fills me with venom. My lip curls in a snarl. I reach through the bars and place my hand on his shoulder, where my grapnel pierced him, and squeeze the wound as hard as I can. He winces, and the pain makes him wither a little, but he doesn’t buckle. He keeps eye contact. I’d be impressed if I weren’t busy planning out how I’m going to kill him.

“I don’t want to hear your cryptic bullshit,” I say, through clenched teeth.

My fingers dig into the wound harder, until I get a real grunt of pain out of him, but it only makes me want to hear more. He tried to kill Arcadia. He’ll suffer for it. He’ll beg me for a swift death before I’m through with him.

I hear someone coming down the stairs to the cargo hold, but it doesn’t deter me. Not until I hear Posca’s voice shout, “Hey! Enough!”

“It’s enough when I say it is.”

Posca’s hand lands on my shoulder, but he isn’t strong enough to pry me off of this man. I glare at him, and, to my surprise, he glares back at me.

“You’ve done plenty of mayhem aboard my ship already,” he says. “That’s enough for now.”

I dig my thumb into the gash in his shoulder. Fresh blood spurts across the back of my hand. My prisoner cries out in torment, falls to one knee, my face twisting into a scowl as I squeeze harder. And harder. It’s not good enough. I want to hear him scream.

Should I feel bad about what I want? I don’t care. He tried to kill Arcadia. My Arcadia.

Posca shoves me. “I said enough! What would your little girlfriend think if she saw you right now, eh?”

That image hits me like a splash of cold water. Not that she wouldn’t understand why I’m acting like this, I’m sure she would. It’s just that I don’t like the possibility that she wouldn’t approve.

I imagine she’d like to question these people. Sigrun warned us about this, she said the ‘Emperor’s finest’ would be sent after us. These two, however, don’t quite fit that description. And this sorry son of a bitch just told me the Empress didn’t send him. I’m not sure I believe that. But, wretched as he looks, he doesn’t strike me as the deceitful type. There’s too much I don’t know, and I’m no master interrogator.

I close my eyes, sigh, and release him.

The man collapses to both knees, breathing hard, sweat on his brow. Posca takes a step back from me and sighs with relief. I give him a cold look.

“You'd feel differently if he’d tried to kill you,” I say.

Posca lets out a little huff of amusement from his nose. “As if I don’t know what it’s like.”

I look away from his smirk, back at the man on his knees in the cage. I want to hit him. Hurt him. But the rage that was so immediate a moment ago is a bit more remote now. There are reasons not to do that. Not yet, anyways.

“Go get some rest,” says Posca. “There’s nothing left to do down here. I’ll bring dinner up when it’s finished.”

Under any other circumstances that would be a lovely suggestion. But right now, in that cabin, Arcadia lies unconscious with a head injury, from a weapon I didn’t even recognize until it hit us. I failed to protect her. The one thing I was chosen to do, that I swore to do, that I was made to do.

But she’ll need someone to look after her while she recovers. Especially if these vermin slip their bonds. That is the thought that lets me turn on my heel and march out of the cargo hold.

The assembled wreckage of the flying machine sits right on the center of the deck. It’s in three pieces, more or less. The body of the chariot, the wooden tail and the mechanism those blades were attached to. Posca’s crewmen work around it, raising the anchor and lowering the sail, two men on the big aft oars steering us out of the cove. They’re doing all this in the dark. Posca must have told them not to light the lanterns again until we’re clear of the island. I get a few less than friendly looks when I come up from belowdecks, but I’m not in the mood to measure cocks with a handful of sailors. I don’t even have one and I’d win.

I open the cabin door as quietly as I can, and the moment I lay my eyes on Arcadia’s face I feel a thickness in my throat that tells me tears are only a moment away. I have to take a breath, squeeze my eyes shut, center myself. She’s going to be alright. The door creaks a little when I close it, but it doesn’t disturb her. Nor does she stir when I take a seat at the edge of the bed.

Just yesterday our places were switched. I was lying there and she was fretting over me, and I’d be overjoyed to have that day back. I’m the one who’s supposed to be hurt. By design. Cut me, burn me, stab me, beat me, crush me. I can take it. If I can’t suffer those things for her, all the training and the treatments I endured are worth absolutely nothing. Watching her sleep, thinking about the futility of my existence, makes my heart sink to the bottom of the ocean.

It’s hard to tell how much time goes by like that. I’ve taken Arcadia’s hand in mine at some point, and I’m rubbing my thumb up and down over the back of it, enjoying its softness. The ship rocks side to side gently, making me think we’re back out to sea again. I get up for a moment and fetch my soggy pack, retrieving Jhekata’s Compendium from it. It appears to be the only item inside that didn’t take any damage from my dip in the cove, but I suppose the book didn’t survive for centuries without some exceptional craftsmanship. I set it down on the little table by the bedside, sit on the bed again, and return to anguishing in silence.

Eventually Posca comes in, holding a big wooden bowl that he places in my lap. It’s beef with peppers and onions, on a bed of rice. It smells amazing.

“Eat up,” he says. “We have some things to suss out, you and I.”

Posca chuckles at me as I hunch over the bowl and bolt the food down like a starving animal. It’s a meal I would normally savor, but my body is perilously low on energy. In no time at all, I’m setting the empty bowl down beside me and leaning back to let out a sigh of relief. And a little belch.

“Thank you,” I say.

He nods. “No trouble. Now then, in regard to my payment.”

I resist the sudden urge to throw the bowl at his face. “Really? We need to discuss money now?”

“I was promised a thousand dinari, plus an as-yet-undecided sum for my services as your personal transport.”

He leans against the cabin wall, takes a moment to tuck a lock of his white-blond hair behind his ear, then folds his arms. I feel like tossing him overboard and declaring myself captain, but apparently that idea doesn’t frighten him. Or he hasn’t thought of it yet.

“I don’t have the money,” I say, gesturing at Arcadia. “She does. I don’t know where she’s keeping it.”

On that note, I don’t even know how much money she’s stashed. I’m assuming magic is somehow involved, since we haven’t been lugging chests of gold coins around with us. But she always has money to pay, and she isn’t stingy.

“Be that as it may,” says Posca. “I’ve already upheld my part of the bargain. And given the situation you two put me in, I think it’s more than fair that you pay up.”

“Can’t it wait until she wakes?”

“If she’s taken a concussion, she’ll be in that bed for at least a few days. Days I suspect you’ll want to spend far away from here, am I correct?”

I can feel my pulse quickening, my face heating up. “What the hell do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to make good on our bargain.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

Posca grins at me. I don’t like the look of it. “We’re sailing somewhere relatively close, where we can lay low while Arcadia recovers. In the mean time you can make me some coin with those excellent warrior skills of yours.”

My eyes narrow suspiciously. “Arcadia said we should avoid Ecean ports. I thought that ruled out ‘relatively close.’”

His grin widens. “Oh it isn’t Ecean, strictly speaking. You could call it… A haven for free spirits, of all nationalities.”

“Pirates, you mean.”

He nods, and my heart sinks. There’s only one place I can think of that fits his description. Calnevari Bay. This will not end well.

Hey readers!

I have a question for ya. Journey to Amoraketh is outlined, in the sense that Catgirl and I know where we're going with the story in a broad sense. But as for the individual 'episodes,' we have a lot of latitude to do different kinds of stuff.

For example, I've seen people asking if Sigrun will come back, and we already had plans for that, but if people really like her I can always come up with reasons to include her more. Is there anything else you'd like to see more of?

More action? More magic? More danger? More gender feels? More lovey dovey stuff? Exotic locations?

I wanna hear from you guys. Even if you don't usually comment on my chapters, don't be shy here. I wanna please our audience, so let us know what you might like to see more of. :)