Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

“-were the beginning of the unrest,” she agreed. “A great change is coming. We've seen this dwindling accelerate in the last decade, and now-”

“-the Vkortha,” he finished for her, and again she nodded.

Silence stretched between them. The kitten, according to the enigmatic internal logic of cats, had slept through their heated discussion, but now awakened and stretched. The priestess picked it up, coaxing a rattling purr out of its thin chest with a few strokes of its back, and settled herself on the chair it had just been occupying.

“Strange doings,” Vidarian said at last, folding his hands. “I can't begin to comprehend them. But I also have never seen willful deception come to a good end. I still do not now see why this cannot be explained to my crew.”

“Do you tell your crew every smallest detail of your charting decisions, your courses, which contracts you accept and which you do not?” she asked, scratching the kitten behind its ears. It purred louder, then rolled under her hand, kicking upward with its feet and attacking her playfully. She wrestled back for a moment, then released it onto the carpet.

“Not every detail,” he said, bound by his own honor to honesty, though unsure what he was admitting, exactly.

“Yet they follow you, because you are their captain,” she said, looking up at him again. “If you were to democratically decide every detail, the ship would never move.”

“I do not demand their deceived belief,” he said. “That's something else entirely.”

“But we do not truly deceive,” she insisted, and the intent sincerity in her wide eyes was more disarming than he'd have liked to admit. “The benefits that I have provided to your ship are genuine.” That he could not deny, and the fervor in her voice was not sternness but ardent conviction. “Captain, you must believe me, that what I have seen as a priestess of Sharli, again and again, is that the priestesshood is needed. The priestesshood alone retains the records of these fluctuations in elemental energy, and if we are to survive, we require the support of the common folk, which comes only when they believe that we are still capable of our foremothers’ deeds.”

“I will not argue against that cannon shot, and I am grateful,” he said. “But can you really be so sure that the priestesshood knows best?”

She smiled, asking with her eyes if he was so sure about baiting her. He smiled back. “I'm never sure of anything,” she said. “As the philosopher Veldaus said, ‘the sure mind is the closed one, capable only of repetition.'”

“You certainly seemed sure of him,” Vidarian said, nodding at the kitten, which was presently attacking a tasseled end of the table runner.

“Her,” Ariadel corrected absently. “I apologize for unsettling you,” she said, her head tilting in what Vidarian was sure was sincere puzzlement. “I don't know what came over me. It's against my training to hold with such impulsive superstition.”

He laughed before he could stop himself. “A fire priestess? Trained against superstition?”

She colored slightly, but her smile was gentle; the sudden thought of Endera even attempting such an expression surprised Vidarian with its absurdity. This Ariadel was obviously unlike any fire priestess Vidarian had known. “You must have little experience with priestesses,” she said, echoing his thought. “Although the common folk”-her eyes dropped to the tray Marielle had brought in, surely unconsciously-“permitted and, yes, even encouraged their superstitions, the priestesshood rigorously trains against such things.”

“Yet I must bear them in my crew.” He sighed, and at her worried glance, smiled again, wryly. “Fear not. I will not betray your secrets. But I will appreciate your honesty in private, at least.”

“That I can promise you,” she said, and he gave a little half-bow of thanks from his seat.

Beneath them, the ship was moving, turning on its course. Vidarian's stomach clenched again, for he knew their place on the chart. They angled southwest, the prevailing south wind dropping from belled sails; in such fashion did the Empress Quest enter the Outwater. And her lights blazed bright against the great dark sea of the night sky.

One week later Vidarian sat closeted in the aft cabin, door firmly shut and commanding officers instructed to ensure that the priestess stayed on the other side of the Quest for a brief duration. When he was satisfied that all was secure, he settled down on the bench bed and drew his sword.

Since Endera's description of steel's “remembrance” he couldn't quite look at his ancestral blade the same way. The longsword, light and strong with the slightest arcing curve to the blade, was as old as the Empress Quest- five generations past, and Vidarian was the sixth. If what Endera said was right, some fraction of his grandfathers’ souls remained in the blade.

Sunlight filtered down through the blue and green stained glass set into the back portholes of the cabin, bathing him in gentle aquamarine light. It slid across glimmering steel like foam along a beach as he turned his arm, feeling the familiar weight of the three-quarter-tang blade and its mahogany covered hilt. As always it felt like an extension of his hand, the weight of his family settling like a protecting mantle about his shoulders.

The square of flattened steel just above the sword's silver-plated crossguard bore six names-and when Vidarian fathered a son, his name would be chiseled in below them at the boy's thirtieth birthday. Seven generations did not make for an ancient tradition, but theirs was sound, and its weight rested heavily in Vidarian's palm.

As was sometimes his habit, he sat contemplating the names for a time; having long since memorized every serif and curve, the letters were familiar, almost mesmerizing. He was still staring at them when the first shouts rang out abovedeck, pierced by the emergency cry of the boatswain's pipe- ship sighted, ship closing.

Vidarian sprang to his feet and only just remembered to sheathe the blade before thundering out the door of the cabin.

High afternoon sunlight lanced his eyes as he ran out onto the deck. Men were boiling up the ladders at either end of the ship, and Calgrath, perched in his customary position in the crow's nest, was bellowing down.

“Captain! Ship sighted off th’ port bow! It's the Starless , sir, and she be closin’ swift!”

Spitting a curse, Vidarian began roaring commands. Fast as the Empress Quest was, she was no match for the Starless Night , a pirate vessel known for breaking speed records as a matter of annual sport. And she'd been lurking, to appear so suddenly. Off to port was a collection of tiny islands wreathed by perilous shoals, all but invisible in the dark waters; it was madness verging on suicide to plant a ship there, but that was a fair description of Vanderken's strategy.

Marielle met him at the wheel. She was already shouting orders to the rest of the crew, but paused to exchange a few low voiced words with Vidarian. “Captain, these're not Starless waters. She hasn't been seen in these parts for over two years! Mighty odd if you ask me.”

“Right now it's best not to ask, Ms. Solandt. Just get me every cannon aboard aimed at that loveless craft!” Taking a sighting from the compass at his right, Vidarian spun hard on the wheel, bringing the Quest about as hard as she would bear, swinging her slender bowsprit around to face the Starless. “Solandt!” he shouted, remembering something. Marielle answered with an “Aye?” from across the deck. “Get someone to the priestess-keep her below deck! Once she's secure, get back up here and unlock the fore starboard chest-I'll not have these men meet Vanderken with rusted weapons!”