First Command: A TIDES novella
Author: Lidell, Alex
Date: 2017-01-26
Rights: Copyright 2017 Alex Lidell. All rights reserved.

First Command

A TIDES Prequel Novella

Alex Lidell

Danger Bearing Press

Contents

Also by Alex Lidell

Title Page

Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

About the Author

Also by Alex Lidell

Next in the TIDES series

FIRST COMMAND

A TIDES Novella

Copyright © 2017 by Alex Lidell

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Also by Alex Lidell

TIDES

FIRST COMMAND (Prequel Novella)

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WAR AND WIND (TIDES Book II) - coming June 20, 2017

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Chapter 1

Standing on the Ashing Ship Faithful’s crowded quarterdeck, I fix my gaze on the sloop tied up beside her—the one I’m about to take command of. The sloop Marquis rocks on rolling waves. Her sails are furled neatly and her mast, which flew an enemy flag just yesterday, now proudly displays my Ashing Kingdom colors.

“Fair winds and calm seas to you, Lieutenant Greysik.” Captain Fey extends his powerful hand to me. A man of average height, slight pudge, and specks of shiny gray in his hair, Fey carries a solid, calm presence that commands respect without effort. I might be royal born, but it is he who is the lord and master of the ship. Of the ocean.

I roll back my shoulders to match Captain Fey’s. The lively breeze blowing into my face carries the ocean’s salty tang and ruffles the few strands of hair that escaped my braid. On the Faithful’s deck, the air is tinged with gunpowder that still clings to all of us after yesterday’s battle. Behind my schooled face and trained posture, my heart pounds like a battle drum. The pounding echoes so loudly in my ears, I little understand how the whole ship doesn’t hear it.

“Thank you, sir,” I say, shaking the offered hand.

The captain nods as if my impending first command, bringing the captured Marquis to port while the Faithful continues her patrols, little worries him. Nothing ever worries Captain Fey, at least not that he lets the rest of us see. The man’s mere presence makes the crew stand taller, I being no exception.

At seventeen, I’ve been at sea for nine years, most of them under Captain’s Fey’s careful eye and all of them at war with the People’s Republic of Tirik. While my older brother is the heir to our Ashing Kingdom throne, I’m our navy’s intended future admiral. Bringing the sloop into harbor may be a short ten-day cruise, but it’s a test. As is everything in my life.

The Faithful’s first officer, Commander Brine, shakes my hand next. “There may be other Tirik ships out here, so keep up as much canvas as you dare and move quickly.” If Captain Fey is the Faithful’s soul, then Commander Brine is the embodiment of practicality. Second only to the captain himself, a first officer takes charge of a ship’s daily operations. On the Marquis, with a prize crew of only thirty sailors and marines, I’ll have no one to fulfill Brine’s role—twelve-year-old midshipman Jax notwithstanding. Brine frowns. “And sound the well regularly to check the Marquis isn’t taking on water. There may be leaks in her hull we missed.”

I touch my hat. The commander’s expected instructions are oddly soothing. “Make all speed and sound the well regularly,” I repeat back to him as is naval custom. “Aye aye, sir.”

The midshipmen, young officers in training, extend their well wishes in turn. Their eyes silently covet my assignment. My first command. The ocean, at least, seems content, lapping playfully against the Marquis’s hull while seagulls circle the clear skies.

Captain Fey’s heavy hand rests on my shoulder. Such touch is rare. I savor its fatherly feel. “Try not to enjoy yourself too much, Nile. Once you bring the prize into harbor, you’ll be right back here as a second lieutenant.”

“Aye, sir. No excess enjoyment of my first command.”

He snorts. “Off with you, youngster,” he says before adding, much more softly, “The duty of keeping a ship safe is often a solitary experience, Ms. Greysik. It’s on you to earn the crew’s trust. Not their friendship.”

I touch my hat again, though I’m tempted to note that Captain Fey manages both without effort.

I turn to my ship. My ship. She is small, her paint chipped and fading, her hull scarred with cracks and dents from yesterday’s battle. She is the most beautiful ship I have ever laid eyes on, and I love her.

I catch a faint, knowing smile touching Captain Fey’s face, though it’s gone when I look at him directly.

I run my hand over my breast pocket, where the coordinates I’ve calculated and checked three times are written on a slip of paper along with the sailing master’s reminders of the currents. I have it all memorized, but the crumpled paper makes me feel better nonetheless. The prize crew, made of people from our Faithful and the Swift, a ship that had come to lend assistance with repairs, is already aboard. As are the Tirik prisoners who lived through yesterday’s skirmish.

All the Marquis awaits now is her captain. Me. Me, storms and hail. I’ve trained for and dreamt of this moment for nine years. The responsibility, the freedom, the head-spinning excitement of showing my father, the Admiralty, the fleet, the skill and prowess of Princess Nile Greysik. Now that the moment is here, though, my heart threatens to burst with fear. I will be the Marquis’s captain. If she goes off course, if my orders are wrong, if the crew misbehaves, if a gale blows us ashore, I’ll face it alone. No mentor, no guide, no safety net.

Forcing my pounding heart to the back of my mind, I pay attention to the motion of the deck beneath me as I approach the rail. Ropes holding the Marquis alongside Faithful slacken and snap taut as the ocean rocks both ships. One glance, that’s all the time I allow myself to judge the motions of the ships, to find my timing and footing. The ships’ hulls slide apart to reveal the sea’s bubbling maw, then crash together with bone-snapping force.

One glance and then I walk forward, stepping from one hull to another with no pause, my feet hitting the deck without a stumble.

“Cast off!” I holler to my crew as I turn to give Captain Fey a final salute. “All hands prepare to set sail. Helm, come three points west. We are heading home.”

* * *

The war between the Tirik Republic and the six kingdoms on the Lyron continent, known collectively as the Lyron League, is of Tirik’s making. According to the Republic, the Tirik seek to liberate the world of royalty and return power to the people. According to me, Princess Nile Greysik of the Ashing Kingdom, the Republic needs to keep its people fighting us to divert their attention from the Tiriks’ mockery of a government. The one that executes scholars for thinking and officers for making decisions on tactics instead of politics.

My present command, the Marquis, is the perfect example. With a single deck and only eighteen guns, the Marquis never stood a chance against the Faithful’s broadside. Her captain should have struck the colors in surrender immediately, but he chose to fight and lost his ship, his life, and most of his crew in the process.

Tirik officers who surrender don’t live long in the People’s Republic. Neither do their families.

“The Swift is signaling her departure, ma’am.” Jax, the midshipman and only other officer aboard, touches his hat with grave formality. A spry, curly-haired lad, Jax is the love of the crew and one of the most acrobatic youngsters I’ve ever met.

“Thank you, Mr. Jax. Please wish her fair winds and calm seas.” I watch the boy scamper to raise the correct flags up our mast while, off our starboard bow, the Swift sets her sails.

The phantom eyes of the Swift’s crew stare back at me, mixing with the Marquis’s sailors’ similar gazes. Gazes that weigh and judge my every step. Well, daughter of the Ashing crown, the gazes ask, well, Miss Presumptive Future Admiral of the Ashing Fleet, can you manage to bring a single ship into harbor? Did you earn your place in the navy or take it on a silver platter of birthright?

Ten days, I want to yell back at them. It’s only a ten-day cruise. Give me a bloody chance.

Except no enlisted seaman is ever interested in giving an officer a chance. In the crew’s eyes, we’ve too much privilege as it is. We sleep in cabins while they hang hammocks between guns. We endure no lashings. We stand on the deck and shout orders that their bodies strain to execute. By the end of the cruise, the sailors under my command will judge my performance as either adequate or wanting. Not good, or exemplary, or any word that they’d wish spoken about themselves or their friends.

This line between the crew and myself isn’t new to me. What is new is the lack of another officer to share in the isolation. Even though I’ve never been true friends with any of the officers—with anyone but my twin brother and the sea—I’ve always found trust and companionship in their company.

* * *

The daylight hours of our first day at sea pass smoothly, if not efficiently. With the exception of a few hands from the Swift, I know the crew. Most are seasoned and trustworthy workers perfectly capable of manning the Marquis with little interference from me. Squirrel, a ten-year-old ship’s boy named for his ability to climb anything, anytime, combined with skittishness, scurries all over the rigging to check for rips and cracks the repair crews missed. Ellis, a middle-aged master’s mate, takes charge of feeding the crew. Landon, a bald bosun’s mate with missing front teeth, struts the deck while slapping a rattan cane against his thigh. He is the one sailor I could do without, but Landon’s hand, though heavy with a cane, is so handy with all other tasks—from manning the helm to firing a great gun—that Captain Fey insisted I take him.

All in all, it is as good a start as anyone can ask for.

Our fair weather ends with the setting sun. By the time darkness descends upon us, the Ashing flag atop the Marquis’s mainmast flaps violently in the growing wind and the deck beneath my feet tilts harshly with each cresting wave. The thwack thwack thwack of the sea slamming the hull is a ceaseless concert of drums. Every few minutes, an especially ambitious swell breaks hard against the rail, spraying my face with ice-cold water and ensuring a slightly sulfuric, wet wood smell in the air.

I grip a stay for balance as I survey the deck, masts, and sails, listening for the creak of straining wood or tearing cloth. The Marquis is about a hundred twenty feet long and just under thirty feet at its widest point. In the endless vastness of the darkening angry ocean, we are a bouncing speck of timber and cloth. I’ve ordered sail taken in twice in the last half hour, bringing sailors up from their warm beds into the frigid night to do it.

The ship lurches again, a renewed gust of wind pressing into the canvas. If the Marquis was an Ashing ship, I’d ride out the squall, but Tirik standards little match ours. No one’s do. Ashing is the smallest of the Lyron League’s six kingdoms, but when it comes to the navy, we are unmatched by any on either side of the war. We have to be, since the ocean surrounds our kingdom on three sides. On the tear-shaped Lyron continent, Ashing is the peninsula on the tip.

“Mr. Jax!” Dread crawls through me as I raise my voice.

The middie climbs down from the shrouds, adjusting his uniform jacket as he first runs—then remembers himself and walks—to the quarter deck. The foul weather has muted even Jax’s unending energy, and the boy shivers with cold as he salutes.

“Bring the hands back on to deck,” I say, just as the skies open and rain adds itself to the windy misery. If I wasn’t the most despised person aboard before now, this order firmly seals me into that slot. The fat drops slap my cheeks and slide down my neck beneath my shirt. “We’re taking in sail.”

Jax’s shoulders hunch as if I’d just ordered him to put down a dog. “All hands on deck. Aye aye, ma’am.”

“The Marquis is Tirik built,” I say, louder than I must, wanting the crew as much as Jax to understand my reasons. To side with me. “There is no telling how much stress the wood will hold. Better a little less speed than a broken mast.”

Jax gives me a dubious look. So much for the value of explanation.

Two minutes later, the deck swarms with two dozen irritated sailors helped along by the threat of Landon’s cane. They all, Landon included, very pointedly avoid my gaze as they set about climbing the shrouds. The wind and rain batter their clothes as their chilled fingers fight for grip. The ship bucks like a wild horse, threatening to throw the climbing sailors into the death of open sea. All because I decided to take in sail. Because I ordered them to climb fifty, sixty, seventy feet up into the rigging and stand on narrow beams as they grapple with canvas in the midst of a gale.

I force my shoulders back, reminding myself of the very words I’d just told Jax. This hardship and risk is worth the cost. A part of me believes that as little as the middie did.

The sail lowers, slowing the Marquis’s run. Although I’ve protected the sloop’s masts, the loss of speed also enslaves us to the rocking waves. Squirrel vomits over the rail before going below to catch what little wet sleep remains for him.

“Can she not make up her mind?” The wind carries bits of conversation to me. An experienced topman who was up in the rigging just moments ago. “We could have done this a half hour past.”

“The youngster is making extra work,” a woman’s voice answers. “I’ve seen winds twice as tough and not a crack in a mast.”

Her bloody highness is not ready for command, say the glares and exchanged looks of many eyes. Not nearly ready.

“Coffee?”

I startle and twist toward the unfamiliar voice. Behind me, standing on my quarterdeck, is a young lieutenant with gleaming epaulettes and a porcelain cup of warm, steaming liquid. His blond hair, pulled back into a ponytail, is plastered to his wet skin as his friendly brown eyes smile at me through the rain. It takes me a heartbeat to find my voice and another beat to school it to professionalism.

“Who the hell are you, sir?” I inquire. “And what are you doing on my ship?”

Chapter 2

The young lieutenant stares at me with matching bewilderment. A few years older than I, he is tall, well-muscled, and handsome to fault. A slight tightness to his uniform jacket—especially around the chest and shoulders—hints that he’s recently gained muscle but has yet to find either time or funds to update his wardrobe.

Ironically, my own uniform fits perfectly, but what I pick up in tailoring, I lack in his ethereal beauty. My red hair is pulled back into a tight braid, and my soaked woolen jacket hugs budding curves on a tall, skinny frame.

The ship lurches. The young man’s arm flexes expertly to keep the coffee from spilling.

“Lieutenant Syd Carley, ma’am,” he says, his voice carrying a bit of an accent I can’t quite place. “Third lieutenant of His Ashing Majesty’s Ship Swift.”

I blink, searching for words. “This is the Marquis.”

He raises a brow, which accentuates his sharp eyes. “Aye, ma’am. I’m aware.” He pauses to weather another wave before speaking again. “I’ve business in Ashing and was told I might catch a ride with you into port. I’d rather assumed the Swift’s captain had cleared the arrangement with you.”

He hadn’t. Hadn’t so much as made me aware of it. And it stings.

Syd moves the coffee cup in a taunting circle. “It will get cold and weak with rain if you don’t drink it.”

I take the cup numbly, the coffee’s steaming warmth seeping into my chilled hands. I’ve had little chance to use the head, much less have a warm meal in the past eight hours. Despite the balm of hot coffee, the indignation of having been aboard for nearly two watches without knowing of Syd’s existence makes it difficult to rein my voice to tight professionalism.

“I was plainly not informed of your joining my complement, but more to the point, I did not see you on deck when I came aboard,” I tell Syd quietly. The less the crew knows of a discord between officers, the better. “Might I inquire as to why it took this long for you to grace it with your presence?”

Syd clears his throat. “I little wished to interfere with your command and crew without your invitation, ma’am.” He tries for a sheepish grin but wipes that off his face quickly as my eyes flash into his.

I know Syd Carley. I’ve met versions of him many times on many ships—though never long under Captain Fey’s command. Good-looking, smooth tongued, and typically naturally talented versus studious, these officers carry a very comfortable opinion that work is something that is divided into exactly two categories: interesting or other people’s. The Syd Carleys of the navy show off at gun drill and come down with fever on laundry day.

“Consider yourself invited and added to the duty roster,” I snap. “Being the only other officer aboard, you are now Marquis’s second-in-command. Act like it, sir.”

Syd touches his hat, and I immediately regret both the temper and its showing on the quarterdeck. Captain Fey never called an officer out before the crew and, despite the sailors’ pretense of sudden deafness, I know they heard my words.

Less than a day into my first command and I’m already a walking disaster.

“What is your name, sir?” Syd asks, beckoning my middie over to the quarterdeck. The lieutenant’s voice is smooth with command and confidence.

“Jax, sir.” The boy cuts his eyes to me for a heartbeat as if to ask, Who is he?

“Mr. Jax.” Syd’s tone hardens, reclaiming the middie’s attention so competently that I can’t help noting the skill. “Would you be so kind as to locate a rain garment for the captain?”

Jax nods enthusiastically despite his dragging fatigue. “Aye aye, sir.”

It’s an effort to control my surprise, and I thank the darkness for concealing the color rising to my face. “That was considerate but hardly necessary,” I tell the lieutenant once Jax disappears from earshot. “I’m perfectly capable of fetching my own clothes.”

Syd inclines his head, bringing his mouth to hover beside my ear, just beyond the reach of my wide hat. “No doubt. But it appears you have a few other things occupying your time just now. Call it an accidental observation of a lowered third lieutenant.” His mouth twitches in a half smile as he meets my gaze. “For instance, take that cup you’ve been savoring. Sight, touch, and smell are wonderful senses to be certain, but this particular liquid is best enjoyed through taste.”

I look down to find the coffee, which I’d managed to forget, still in my hands. My face blazes.

“It’s called co-ffee,” Syd offers conspiratorially. “An ancient tradition on the Swift.”

Right. Toasting Syd with the porcelain, I take a sip and dissolve into the warmth of rich hot liquid coating my tongue.

Syd grins and extracts a flask from a pocket, extending it to me. “I also located an exquisite brandy in the Marquis’s captain’s private stores. Will warm you up in no time.”

Of course he located brandy. Probably took it upon himself to sample it first, out of consideration for his fellow officers. Unfortunately for Syd, he’s trying the wrong way of getting into my good graces.

“We’ll have no spirits on this trip, if you please, Mr. Carley. We sail with a prize crew through dangerous waters.” My pleasure at watching Syd’s mental stumble at this change of expected course is very short-lived.

I realize what I said—and how loudly I said it—when a sudden, heavy silence grips the deck around me. Grog, a rum-and-water mix served to seamen twice daily, is both a coveted tradition and often the high point of the crew’s day. Stopping it is a delicate negotiation, not a casually dropped line between two officers.

“We will keep count of missed grog rations and provide them to the crew once in port,” I add hastily. Too little, too late.

“I need second man at the wheel,” Ellis calls from the helm an hour later, the wind and sea still tossing us about like fodder on the waves. “This Tirik bucket is as weatherly as my grandmother’s washtub.”

“She is no such thing,” snaps Syd, the indignation in his voice genuine.

I motion for Landon to assist Ellis and have a pump brought up to clear away water that laps over the rail to the deck. While I do, Syd orders the well sounded again to check for leaks and sets up a rotation for working the pump itself. As much as I hate to admit it, Syd’s presence, selective and swaggering as it is, provides me with a much-needed second-in-command.

The sun is well abed and the rain shows no sign of tapering when Syd focuses his attention on me again, leaning his elbows back against the rail. The pose is more suited for a pub than a quarterdeck, and the gleam in Syd’s eye says he knows it.

I glare at him.

He raises his chin. The cocky, unabashed arrogance oozing from him almost succeeds in concealing the fatigue in his eyes. “It is an honor to be working with you, you know,” Syd says with a lazy drawl. “One day I’ll be telling my grandchildren that I served with the Ashing’s top admiral when she wore a mere lieutenant’s insignia.”

“Are you purposely trying to ignite my temper?”

“I’d call it an instinctual tendency more than a purposeful plan.” He grins and lowers his voice for my ears alone. “But since we are discussing intent, I was wondering whether you were purposely trying to drive the crew insane?” Syd turns up his palms. “If so, I’d be happy to help. I’ve been told I’m excellent at driving people insane.”

“What?” I rub my eye with the heel of my hand, the deck swaying beneath me.

“Easy.” Syd’s steadying hand clamps on to my shoulder, and I realize that I had been the one swaying. He waits until I shift my feet under me before releasing his hold. “How long have you been awake?”

From rising this morning until now? Twenty hours. I’d been awake and working for twenty hours straight. “I’m fine, Mr. Carley.”

“No doubt,” Syd agrees easily. “It’s just that your cold, wet, and exhausted sailors would welcome a chance to curse and joke—a luxury they can’t take when their captain is watching their every breath.” He jerks his chin toward the main deck, where the hands go about checking lines and holding the helm in sullen quiet. “So…” He stretches his other shoulder, a feral grin spreading across his face, “so, perhaps you might consider getting the hell out of everyone’s hair for a spell?”

I put my hands behind my back, holding one wrist tightly, and weigh the lieutenant with my gaze. Syd Carley is hardly the first attractive man I’ve met. He’s just the first one to point that maleness in my direction. Between my royal birth and my life in the navy, I’m always someone’s superior or subordinate. Never a friend, never an equal. Never someone any man would consider looking at too long or too closely.

I am not a girl, I’m a naval officer. By choice. Maybe other girls get to be both, but not me.

“Did you just tell me to get off my own quarterdeck, Mr. Carley?”

Syd shrugs. “Is that what I said?” His voice drops so low, I can barely hear him despite standing inches away. “Every captain needs someone who’ll tell her when she’s being an idiot, and it appeared that function was left unfulfilled before my appearance.” He pauses, his dark eyes capturing mine. “Would you prefer I touch my hat and say yes, ma’am to everything you utter?”

“Yes. It’s called naval discipline, and it is how a ship stays alive.”

Syd takes a step forward until he stands right beside me. “And here I thought a captain who can think straight has something to do with a ship staying afloat,” he says into my ear before stepping away smartly and touching his hat. “My mistake, ma’am.”

I watch Syd walk off, setting course for Squirrel, who is snoozing in middle of the deck, curled up into a small ball beside the ship’s boat. A bad place to be. Landon spots the boy at the same time Syd and I do, and the fury on the bosun’s mate’s face is cruel enough to match the seas.

Everything happens at once.

Landon winds up that damn cane of his and brings it down toward Squirrel’s back with all his might.

I shout, “Belay that!” even as the cane is already whistling through the air.

Squirrel’s eyes pop open, and he shrieks, his thin hands jerking up to cover his head.

Syd, within reach of Squirrel but too far from Landon himself, throws himself between the two.

The cane raps against the lieutenant’s flesh with a dull thud that stills the ship’s collective breath—my own included. Silence hangs over the deck. Tense and waiting. My heart stops.

The circumstances little matter so far as naval law is concerned. Landon, an enlisted sailor, has struck an officer. One single word, one look, from Syd to me in official report of this incident will leave me no choice but to put Landon in irons and order him flogged once the sea settles. There are three officers on this ship: me, Syd, and Jax. None of us are to be touched. Ever. Nausea creeps up my neck, burning the back of my throat. The effort of keeping my face blank strains everything inside me.

It is my fault. I should have seen the problem before it happened, should have spotted Squirrel sleeping, should have noted that Landers was at the end of his patience and set him to work off his frustrations off deck.

Landon’s eyes widen, his hands releasing the cane and rising surrender-like into the air. “Sir, I didn’t—”

Ignoring Landon’s sputtering, Syd bends down to pick up the rattan cane and breaks it smoothly against his knee. “Be about your duties, everyone,” he calls, throwing the pieces overboard into the sea and continuing on his way. Not a glance back at me, not a word, not even a twitch of muscle to rub what had to be a welt filling beneath his jacket. Nothing to acknowledge that anything had just happened.

I let my breath out slowly, my knees weak with relief behind my steady, straight-backed posture. Giving the ship a final surveying gaze, I take in the crew working hard to avoid notice, Syd standing at the rail, the Ashing flag on the foremast flapping in the jerky wind. The night sky is dark, with not a star to be seen through the weather.

“You have the deck, Mr. Carley,” I call loudly and, without waiting for a response, make my way down to the cabin below.

I little recall hitting the pillow. But I am well aware of hitting my head on the low beam a few hours later when a cannon’s belch and the splash of shot hitting water wake me from sleep.

Chapter 3

My heart gallops, my mind racing with my pulse to figure out why my ship fired a great gun while I slept. Images of a Tirik frigate bearing down on my little sloop interpose themselves on scenes of my crew in chains, being hauled away to a Republic prison camp. My breath comes quick as I struggle into my boots. Why is no one beating a drum to call the crew to battle stations? Why in the stars named did no one wake me?

I nearly hop out the cabin door on one foot before I remember myself and force a breath into my lungs. No good comes from letting the rest of the crew know their captain is as bewildered as the rest of them. The three extra seconds I take to straighten the uniform I’d slept in and tie my boot laces are the longest of my life.

The ship sounds eerily quiet as I swing myself onto the companionway stairs that lead to the deck. The patter of my own boots hitting wood echoes in my ears. The instant my head clears the hatch, I twist to survey my ship. I’d slept longer than I intended, and the night has given way to a miserable gray dawn. Early rays of sunlight try and fail to penetrate the newly settled fog. A fog so thick I can barely make out the rail of my own ship, much less anything beyond our hull.

Yet something must be there. And apparently, it’s trying to kill us.

The quarterdeck, where I presumed to find one Lieutenant Syd Carley, stands empty. “Mr. Carley,” I call out into the misty gloom hugging the deck. Clouds might look nice in the sky, but when the thick swirls turn you blind in the middle of an ocean, the combination is deadly. “Report!”

Sure footsteps sound against the deck behind me, and I turn to find Syd, a glass in his hand and a rueful half smile on his perfect face. With the curtain of fog around him, the lieutenant has an ethereal aura about him that pushes in on me. He stands tall and calm and certain, whereas my heart races my mind to understand what the hell is happening. It’s all wrong. It should be the other way around, but it isn’t.

It’s an inhuman effort to school my features to stone and force my hand to drape casually behind my back. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this exercise, Mr. Carley?” I ask in a voice that sounds too calm and clear.

“An accident, ma’am,” he answers with matching calm, one that seems to cost him as little to maintain as it had when he showed up on deck six hours late, after all the tasks of getting a ship under weigh that been finished. “No need for concern. I’ve got it well in hand now.”

Heat rushed through my veins. No need for concern? The Marquis just fired a bloody gun, something that’s not only unacceptable but that also alerted every ship in the vicinity of our presence. For a small sloop in enemy-infested waters, the wrong kind of attention can be suicidal. I rub my face. “Pray tell me how a gun that takes six men to properly load manages to fire by accident?”

Syd shrugs one muscled shoulder. “It appears the Tirik had primed and loaded but never fired one of the guns during the battle. The repair crew must have overlooked the fact that the gun was still loaded when they secured it alongside others. With all the jostling of the angry sea—”

With all the jostling of the angry sea, the gun would still have needed a spark of flame to fire. The chances of the powder having combusted from friction alone in this weather are simply too small to accept without question. “My cabin, Mr. Carley,” I say, cutting him off midsentence. “Now.”

I signal Landon to take the watch and turn on my heels, leading the way back to the hatch. My heart gallops, in equal part rage and nerves. By all rights, it should be Syd Carley who breathes nervously, but from the confident swagger of his step, one would think it was me in trouble with him and not the other way around.

Dressing down a crewman is an abhorrent experience in the best of times, and here, with Syd, the anticipation itself is enough to make nausea crawl up my throat. Variations of the opening gambit rehearse themselves in my mind. How the hell did that gun fire? Did he realize the gravity of what happened? Was he ever planning on sending for me?

None of it feels like the right thing to say, though. By the time we reach the cabin and shut the door, I’ve come up with nothing workable.

Syd braces his hands on one of the lower ceiling beams, his larger size filling the cabin with his presence. His damp hair is plastered to his head, and he shivers slightly beneath the blue jacket of his uniform. A reminder of the cold misery reigning above deck. One that Syd stood watch through so I could sleep. His gaze follows mine to the water still dripping from him to the floor, then meets my eyes head-on.

“Do you realize that accidental shot just gave away the Marquis’s position to any passing Tirik man-of-war?” I say finally.

“Aye, ma’am.” His chin rises a fraction.

My voice freezes into a chill to match the seas. “And?”

“And,” Syd says with that perfect, controlled calm, “and I can no more make it unfire than I could make the idiot of a bosun’s mate unswing a rattan cane.”

I draw a breath. “What the hell happened on deck, Mr. Carley?”

“The impossible. One of the Tirik guns seems to have been secured with powder and shot still inside. And by some miracle, the water had stayed out of the breech. With the waves crashing up to and fro.” He shrugged, letting the scenario speak for itself, as if there was little more to say on the matter.

Such as how this miraculous contraption had come in contact with flame.

I wait.

Syd raises a brow.

“Was someone smoking beside one of my guns, Syd?” I demand finally, throwing my hands into the air.

Syd crosses his muscular arms over his chest and weighs me with his eyes. “Do you truly wish to ask that question?” he asks with preternatural calm. “What will you do if I say yes? Ask me the man’s name? Put him in irons? Flog him?”

Syd’s words hit me like a bucket of ice water. My gut still says Syd has no idea what really happened, that he’d let his attention wander, perhaps even fallen asleep in the late dark hours of the night. But maybe, maybe, he holds the information back from me for my own bloody sanity.

The question is, does it matter? I rap my finger against the tabletop, my mind racing, trying to put all the pieces together and coming up short each time. If Syd’s work ethic is as selective as I suspect, I will not be altering that in this ten—now nine—day cruise. If he’d caught the culprit in the act and dealt with the matter on the spot, then little more good will come of my resurrecting the matter. Either way, Syd is right—the accident cannot be undone. Not even if I turn the ship on its head, ferret out the culprit, and punish him before the crew. Not even if I punish Syd himself.

How can I be the captain and feel as powerless as Squirrel?

Syd’s brown eyes brush mine, as if reading my thoughts. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and trails his softened gaze to the port window, the foggy sea swaying beyond it. “We’re in the same binds, you and I, Nile,” he says softly, as if to himself. “The seamen are the ones who make the ship move. We know it. They know it. Cross a line and they’ll show you just how little an officer’s epaulettes can matter.”

He clamps his mouth shut and watches the sea in silence, but I can tell he has more on his mind, words he needs to say. Maybe as badly as I need to hear them. Words that have always been there, in my chest, but never uttered.

Syd sighs. “When I went to sea, I thought my officer’s uniform would make me a god. That everyone would walk around in awe of my wisdom because I’ve the epaulettes and the fancy coat and the letter of commission. But it’s all an illusion. A game that we all play in hopes the common sailors don’t realize our utter insignificance. How utterly alone we are in all this.”

The words fit so perfectly into the hollowness in my heart that my breath catches. With his easy smile and handsome face, it’s difficult to imagine Syd Carley lacking for company—but what he said, how he said it, rings with truths I thought were mine alone.

A younger child of the Ashing king, I’m too unimportant to my father to speak with, and too important for everyone else on the mainland to talk to without an agenda. On a ship, I’m an officer. Someone’s junior and someone’s senior. Never a peer. And as for more intimate relations… My mother’s beautiful eyes and long lashes went to my twin, Clay, not me. At seventeen, my body has only started developing a female’s curves, and I know as little about what to do with the new additions as I know of lip paint and dresses. By the time my older brother was my age, he’d bedded more girls than I could keep track of. Me, I’ve never even kissed a man.

I sigh, giving up all pretense of a captain’s grandeur, and kick a chair toward Syd. “How long have you been at sea, Mr. Carley?” I ask. With the exception of the few officers who rise from the lower ranks, most go to sea as children to learn seamanship and command from youth. One has to start young to truly learn the craft. It is not so different on land, I think—my older brother, the crown prince of Ashing, started attending council meetings when he was six.

“It’s Syd.” He hooks the chair with his leg and turns it around, straddling the back. “I went to sea at age eight, same as you, I imagine. I’m twenty now.”

Three years older than me and ranked my junior. I nod.

“I’ve not the blood or relations for the Admiralty,” he says with a shrug, holding up his hands before I can retort. “That wasn’t a gripe. Just a statement of fact. I merely wanted to say that I understand our relative positions, and I’m all right with them. In case you were concerned on that front.”

I’m not concerned on that front. Or wasn’t until just now. I’m concerned about the fact that my control over Syd and the ship is thread thin, that a preventable error just threw us into mortal danger, and that despite my rank and training and assignment, I’ve not the slightest idea how to handle Lieutenant Syd Carley. Worse, I’m not sure that I want to handle him. There is something seductively nice about being treated as a human being.

I walk to the table in center of the great cabin and sit, wondering what kind of man lived here before we attacked his ship. Was he a kind captain or a cruel one? Smart like the career Republic officers I’ve met, or a pompous idiot like the political appointees who take command while knowing nothing of seafaring. He was well educated, I think, judging by the books I see collected on a small shelf—two of them written in Lyron. I speak Tirik well enough, but not so well as to enjoy casual reading in the Republic’s tongue. I wonder if a dead Tirik captain might tell me how to deal with a living Lyron lieutenant.

“Do you like being a royal?” Syd asks, his attention still on the sea.

I shrug. “There are worse things.”

“Such as being common born?”

“Such as being Gifted.” The words are out before I can think them through.

Syd turns his head toward me slowly, calculations and memories clicking behind his gaze. “Your twin, right?” Syd’s words are gentle, but I flinch nonetheless. “What is his Gift, if I might ask?”

“Metal-calling.” It’s not a secret, really, but the royal family little advertises its tragedies. For my twin, Clay, the magic in his blood that attracts metal also destroys his mind. With even walking through a kitchen being potentially fatal, Clay’s life is limited to the palace walls except for occasional, well-controlled outings. Actually, I’m surprised Syd even knows that there once were two young royal children who went to sea. Outside the navy and the Ashing palace, few would recognize me on sight. “What of you?” I ask, changing the subject. “Your accent, it isn’t quite Ashing.” While all the kingdoms of the Lyron League speak Lyron, we all have our own way of pronouncing the words.

He grins without humor. “No, it isn’t. You can call me a common half-breed, I suppose.”

I wait for him to say more about his lineage, but the strain in his jaw whispers that the story touches more nerves than he wishes. My own mother is from the Felielle Kingdom, and I know firsthand how different kingdoms’ conflicting values tear at a child. And an adult.

We sit in companionable silence for a full minute before I make myself tear my eyes from the waves and pull down my jacket. Syd straightens as well, taking my cue that the time to return to reality is at hand, whether we are ready for it or not.

“All right, Mr. Carley,” I say briskly as we both rise to our feet. “Have the whole ship inspected to ensure we’ve no similar accidents, if you please.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

I rap my knuckles on the table’s edge, remembering one other task I’m embarrassingly delinquent on. “Also, please locate the senior officer amidst the Tirik prisoners and invite him to join me here.”

Syd jerks around to face me, his face dark for a moment before he reins himself in with visible effort. The Tirik are known to forgo naval courtesies when taking our people prisoner, and it’s little surprising that Syd wants to reciprocate in kind. I suspect most of the crew does.

But no vendetta will be playing out aboard my ship.

My ship. My heart pounds against my ribs as the words thrown casually in my mind fully sink in. I grip my wrist more tightly to avoid my face shifting its mask. “The Tirik senior officer, please, Mr. Carley. And please remind his escorts that I expect this officer to be shown all the courtesies due his rank.”

“Of course,” Syd says curtly. “Is there anything else, ma’am?”

Should there be? I riffle through my mind and all the duties I’ve not yet touched thanks to keeping myself busy making sailors nervous on deck. “When you have a moment of respite, please send over your orders from the Swift’s captain attaching you to the Marquis’s complement.”

The corner of Syd’s mouth twitches, a conspiratorial half smile returning to his face. “You’ve yet to start your captain’s log and paperwork, haven’t you?”

“Go away,” I mumble, and he chuckles before disappearing out the door.

With the amused laugh and obnoxious lieutenant both gone, I am left alone in a dead man’s company. I run my fingers over the wooden bulkhead, the lovingly crafted furniture, the port open to the sea beyond. Years of another captain’s life cling to the walls in forms of books and portraits and unfinished letters.

My Dearest Mairella, is scrawled in a neat-looking hand atop a loose sheet of paper.

I turn the page over. The author of the letter, the rightful owner of this cabin, the captain of the Marquis, is gone. Killed and gone overboard in a battle he never could have won. And while I’ll read any naval journal he might have left behind and turn the room over for the slightest chance that a Tirik signals book wasn’t thrown overboard when the ship fell, I won’t violate his personal life more than I must.

Despite being half the size of Captain Fey’s cabin on the Faithful, this space feels too large for me. Even once I was out of the midshipmen’s berth and had my own cabin, the space was never large enough to entertain guests. More importantly, the door of my cabin led to the gunroom, where fellow officers awaited. Not friends, perhaps, but comrades. The door from this cabin leads to a hallway with a marine sentry outside.

Staying one more moment in the dead man’s isolated home threatens to suffocate me. I step toward the door, only to remember that I’ve marooned myself here with my very order to summon the Tirik officer. My mouth dries, and I force myself to look through the remainder of another sailor’s life in search of something to offer my guest.

I’ve just located a bag of dried dates and a pair of cups for water when the marine outside raps the door sharply. “Midshipman Korrelie, the People’s Republic of Tirik, ma’am,” the man calls.

Midshipman. The senior officer left of the Marquis’s Tirik crew is a middie. I bid Korrelie to enter and rise as a boy of fourteen with thick red curls and stormy eyes glares at me with disdain.

I nod formally to the middie and hold out my hand. “Lieutenant Nile Greysik of His Ashing Majesty’s Navy, at your service, sir.”

The boy spits at my boots. “We will kill you,” he informs me in broken Lyron. “You and all your high kings.”

Chapter 4

I rein in my rising temper, reminding myself that this meeting is about maintaining Ashing standards of naval conduct and not about converting wolves to vegetarians. War is horrid enough without forgetting that those on the other side of the broadsides are human beings. Perhaps ones with whom I’ve more in common than the swath of Lyron subjects who make their life outside the sea.

Plus, ensuring that our own captured sailors are treated well starts with showing the same courtesy to a frightened midshipman. So, I nod to Korrelie as if the boy hadn’t just spit at me and pull back my hand. “A pleasure to make you acquaintance, Midshipman,” I answer in Tirik, which is greatly more fluent than the boy’s Lyron. “Are your sailors well?”

He raises his chin. “We are held prisoner.”

“Yes, I’m aware. But besides that inconvenience, have your needs been seen to adequately?”

His nostrils flare, and he studies me with the angry eyes of an injured animal examining the trap around a piece of meat.

I sigh. “I will treat you with the military courtesy that is the custom of both our navies unless you prove yourself unwilling to hold up your end of the process.” I motion him to the dried fruit and water I’ve set out on the table, not a feast, but a treat nonetheless. Catching rats to supplement rations is not unheard of for middies even in the Ashing navy, and by all reports, our comforts greatly outpace the Tiriks’. “And as you are almost an officer, I’m willing to accept your parole. Give me your word that you will do nothing to interfere with the operations of this ship or try to escape, and you will be free to move about the decks until we near port.”

Korrelie might as well be deaf for all the response I get from the boy.

I clear my throat. “I thought you’d be interested to know that we are heading for an Ashing port. Once there, you and your men will be transported to one of the other kingdoms to join fellow prisoners of war.” Ashing is too small to house and sustain camps and prisons. “If you’ve questions I might answer without violating my own fleet’s security, I am happy to oblige.”

The boy’s face tightens. He glances once at the table, then puts his hands behind his back as if to keep himself from reaching for the food. The anger and hate rolling off him are potent enough to curdle cream. I wonder what Ashing or any other Lyron League kingdom could have possibly done to warrant such personal fury. A heartbeat later, I have my answer as the boy speaks again.

“Greysik,” he says, pronouncing the word like a curse. “Is that not the name of the oppressors of the Ashing people?”

“I am a member of the Ashing royal family,” I say flatly, “if that is what you are asking.”

The boy nods, his eyes narrowing at me as if searching for poisonous snakes I doubtlessly keep in my pockets. Raising his chin, the middie speaks loudly enough to be heard throughout the ship. “The Greysiks and other filth sitting on your throne, swaddled in comforts the people break their backs to deliver, are the disease behind orphaned children and hungry families. I will give you no parole or cooperation, Nile Greysik. And once Tirik is victorious and all people breathe free, I will join them in dancing upon the remains of your throne and bones.”

Well, this is going swimmingly, isn’t it?

I motion for the marine guard to take Korrelie back to the holding cell with other Tirik prisoners while I retrace the encounter in my mind. I search for what I said wrong, desperately hoping that I did say something wrong. Because the alternative is that even at fourteen, a Tirik officer so hates my people that he’s unwilling to shake hands. And if that’s true, I do not see how we will ever end the war short of destroying each other.

I return to deck to a hushed silence, as if the crew took a collective step backward with my emergence. Ellis, the master’s mate, refuses to meet my eyes. Landon turns his back and throws his energy into working the pump, though very little water remains on deck. They heard the Tirik boy’s words and are as little happy with my extending a hand to the enemy as he’d been. If I was attempting to close the gap between our peoples, I succeeded in accomplishing the opposite.

I force a smile to my face.

Hands formally touch foreheads.

I clear my throat. “As you were.”

The men and women around me return back to their tasks. Outside my interference, the crew works together smoothly, needing few words exchanged between each other even for the most complex of tasks. Many have been at sea longer than I, and their training under Captain Fey has them going about duties with little more from me than official approval for tasks they intended to undertake anyway. The truth of Syd’s words returns to me. I am the ship’s captain, and I’m the least useful body on deck.

Hours pass, and the watch changes, the fog still hanging thick around the ship. I look up the shrouds to ensure the lookout at the top of the mainmast is alert. He is. And below him, hanging upside down by his knees on the rigging, his arms thrown wide to enjoy the bustling wind, is my curly-haired Mr. Jax.

I can’t claim myself innocent of the same behavior a few years past, but I am starting to see why it drained the blood from Captain Fey’s face every time I did.

“Mr. Jax,” I holler up into the rigging. “A word, if you please.”

Jax swings himself upright immediately and scampers down like a monkey. Within moments, he stands on the quarterdeck, trying to tug his coat straight without me noticing. “Ma’am?”

“I’m very short on officers, Mr. Jax,” I tell the boy solemnly. “It would be very inconvenient for me if you broke your neck on this cruise.”

I see the denial of any such possibility flicker in the middie’s eyes, followed at once by trained instinct never to contradict a ship’s captain. One that, clearly, Syd failed to acquire. Before Jax opens his mouth to make a promise he’s no intention of keeping, I step closer to him and lower my voice.

“Additionally, I will be looking to you for information and advice, Mr. Jax. And I little fancy having to climb to the foremast to discover the status of our prisoners, the repairs, and crew watch bills.”

That makes the boy straighten. “Aye, ma’am,” he says, touching his hat. “Was there something specific you needed to know, ma’am?”

My throat tightens. Don’t ask questions to which you little want to know the answer. “Mr. Jax,” I ask quietly nonetheless, “were you on deck last night when our gun discharged?”

The middie nods solemnly. “Aye.”

“And did you happen to see anyone smoking or having open flame beside it before that happened?” I hold my breath.

Jax nods. “No sailors near that gun at all, ma’am. Only Lieutenant Carley. He was smoking a pipe there for a good half hour, ma’am.”

Syd, you bastard. I shut my eyes, but the moment is short-lived.

“Deck there!” The lookout’s voice rolls down from the foremast. “Sail off starboard! Tirik by the looks of her! Square rig with more guns than we have.”

Considering that we have eight guns on each side and two chasers, it was hardy likely that anyone out there would have fewer guns than us. Worse, I’ve not the sailors to work all the guns we do have. And if we need to alter sail, I’d be lucky to have just two of the great beasts ready for action.

“All hands on deck,” shouts Syd, appearing beside me at once. “We shall beat to quarters.” He shouts the order to bring the crew to battle stations.

“Belay that.” My voice carries through the deck, pausing the crew in midstep. I feel their confused gazes, but it is Syd to whom I address my orders. “We will indeed come to quarters, Mr. Carley, but in silence. Any ship out here is likely to outgun the Marquis, but small also means fast and difficult to spot in the fog. Our only hope of winning this fight is to avoid it. So we shall have full noise discipline from this moment on. Nothing to draw attention to our location. Understood?”

Syd looks ready to argue, but then a flash of unexpected respect glints in his eyes as he touches his hat. A moment later, the deck comes alive with rushing sailors. Loose objects are cleared or tied down, a net is slung above the deck to catch falling debris, sand is spread onto wooden planks to help with footing. Three minutes and the Marquis is as ready for battle as she’ll get.

“Do you think she sees us, ma’am?” Jax whispers.

As if hearing the middie’s question, a great gun belches in the distance, its flash lighting up the foggy murk. A moment later, a splash sounds a cable’s length from our bow.

“I believe she might,” Syd says calmly.

Chapter 5

My heart is oddly steady as I keep my eyes on the fog and touch Syd’s arm to get his attention. “Set all sail,” I order in a barely audible whisper. “Now.”

The muscles of his forearm coil beneath my touch. “Are we cowards who run?” Syd hisses, his nostrils flaring.

I wait for the rush of panic and self-doubt to flow through me, but it doesn’t. Not even with Syd’s taunt beside me and the deck vibrating with energy of the crew as they stand at battle stations, waiting for orders that will decide their lives. And deaths.

“Knowing when not to fight is strategy, not cowardice,” I tell Syd levelly, well aware of the crew’s listening ears. “One that Tirik are fools not to understand. I am not a fool.”

“They’ve just fired shot at us,” Syd insists, a glint of panic in his dark eyes for the first time. His hands twitch at his sides. “We must fight.”

I drape my hands behind my back. Slow. Easy. Trained. “They fired a shot at where they think we might be,” I say quietly but surely, as if the discomfort in Syd’s eyes had calmed all doubts in mine. “And they missed. I would prefer not to find out just how long it will take them to calculate our actual whereabouts. That’s enough discussion, Mr. Carley. Be about my orders.”

Syd opens his mouth to protest, but the seamen are already in motion, swarming silently into the shrouds to set sail as I ordered. My breath halts once as the poor visibility and swaying ship threaten to knock them from precarious purchase, but the topmen know their craft. In minutes, the Marquis’s sails fill with a pop, and the ship lurches in a flight as fast as winds can carry her. Another shot sounds, farther away this time, as the Tirik ghost ship searches the thick fog for its fleeing prey.

“This is a fool’s run,” Syd hisses to me, his hands crossed too tightly over his chest. “The fog can lift at any time, and then the Tirik, not us, will chose the angle of attack. Better face them on our terms.”

At least he’s dropped the only-cowards-run approach to pushing his strategy.

A raised eyebrow is all I bother with to silence Syd. “Then we better be outside their sight sooner rather than later, Mr. Carley,” I say with a mildness that fools no one and leaves him to stand frozen in place as I call for a chart, calculating with nothing but math and compass and estimates. Squirrel keeps himself beside me, fetching anything I might need. Sunset. I need to keep us alive and out of reach of the Tirik man-of-war’s guns until sunset for the second part of my plan to work.

Silence reigns, interrupted only by the occasional quiet call of the lookout. The Tirik are following, the calls assure us. Out of gun range but close enough to occasionally spot our sails. A game of cat-and-mouse in the fog.

“You’ve but delayed the inevitable,” Syd says, staring into the darkening sky. The setting sun saturates the thick air, heralding the night’s blackness more quickly than usual. “They’ll catch up to us.”

“I know.”

He leans his elbows on the rail, his fingers curling and releasing. “They’ll be atop us by morning, certainly. Perhaps sooner.”

I nod. “Yes.”

Syd drops his voice. “And what then, Nile? Will you strike the colors in surrender?”

I check the setting sun and give Syd a half smile. “Have a boat readied, Mr. Carley.”

“A boat?”

“A boat,” I repeat with a calm I feel none of. “I’m of a mind to amuse the enemy this night.”

With the blanket of darkness wrapping the deck, we work by feel as much as sight to slip one of the Marquis’s small boats, now rigged with a mast, into the water. Holding three covered lanterns in my hand, I watch the little boat hop around the rough sea. My stomach is tight as stone. The probability of this concoction of a plan working is fifty percent at best in a calm sea—and I know that much from Intermediate Naval Strategy, not actual experience. I only remember the idea because I’d argued against it with Captain Fey, my twelve-year-old self insisting that the variables were too unpredictable, too much outside human control to be worth the risk.

“There will come a time, Ms. Greysik, when half a chance is more than you dare hope for,” Captain Fey had told me. I didn’t believe him. When Captain Fey had a plan, you knew it would work.

“A line, please,” I ask of Landon, and wrap the rope securely around my waist. A world lies between studying theory and gambling a crew’s life on it. My hands are oddly steady despite the cold, the rush of blood through my veins an exhilarating drive. All around the Marquis is the majestic infinity of the ocean, inky black with night and alive as always. A rare twinkle of stars belies the fog is starting to clear. “Line secure,” I tell Landon, who walks over to check my knots nonetheless.

I step toward the edge of the Marquis, where the little boat is tethered on the other side of the hull, and reach for the rail.

“It shouldn’t be you,” Syd says, putting his body between me and the exit. “You are the captain. It shouldn’t be you. One of us will do this. Me. I volunteer.”

“I’ll go,” Jax echoes in his small voice. “I volunteer too, ma’am.”

“Or me,” say others in the crew.

I reject them all, just as I had an hour ago when I explained my plan to them. I tell them again that it has to be me because I’m the strongest swimmer of crew—which is likely true since many a sailor believes swimming a hazard that only prolongs death should one find himself overboard—but whether it’s true or not little matters. I know full well that my swimming skills are not the real reason I am going myself. I am going because this whole plan follows my gut, and I want to bear the brunt of the consequences myself. The Marquis may be my ship for only days, but while it’s mine, I will protect it with my life.

“You have the deck, Mr. Carley,” I tell Syd as I check that my three lanterns are firmly closed and concealed. One deep breath later, I am climbing down the handholds into the boat and choppy sea. The boat’s little deck moves like a phantom in the darkness, plunging down and up and sideways in a way the ocean alone predicts. My blood sings with a rush of fear and energy that tingles my skin.

“Cast off,” I call as loudly as I dare and crouch low to steady the craft. The boat shifts uncertainly, the briny lapping of sea whispering against its sides. Drops of cold water spray my bare feet. From down here, the Marquis’s hull looks impossibly large. An island of safety that I’m about to leave behind.

“Casting off, aye,” a soft call returns to me. A moment later, I feel the line tethering my boat to the Marquis release, casting us into the open ocean.

The waves take me at once, the swells no match for the rudder and single sail I have. A hard gust of wind pulls the rope from my hands, taking skin with it. It was wishful thinking that I might control the boat in this sea. My breathing quickens, my heart racing the wind.

Stop. Breathe. Focus.

I swallow, forcing my bloody hand to find grips. No, I won’t be fighting the ocean, but perhaps I don’t need to. I’m here to confuse the Republic, and for that I primarily need to remain alive. And not capsize.

The biggest problem with my lack of steerage is that I can’t guess how much time I have left before the length of rope between my waist and the Marquis goes taught. Forcing my hands to move quickly, I tie the sail and rudder lines to the boat’s hull and rise to my feet, my eyes fixed on the three lights atop the Marquis’s masts.

Come on. Come on. I beg my crew silently. Hurry.

After two long heartbeats, the first of the Marquis’s lanterns blinks out of existence. Then the next. And then I feel the line around my waist tighten.

Too soon. I need more time before the rope pulls me off. A few more seconds or this is for naught. Before I can reconsider, my hands drop to the knots holding the rope around my waist. I untie my tether just as the last light of the Marquis disappears. The boat bucks, and the line that was once around my waist falls away into the darkness of the sea with a gentle plop that leaves me utterly alone in the never-ending vastness of the ocean.

For a heartbeat, I’m nothing but an insignificant speck, one of millions floating in the sea. A hint of vertigo spins me, making me grip the sides of the boat as the Marquis shifts away at eerie speed. But that’s all the time I have for the fear that washes over me, and with the next breath, I force my body back to its task.

Securing the lanterns I’d brought to the boat’s makeshift mast, I light them quickly. With fog, darkness, and distance, the Republic will be hard-pressed to imagine that these lanterns are not really the Marquis’s guiding lights. If I’m right, the Tirik ship will follow this little boat’s lights for the rest of the night while the Marquis disappears into the ocean’s vastness.

If I’m wrong, we are dead.

Whether I’ll be alive to discover what happens is another matter entirely. With a final prayer to the waves and wind, I brace myself and dive into the water.

Chapter 6

The freezing ocean takes my breath, the waves I cannot see crashing over my head. My muscles and lungs scream their agony as I flail to raise my head above the swells. I steal hungry gulps of air when my head manages to break the surface long enough for such luxury.

The next chance I have at a full breath, I fill my lungs and duck beneath a swell. The instant it passes, I thrust myself up to the surface and force my eyes to get their bearings on the dark shape that is the Marquis. And then I swim like hell toward it.

It does little good. No more good than the little sail and rudder had done for the boat. The water closes over me harder than my arms and legs can keep up with. But I kick my legs nonetheless. It is my only chance to live, and I have to live. Have to get my ship back to harbor.

Water enters my mouth, and I fight against inhaling as something rough hits my side, disappears, and whacks me again.

The rope. The ocean dragged the rope along at the same trajectory as it now drags my body. With my last bit of strength, I grab on to the rope and wrestle it around my waist. Then, hand over hand, I haul myself to the Marquis’s hull.

I’m an arm’s length away when the ship swings toward me. I throw my legs forward to brace against the hull before the wood can split my skull. Calls sound from the deck as the crew realizes what’s happened and sailors swarm down to lift me the rest of the way.

Then I’m on my hands and knees on the deck, spitting water and shivering. My head rises long enough to see the three lights of my decoy bobbing at sea, before it drops back to the planks. “Helm,” I croak into the silence around me. “Bring us around. All hands to deck to wear ship.”

* * *

Syd wraps a blanket around my shoulders and guides me to the captain’s cabin, his strong arms protectively wrapped around my body. The port window is covered tight to allow a lantern to be lit without the light being visible outside the ship. After depositing me in a large armchair, Syd walks around and crouches before me. His handsome face peers up at mine, the lantern light playing in his brown eyes. “Are you all right?”

I nod, my teeth chattering.

Syd rises long enough to fetch a mug of tea he’d ordered brought, and he shoves the warm liquid into my hands. “That was pigheaded, Nile,” he says softly, crouching before me once more. “You should have let me go. I’m expendable. You are not.”

I stare at the tea.

“There is nothing in it,” Syd says with a sigh. “Drink.”

I obey. The warm liquid rolls down my throat into my trembling limbs. “No one is expendable.”

Syd closes his eyes, his hands on my knees. “Yes, we are. Some of us.” Taking a breath, he looks at me again, his gaze brushing every soaked inch of me. “I still dislike you having gone out, but the crew is pleased. Both with your mettle and the fact that we’ve a chance to lose our tail without getting ripped to shreds.”

“I thought you wanted me to engage the Tirik.” I frown at my suddenly empty cup, and Syd refills it from the teapot before I have to ask.

“I did,” he admits. “More accurately, my hot blood did in the excitement of the moment. But I think some part of me always knew you were right.” The corner of his mouth tugs into that irreverent half smile again, the one that makes my chest tighten. “Perhaps there is a reason why you are the captain of the Marquis and not me. One that has little to do with bloodlines.”

I look down, struggling to hide just how much the compliment means to me, how starved I am for a word of praise. Pathetic. Perhaps I went out into that boat for myself as much as for the ship.

Syd’s words from a day ago—waves, has it only been a day?—come back to me. “It’s all an illusion,” he’d said about command. “A game that we all play in hopes the common sailors don’t realize our utter insignificance. How utterly alone we are…”

I rise, pulling the blanket off to unbutton my soggy coat. My hands shake from the cold, my bloody fingers working the buttons clumsily.

I realize Syd is behind me only when I feel him take the weight of my sodden coat and whisk it away. He rummages in the Tirik captain’s chest, touching the dead man’s things without hesitation, until he comes up with an overcoat. Too large by far—of a size to fit Syd himself—but it’s made of good warm wool. And dry.

I nod my thanks and hold out my hand, but Syd steps neatly around my outstretched arm and lays the garment around my shoulders. His hand slips along the fabric, hooking under my wet braid and pulling it away from my neck. His touch lingers there, sure and warm against my skin.

I stiffen. My chest squeezes, my heart suddenly pounding too hard against my ribs. That touch, held just a little too long to be accidental, sends heat along my frozen bones. My feet move, taking one clumsy step away, then two. I turn slowly, facing the lieutenant, who looms over me.

Syd’s shoulders are wide, his clothes stretched over a taut body, and his eyes… His dark eyes pierce me as if to say, I understand. You and I, we are the same.

“Brave, smart, and beautiful,” Syd says quietly, like a thought spoken aloud by accident. His face flushes, but instead of turning away, he grins, owning his admission. “Well, I’ve been told I wear my thoughts on my sleeve—apparently I narrate them too.”

Instead of being cold, I’m suddenly warm. Too warm. Blood pounds, my body alight with unfamiliar tingles and excitement as my mind screams its warning. Wrong. Untrue. Undeserved. Illegal. Impossible.

I swallow. Back away, needing the distance to catch my breath. To find my voice. “I… I errr… I still need a copy of your orders,” I blurt. “For the log.” Orders. Of all the stupid things to bring up now, with me having nearly died, an enemy ship chasing in our wake, and Syd doing whatever this is, I decide to talk about paperwork. Bloody brilliant.

Syd raises a brow. “My orders,” he says. “Of course.”

I clear my throat. “Thank you.”

Syd chuckles. His hand jets forward, catching my wrist in a strong but careful hold. “I might have a copy with me,” he whispers, closing the distance between us again. The heat of his body swirls around us, his dark eyes sparkling like a cat’s. Syd’s free hand comes up to push a stray strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. His face bends down toward mine.

“What are you doing?” The words, spurred by the part of my mind that still works, slip past my racing heart. We are on duty. In uniform. On the same ship. I’m his bloody captain. I’m… I’m wrong for this ethereally beautiful male before me.

Syd’s throat bobs. “Stealing a moment with an exquisite woman,” he whispers.

Chapter 7

We can’t.” My voice is too high, too breathless.

“Says who?” Syd purrs.

“Everyone. The rules, the Admiralty, the…” I close my eyes. “What are you doing, Syd?”

“What are you doing?”

“Coming to my senses.” I step away again, shaking his hold off me. The movement is harder than it should be, and I feel the loss of Syd’s touch keenly. No one has touched me thus before. And for good reason. “I’m your commanding officer, Mr. Carley. We can’t—”

“The rules about command are to protect the subordinates. I little think anyone would claim that you overpowered me and forced me into your bed against my will, ma’am,” Syd says with a dry smile. “There will always be rules, Nile, but a life at sea need not mean a life without pleasure.”

I shake my head, clearing the fog of a too quickly beating heart. This is wrong. I know it deep inside, on levels I don’t fully understand with my mind. Not just wrong because it’s against the rules, but wrong because it is wrong.

“I need you to return to deck, Mr. Carley.” I enunciate each word clearly, lest I confuse myself. “Keep watch until I relieve you. You’re dismissed.”

Syd recoils, his face a storm of hurt tinged with rage. “I see.” The words are clipped, breaths quick. His hands grip the back of a chair, knuckles white. “May I just ask one question before I go, ma’am?”

No. I know I should say no. But I nod.

Syd’s nostrils flare. “Is it because I’m low born?”

“Have you lost your wits?” I blink. “It is because forty-eight hours ago, I did not know a Syd Carley even existed in the Ashing fleet. One hour ago, I was at death’s door. It is because we are aboard a ship of war, not in a dance parlor. You and I both have duties to attend to, and bedding isn’t one of them.”

“Right.” Syd’s voice says he believes not a word of the truth. Sticking his hat back onto his head, Syd gives me a mocking salute and is gone before I can utter another word.

It takes all my effort to think of anything except Syd. Even the worry over whether the Tirik will take the bait lies in the shadow of the odd encounter. What in the storms was the lieutenant thinking? What in the world was I thinking? I force myself to eat and change and sit on the dead captain’s cot to rest my body. I know I should sleep, but I can’t.

The night drags itself hour by hour. It is a battle of will with myself to stay belowdecks, to pretend I’m not jumping at every creak, wondering if this is when the lookout will shout, Deck, there! Sail! Better to stay below, to pretend as if I’ve faith in our plan. Our safety.

I don’t recall dozing off, but the first rays of dawn tickle my eyes awake. Dawn. Dawn has come and there is no cry from the lookout, no sailors rushing to battle stations. Something in my chest falls away, and my body sinks once more into the darkness of sleep. This time, deep and restful.

The ship’s bell is calling the change of watch when next I rise, straighten my uniform, rebraid my hair. If anything, the episode with Syd made it plain that everything I do sends a message whether I wish it to or not. And if I fail to control the narrative, it shall control me. And the ship.

“All is well,” the lookout had called, and that is what my appearance needs to say as well. So I force myself to dress carefully and ascend the deck with a dignity worthy of a captain who’d made a decision, not tossed a pair of dice and prayed that her absurd plan would work. Drawing a breath, I hoist myself out of the hatch on the deck.

And find my crew drunk.

“Three cheers for Captain Greysik,” Syd calls, raising a sword above his head.

“Harazzah! Harazzah! Harazzah!” shouts the crew, their cups of spirits high in the air.

The anger pulsing through my veins threatens to take my breath. No spirits. I told Syd no spirits. He’d not only contradicted my orders, he did it in a way that’s guaranteed to put the entire crew squarely on his side when enforced.

“Mr. Carley.” My voice is glacial, and several of the crew exchange concerned glances. Several others hurry to drain their cups. “Mr. Carley. Have all the spirits dumped overboard, then consider yourself relieved of duty. I don’t know what protocols you followed when you served on the Swift, but here, when I give an order, I expect it to be obeyed.”

The deck falls silent. Even the wind beating on the canvas sounds too loud for the gray cloud that my words summon over the Marquis.

Syd, standing tall and muscled and perfect on the quarterdeck, looks down his nose at me. “Not for nothing, Nile,” he says, putting his hands into the small of his back, “but this crew has earned their rest. Your Highness should reconsider her decision to deprive them of what their counterparts on the Faithful and Swift enjoy every day.”

I can see agreement with Syd’s words play in the seamen’s eyes. I am the villain, the tyrant, the heartless bane of their existence. Syd has discovered my fear and is using it against me.

Fine. I grit my teeth and straighten my spine. Fine. I’m not here to make the crew like me. I’m here to keep them alive. There is a Tirik ship with twice our guns hunting us, a prize crew too small to stand up to sea combat, and days yet before we are safe in Ashing waters.

A calming coolness coats my nerves, my chest. Not an absence of emotion, but a distance from it. As if the fear of loneliness and the crew’s judgment has bowed its head in deference to my job. I do not need Syd Carley to be my friend. I need him to be my first officer. And if he can’t do that, I do not need him at all.

“Landon, Ellis.” I find the men easily, and something about my stance and voice has them touching their foreheads before I’m done speaking. “Escort Mr. Carley to his cabin, if you please. Mr. Jax, have the spirits emptied as I instructed.” My orders hang above the deck for a heartbeat before the crew sets them in motion. I cross my arms and lift my chin, my heart beating hard but steady beneath my perfect coat.

The next hour passes in silence, with none of the crew daring to look at me too long, much less approach. Where Syd’s easy smile used to be, now only cold formality lives. It stings to be so distant from everyone that I feel more like a concept than a person, but the sting helps me think. Notice things.

Such as the tightness of Jax’s freckled face and the uncharacteristic way he worries the hem of his coat.

“Mr. Jax,” I call quietly, motioning the middie to me. “What is on your mind, sir?”

Jax touches his hat, his feet shifting beneath him.

“Words please, Mr. Jax.”

The middie’s voice is feather soft. “You recall a little earlier, ma’am, when you’d made a comment about Swift’s protocols?”

I nod, the boy’s anxiety making my own muscles tense. A slow knowing kind of dread fills me, and I’m certain that something is very, very wrong even before he speaks.

The boy swallows. “Well, that started the crew talking. And Vicom and Nunes, they are both from the Swift, ma’am. The only ones. Neither one of them has ever seen Mr. Carley before. They did have a third lieutenant aboard but he went missing while boarding the Marquis and was presumed dead. Vicom and Nunes thought Mr. Carley a Faithful officer. So when you said he wasn’t…”

My heart stops beating. Syd Carley is not from the Swift. Or the Faithful. The past two days replay themselves in my mind, each piece adding to a horrible puzzle. Syd’s late and odd appearance, his accent, his ill-fitting third lieutenant's uniform, his too-forward manners. His presence beside the accidentally discharged gun that guided a Tirik ship to us in the fog. The insistence we stay and fight an impossible battle. The oh-so-right words uttered in my cabin, the play at seduction. And now the final piece in Syd’s game—the play to render my crew ineffective and turned against me. I see it now, the full picture. Blood drains from my face.

“Mr. Jax,” I say with a calm I feel none of, “beat to quarters and prepare to repel boarders.”

“Boarders from where?” Jax’s eyes widen as he looks at the clear ocean waters.

“From our prison hold, I suspect, Mr. Jax,” I say dryly. “Syd Carley is not an Ashing officer, but a Tirik one.”

“True.” Syd’s voice carries over the deck as he pulls himself through the hatch and points a pistol at my chest. There is no flirtation, no happy irreverence in his dark gaze as he pulls the trigger.

Chapter 8

I dive out of the way, throwing myself down to the deck. The bullet whizzes above me and lodges in the mainmast.

“Jax, my pistols!” I yell and am relieved to see the boy scamper away as the sailors rush to distribute cutlasses among themselves.

Landon is halfway through distributing cutlasses when a herd of freed Tirik prisoners erupts from the hold. Their clothes and skin are dirty from their time in the prison hold, but their eyes flash with feral wildness. They carry makeshift weapons, whatever they’d had a chance to grab in the past hour, and the element of surprise. My crew, by contrast, is startled and exhausted. And—thanks to Syd—well plied with alcohol. Five of them are too wobbly to stand on their own two feet. But they are all ready to fight.

The Tirik coming up through the hatch’s funnel meet Ashing blades. In the front lines, Midshipman Korrelie picks up Squirrel and throws him against the mast. I scream my fury.

Syd discards his now-empty pistol and draws a sword, his eyes still on me.

“Captain!” Landon shouts, and it takes me a moment to realize he means me. I glance over in time to see him slide a sword toward me. “On your right!”

I swing, slicing down a man intent on smashing my head with an iron ball. The steel bites through flesh, hits bone. A scream sounds, distant despite happening right beside me.

Syd ignores his fallen comrade.

“Why did you wait so long to attack?” I ask in Tirik.

Syd closes the distance, stepping over the dead man’s body and aiming his blade at my chest. “Because I’m not an idiot. Having the Tirik frigate take care of you was my first choice.” He shrugs. “Plus, you were so eager to fall for the ruse, I needed to see where I could take it.” Syd’s sword flies at my neck.

I block, the impact echoing through my muscles and singing in my bones. I had been willing to play into his game. Willing to do anything for a friend.

My eyes lock on Syd’s sword, an officer’s weapon that fits perfectly in his large hand. We never did find the weapon of the Marquis’s captain. Or the body. The captain who spoke Lyron so well he read books in our language for pleasure. “The Marquis was yours, wasn’t she?” I rasp. Gathering all my strength into a single thrust, I shove Syd’s sword away and quickly find my feet.

Syd steps back and rebalances, adjusting his stance to take the most advantage of his greater reach. “The Marquis is the Republic’s. But yes, I am her captain.”

“Was,” I correct as I sidestep a lunging thrust that would have disemboweled me if I moved a second slower. My boot scrapes the sand as I close the distance between us and fight to keep my ground. Only by keeping close, staying inside Syd’s guard such that his longer reach becomes his liability, can I hope to win. “Do you really believe the Republic’s rhetoric?” I ask.

“Is there any kingdom in the Lyron League that would educate an orphan thoroughly enough to fool even an Ashing princess?” Syd demands. “Any kingdom that would have granted a nobody like me command of a ship?”

I kick his knee.

Syd shifts, and my foot connects with the meat of his thigh instead. With his free hand, Syd strikes me across the face.

I stumble backward, keeping my balance only by virtue of running into someone behind me. The pain of the blow barely registers before Syd’s sword comes again, feigning high, then cutting down and across my chest.

The angle of his strike forces me into a weaker, backhanded parry.

Syd pushes the advantage, pressing with all his strength against my defense. My arms tremble, giving way to his deadly blade inch by inch. Over our crossed swords, our gazes meet and lock. Familiar, beautiful brown eyes stare into mine.

“Do you hate me?” I ask.

“I rather like you.” Syd kicks me away and swings his blade. “You are decent enough for a new officer, and you treat the crew well. It’s what you stand for that I despise.”

I stumble back and pivot. The move is fast enough to save my life, but Syd’s blade bites into my arm just the same. Warm red blood soaks my jacket, but the pain is numb in battle’s heat. I sidestep the next attack, lower my center, and lunge inside with my sword extended. From the corner of my eye, I see Jax dashing toward me, his hands gripping my pistols, his feet navigating the bloody melee.

Syd sidesteps to parry my thrust, and we end standing a hand’s width apart.

I feel as much as see his arm draw back, the hilt of his sword aiming for my temple. My injured arm shoots up to block the blow. I scream in pain when it connects.

“I’m sorry,” says Syd, and I know what he means. Sorry for causing me pain, not for trying to end my life.

Gasping, I draw back and punch him in the nose. There is a crunch, and blood flows freely down his face, soaking his shirt.

“What would you have done if I’d accepted your advances?” I pant, putting my hand behind my back. I let my sword fall from my grip as Jax presses the cool hilt of a pistol into my palm. To my right, Ellis and Landon form a protective wall, as if keeping me alive will ensure an Ashing victory.

“Talked my way into an audience with your father,” says Syd, running a sleeve over his face to stop the blood. “And then killed him.”

“It almost worked,” I confess and press the unmistakable barrel of a primed pistol against Syd’s sternum.

Syd freezes. His eyes take in the pistol first, then my face. His jaw tightens, chin rising into the air.

“Surrender,” I whisper. “Surrender and give me your parole to make no move against Lyron.”

“I can’t.” Syd fights for a smile, of all things. “You know I can’t.”

My eyes sting.

Syd makes a grab for the pistol in my hand. My finger tightens, the trigger depressing before I can think. The pistol’s report feels as loud as a great gun’s as it belches its small ball into Syd’s gut.

Syd’s eyes widen in pain, his arms slackening as he drops to his knees.

And stupid idiotic me catches Syd as he falls. He swallows, finding my eyes. There is no coming back from a belly wound, and we both know it.

“It is unfortunate you were born in Ashing,” Syd gasps between breaths, the light in his eyes dimming. “The Republic can’t win against people like you.”

“It’s unfortunate you were born Tirik,” I whisper back. “We could have been friends.”

Syd conjures one last perfect smile. “You don’t need me among your friends,” he says, closing his eyes.

* * *

I stand with my hands behind my back in Captain Fey’s cabin as he rereads the report before him and raises a brow at me. “Despite their greater numbers, the Tirik prisoners were unable to mount an offensive against better-trained Ashing seamen,” he quotes aloud. “Their resolve faltered quickly after the death of their captain.”

I nod.

Captain Fey puts down my report. “Well, Lieutenant, it appears you’ve had a bit of excitement on your cruise,” he says calmly, as if I’d run into nothing beyond a squall.

“A bit, sir.”

“In fact,” he drawls, “every sailor in your crew requested to be moved into your division on the Faithful. Even Landon.” He pauses to let the words sink in but holds up his hand before the warmth spreading through my chest can transform into a smile. “And what of the butcher’s bill?”

That snaps me back at once. “Ten seamen have been discharged dead, sir.”

Captain Fey nods. “It could have been a great deal worse, Ms. Greysik. You saved the ship.”

“The losses were double on the Tirik side, sir,” I add. “Including one Captain Syd Carley, though I understand he went by a different name in truth.”

“Ah, Mr. Carley.” Captain Fey interlaces his fingers and leans back in his chair. “According to the Tirik prisoners we interviewed upon your arrival in Ashing, the man you knew as Syd Carley was a trained intelligence officer as well as a sailor. I imagine it was his intelligence training that gave him the idea of feigning his death and infiltrating your crew. His own crew resent him for it, though, especially his decision to keep them locked up while he attempted other means of regaining the ship.”

“Strategically speaking, sir, he made the right call. Reckless, brilliant, and best of all options.” I shake my head. “How can the Tirik crew still doubt it, even after witnessing the failure of the brute-force approach firsthand? Had Syd tried to free the prisoners and retake the ship earlier, before my crew was tired and half-drunk, he’d have had no chance of success.”

“It is one of the mysteries of command, Ms. Greysik. No matter how correct your decision, someone will always be a critic.” He smiles at me. “When did you really figure out something was amiss?”

My face heats. “When…Mr. Carley indicated that he found me…attractive, sir.”

“And?” Fey asks, tilting his head.

“And I knew it could not be true. That there had to be an ulterior motive.”

For the first time in my life, I see Captain Fey bury his face in his hands and sigh deeply. “Storms help me with adolescents,” he mutters. “A mix of brilliance and stupidity in a single contrary package.”

“Sir?”

He sighs and looks up at me. “What I meant to say is that it is a pleasure having you back, Lieutenant Greysik, as it appears we’ve new orders.” Fey hands me a paper with my father’s seal clear beside the Admiralty’s.

Blood drains from my face as I read the words printed on it. Words that will send the Faithful alone into the heart of the Tirik fleet. While I understand why the king of Ashing would like to show off the Ashing naval prowess before the other kingdoms, the risk of failure outweighs the chance of success too greatly. “This is…” Choosing between impossible, suicidal, and moronic to describe my father’s latest idea is difficult.

Captain Fey quirks a brow in warning. Because there is only one response to give.

I touch my hat. “Aye aye, sir.”

END of PREQUEL NOVELLA

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About the Author

Alex Lidell is an avid horseback rider, a (bad) hockey player, and an ice cream addict. Born in Russia, Alex learned English in elementary school, where a thoughtful librarian placed a copy of Tamora Pierce’s ALANNA in Alex’s hands. In addition to becoming the first English book Alex read for fun, ALANNA started Alex’s life-long love for YA fantasy books. Alex’s debut novel, THE CADET OF TILDOR (Penguin, 2013), was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards finalist. Alex is represented by Leigh Feldman of Leigh Feldman Literary. She lives in Washington, DC.

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Also by Alex Lidell

TIDES

FIRST COMMAND (Prequel Novella)

AIR AND ASH (TIDES Book I) - Pre-Order Now

WAR AND WIND (TIDES Book II) - coming June 20, 2017

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TILDOR

THE CADET OF TILDOR

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