The 3 Seas

“So that’s a magic boat, then?” the watchman said when presented with the Horizon Chaser, sitting at anchor in the shade of a dock. “It doesn’t look very magical.”
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Jace, of course, had taken off running as soon as the two combatants’ respective attentions were fully occupied by each other. Despite Iskondra’s declared intention to protect him and Tauri’s original proclamation that he had no intention of harming him, Jace did not really feel either of them would be safe to be around.
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Tauri advanced on Iskondra, who waved her blade in two quick passes at his outreached hands, forcing him to jerk them back.
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“Do not bother to seek within for the slow-witted scribe,” Iskondra Devalion herself said, stepping through the curtain with a single long stride, her blade in her hand. “I’m afraid the stubborn fool has wisely absented himself from the premises, by way of a staircase in back of his living quarters.” She held up a book in her left hand. “Fortunately, not before he had all but finished the work I required of him… under considerable protest, of course, but I was able to make myself quite persuasive.”

“Should have joined him,” Tauri said.

“Oh, believe me when I say to you that I strongly considered it,” she said. “I was in the process of weighing the benefits of exercising the better part of valor myself when you took the decision out of my hands by involving the boy. I want you to understand the difference between yourself and me… well, one key difference among the many, which include but are hardly limited to our comparative levels of education, breeding, skill at elocution and general deportment, hygiene… that would be quite a large one and all the more unfortunate as unlike most of your defects it is something that would be entirely within your own power to redress…”

“No lists!” Tauri growled.

“Well, to be very brief, then,” Iskondra said, “the key difference with which I am concerned for the moment is that while I may have fallen into desperate circumstances, I am still essentially a woman possessed of her honor, while you are nothing more than a common criminal.”

“Criminal?” Tauri repeated. “Broke no laws yet in pursuit of goal. Not run out on debts. Not steal tomes. Not extort work from shopkeepers. ”

“Yes, I may have been forced into a position where it was not possible for me to meet my lawful obligations, and yes, I may have taken one or two morally ambiguous shortcuts in pursuit of my ultimate goal, but as that goal is itself the redress of the original error–in which I am essentially blameless–then I think I can fairly say that my conduct is ultimately lawful, whereas your ultimate goal in reference to me is most decidedly contrary to law,” Iskondra said.

“Montport law, maybe,” Tauri said. “Try not to involve self in jurisdictional quibbles, mostly.”

“Murder is not simply a jurisdictional quibble… particularly the murder of a child,” Iskondra said. “Even in the absence of codified statues expressly prohibiting it, such an act is against natural law.”

“Think so? Must not spend much time with nature,” Tauri said. “No soft spot for children in nature. Except maybe top of head, when very young.”

“I had no intention of confronting you, Tauri Quick-Claw,” she said. “I still harbor no intention to kill you… though if you press me to the point I can assure you that I will not hesitate to press mine to you. Let the boy go unharmed and we can avoid much in the way of regrettable violence.”

“Not interested in harming boy,” Tauri said. “Only look for connection. Unnecessary, it seems. Go, boy.”

Jace and started turned to run.

“You may have just saved your own life, honorless scoundrel,” Iskondra said. “Because I have no interest in staying to fight you once he is no longer in peril.”

Tauri’s tail shot out behind him, knocking into Jace’s ankles and sweeping him off his feet.

“Changed mind,” Tauri said. “Stay, boy.”

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As the bookbinder’s red ink substitution had been accepted by Katryn the first time around, Jace returned to the same shop where he had purchased it in order to buy more. Once again, he heard the evidence of a heated conversation from within.
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It turned out that Jace did not have even the smallest difficulty wrangling the position of cook for himself. He was not all hampered in his attempts to sample the better of the foodstuffs that were brought aboard the Chaser. He was not thanked for his efforts, either in preparing the food or for having procured it in the first place.
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Jace looked at the shopkeeper in confusion, but the man just returned his bewildered expression before going back to bluster at the woman again.
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Inside the store, Jace found a tall scaly woman dressed in black clothes, of a general style he recognized as having been fairly common in Keeper’s Cove: things that had once been fancy but now weren’t. She seemed to be quite engaged with the shopkeeper, a squat and spiny fellow.
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Jace felt excited when he first set off for the bookbinder’s. He was good at things like directions, and he kept them in his head rather than focusing on the strange and unfamiliar surroundings. The streets of Montport were narrow as only a few short alleys between buildings in Keeper’s Cove had been, and they were long and winding. Though the sky was blue, the sun was nowhere to be seen and the streets were shadowed.
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While there were certainly few stranger ships prowling the Outer Sea than the Horizon Chaser, it had the advantage of being small. The mind that rebelled at the sight of what should, by all rights, be a three-masted galleon could content itself with the existence of a smaller craft that propelled itself without visible means.
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Jace saw very little of Sheiral for the brief remainder of the voyage to Montport, which did not overly distress him as the change in her status from barely tolerated passenger to vital part of the crew had not been enough to lift her out of the misery with which she seemed to greet all circumstances she found herself in.
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“If you want entertainment, I can sing,” Sheiral said. “My tutors said I was wayward and backward, but I have heard what passes for singing down here…”
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