The 3 Seas

“Anyway, listen,” Katryn said to Jace. “When the two of you came crashing into my cave, I was running pretty low on supplies and not sure what to do next… we helped each other out, though to be fair, you made it easier for me to get away from Faresia than it would have been otherwise.”
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If Jace was certain of anything in his increasingly uncertain life, he was sure that Sheiral would welcome the news that they would soon be making port and leaving the tiny, poorly furnished, and increasingly fishy-smelling hold of the Horizon Chaser behind them for solid land. He held onto this piece of news as talisman to ward against her ill-will and the stream of arcane, incomprehensible profanity she directed at him the moment he descended below deck, knowing that it would be just the thing to turn her mood around and coax a smile out of her, or possibly even a kind word.
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“Oh, well, excuse me for not knowing the finer points of enchanter’s syntax,” Katryn said.
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Katryn spent most of the passage to Montport buttoned up in her cabin… going over her books and charts, Jace assumed. She stuck her head into the hold to yell at her passengers when their arguments became audible. She came out for food, after it was made clear that procuring and preparing fish were entirely Jace’s responsibility. She came out on deck sometimes in the evening, when Jace’s lonely watch was ending.
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In the early hours of the voyage, Jace had been looking forward to Sheiral’s recovery… which he had no doubt she would make, as there seemed to little point to his rescuing her and their escaping the island on what was clearly a magical ship if she never woke up… so that she could be suitably impressed with the way he had discovered a magical ship and arranged for their passage from the island.
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Five days out from Faresia, Jace was finding out the limitations of his fish-catching abilities. Out on the open ocean, he could not simply dive overboard at will and bring back up a meal’s worth of food. While the Horizon Chaser displayed a remarkable ability to slow down or loop around him without losing its speed, her captain was not tolerant of the idea of treading water while the boy hunted around the dark depths for stray fish. Loki, whom Jace had gathered was the strange ship’s pilot, was even less patient.
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“If you don’t believe that two reasons are sufficient to stay my hand with steel drawn against you, that actually comes to bear rather neatly with the third point,” Iskondra said to the downed man. She lowered her sword a fraction of an inch towards his face, bringing the sparking blue orb almost in contact with his skin. “Which is that ending the life of a lowly assassin is a task more fit for an executioner… or an exterminator. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that I would not stoop to doing so, if pressed to the point. It is only for the sake of the fourth and most important reason that I have not slain you.”
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The assassin faked another low charge. Iskondra kept her sword level but bent her knee, dropping her shielding hand down. The blue protective glow firmed up in anticipation of his attack. Tauri’s tail whipped around the stout wooden leg of a tavern chair.
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Iskondra lunged forward while Tauri was momentarily distracted, her sword flashing with light. The assassin twirled to the side. The blade-bond kept moving forward towards the door, but a long tail swished out from beneath Tauri’s cloak to grab onto her leg, tripping her up. She rolled onto her side as she fell, and ended up on her back, though she lost her grip on her sword.
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“All the time you have spent trailing me, Tauri Slow-Brain, and you did not realize what I was?” Iskondra taunted, holding the sword with the point towards him.
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“You can pronounce my name properly but simple conjugation, articles, and pronouns are beyond you?” Iskondra said, holding her empty hands out in front of her.
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The same day the Horizon Chaser set out for Montport, a number of people were arriving there. Among them was a tall, thin woman with long, clever-looking fingers and scales the color of rust. She was dressed all in black. On her narrow hip, she wore a long sword with a decorated ivory hilt, sheathed in a round scabbard that was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Taken as a whole, the scabbarded sword had more an appearance of being an ornate staff or scepter than anything else.
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