Oathbreaker: The Knight's Tale by Colin McComb Page B

too friendly with us. She’s got three masts on the deck and three levels below-decks, and one of those masts can double as a mooring for a light dirigible if we've got our heavy anchors down. The steerhouse sits on the top of two levels at the stern of the ship, with mage-hardened windows all ’round. She’s got a speaking-tube system that lets the captain communicate across the ship, and he runs the ship hard and well. He runs the ship for House Hulden, and they lease her services to other merchant Houses of the Empire, at least in name. In practice, Early Jon picks and chooses the contracts he wants, and he’s good enough and generous enough that he’s kept his sailing crew working with him for years. He's canny in the ways of the sea, he rises before us and is abed after. The Ocarina is the best ship most of us’ve ever sailed on, and it’s because of that that we’re in the position we’re in today.

    “Out of the way,” Pol snarled, and she reached out to shove the interloper aside. I say she reached because he wasn’t there when her hand got to where he’d been.
    “Don’t do that,” the stranger said. His voice was flat, his face empty, and it nailed Pol to the spot. If he’d flashed or growled, she might have tried again. She backed down, though, the first time I’d ever seen her do that. And now, thinking back on it, I think she might be a better fighter than I ever thought, because I guess she never got into a fight she wasn’t sure she could win, and she never’d backed down before. At least not in front of me. But this time, she put her hands down and spoke.
    “What do you want?”
    “I need to speak to your captain,” the stranger said. “I need a ship, a fast one, for myself, my charge, and my steed.”
    “Guild’s empty,” I said. “We’re just in, and we ain’t leaving.”
    “You will. I can pay.”
    Skag broke in: “We won’t. We been out to sea for a month now, and we’re due leave. You won’t find a crew willing to take you for at least a few days, unless you have truly excellent money.” Skag looked the man up and down. “A lot more than it looks like you’re carrying.” Skag had been third mate before he’d been busted back down, and he knew how a ship ran. “Anyway, the captain won’t see anyone ’til he’s seen to the replenishing of the ship.”
    “I do not ask,” the man said. “I require.” His hand drifted to his sword handle, idly, slowly, and it was suddenly perfectly clear to me that it wasn’t idle at all, that this man didn’t make threats, not like sailors do.
    “But you can’t require,” continued Skag. “Our ship is light-staffed as it is, and our sailors have spread through the city. No way we can run a ship without our men, and no way we’ll be able to find them all in this city in the next few days. They’re at the whorehouses or the gambling dens, or they’ve headed out into the country. Like I said, we’re due leave, and our sailors take it when they get it. They’ll hear if we put the word out that there’s more money to be made, but I don’t make any guarantees.”
    The stranger looked at us, one after the other, studying us. Though he didn’t like it, he saw the truth in our faces like sun off the water. He nodded, tilted his head a tiny piece, and said, “My apologies for the waste of your time. I shall return tomorrow evening to speak with your captain, and with enough money to hire your services.” He turned and headed up toward Candlemaker’s Square. That’s when the clouds broke, and that’s when we bolted in.
    We spent that night inside, playing cards and drinking ale, cursing the weather. It poured through the night, filling the hilly streets of Westport with the water the clouds’d reclaimed from the sea. When we stepped out the next morning, I was surprised there weren’t fish flopping in the gutters and dying on the stones. The alchemical smears from the presses had been washed away, down to harbor, leaving