Oathen by Jasmine Giacomo

Salvor!”
    Salvor gripped his shoulder and fixed him with
a stare. “Yes, you can. And you will. You know what will happen if
you don’t.”
    Geret gritted his teeth, trying to think of an
alternate plan.
    Salvor lifted a corner of his mouth. “If it
helps, just pretend you’re me.”
    Geret’s lip curled, and he pushed Salvor back
a step. “I’m not you. I’ll never be you.”
    “That’s true,” the nobleman replied. “I’ve
always been a step ahead, and I always will be.” He turned and
descended the castle stairs.
    Geret let out a long sigh of irritation.
“Folly. I think I’ll stick to mango juice from now on.”
    ~~~
    During his practice, Kemsil discovered that he
could alter the Circuit’s default form, a sphere, to any other
shape he could hold in his mind, allowing him to hide any or all
ships from view. Unfortunately, doing so precluded him from being
able to do much else, as he had to press the single-circle symbol
and hold the new shape in his mind.
    “Don’t worry, Meena’s always hidden. I learned
what this symbol does,” he assured Rhona, indicating the pair of
triangles on the Circuit, after she expressed concern over his
ever-changing mental focus. “It was the one the former users of the
Circuit used to keep their Patruses safe in battle. She’s pressed
the symbol with me, so the Circuit will protect her no matter what
formation I choose. It won’t let me exclude her until she presses
the same button with me again, and it lets me pinpoint her without
even looking.”
    The sun reached its zenith. Kemsil informed
Rhona that his testing was complete, and that the Circuit required
more effort to extend its range, rather than to obscure more people
and things inside itself.
    “So if we sail closer together, we’ll tax you
less,” Rhona summed.
    “Exactly,” he said, rubbing his temples with
his fingers.
    “All right,” she said, tapping her chin with a
finger, “the maximum range you reached was about half a league in
all directions. We can’t very well sail all the way to Shanal
within your orange circle. The first good storm will scatter us.
I’ll put a scout ship or two ahead. If they run into trouble, the
rest of us can still have the element of stealth.” She grinned
wickedly.
    “My thanks, good captain,” he said.
    Rhona ordered the other two caravels in her
fleet, Green Pearl and Uncle Goldpouch , to scout.
Their crews raised anchor and headed out among the sun-drenched
western islands of the Jualan archipelago. Rhona led the Princeling and his four escorts after it, with a gap of
several miles since the waters were calm. Her caravel led the way,
flanked by two galleons a few lengths behind on either side, and
the remaining two brigantines followed behind them, nosing toward
the gaps between the three ships.
    The day passed quietly; the few ships they
sighted took no notice of the visible scout ships. When the last of
the sun’s afterglow had left the western horizon, Kemsil sat down
against the rail and let his head fall into his hands.
    Rhona had handed off the steering to Ruel for
a few minutes while she ate an avocado, and she squatted beside the
Jualan in the light of the ship’s jellyfish lamps,
chewing.
    “They’ll never catch you now,” she
said.
    The refugee nobleman turned to her, a wry
smile on his face. “That either.”
    “What do you mean? You can’t possibly miss
them. Your own family wanted you dead for ruining their deal! Me,
I’d be looking for ways to pay that favor back.”
    Kemsil clenched his jaw against a flurry of
emotions. “My childhood, my youth, my entire culture, are dust to
me now. I will never again set eyes on the Celestial Calendar,
where I would slip away to avoid my sisters’ bickering.” He huffed
a small snort of nostalgia. “Nor my secret beach, down through the
cave that fills at high tide, where the sharks sleep.”
    “There are more than one of those,” Rhona
said, laying a hand on his arm. “Though I hear what