Page 122 of The Sun King's Noon

Flint led them down the quay at a lazy stride, hands tucked in his pockets, whistling a sea shanty. A pair of chatting guards glanced up, took in the three dishevelled figures, and looked away again—likely figuring that it was just another late-night loading.

The ship Flint had chosen was moored at the very end of the quay, where the lamplight dimmed. She was a sleek thing—single-masted with a curved prow shaped like a fish’s tail. Her name, painted in red along the stern, read ‘Maiden’s Promise’.

“Expensive taste,” Richard murmured.

“Aye. And it’s ours.” Flint led them up the gangway and onto a deserted deck, before moving towards the ship’s rear. Walking past coils of rope and stacks of crates, he ushered Richard and Kaelen down a flight of steps into the captain’s cabin. It was a lavish place, with an oaken desk, a bunk hung with velvet curtains and a lamp swinging from the ceiling.

On the floor, trussed like a hog, sat its master.

He was a man of perhaps forty, with silver-black hair tied back from a thin face. A strip of cloth was knotted between histeeth. When he saw Richard and Kaelen enter behind Flint, his eyes bulged, and a muffled, pleading sound slipped from the gag. He thrashed against his bonds, creaking the floorboards, and Flint clucked his tongue.

“Now, now, Master Marek.” Flint crouched beside him. “None of that. We’ve discussed it already. You’re going to be very helpful, and then you’re going to be very lucky, and everyone will go home pleased.”

Marek’s eyes flicked between Flint and Richard, wet with terror.

Flint pulled out his knife and, ignoring Marek’s whimper, sliced the rope that bound the merchant’s ankles and wrists.

“Up you come. There’s a good man. To the wheel, if you’d be so kind.”

Marek staggered to his feet and let himself be manoeuvred up onto the deck. Flint kept a hand on his shoulder and the knife at his hip.

Richard followed and shook his head when Kaelen shot him a troubled look.

“Leave it be. I sailed to Frostheim many years ago and watched the helmsman work, but the finer points of sailing elude me.” He sighed. “It is better, I suppose, for us to travel with a guide.”

“We do not need one,” Kaelen muttered. “The generals briefed me on charts and bearings, and the basics on how to steer a ship. I know enough?—”

“Regardless, you have never sailed.” Richard entered the deck. “Marek has. Let him show us, and then we shall send him home.”

Further ahead, Flint had Marek working the lines. The merchant moved with dazed efficiency, loosening the moorings, hauling the mainsail by its halyard, leaning his weight intothe boom. The canvas snapped open with a thump, and theMaiden’s Promiseeased away from her berth.

Richard’s stomach lurched as the deck shifted beneath him.

“Steady there.” Kaelen’s hand found Richard’s elbow for the briefest moment before falling away.

The ship glided through the moonlit harbour. The quays slid by on either side, then the arm of the breakwater, and finally, they were out into the open swell, with the city’s lights dwindling behind them. Marek, hands trembling on the wheel, looked over his shoulder at the receding harbour, and a keening noise escaped his gagged mouth.

Flint let him weep his way through it. Only when Vexmara had become a smudge on the horizon did Flint at last unknot the merchant’s gag.

Marek spat the cloth from his mouth and gasped. “Please. Please, sirs, I have a wife. I have children. I have done nothing?—”

“Hush, hush.” Flint patted his shoulder. “We’re past such a point, Master Marek. We’re at the part where my friend here shows you where we’re going, and you tell us how to get there. Easy. Kaelen?”

Kaelen drew a roll of parchment from inside his cloak and spread the map across the top of the binnacle. “Singers’ Teeth is where we’re headed.”

Marek’s knees buckled, and he had to clutch the wheel to remain upright.

“No.” He shook his head. “No. No, sirs, no, you cannot mean that, you cannot—Singers’ Teeth, no sailor goes within ten leagues of those rocks, no sailor who wishes to keep his bones in their proper order. I have known plenty who tried, and none—none—returns alive. I will take you to Skythe. To Neprass. To the ice of Frostheim even, if it pleases you, but not?—”

“Master Marek.” Flint held up the knife between them and turned it slowly, so the blade glinted in the lamplight. “Honestly,I’m not a patient man—and by the gods, do I never hear the end of it from my lovers. So I’d be ever so grateful if you would tell us how to point the ship and how to read the wind. Please do so quickly, because my arm grows tired and my temper short. Do we understand each other?”

Marek swallowed, a tear sliding down his cheek. “I…yes.”

He spoke for a long time. He showed Kaelen on the chart how to reach there in eight hours, and warned of the uncharted sandbars that would gut a hull at low tide. He explained the trim of the sail when the wind backed east, and the smaller jib at the bow that should be set when the swell rose. He showed how to read the trailing log to measure their speed, and how to mark the hours on the slate beside the binnacle.

Kaelen listened intently, asking quiet questions and repeating unfamiliar terms under his breath. Richard stayed by his shoulder, trying to absorb the same.

When at last Marek had finished, he turned to Flint with a hopeful smile.