Hours before the rigger died of his infection (or, perhaps, an unintentional overdose of medicine, courtesy of his ignorant shipmates), he told Aifread an interesting story. It was disjointed and half-nonsensical, but through the hoarseness of his voice and the stuttering of his fevered lips, Aifread could recognize a tale in there somewhere. It wasn't until after the rigger stopped breathing and his body went limp that Aifread was able to piece together the narrative.

He'd had a daughter. Years ago, when he was a younger man, when there was still some unmarked skin on his body, he'd found a lover and fathered a child. Apparently it was wholly accidental. He hadn't known he was even a father until his woman showed up on the docks, baby in arms, insisting it was his.

So he married the damn woman. He hadn't even remembered meeting her, much less impregnating her, but she was the daughter of a wealthy man, so it wasn't the worst thing that had happened to him. Her father was a traditional gentleman, and only accepted him as a son-in-law to save his daughter from what he often referred to as "her greatest shame."

The rigger didn't care. He started finding himself in fancier clothing, spending more time on land, pilfering a valuable trinket or stack of gald where he could. He raided his father-in-law's stores, stealing precious metals, jewels, weapons, or anything he could get his hands on. But never enough to raise the father's suspicions enough to kick him out of the house.

It had been a good time for the rigger. He had a wife, a daughter, a chandelier, a foyer… he had enough money to eat, to drink, and best of all, to gamble. He had always told himself that this wealth, this comfort, was the reason he'd taken up privateering in the first place. His goal, his desires, all revolved around sustaining himself. And here, after accepting this woman and confronting her family, he found himself knee deep in money. He had everything he wanted.

He had to go back to the sea. He had no other recourse. He told Aifread, in gasping, stuttering breaths, that he couldn't stand wealth. He couldn't stand the dinners, the balls, the heavy purses, the stifling clothes, his family.

So he pulled on his boots and coat and left in the early hours of the morning. Before the sun rose he was on the deck of the Serpent, far out to sea. He never saw his wife again after that.

But he did see his daughter. Years after, he spied her at the harbor, skirts hiked up past her knees, dancing drunk among the sailors. He had watched her for hours, surer with each passing minute she was the baby he'd held in his arms so many years ago.

He knew he should've picked her up and carried her back to her house, to her mother, to her wealth and safety and her warm bed. He should've knocked her out and dragged her back home, back into the foyer under the chandelier, taken her up the stairs and to her own room filled with toys and children's books and a rocking horse adorned with real horse hair—he should've thrown her at the feet of her overprotective grandfather and demanded she be locked inside from then on.

But he didn't. She got drunker through the night, rowdier, more touchy. He just sat and watched her, thankful only that she did not make her way over to him and sit in his lap. She had thrown her arms around one of the rigger's shipmates and let herself be carried back out into the street, away from the bar, away from the light.

And the rigger had just turned back to his ale and drank.

The regret of that decision stayed on his mind, on his breath, as he died.

When Aifread fetched the other sailors to help him carry the rigger's body up top, he could not help but think the gods were punishing him. They were punishing him for having the audacity to think he could make deals with them.

He had been kind to the rigger—at least he thought he had—and he'd been rewarded with nothing but a sad, disjointed tale and another passing.

Perhaps he was making the wrong kind of deals.


Aifread didn't know how many of them were left, but at this juncture he wasn't sure if it was even worth it to find out. He just leaned on a barrel and stared out into the endless purple ocean, windless and silent. No one was willing to hoist the sails, to go down and sweat at the oars. All they could do now was float on, hoping that either they would cross land, another well-stocked ship, or at least die quickly.

The heat beat down on Aifread, and he couldn't hold himself up anymore. He slid down on his knees, staring at the sea between the planks in the deck's railing, and sighed. The first mate—Aifread had to correct himself: captain—walked from bow to stern and back again, telling the men to never give into despair, to keep going. It was what had kept them alive this far, after all.

Aifread didn't know how the young captain managed to walk from one end of the ship to the other, much less keep the speeches rolling. Aifread himself hadn't had anything to drink that day, so he could barely open his mouth at all. Either the captain had some sort of wellspring he was keeping a secret, or he was invincible.

His encouraging words blurred in the thick air, obscured by the heat. The only thing Aifread could hear after a few hours was the stinging billowing of the miasmic clouds above him. He swore he could hear the damn calamity, whatever it was.

He might've been hearing nothing. He might've been lost in his own mind the way the Serpent was lost at sea. Perhaps he was going insane, infected with whatever germ had crawled into the blood of the unlucky rigger.

He had checked himself for cuts, for open skin, to see if any of the rigger's infected flesh touched his own where it was vulnerable. He couldn't remember. For all he knew, he could be in bed right now, another man standing over him and shoving herbs down his throat. Maybe it was just the heat. Maybe it was nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

Wasn't that a thought?


The first mate died of sunstroke. No, he was the captain. The second captain the Serpent had had in a week, and he died much like the first. Few people noticed him gone.

They didn't even bother to throw his body off the side of the boat. But as far as Aifread could tell, no one bothered eating the bastard either. It was too much to ask to haul oneself off the hot, heavy wood, even for the promise of food.

Martel, Martel, Aifread said in his head, looking up to the windless purple sky. If I survive this, I promise, I promise I'll go back to Izoold. I'll write that woman so many letters she'll drown in them. I'll hold her and say her name, shit, I'll marry her. I'll marry her and be the best husbandfatherI'll become a goddamn father if you want me to. I'll give up piracy for good. I'll go around sinking pirate ships and making sure everyone arrives safely from one end of the sea to the other. Hell, I'll give my money away, I'll be kind, I'll be honest and trustworthy. I'll go to your church every day and kiss the feet of your statue. I swear to you, if I live I'll become everything I'm not, I swear, if I live

The only one listening seemed to be the endless, silent ocean. And even then it didn't answer.