The battle was over almost before it started, especially when the city dwellers got a load of the murderous band of pirates who unexpectedly joined on the side of the beastriders. Of course there were still casualties on both sides and injuries that needed to be tended. Mhaegen stepped right in to see where she could be of use.

Soon she found herself working alongside the beastrider's own healer who happened to be none other than the man who had nodded to her from the back of the ruping. When he wasn't focused on the patient before him, she caught him staring at her just as intently.

"What?" she asked self consciously.

"They said your name was Marlon?" he asked by way of a greeting.

She finished tying off a bandage and then patted the fighter on the shoulder with an encouraging smile and stood. "That's right." She began to walk among the injured looking to see if anyone else still needed her help.

The other healer followed and shook his head. "I could have sworn when I flew over…"

Seeing no where else to be of use she turned to address him directly. "Could have sworn?" she led, wondering, maybe hoping that he had noticed something about her.

"Nevermind." He smiled. He was tall, dark and handsome and he held out his hand to shake hers as if she might be a peer or an equal. "I'm Hiram Gerrera."

She shook, a little disappointed that he hadn't directly called her out in her deception. "It's very nice to meet you."

"You know you didn't have to do that back there, treating our wounded."

"It needed to be done and I had the skill." She answered bowing her head humbly.

"Your people didn't have to fight alongside us either."

She laughed. "You'd be hard pressed to keep our captain out of a fight. I'm just glad it was your side she chose to fight for."

"So am I. I don't think I'd like to be her enemy."

They faded into silence, listening to the chatter of the other sailors and beastriders getting to know one another and the sound of a voice singing. Another man with lighter skin and hair than Hiram's but still deeply tan from exposure to the sun was singing some sort of chant over the body of one of his deceased clan members.

"What's it all about?" Mhaegen asked with a soft reverence.

"They came for him ." Her new friend said with a sigh. "He has a claim to the throne."

"You mean he's…"

"Drokko Kira." Hiram nodded. "His…" he thought a moment, "great-grandfather came to the jungle to get away from the responsibility and left a warden to guard the throne in his place. Drokko's grandfather and father chose to stay out here as well."

Of course she knew the story. Every northerner had heard the story of Dina Blackwell's fateful trip down the river. Mhaegen had never expected to meet the characters on the other side of the tale. "And now?"

"The old warden died recently, so there's question as to who should rule in his place. He has a son, a spoiled child, who's grown up at the palace and believes that the throne is his by right. But there are others who believe that the Kira heir should go back to the city and take it for himself."

"So they came to bring him back to Iziz to take his place as king?" She asked.

"Or to make sure that he wasn't a threat to their own line of succession."

Mhaegen gave a little shiver in the jungle heat. She had thought that northern politics were vicious. "Do you believe he should be king? Is that why you fight for him?"

"I believe in keeping him alive long enough for him to make that decision on his own. He's my cousin," Hiram added. "Well not directly. The Gerrera family were cousins to House Kira ages ago before they married into the royal family."

"I'm sure he appreciates your loyalty." She watched as the Kira heir covered the body before him with a sheet and moved to the next victim of the violent action to sing the song again. Mhaegen pressed her own thumb to her lips and lifted her palm reverently to the salt gods.

"He never asked any of us to fight and die for him."

Mhaegen turned to see some of her own crew preparing for a victory celebration. "I doubt your cousin will feel like a party."

"I don't know." Hiram tried to smile. "Maybe he'll be thankful that your crew shortened the battle and prevented further loss of life."

…

Drokko hadn't asked for this celebration. Of course he also hadn't asked to be born a Kira, hadn't asked for the current Warden to drop dead and leave him with the choice whether to take up this responsibility or not. Still the party swirled around him in his makeshift jungle court that had been turned into a sort of pub and brothel by his recent influx of hangers-on.

A girl sat in his lap, intending to reward him for whatever it was they thought he had done to deserve all this. He pushed her away. He would take the drink they offered him however. He would drink to those who had lost their lives and maybe ease some of the stress that came along with being proclaimed the leader of this rabble.

Sanya watched him, standing a bit apart, arms crossed over her chest with a drink of her own in her hand. She thought she understood a bit of what he might be feeling, the pressure of expectations on a noble born child.

He wasn't at all what she had thought the legendary Kira heir would be like. Though she hadn't really put much thought into it since her days of telling the ghost stories about his long dead ancestors. His features were nexu like with small bright eyes and he was tanned and muscled not at all like the lanky dark haired sailor boy who stood beside her like a sworn protector.

Maybe Drokko felt her staring at him. His eyes met hers for a moment and then his gaze passed over her to Jamos. "So you're a Blackwell." His voice was slightly nasal but with a deep growl of an undertone.

"Ah… Aye," Jamos nodded as if surprised by the direct address. "I am the second son of that house. My brother will inherit the title."

Drokko pushed out the chair next to him and gestured for the other young noble to come and sit. "We could have been cousins."

Jamos glanced quickly in his captain's direction and then went to the table taking the mug of ale that was offered to him and the chair. "I suppose we would at that."

Sanya a bit miffed at being looked over stepped forward but didn't dane to sit at their table without invitation.

"I suppose…" Drokko used the same turn of phrase with a hint of a smile and barely a glance in her direction, "that I have you all to thank for coming to our aid in the skirmish earlier."

She scoffed and Jamos spoke up in her defense, "Well really it was our captain who suggested that we step in on the side of your honorable warriors."

"Your… captain, right."

Jamos turned in his chair and looked back and forth between them as if he were watching a racquetball match. "Aye, that's right. Lord Kira, may I introduce, Captain of the Bloody Galia, Lady Sanya Harkon."

The beast lord scratched his chin and looked her over appraisingly. He smiled as if they might be playing a joke on him. A girl captain? Or maybe it was the designation of 'lady' that he found humorous. He leaned toward Jamos's chair but didn't speak so low that she couldn't hear. "She's good with all those blades? I think if she crawled in my hammock and slit my throat I'd die a happy man."

She nearly choked with indignation and looked to her quartermaster to see how he would answer.

"Well, now, Lord Kira, the captain… I mean to say, she…" He stammered.

Drokko took a gulp of his ale and laughed. "Not going to lay claim to her?" He pounded Jamos on the back and looked into his cup when he should have been keeping an eye on who he was insulting. "You'll never sail beneath the Black again. You'll sit in this place and rot with the rest of the whores."

She was on him in a moment with her favorite dagger pressed to his throat. "I have never, nor will I ever, sail beneath any man!"

"Ah!" Drokko gave Jamos a wink. "Likes it on top, does she? Lucky ma-"

Sanya dug the dagger a little closer.

"Now Captain," Jamos attempted to talk her down while a crowd gathered around the table and started looking around at who they might attack first if it turned into an all out brawl. "I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it and after all he's going to be the king."

"He's not my kriffing king!" she spat.

"Aye well, if you kill him now you'll be doing a favor for those nice gentlemen we fought against today."

She growled, "Maybe we picked the wrong side." She looked around at the celebration that had come to a dead halt but she didn't lower her own blade.

Kira's supporters seemed to be watching to see if they might have chosen poorly in their leader as well, waiting to see if this slip of a girl might be the end of him.

She had thought that maybe at least his healer, the one she'd seen speaking with her own medic, might come to Drokko's defense but Mhaegen had laid a hand on his arm to hold him back.

"We'll put him in the brig." she finally decided. She didn't want royal blood on her hands as much as she would have liked to end him for the offense. "We'll take him back north with us."

That got a cheer from her own crew and a couple of her men stepped forward to do her bidding. At this a couple of his men advanced to stop them but Kira raised a hand and went willingly with his captors.

Moving away from Mhaegen the one called Gerrera asked, "Drokko, do you want me to…"

But Kira cut him off with a smile, "I've always wanted to see the north. And maybe when I get back all this trouble will have blown over."

"What makes you think you are ever coming back here?" Sanya fumed.

He nodded at her with at least mocking humility. "My apologies, Captain."

…

Sanya didn't trust herself to stay on board her own ship that night, in case she suddenly got the urge to go down to the brig and stab their prisoner. Instead she took a room in the inn over the pub alone.

The party was still going on downstairs. She wasn't sure what they were celebrating since she had locked their leader in irons.

She did hear the knock on the door but she didn't answer. So Jamos poked his head into the room cautiously, "Captain, it's me, Frasier."

"We both know you're not a kriffing Frasier." Was her answer but she didn't tell him not to come in.

He took his chances and entered. He started to say something, stopped and then started again. "Are you still angry with me for insulting you when we first met?"

She shrugged. "Didn't care if you insulted me. It was my sister you were supposed to be betrothed to. Nobody better the Dxun mess with my sister!"

"Oh." He frowned and ran a thumb along the ostentatious strip of sideburn that ran across his cheek.

"Oh?"

"In my defense I was only fourteen at the time that I said it, I hadn't yet met either you or your sister, and your brother had just insulted my family."

She grunted. He wasn't sure if it was in agreement or not.

He pressed on. "I stand by what I said though."

"You kriffing what?" She turned towards him. He had her full attention now.

"It's why I left the Hold." he explained. "I would have had to have been a fool to marry Talya when I could be out here sailing with you."

She looked away again, embarrassed.

He chuckled but she could tell it wasn't at her. "I'd have to be a kriffing fool to believe that I could ever bring her twin to the salt formation either."

"Dxun, Aye." she muttered with a slight smile.

"Nya." he said her name tenderly. "I know you can have what you want when you want it…"

"You know nothing of the kriffing sort."

He frowned, confused. "But at the brothel…"

"Nice to know the deception worked on you too." She looked him in the eye for a moment and then and there made the decision to be honest. "I've never paid any man for a kriff. It was just to keep their mouths shut."

"You mean you've never…" He raised an eyebrow. "No man or woman either?"

"Salt gods, Freya? No, she was just for the sailor so I didn't have to pretend to be with him. You thought I… with both of them?"

He gave her a guilty tilt of his head that wasn't quite a nod.

"Well, thanks for not sayin' anything, to the others, about her. Osik…" She shuddered, wondering what else her crew said about her behind her back.

"So you've, not ever…?"

"I thought up the deception to protect myself. If people thought I had nothing to lose they wouldn't be so keen to take what I have. You must think I'm a child, aye?"

Jamos cleared his throat. "All I see before me is... the most powerful woman I've ever known."

She scoffed.

He crossed the room towards her and she stood from her seat to meet him. Neither of them could have said who initiated that first kiss.

"The question is," He asked her when they separated for a breath, with a smile and a flirty cock to his eyebrows. "Do you still want to be a virgin when you leave this room?"

"Jamos." She used his real name for the first time. "I…"

He cut her off before she could continue, "... because I don't."

She gaped at him. "You? A virgin?"

"Can you blame me for waiting?"

She just shook her head.