It was difficult, unsurprisingly, to steer the boat over the dark ocean while being stitched closed. From time to time, Yern would mutter something about Wirrin being lucky: ‘vos tholgek’. Wirrin didn’t feel lucky as the pain set in, Yern kept on stitching, and the smell of myrrh clogged her nose.

  From time to time, Wirrin would make Yern pause for a moment and take another bite out of one of the dead mages on the boat. Wirrin wasn’t much of a sailor, so almost all of the boat’s speed came from her magic rather than the inconvenient crosswind.

  Wirrin was once again missing her sense through the ground. By comparison what feeling she did have through the water felt like staring through dense fog, or the aftermath of forgetting to wear a mask in the snow. She had the sense of shapes, just about recognisable as dunes or rocks or plants, she had a sense of the current trying to pull the boat west into the strait. There was no detail, no precision.

  In an attempt to distract herself from the pain of what must have been dozens of stitches down her left side and around her mouth, Wirrin was kicking herself for not thinking of the strait of her own.

  Only an hour or two from the docks of Ahepvalt was the Northern Strait, a channel of high current that turned a day’s sailing into only a few hours of struggling with the wheel or the rudder, if you were headed west. If you were headed east, it turned a day’s sailing into three days of fighting the water.

  Wirrin didn’t know for sure that it was why most shipping around Nesalan went counterclockwise, but, unlike similar straits near Yokassa and Vortiv, sailors didn’t go around. To try to avoid the strait meant going all the way around the reefs, which turned a day’s sailing into a week’s painstaking avoidance of obstacles.

  Now that Valok had mentioned it, it seemed obvious. Wirrin didn’t know all that much about the ocean, or the movement of water, or how these straits actually worked. But the rest of them that she was aware of were all between islands and the mainland, so surely it only made sense that this strait would be as well.

  Berating herself for not thinking of the strait did not help distract her once Yern started stitching the torn skin around her mouth closed.

  ‘You’re going have some scars,’ Yern muttered from where she was sitting on Wirrin’s lap and doing her best to brace herself against the movement of the boat on the waves.

  ‘More scars are more scars,’ Wirrin muttered.

  ‘Vos yav.’

  It was past midnight by the time Wirrin could no longer feel the current trying to pull the boat west. She thought she could feel some significant rise on the sea floor just off port, on the far side of the strait, but it was hard to tell for sure.

  Yern was already asleep in a pile of Wirrin’s sleeping rugs and blankets, with her recently oiled autumn leathers over top to try to keep the occasional ocean spray off her.

  Most of the stitches had faded to a dull, myrrh-scented ache, and Wirrin was running out of dead mage at an astounding rapid rate. One of the few things Wirrin knew how to do with certainty was drop the anchor.

  Yern grumbled when Wirrin joined her under the covers, where it was slightly damp and slightly too hot. It got even more too hot when Yern grumbled some more and cuddled up against Wirrin before fully returning to sleep.

  Wirrin lay on her back and stared up at the stars. It felt like a while since she’d had any trouble falling asleep, but if it was going to happen she supposed it would be now. Despite the hours of sitting at the rudder, it had certainly been a stressful day.

  A thought occurred to Wirrin, another one that she felt she should have had earlier. ‘Did you have constellations?’ she wondered.

  It was a clear night and Wirrin’s eyes were drawn to the constellations she’d learned as a child: the Spear, the Sickle, the Climbing Vine, the Sun’s Rays, and the Medic, which had always been least convincing. Straight and curved lines that really could have been anything or, more likely if you asked Wirrin, could have been nothing.

  ‘Those seven, just off to the left, a bit like a triangle,’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘That was the Mountain.’

  ‘I see the Sun’s Rays and the Climbing Vine,’ Ulvaer rattled. ‘We always made it into an argument, Azavaer and I, about whether those rays might have been a vulture instead.’

  ‘Really anything could be a swimming fish,’ Naertral burbled. ‘There was supposed to be the Frog, not far from the Mountain.’

  ‘Those six, curved line and flat, that was the Medic,’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘That was Gnaer’s.’

  ‘It’s Iltavaer’s now,’ Wirrin thought. ‘I don’t see it.’

  ‘One of the less convincing ones,’ Ulvaer rattled. ‘Just below, those five in a wavy line, that was the Dunes. I could never decide which was less convincing.’

  ‘The Medic,’ Wirrin thought.

  ‘A wavy line could be anything,’ Naertral burbled. ‘Could be a river.’

  ‘At least it’s a wavy line,’ Wirrin thought. ‘The Medic is supposed to be someone bent over a patient. Turn it around and it’s another mountain.’

  ‘Could be a scythe,’ Mkaer rumbled.

  Wirrin and her three Fiends spent some time coming up with new constellations before Wirrin did, finally, fall asleep. If she dreamed, she didn’t remember what she dreamed of, but she liked to think it was constellations, and not ships.

  She woke to the sun, aching and sticky. Yern was laying on top of her, face pressed into her right shoulder. It wasn’t long past dawn, and the sky was gradually filling with bumpy, light grey clouds. The cloud cover hadn’t reached the eastern horizon, and the sunlight turned the inside of Wirrin’s eyelids white.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The westerly breeze was cool on Wirrin’s face and neck. Her sleeping rugs were soft and not too damp. She was strongly considering going back to sleep. Low tide should be in a few hours and that seemed to Wirrin like the best time to set off. Even if it would make the reefs more dangerous, she figured it would make them easier to feel.

  Unfortunately, someone and their ship weren’t going to give Wirrin that much time. She dozed for a little while, just long enough for the sun to rise behind the spreading cloud cover, but not as long as she would have liked.

  Just as she didn’t know how far her sense through the ground extended, Wirrin had no idea how far her sense through the water extended. It was clearly not as far.

  When she sat up, arms around Yern so that she didn’t fall over, Wirrin was fairly sure she could see sails on the southern horizon. They, too, were resisting the western pull of the strait, and apparently headed for Wirrin’s little boat.

  ‘Vos vos,’ Yern grumbled, putting her hands over her eyes.

  ‘Someone’s following us,’ Wirrin said.

  Yern uncovered her eyes to first glare at Wirrin, then over her shoulder at the steadily growing sails. ‘Fine.’

  It seemed to take an age to get up and to winch up the anchor.

  As much as Wirrin didn’t remember what Valok’s ship looked like, she was pretty sure this wasn’t it. It was narrow and tall, double masted, with a raised prow and aft. It was a messenger ship, not what Wirrin thought of as the sail-barge design of a trading ship like Valok’s.

  ‘Oh, that’s silly,’ Wirrin said, taking one last moment to frown at the oncoming ship before she pulled at the water under her and turned west toward the reefs.

  Yern was glaring at the horizon. ‘What’s silly?’

  ‘If I’m remembering correctly, ships like that have a much deeper hull than trading ships. So it’ll be much harder to navigate the reefs,’ Wirrin said. ‘They’re faster, certainly, but… not to mention the prevailing wind is still westerly.’

  It was more like a breeze than a proper wind, but Wirrin had left the sail furled as she set to getting the boat ready to move. She’d struggled enough to catch a sidewind that she certainly wasn’t going to make any attempt to deal with a headwind.

  ‘I don’t know what any of that means,’ Yern said, switching sides to continue glaring at the ship as they turned toward the reefs.

  ‘Their ship is too tall and the wind is going the wrong way,’ Wirrin said.

  ‘They’re gaining on us,’ Yern said.

  ‘I know,’ Wirrin said.

  After a moment of Wirrin not saying any more, Yern turned to look at her. Wirrin continued not to elaborate.

  ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ Yern glared.

  ‘Nothing,’ Wirrin said. ‘Are there holes down the sides?’

  Yern returned to lookout position. ‘I think so.’

  ‘That might be a problem,’ Wirrin admitted.

  ‘Elaborate.’ Yern glared even harder.

  ‘I already said,’ Wirrin said. ‘The ship is too tall and the wind is blowing the wrong way. Once they turn toward us, they’ll slow down by a lot.’

  ‘And the holes down the side?’

  ‘Might be oars,’ Wirrin said. ‘If they have oars, they’ll be able to switch over from the sails. I would still expect them to slow down…’

  ‘But if it’s mages, they might even go faster,’ Yern concluded.

  Wirrin shrugged. ‘If they would go faster by rowing, I would expect them to already be rowing,’ she said.

  ‘Rowing isn’t much fun,’ Naertral burbled.

  ‘If they’re so feverishly devoted, they shouldn’t be worried about fun,’ Wirrin said.

  ‘Hard to row if you’re throwing up the whole time,’ Yern said.

  ‘Not everyone gets seasick,’ Wirrin said.

  ‘I got riversick, thank you,’ Yern proclaimed.

  Wirrin took a bite out of one of the mages. It didn’t help as much as it had even last night. It still helped a lot more than anything she’d eaten at the market. It was enough to speed up.

  Yern gave periodic updates on the ship as it crossed the strait and turned into the wind to follow them. Oars were extended, but only three sets compared to the twelve holes. The ship slowed, and once Wirrin thought they’d pulled away sufficiently, she slowed the boat down again to match the ship’s speed.

  They were approaching the reefs and Wirrin didn’t want to be going too fast, even if she could probably move the boat exactly how she wanted to. The less effort she used before they reached the statue, the better.

  Yern had the same thought. ‘Why even bother following us? Aren’t they waiting there, like with Tegalk Tesholg?’

  ‘They didn’t have enough last time,’ Mkaer rumbled.

  ‘But they’ve had more than a month to reinforce since then,’ Wirrin said.

  ‘Would they wait for more than a month?’ Yern wondered.

  ‘Or did they come home when you were captured?’ Ulvaer rattled. ‘Figured the problem was dealt with.’

  ‘You may well be right, Ulvaer,’ Wirrin said. ‘They might have left when we were in gaol.’

  ‘Oh, Tegalk is probably right,’ Yern said.

  The reefs were interesting.

  Wirrin felt the reefs as isolated patches of nauseous, warm haze before she could feel the shape of them through the water. It was a completely new feeling to her, like washing blood in a pond or a sink, a haze of colour suspended in empty nothing.

  She had no idea how to interpret the feeling. Something rotting and sick and bursting with life. Something nebulous and concrete and porous. It was so strange Wirrin might have run the boat straight into it in her distraction. Except that the boat wasn’t deep enough that the first reefs were a danger.

  Even within her sense through the water, Wirrin couldn’t make any more sense of the conflicted, contrary haze of the reef. She could feel the fish more clearly, but the coral itself was nebulous and strange.

  She liked it.

  ‘Is that a reef?’ Yern asked.

  Wirrin had been so distracted by the feeling of the coral that she hadn’t noticed Yern looking away from the ship behind them to stare into the water. She hadn’t noticed the pounding building in her head.

  She took another bite of the remaining mage before she answered. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s pretty,’ Yern said. She looked back toward the ship. ‘They’re slowing down again.’

  Wirrin let the boat slow down slightly, not as much as the ship behind them. Though if there was no one waiting at Haerst’s statue, there wasn’t much point in beating the Church there.

  At a more leisurely pace, Wirrin could let herself experience that miasmic strangeness of the coral reefs. It had become so rare for her to have new experiences. This was interesting.

  What became clear, as they kept on west, was that the coral was growing on the bones of rotten buildings. Places where the reefs were closer to the surface weren’t higher seafloor, they were elevated.

  It was almost midday before Wirrin actually had to change direction to avoid a reef ahead of them. This one felt like it might have been on the top of a lighthouse, by far the tallest building Wirrin had felt so far.

  It wasn’t far past that lighthouse that the seafloor did begin to rise. A gentle slope punctuated by reefs slowly taking over the bones of what had probably once been houses.

  Before Wirrin could feel the ground sloping down again, she spotted the top of what had once been a large hill. Yern spotted it at the same time.

  ‘Looks like Ulvaer was wrong,’ Yern smirked.

  There waited another ship.