There was no end to the raging waves. Each time Luce’s head slipped below the water felt like it would be the last.

Brilliant plan, Luce.

But he had been desperate. If he could have escaped and framed the pirates as rogue criminals, unaffiliated with any greater polity, there might have been a chance to calm the embers of hatred in Avalon.

After so many ports in a row, it had seemed obvious that the next time he’d be taken above the deck would be in the presence of another. A simple explosion as a distraction, and he could be off the ship and free, while the pirates would no doubt sail away as fast as they could manage in order to avoid the authorities.

Whether they’d have succeeded at that point was immaterial; Luce would have had control of the narrative, and that was everything. Harold had taught him that much.

And now I won’t even make it to shore.

The cracked earth seemed no closer than when he had started paddling, his head ringing from the blast.

If anything, every breath seemed to see it retreating further away.

Girding himself, he poured every ounce of effort into a burst of speed, wreathing his arms in a flaming ache. But still the shore retreated.

Riptides, you fool.

How many times had Father warned him, frolicking through the water on King Lewys Beach?

Breaking above water once more to orient himself, Luce turned ninety degrees and pushed forward until he felt himself escape the aggressive pull of the current. He could barely come up for air by the time he was clear, but at least his corpse wouldn’t wash up back on Avalon.

The ship had continued sailing on, he saw. Its aft side sported a massive jagged hole where the bomb had blown out the back of his cabin, but the damage hadn’t reached deep enough for it to take on water. Nothing unexpected there. The ship had never needed to sink, the important thing was his escape.

Interesting that they aren’t returning for me, though. What of the ransom? What of revenge?

Perhaps it was simply luck, finally in his favor for once after this string of disasters.

It was at that moment that he saw the pirate captain, her hands gripped around a large wooden palette as her legs kicked vigorously. No, not a palette. The deep red stain meant it was probably a stretch of flooring, torn out by his explosion. Of all the parts of that damned chamber to float this way…

“You have got to be the luckiest fucker this side of the Lyrion sea.” Her usual flat affect was nowhere to be seen; genuine rage made itself plain on her face. “You get to beg for your life.”

Luce ignored her, paddling futilely towards land.

“Can’t spare the breath to respond?” She followed it with something else that he didn’t hear, his head underneath the water, but when it emerged once more he could hear her finish with: “awfully tired.”

“Don’t think drowning will get you out of it, either,” she continued heckling, following effortlessly behind him on her wooden throne. “I’m sure Her Verdance would pay handsomely to parade the body of a Prince of Avalon through the streets of Lorraine. Not as much as Perimont, perhaps, but you, you vile little worm, may have finally made me see the value in the lesser sum of money.”

Luce felt his collar tighten, hands wrapping around his neck.

He thrashed as hard as he could to escape the stranglehold, but after a minute of yelling and splashing every which way, the pirate had his hands pinned behind his back, his body face down against the bloodstained wood.

“Let’s try this again. When someone saves your life, what do you say?”

He inhaled deep, reaching for the breath to respond. “Fuck you. I’d sooner drown.”

“Is that right?” She pushed his head up against the edge, water crashing against it with every wave. “Even after blowing up my ship, I save your miserable hide, and you’d rather I leave you to your fate?” She pushed his head into the water, salt entering his eyes before he could shut them. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Do you?” he shouted back, straining his throat to be heard over the ocean’s roar.

He felt the pressure on his head subside, and looked back over his shoulder to face her. “Kidnapping a prince? It’s hardly a secret that the fragments of the Erstwhile Empire are the only thing keeping you criminals in business, paying out the nose for plans that rightfully belong to Avalon. If anything happens to me, even I won’t be able to stop the Great Council from setting its sights on the Arboreum, or Condillac, or most of all, Guerron.”

She snorted. “Too late for that last one. Half your bloody family’s squatting on it to keep it under their heel.”

Family? Did that mean that Father—?

“Don’t seem to have lost any sleep over losing you, either.”

“You can’t know that.”

“You’re right, I’m just making shit up to needle you.” She folded her arms. “They might just be idiots who believe you suddenly went on a tour of the territories. Either way.” She shrugged. “Any repairs to that ship are coming out of your share, and then some, mark my words.”

My share?

“Now help me paddle this fucking thing to shore so we can wait for them to come back.”

Luce tried to jump, only to see her fist in his gut before he could even feel it, the air knocked entirely out of him.

Her eyes narrowed. “We had a good thing going, carting you around to sell as freely as we could ask. Buy a package for a florin, sell it for two. Simple as that. We made as much money carting you around for two months as the last five hauls combined. No blood, no fuss, no risk.” She exhaled sharply. “And you blew it all up, you bloody maniac!”

“You know what that girl said to me? The one you disposed of because of an act of basic decency?” Luce inhaled deeply. “She said you told her that this was just how things work. It’s all part of your sick little game.”

“You killed four people.”

“Should have chosen a smaller number, would have been more believable that way.” He pulled himself to a sitting position, facing her across the piece of wooden debris. “I know exactly how much powder was in that device, and if that weren’t enough, I saw the state of the ship! Unless four people were hugging it when it went off, I doubt it killed so much as a soul. And I’m not going to cry about your plan failing, either. I couldn’t take another fucking second helping you get rich peddling poison on the back of my reputation.”

She stared him down for a long moment, not responding. Luce readied himself to jump once more and take his chances with the water when she nodded. “Fine. You trying to escape? Part of the game. Fair enough. Now your choices are death, or coming back up on that ship with me.” She clenched her fists. “We’ll sail straight back to Malin and ransom you to Perimont, and that’ll be the end of it. Choice seems obvious to me, and I’m sure you’re smart enough to see it to, Daddy’s little scientist that you are.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Her thin lips twisted into a smirk. “Because carting you around just stopped being easy and bloodless. As much as I can’t wait to see what shit you’d try to pull at the next port, I’d just as soon be rid of you. Get something out of this fucking mess.”

It had a certain logic to it, but that wasn’t nearly reason enough to trust her. Still, it was at least enough of a pretense that he could justify helping them get to shore.

“Better than drowning,” he sighed as he stepped back down into the water, beginning to kick.

The captain smiled deviously as she slid down next to him, her legs moving with far more energy than he could muster.

She still looked drained by the time they reached the shore, though.

Luce could barely manage more than falling face-first into the pink-tinted sand once he was clear of the water, while the pirate lay back against it, her hands behind her head, as if this were simply a day at the beach.

By the time he had the energy to pull himself up, what felt like hours later, the first streaks of orange were rippling across the horizon, heralding the setting of the sun. His eyes were so bleary it looked like the dead trees were moving, but he had to be alert.

What time was the explosion? It had felt like midday, but time was so hard to measure in that cramped cabin. Even with the window, the monotony had a way of turning minutes to hours.

Still, even if it had only been minutes, the lack of the ship in sight was puzzling. I may be no sailor, but how long could it possibly take to turn around? Had the bomb damaged it beyond the superficial hole? Perhaps enough to kill four people?

It didn’t sound right.

The pirate had moved into the shade of the white husk of a dead tree, its shadow stretching back twice its height. A mighty scowl sat across her face, which was strange, since she hadn’t seemed to notice him get up.

The slight flinch as he grew closer confirmed that, though she made no move to get up. “You aren’t going to try to run, are you? As vibrant as these woods might look, with your athleticism and survival skills, I’m sure you’ll be back in Malin by nightfall.”

“If I wanted to run, I’d follow the coast,” Luce lied. The last thing he needed was that ship spotting him from the water. “Less chance of running into whatever remnants of the spirit-touched might remain. I shudder to think what they might look like with the forest in this state.”

“Vivacious, powerful, and numerous, I imagine. This bountiful land looks like it could feast a thousand.” She folded her arms. “There’s a certain amusement to the thought of a Prince starving though. You’d probably be the first in history.”

“Not even the fourth that I can think of, although I’d certainly be the first of the Grimoire dynasty.” He looked back up the coast to the East, searching again for any sign of the ship. “They wouldn’t be able to call Harold III ‘The Hungry’ anymore, I imagine, not when the appellation would fit me so much better.”

She caught him looking, following his gaze over the water. “Don’t get any ideas. They’re coming back, obviously. They’d be absolute fucking idiots not to, with their captain and probably millions of florins in human form back here.” She shrugged, somewhat stiffly. “Your little stunt did a number on the ship.”

“How would you know? It knocked you off, same as it did me.”

“Ha! You don’t really believe that, do you?” She sneered. “I saw a fat ransom fall into the water and start to drown. So I took steps to correct that.”

“You… jumped after me? Is that what you’re saying?”

She looked him dead in the eye. “You figured that out awfully quickly, didn’t you? The only thing harmed by that blasted explosion was yourself. And the ship, I suppose.”

Luce folded his hands, leaning back against a tree opposite the one she was sitting under. “You didn’t think to hold onto a rope?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I saved your foolish hide from drowning. And just barely, at that. There wasn’t time for anything more.”

“Of course. And you just happened to forget to give orders to your crew before you did, too, or you’d know when they’re planning to return.”

“I did. I told them to look after the ship first. No point in picking you up if the thing’s going to sink a few hours later.” She yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth with her hand. “They’re probably taking this long because you did more damage than you thought. It would hardly be the first time Avalon’s managed that.”

“That’s not the same at all!”

She waved a lazy hand at the landscape around them, dead white remnants of the great trees that had been sitting atop salted land. Even this close to the solstice, it looked frozen in perpetual winter, not a trace of green. And yet the stirrings of the wind blew dust to and fro, as if the barren earth had come alive in a twisted mockery of the once-bountiful forest.

“For someone so eager to criticize your homeland, you certainly showed a great amount of restraint in following in their footsteps. Most of your family would simply order the bombs built, but you needed the satisfaction of doing it personally, didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “I have no shame in doing what I needed to do in order escape the fucking pirates who kidnapped me. Any moral framing you could possibly twist this situation into still puts me ahead.” Not that philosophy had ever been a great interest of his, but this was hardly a situation requiring much in the way of nuanced understanding.

The pirate rolled her eyes. “Yes, obviously I’m talking about that. Not the fact that for all your talk of breaking tradition, your first instinct was to build on it. Few in Avalon can even make explosives like that, but you had to learn it. It was that important. ”

“It was part of the curriculum! My studies were concentrated on energy, and that meant taking thermodynamics which taught—” Unbidden, his mind turned back to his last conversation with Harold, in the Great Council Chambers. Luce had been asked to provide a spot for Rebecca Williams in Ortus Tower, a plumb spot for the daughter of a warmonger, a specialist in explosives and war. She might make the same excuses, were I to ask her. “You know what? No. I’m not justifying myself to you.”

“Never asked you to.” She shrugged. “You’d hardly be the first hypocrite to live in a castle with diamonds on the doorknobs. I remember Lord Airion handed out bread to the survivors of his slaughter for months after the Foxtrap. Whether he was being calculating or contrite, I guarantee you it never eased his guilt.”

“Then why bring it up?” Lord Airion especially… Uncle Miles had always supported Luce, had vowed never to repeat the horrors of war. It was easy to forget how many people he had killed. And now when I return, I’ll have to explain to him how I got his daughter killed.

“You can’t rattle me,” Luce said, rattled. How can I change anything if I’ve been tarred by the same destructive folly? It didn’t make the pirate right. It didn’t.

But it was still difficult not to think about it.

“It doesn’t really matter either way. Honestly, the sanctimonious ones were always more troublesome than the out-and-out villains. There’s more honesty in naked self interest. Makes things easier to work with. Jacques always told me that he’d take a Williams or a Stewart over an Airion in a heartbeat. Greed leaves things workable, sensible. The self-righteous waver back and forth at every turn, but their so-called conviction doesn’t stop them. All they need is a bit of creative framing to justify their actions.”

“Like you?” he spat. “You know what I think?”

“Of course. Every pirate can look into the hearts and minds of others and read their thoughts. They teach it on the first day of pirate school.”

“I think that somehow, you fucked up. Maybe you fell off, maybe you forgot to grab the rope, or maybe ‘your’ crew got sick of you disposing of people for the slightest show of empathy. I think that ship’s not coming back for a long time, if it ever is. You’re poking at me, trying to scare me, or mess with my head, because you’re mad at me for a mistake you made.”

She uncrossed her arms, stretching them out as she yawned once more. “Believe what you want to believe. As long as you don’t run off and get yourself killed before my crew returns, I really couldn’t care less.”

That should have been the end of it.

Luce could say he was going for a walk along the beach and edge closer and closer West. If he could reach the Rhan, the odds were good he could wave down a passing boat, and even decent that it would owe allegiance to Avalon.

In that direction, it almost looked as if there were specks of dark green at the far reaches of the forest, dappled in amidst the white. If so, it raised the possibility of getting water out of the plants further west, closer to the mouth of the Rhan, which might have some semblance of life.

Making it that far before hunger and thirst consumed him was an uncertain bet, especially exhausted as he was, but what alternative was there? What good could possibly come of waiting on the unnaturally still beach with the kidnapper who lied as easily as breathing?

Even if the ship were coming, the promises of returning him immediately for the ransom seemed hollow, the chances of averting war impossibly dim.

If he could simply—

“And I didn’t dispose of Florette, you know, you judgemental imbecile.” The pirate took a deep breath. “Her heart wasn’t in it. You saw that look in her eyes when she bumped off what’s-her-face.”

“Cassia,” Luce supplied through grit teeth.

“Sure. And then she got all remorseful around you, giving you books and shit? It wasn’t going to end well. I gave her an out, a way to go back to her simple life knowing she could never be a criminal.”

“What, so you tossed her away because she had too much of a soul? No wonder the only ones left on your ship didn’t feel like coming back for you.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“I noticed different faces on the deck, and fewer. You were probably losing people at every port, if I had to guess.”

“Unrelated.” She crossed her arms. “People come and go, no crew’s exactly the same two jobs in a row. Some of them wanted other things, and I respected that.” She leaned her head back against the desiccated tree trunk. “Not that you have any right to know, but Florette had her taste, and it wasn’t right for her. She had to find that out for herself.”

“Had her taste?”

“Of this life. Don’t be childish.” The pirate frowned. “I’m not much inclined to it for its own sake, but it seems to me leaving her behind was the kindest thing anyone could do. She knows what awaits a pirate, and now she can go be a farmer or a weaver or something, without any regrets.”

Luce scoffed. “It was the easiest thing for you, not having to deal with her. That doesn’t make it a kindness.”

She shrugged again. “Then it was still the right choice.”

“You— You feckless, self-absorbed, criminal wastrel! What is wrong with you?” His voice was punctuated by the sound of wind rushing through the leaves.

“I don’t delude myself!” She stood up, slamming her fist against the bark of the dead tree as the rustling grew louder. “I don’t waste my time complaining about what’s never going to change, and then doing nothing to fix it!”

“I’ve done a great many things! And you…” He trailed off as he noticed her eyes growing wide, the anger draining rapidly from her face. “What—?”

He saw the spotted vines curl around her face before he felt them on his skin. Dappled and decayed, they still held him with a force so great that it was impossible to move.

The spirit-touched…

He didn’t even manage to swear before they curled around his mouth.