The next morning, Lathe found Soromet on the deck of Darkwind, messing with one of those flashdirks while another pirate gal took notes on a wax tablet.

  Squinting her good eye against the glaring sun, Lathe shimmied down the ropes to the smallship like she’d seen other pirates do. It was faster than a ladder, but it tore up your hands if you forgot to hand-over-fist it and slid them along the fibrous cable instead.

  On deck, Soromet held the flashdirk out and lit the back end with a stick from a brazier smoldering nearby. There was an airy pop as the black sand went up. The ball splashed into the waves close to a floating target.

  Lathe eyed the smoke curling out of the tube. “When’re you gonna sail for land again?”

  Soromet told the writing gal some numbers, then loaded another measure of black sand and dropped a ball in after it.

  “Perhaps never,” she told Lathe. “Darkwind is my wedding vessel, but only a raed commander can decide when she sails.”

  Another pop and splash. The ball hit closer to the target this time.

  “But you sailed her all the way to Siu Carinal and back.”

  “I chose to carry out my husband’s final duty. There are some who believe I should not even have done that much, but I accepted the potential backlash when I made my decision. Chaelon’s honor was upheld. That is all that matters.”

  Lathe chewed on that. “I wish you hadn’t wrecked up my city, but I’m glad you pulled me outta the water.”

  “I wish that I had not.” Soromet gave another set of numbers to the woman writing and reloaded.

  Lathe told her what she could do with her wish.

  “Anyhow, what’s stopping you from just taking Darkwind and going where you want to? You said she’s yours.”

  “Nothing a dirter can understand.”

  “Try it. I’m a fair study, me.”

  Burning stick. Flash of fire. The ball clipped the target, smashing a fist-sized hole in the wood.

  “Ninety to one hundred ten grains!” the writing gal spoke up for the first time, happy as a frog. “The efficiency has increased two-fold from last month’s batch. Try it again within the same range.”

  Nodding, Soromet began to painstakingly refill the tube with black sand.

  “The laws of honor offer no clear guidance for a marriage vessel trapped in Darkwind’s situation,” she said as she worked. “A raed commander should not die in honorable combat without his wife, but your people did not have the decency to fight Chaelon face to face. Whether Darkwind should withdraw permanently to Cryst’holm or return to battle under my command, the elders are still deliberating on the most honorable course.”

  “Why don’t you just become a raed commander?”

  Soromet scoffed. “A woman cannot be a raed commander.”

  “I’m a woman, and I’m the Daughter of Steel. I bet I could be a raed commander.”

  “You are forced to take on a man’s role because you do not have the commonsense a woman should.”

  “I got commonsense fit to choke a mule,” Lathe said. “I just don’t let it get in my way.”

  “Clearly.”

  Lathe was about tired of the pirate gal’s snot. “Loyalty—ever heard of it? I got two brothers who need me and a sister who mighta got killt in your bombardment. I’m gonna get to ’em, if I gotta steal your stupid crate and sail it myself.”

  “Then I will double the guard on Darkwind and warn the other raedrs to do the same for their smallships.”

  Cussing Soromet didn’t help any, and Lathe got the idea that a Daughter of Steel shouldn’t punch a pirate gal. It wouldn’t be a fair scrap with Soromet all tangled up in swathes of fancy cloth.

  So when Soromet raised the burning stick to the flashdirk again, Lathe sucked down the tiny bit of energy from the ember and all of the fireburst that the black sand tried to make.

  The ball rolled out and dropped onto the deck.

  “Misfire,” the writing gal said, disappointedly marking it down.

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  “How does a pirate get him a ship so’s he can be a raed commander?” Lathe asked while Soromet bent to scoop the ball off the planks.

  “He takes it in a raid.” Soromet was getting gronchety now.

  “S’pose I declare this a raid.”

  Soromet reloaded. “Suppose I put another hole in your chest.”

  Lathe grinned. “Best hope your ball gets to me afore I suck the fire outta your black sand.”

  “You are not a sun-breather.” Frowning, pierced brows appeared in that strip of face between silks. “I checked your ears after you were pulled from the waves.”

  At the next meal, Lathe asked Kalaset what sun-breathers were.

  “They are the Helat,” the old woman told her. “When I saw such white skin, I knew you were a blood-drinker, but your features call this supposition into question. Peaked, elfin. Helat but for the rounded ears and coloring. Were your father or mother of mixed descent?”

  Lathe shrugged. “I never had one nor the other, me.”

  With a sigh, Kalaset brushed a gnarled hand across Lathe’s freckling pink-tinged cheek. “I wish you would reconsider garbing yourself in veils. They would protect your sensitive skin. Miranel, daughter of my love, left behind many beautiful silks last year when the God washed her clean in the sun and salt. She was much shorter, but we can alter them for your height.”

  ***

  Reikr’s Throatcuttr returned a week later, stinking of smoke and battle. Two raedrs were wounded badly enough that they could not climb the ropes themselves and had to be lifted onto the greatship in slings.

  One man had taken a sword wound to the thigh when boarding an enemy chaser, and it had rapidly mortified. Poison was suspected, and if not that, then the natural filth of dirters. The other raedr had been smashed viciously in the head with heavy tackle during the same battle; he hadn’t woken since. When the swelling went down, it revealed a temple and cheekbone crushed beyond repair, as well as a ruined eye. His mouth hung open, all gaps and broken teeth on that side.

  The Waeld physicians tended the raedrs on deck, as it was common knowledge among Ocean Rovers that sun and salt were the best cure for any wound. The wife of the sleeping man knelt at his side day and night, trickling water and fish broth into his mouth, drying the ooze that seeped from his crushed eye socket, and shushing his moans.

  Between other duties, Reikr tended to the raedr with the wound fever as that man’s wife was in Cryst’holm with their children and unable to carry out the duties. When the little ones were grown, she would sail again with her husband. If he survived.

  “You’re down two fighters,” Lathe observed, perching on a stretch of rail overlooking the injured men and their raed commander. “Me, I’m worth two at least. You oughta take me on your next raid.”

  Reikr didn’t look up from mopping the fevered man’s brow.

  “Go trouble someone else.”

  “Throatcuttr’s a fair fast ship, ain’t it? Soromet told me you stoled it. She said that’s how all raed commanders get their boats. I told her if anybody stoled a ship, it was that schemer Reikr.”

  “The Waeld are not dirter thieves.”

  “Not dirter thieves, sure, but might be you’re watery ones.” Lathe grinned. “I’m pretty good at swiping, too, you know. Back on land, nobody could catch me at it.”

  “I took Throatcuttr honorably in a raid against the Phaet.”

  “Some Waeld sounds mighty defensive, him.”

  “Do you have no one else to annoy?”

  “Might be I’ll go bother Soromet again after a while. And Caelenel and Tulaan usually got some bellows for me to pump or some wax tablets to smooth out.”

  Lathe cupped her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun and looked across the sparkling waves. “Do raids have to be way out in the ocean to be honorable? What if I just slid down a rope onto your ship right now and said it was mine?”

  “Then I would send both you and Throatcuttr to the depths.”

  “Yeah, you’d purt near have to sink me,” Lathe agreed, pushing away from the rail. “’Cuz I’d be her raed commander then, and we already seen you can’t whup me in a fight.”

  ***

  “I gotta have a ship, me, and I mean to take one by combat,” Lathe told Dragaar that evening. “So do I challenge the raed commander whose ship I want, or what?”

  They stood at the old man’s favorite after-dinner spot, the greatship’s wheel, looking out over a restful horizon of oranges, pinks, and violets.

  Dragaar finger-combed his wiry gray beard. “Do you know how to sail, Daughter of Steel?”

  “I figured the crew would take care a’ that.”

  “And when you take this ship you have in mind, will the raedrs fight for you, or will they fight against you? How will you inspire their loyalty?”

  Lathe scratched around her ear cuff. “I guess I could whup ’em all, if I had to. Might take some doing, though. They’d probably all attack at once, them. Not like the testing.”

  “And navigation? Every raed commander and his wife must know how to find their way by star and sun. Raedrs may learn one or the other, but rarely can they keep a ship on course through the dark and the light. And what of the days when only clouds grace the sky?”

  Lathe grunted. She’d hated staring at maps and charts during lectures.

  “That a-way’s land, ain’t it?”

  Dragaar gave her pointing arm a nudge.

  “Pretty fair guess,” she said, brightening up.

  “Eight degrees,” Dragaar said. “Travel a league, and eight degrees makes very little difference. Travel three hundred leagues, and you have missed your destination by more than forty leagues. You may never even see land.”

  Lathe cussed and scuffed a foot on the deck.

  “Can you think of no other way to resolve your plight?” the old chief prompted.

  She stretched her shoulders. They were getting awfully tight sitting around the greatship doing nothing.

  “I could be a raedr, if the ship I took on with was headed for land. Raedrs only gotta fight, don’t they? Who do I whup to become a raedr?”

  Thoughtfully, Dragaar caressed the ship’s wheel. “In the past, the test of steel brought new sons to the Ocean Rovers, fearless and steeped in battle. Those sons could prove themselves as raedrs and eventually rise to command once more.

  “Over time, the Waeld’s raedrs have tapered to the few you see now. While tribes like the Raen and the Phaet grew into mighty warriors by protecting our waters from incursion, and hunters like the Hael and the Shaed stalked the monsters of the deep, the Waeld distinguished herself by her mind.

  “It may be that your desire to fight is natural for one who swims the seas you swim, Daughter of Steel. If you are set on maintaining this course, I will not stop you. I only ask that you prove your place in your new tribe as we have proven our place among the Ocean Rovers. With your mind, not your might.”

  “’Ruther prove it with steel, me.”

  Humor shined in the old man’s pale, pale eyes, but his stern face didn’t budge.

  Lathe blew out a disgusted sigh. “Fine.”