As the Vien craft limped away into the darkness, Jareen climbed out of the larder-hold and onto the deck. Blood ran across the planks to drip over the side, following the slant of the deck. She stepped over the stream of darkness and came to the rail near the fallen vien and his slain foes. Bodies lay all along the length of the ship and she saw one of Gyon’s elves standing there bloodstained, holding a short blade and a human shield riddled with arrows. He turned and raised his blade as Jareen came into view, but then he saw who she was. His arm lowered.

  “You, healer!” he said. “Come!”

  Jareen obeyed, but she was no healer. That was not the purpose of the Voiceless Sisters. She knew much about medicines to ease suffering, but she had not. She could care for the many kinds of wounds that afflicted the dying, but what did she know of other hurts? The vien led her aft. The canvas of the pavilion was rent in many places and spattered with dark bloodstains. Reaching the elevated stern, Jareen saw even more bodies heaped there. She stepped over the golden hair of one of Gyon’s vien that splayed across the deck from his still head, soaking in blood. The survivors clustered around the tiller. Firnel held the tiller himself, now, and blood ran down from the broken shaft of an arrow that protruded from his calf. Neither of his sailors were present. Another of Gyon’s vien kneeled, his legs folded beneath him, staring down at the deck. His breaths were shallow and pained. Another stood with curved swords in each hand. His clothes were bloody, but Jareen could not tell if he was wounded.

  Gyon stood with his back to them, staring into their wake, watching as flames took hold of the human mainsail. Sparks trailed into the night and fell the foe-deck. Already, the humans were two hundred yards away and falling further. Even injured, the Vien craft cut the swells.

  “Let me watch it,” Gyon said, turning his head to Firnel. “I would see them burn.”

  Without a word, Firnel sidestepped, the tiller beneath his arm. The ship fell off the wind. The deck leveled, and their momentum dissipated.

  “Liel,” said the vien who had brought Jareen. “Let her tend to you.”

  At that, Gyon turned. The front of his flowing robe was dark with blood, and while his right arm hung limp, his left pressed against his belly.

  “I am past tending,” he said.

  “Bring me light,” Jareen ordered, and the vien who brought her grasped an oil lantern that lay on its side upon the deck, its wick still burning. Lifting it, he opened the remaining shutters and let light flow out through the glass. He held it up for her as Jareen laid a hand on Gyon’s shoulder and turned him to her.

  Jareen could tell that Gyon pressed his arm against a wound in his gut, but above it the broken shaft of an arrow jutted out between his lower ribs. She met his eye, and she saw a familiar look—the look of one who already knew. Many times that look had met her gaze. He had already made peace with the truth.

  Jareen looked around at the five other vien clustered around the tiller.

  “Are there any more alive? Any wounded?”

  “We are all wounded,” said the vien with the swords.

  “How bad are you hurt?” she asked the kneeling one. She realized she had never learned their names, not beyond Gyon and Firnel. She had let her anger rule her.

  “I will mend,” the vien answered, but she did not trust his word.

  “I have never seen the pirates so heavily armed,” Firnel said. “There must have been forty men aboard such a small vessel, geared as if for war. I am sorry.” The last statement was directed to Gyon, but the ambassador shrugged.

  “It is well for us that they are poor bowmen and could not board us all at once.” Gyon spoke as if he was commenting on the weather. His eyes were locked on the burning ship. The waves gleamed in the light, and even so far, Jareen’s nose stunk from the smoke. The flames had spread now, and it looked like part of the deck was burning.

  “It is a shame on my head I will bring back to the Synod,” Firnel replied.

  “It was by my command,” Gyon said, “and we have done it.”

  Firnel glanced back to the foe-ship.

  “They’re lowering a boat,” he said. Jareen had seen a boat hung from the back of the ship above the rudder.

  “If they take to it, I want you to run it down,” Gyon said. He placed a hand on the rail, grimacing as he leaned over. “Please bring me a place to sit.”

  The first elf went running back down the rail and a few moments later returned with an empty wine-cask. He stood it on end for Gyon, and the ambassador slowly sat. Jareen stepped up to him and knelt on one knee, as she had done so often next to a Departing.

  “I can bind your wounds,” she said. “It might ease you.”

  Gyon shook his head and did not reply, staring at the flames.

  The Vien craft drifted, the sail flapping loose and free of the wind. The sky to the west glowed. They had passed through the fog before the battle, and the seas were calm and the breezes light—one of the oddities of the strange currents and winds that prevailed there, Jareen believed.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “A drink,” Gyon said. Again, the vien who had attended Jareen hurried away.

  Gyon took a deep breath and let out a sigh. Jareen heard fluid in his lungs. Quietly, so that only she could hear, he spoke:

  “My thoughts were confused in Nosh. I sometimes did not know what was true or false, right or wrong. Now, my thoughts clear again. Even dying, I feel the life of the Current.”

  Jareen didn’t respond. With effort, Gyon looked from the burning foe to her face.

  “I know who you are, I think. It came to me while we sailed, as my mind cleared. I told my vien not to repeat your true name unless commanded by the Synod.”

  “Thank you,” Jareen said.

  Firnel took a pained breath.

  “I had thought of seeking Vah’tane.” He looked back to the fire. They could see the humans pulling away in a boat as the flames engulfed the prow. “Those of us who have been to the Mingling think on it most.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Always, it was one more day. One more day in this world. One more duty to perform. Now there are no more days.” He grimaced, wheezing as he inhaled. It was the last that he spoke. When the vien returned with wine, Gyon only wetted his lips. Not long after, he collapsed sideways into Jareen. At the urging of Gyon’s remaining comrades, Jareen did what she could, bandaging and cleaning his wounds. Though he lingered for hours, nothing Jareen could do would make a difference. The wounds were too deep, and she could not remove the arrow, for the flesh had swollen around it. By dawn, he was gone.

  Firnel held to Gyon’s word. Jareen thought he had simply let the ship drift through the night, but in truth he was watching the progress of the human boat, making slight corrections now and then.

  As the sun rose in the east, the five survivors stood around the tiller. It was true that they were all wounded. Jareen had bathed their hurts with wine and bound them as best she could. The one who she had found kneeling had taken a slashing cut across both calves and likely had some broken ribs. He had trouble moving his feet. The others were struck with arrows and had shallower lacerations. She used pieces of sailcloth to at least stem any further bleeding, while the two halest of Gyon’s comrades went up the ship sides throwing human bodies overboard. Firnel lashed the tiller and busied himself with splicing stay lines.

  “Will you run them down?” asked the vien with sliced calves. “It was Gyon’s wish.”

  “I will,” Firnel answered. “They are pulling toward the coast. I will not let them set foot on our shores, but I need to set a few things to rights, first. I worry the remaining stays will part if I tack into the breeze again.”

  “What but death do they think they will find upon our shores?” the vien asked.

  Firnel shrugged.

  “It would be death for them, but we will oblige them sooner.”

  Firnel spent the next hour working to mend as much as he could. Jareen did not bother trying to stop him. Even with an arrow in his leg, he climbed above and partially reefed the sail.

  Jareen did what she knew how—she tended to the bodies of the fallen vien. With help, she brought the five fallen into the pavilion. The sixth—one of the sailors—had been struck by arrows while cutting the rigging free and had fallen into the sea. Jareen bathed the bodies and wounds in wine and wrapped them in clean sailcloth from the ship’s stores. She combed their hair and closed their eyes. She prepared Gyon last; it felt correct, though she did not know exactly why. His three surviving comrades and Firnel came and looked down on him one by one, tears washing their faces.

  “Three hundred and two riders we were of the Lishni contingent,” one said, “who rode with Gyon into the Mingling two hundred and seventy-four years ago. Now we three remain.” He and Jareen were alone in the tent with the bodies, kneeling on either side of Gyon.

  “Was he your plume?”

  “Not at first, but soon. He brought six of us out with him. No one contingent had ever seen so many survivors. He never accepted praise. ‘Two hundred and ninety-six tongues do not praise me,’ he would say.”

  Jareen did not know how to respond, so they sat in silence a while longer, looking upon Gyon’s still face. There were things she knew how to say in Noshian—traditional nothings, phrases for times such as these, phrases that sounded like comfort but often meant little. Vienwé had few such words.

  “We will compose a song,” the vien said at length. Tears flowed down his face. “But not yet.” And laying his forehead down on Gyon’s chest, he wept. Jareen slipped out of the rent pavilion to grant him comfort in solitude.

  Firnel was back at the tiller, his upper lip curled in a fixed snarl. Jareen came and stood next to the shipmaster and turned to follow his gaze. The human boat was just ahead. The men within pulled upon their oars with all their might, trying to veer away from the oncoming craft. The boat was over-full.

  Jareen had seen only one boat attached to the back of the ketch, yet there was no way the whole crew could have fit in it—not even half the number the ship had born. She remembered Gyon calling them desperate men. Firnel guided the ship smoothly on. Though they barely made half the speed they had carried on the passage from Nosh, it would be enough. The keel of the Vien craft was high and proud, sharp but strong. The over-laden boat could not resist.

  As if sensing the approach, Gyon’s comrades but for one stood at the prow, watching the oncoming revenge in silence. The humans cried out, raising hands, pleading in their foreign tongue. It never occurred to Jareen to look away. Many jumped at the last second. A shudder that ran beneath their feet, and the sound of splintering wood followed by the scraping of the men clawing hopelessly at the smooth sides of the ship as it slipped past them. Though she didn’t know their tongue, she knew they cursed and prayed and begged.

  Less than an hour later, they sighted the shore, a blue-green haze in the north. The coast of Findeluvié appeared uninhabited, for there were no structures there. From a distance, it looked like any forested coast might, but upon drawing near, the scale beggared expectation. Sailors said it was unlike anything in the world. Even having seen it before, Jareen was surprised, as if her memories had diminished the reality. The trees rose hundreds of feet high, many with trunks the size of houses. Dense poison-thorn thickets grew down to the rocks and the black sand coves, interwoven by strong clinging vines. Even without anyone to resist, breaking into the interior of Findeluvié could be difficult. In some places further east, dense mangroves extended far beyond any solid ground, a home to monstrous snakes and crocodiles. She knew her people liked it that way—indeed, they had cultivated it.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “We are about seventeen miles east of Talanael,” Firnel answered. Talanael was the name of both a heartwood and its harbor city.

  “That is all? How could those pirates have been so bold, to cruise so near?”

  “They grow bolder. I have never seen such well-equipped pirates, with mail and a double crew no less.” Firnel shook his head.

  “It bodes ill,” one of Gyon’s comrades said.

  “The Noshian navy has not kept their end of the bargain,” Firnel replied.

  “Nor will they.”

  Jareen glanced at the embassy vien. What did he mean by that? Though she wondered, she did not ask.

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