Jason Taylor, Second Mate on the merchant ship Ruby Ring, was in the middle of a strange kind of dream. A certain busty wench at a certain portside tavern in Charleston was teaching him how to use the navigation charts for the sextant he'd been learning to use. But then the ship lurched, wrecking the dream and whacking him against the sidewall of his bunk.
       He rubbed at his forehead while the entangled visions dissolved into a sudden urgent wakefulness. Waves thundered against the hull, throwing him the other direction, against his cot's guardrail. Alarmed voices rose above the relentless pounding. The Ruby's timbers shuddered and groaned in protest.
       Jason propelled himself out of bed. Storm. It had to be. He didn't hear the telltale roar of pirate cannon, though that was the greater risk this close to port. He grabbed a pair of breeches, not sure if they were his or his bunkmate Sam's, stuffed his legs in, and belted the waist tightly. He stumbled to the cabin door and wrenched it open.
       Water poured in around his bare feet. The shouting grew louder, though still muffled by the heavy wood door barred ahead of him. No one else was in the short hall behind him that led to officers' quarters. He braced himself against the shuddering ship and made his way to the main deck. He struggled with the bar that held the door shut, only to have the whole thing ripped from his hands by a howling wind that threatened to suck him out into the void of a wicked night storm.
       Waves slammed the ship from both sides, poured over the gunwale, and flooded the main deck. Jason watched, frozen in the door frame, as the water swept every man on the deck off his feet and yanked them all overboard. More water lunged into the entrance to the cargo hold in the deck, seeking, clawing, even as foamy fingers curled around Jason's ankles.
       The hold.
       The waves fell back, a rhythm Jason realized he had felt even in his sleep. He scrabbled out of the crew quarters into screaming wind that turned untended ropes into lashes. He skidded across the deck to the hold's main hatch. He had spent the majority of this trip pretending there was only one level below, but there were three. There was one level for the rest of the crew, then one for the women and girls, and one more for the men and boys. He'd told Captain Tille this 'cargo' was a bad idea. And now it seemed Poseidon himself had sent the sea to exact its revenge for the horror they were inflicting on fellow human beings.
       The timing in his head told him he had only moments before the grasping waves surged again. He swung his legs over the side and dropped into the darkness below.
       Jason landed in waist-deep water. His heart sank. If the water was this deep already, what did that say for the poor souls below? He waded to where he knew the hatch to the lower levels to be, found the ring, and yanked with all his might. He might as well have been trying to lift the entire ocean. He reached down with his other hand, braced his feet on each side of the hatch, and pulled until his vision darkened.
       The waves surged into the opening above him, pouring into the crew level with relentless, seeking force. The rush shoved him back, tangling him in abandoned hammocks. His foot banged into something, a sailor's personal trunk most likely. And then his back hit the interior wall that divided the crew quarters from the galley. Water surged and sprayed into his face, choking him. He turned to hug the wall so that the pounding water shoved against his back. Gasping, he tried to pull himself along to the hull. There were cannon ports on this deck from when the crew had originally occupied the deck below. If he could make it to one of those, he could maybe squeeze out before he drowned.
       The seafoam grabbed at him as currents swirled around him, pushing him away from his objective. He turned again, ready for the waves to recede in their rhythm, but instead, a new deluge of water rushed in. The surge lifted him off his feet. He put his hands up to protect his head from the beam overhead. He took one last gasping breath as the water swallowed him up.
       And then there was a space, a pocket of air. He kicked his feet, grabbed at a crossbeam that braced the deck above, and held on. The ship groaned and shuddered around him, an unholy noise that vibrated through the water. The air would grow stale all too soon. Jason clung to the beam, unsure whether it would be better to wait until his own breath choked him or to just let go and let the water take him, as it had taken crew, friends, the men he'd lived with for the last four years.
       The choice was made for him. As suddenly as it had surged into the ship, the water rushed out of the hold, upward in a reverse that defied the laws of nature. Jason grew heavy when water that had buoyed him against the hold's ceiling left him hanging. The seawater continued its streaming flight up and out of the ship, flipping the lower hatch open like a pistol shot. Torrents of water streamed up and up out of the lower decks, confirming Jason's worst fears about the people trapped below.
       He let go of the beam and landed heavily on his feet. His knees would not support him, and he fell to the deck, his heart in his throat. Poseidon indeed. Only wizardry or a god could make the ocean do such unnatural bidding. He had seen many strange things in his life at sea, even multi-colored witch lights dancing overhead. He had never seen anything like this.
       The ship calmed and stilled. The only sounds now were the steady drip of water from the twisted hammocks and Jason's own rattling breath. He forced himself to his feet and made his way through the wreckage of his shipmates' belongings to the hatch to the lower decks. Salt and shit and rot wafted out of the hole. Jason cleared his throat and called out.
       "Anyone there?" He waited until his throat nearly closed, from the odor, from the tragedy. "Please?"
       Nothing stirred, and no voice answered--only the steady drip-drip of water.
       He swung the hatch closed and turned to the opening overhead. One ladder remained, hanging by one leg. Jason reset it and wedged it against the square above. He took a deep breath and clambered up to the main deck.
       The storm had lifted, taking the night with it but leaving behind a wan morning light. Thick fog surrounded him, putting soft edges on the damage all around him. Tangled lines, torn sails, splintered masts. He spun a slow circle, eyes seeking any sign of the crew, but he was alone.
       Shadowed shapes moved in the mist. Jason froze. The shapes resolved into men, two men he did not recognize. On the left, an enormous man, bald, black, with a sapphire solitaire the size of a grape in one ear. He was dry, which made Jason, soggy and exhausted, stare. His boots squeaked on the wet deck. His silky blue breeches fluttered in the misty swirls he made as he strode through the fog. He wore no shirt, and his giant hands made the cutlass in his left and the blunderbuss in his right look like children's toys.
       His companion was more pedestrian but just as dry and fresh. Weathered face, an indeterminate brown, long brown hair held back in a low tail. Streaks ran through that could be either sun bleaching or the gray of age; it was impossible to tell. He wore dark canvas breeches, the rope sandals of someone more accustomed to going barefoot, and an undyed linen shirt that looked as if it had been washed roughly many times but not enough. He carried only a cutlass but looked as if he meant to use it. Right now.
       Jason stood empty-handed, flat-footed, and resigned. He was already past the moment that should have been his death. Every breath he took since was more than he deserved, and if that meant only a few hundred more before a pirate cut him down, then so be it. It was what he deserved for going along with Captain Tille's desperate slave run.
       The plain man drew back to cut Jason down.
       The bald giant stopped him with a gesture, his gaze tight on Jason. "How do you live?" His voice rumbled through the fog.
       Jason shrugged, no voice to give to words he didn't have anyway.
       The bald man's eyes narrowed a moment longer. He reached out and, with casual strength, rapped Jason on the forehead with the pommel of his cutlass.
       The world went dark.

       Jason woke on his knees, his arms bound painfully behind his back. A crowd surrounded him, it seemed, but his vision stabilized inside his aching head, and the crowd resolved itself into four people: the bald giant and his rumpled, ageless companion, one on each side of him, each with a hand both holding him upright and keeping him on his knees. The deck beneath him and the ship's alien rhythm and the breeze told him he was no longer on the Ruby Ring. Directly in front of him stood a man with such an air of command that Jason immediately identified him as the captain.
       The man wore heavy boots, red silk breeches, and a loose shirt with flowing sleeves. A silk sash cinched tightly around a trim waist. Thick black hair was tied back in a red leather band, and a smooth, groomed beard of black showed no streaks of gray. Startling pale gray eyes watched, sharp as a hawk's, as Jason regained his bearings. A band enclosed the man's throat, like a woman's choker, but this was black leather with red embroidery that set off a single oblong ivory bead centered at the hollow of his throat. The captain's lips twitched as he noticed Jason's interest, and a hand moved almost absently to caress the bead.
       And then Jason saw the man's companion, and his perilous situation was momentarily forgotten. Everything the captain had -- grooming, culture, fashion that covered a subtle but very sharp steel -- this woman was the opposite. She came only to the captain's shoulder, pale next to his ruddy good health, and as black as his hair was, hers somehow managed to be blacker, with glints of blue like a raven's feathers. It was unbound and wild, waves that moved almost of their own accord. Her eyes were bluer than the captain's, and while sharp wit lived within, they were as wild and restless as her hair. She wore a simple shift, sleeveless and white. It fell to the deck, covering her feet, but did little to conceal her nakedness beneath as it pressed against her in the breeze.
       The captain spoke, his gaze heavy and threatening like a coming storm. "Who are you?" Constant exposure to the wind had not yet stolen the smoothness from his tone.
       Jason tried to hold his aching head high. "Jason Taylor." A knee prodded him in the back, from the rumpled man he guessed, and he reluctantly added, "Navigator on the Ruby Ring."
       The captain stepped back and to the side. "That ship?"
       The Ruby sat, becalmed, wrecked, but still floating, a few hundred feet off the bow of the ship Jason found himself on. He looked up at the captain and saw keen interest there. He swallowed against a dry throat. "Yes."
       The captain smiled, but it was a shark's grin. He wrapped his fingers around the woman's arm and yanked her to his side. "You were supposed to drown them all."
       She kept her gaze fixed to the deck. "I did as you directed." Her voice was low and musical, like the hum of the Ruby when it was running full sail before a strong wind.
       The captain frowned. "Malak." He nodded at the giant bald man. "You're certain there was nothing worth taking?"
       Malak's voice was so low it vibrated in Jason's chest through the man's hand on his shoulder. "Slaves. All dead."
       The captain glared at Jason. "What are you playing at? Smuggling? That's not a slave ship."
       Jason hesitated, but the sight of the seafoam reaching up and yanking all his crew overboard flashed before his eyes. Who was he protecting? He was the only one left. He answered truthfully. "Captain Tille fell on hard times and took a slave run."
       "Navigator, you said?" The captain's voice was sharp.
       Jason nodded.
       "Astrolabe?"
       "Yes?" Jason squinted up at the captain. No one had relied on an astrolabe for years. Even the old-timers had moved on. "And the quadrant, the back-staff, and the sextant. The sextant is more accurate. . ." He snapped his mouth shut when he realized he was babbling.
       A dark scowl crossed the captain's face. "As you say." He still had his hand wrapped painfully tight around the woman's arm. "And you did not approve of your captain's choice of cargo?"
       Jason shrugged as best he could with the two men holding him in place. "I warned him it would make us look a target worth taking."
       The captain flashed a tight smile. "Indeed." He dragged the woman to the gunwale, looking back over his shoulder to make sure Jason had line of sight to the Ruby. The smile broke into the shark's grin. He looked down at the woman. "Sink it. This time for good."
       The woman set her shoulders, a resigned and tired move. She reached out one hand to the Ruby and bowed her head. Her hand tightened into a claw.
       Water streamed up the sides of the Ruby Ring until the ship was somehow entirely encased in water. And then, with a giant crunch, the ship cracked into thousands of splinters and disappeared into the thrashing sea.
       All the breath left Jason's lungs.
       The woman staggered. The captain steadied her and then yanked her around to face Jason. "What should I do with him?"
       She looked up at the dark, grinning face, eyebrows raised as if he never asked her opinion about anything. "What do I care what you do with him?"
       The captain's eyes flashed, and his hand went to his throat, to the ivory bead. He caressed it with a finger. "I don't know," he told her softly. "What do you care about him? You saved him, didn't you?" His voice grew hard. "Why?"
       The woman looked down and away. "He saved himself." Her shoulders hunched as if she struggled with the next thought. "Conscript him if he looks to offer value. Or throw him overboard if he does not." She met his shark's grin with a fierce gaze. "I don't care."
       The captain stared at her thoughtfully, fingering the bead at his throat. Finally, he dropped his hand. He gestured to Malak. "Fine. Cuff him, bake him, and break him."
       Jason hardly had time to wonder what that meant before the damn cutlass came at him from the side, knocking him sharply above the ear. And everything went dark again. If he could have, he would've sighed with annoyance.

       Jason woke to bright early morning sun and a clear blue sky. He guessed he'd been out overnight and then some.
       His situation went downhill from there. He was strapped to the pirate ship's mizzenmast, his arms stretched painfully behind him. They were bound together, with more rope wrapping around his body and the mast. From the raw patches on his arms and legs and the deep thrumming ache in his shoulders and back, he'd been there most of the time he was out.
       His left leg burned with a different urgency than the rest, just above the ankle. He couldn't lean forward enough to see well, but as the ragged hem of his trousers flapped in the breeze, he caught a glimpse of an iron cuff. Cuff, bake, and break. He swallowed around a dry and swollen tongue. He felt baked already.
       A slight cough alerted him to someone else nearby, and he raised his head to find the rumpled, weathered man who had been ready to cut him down on the Ruby Ring. Rumple stood behind a small round table. He had both hands pressed down on it to keep it from sliding across the deck with the rolling waves. A glass sat in a recess on top, sized to hold it in place. And in it, what looked to be water.
       Rumple grinned when he saw that Jason was paying attention. He gave a short bow. "Rassler, at yer service." A gold tooth glinted in the sun as he grinned. "Drink or die. Drink, and swear fealty to our captain. Or don't drink. And die."
       Not the usual pirate offer, at least in Jason's limited experience. His thirst already maddening, he still forced himself to think and to be careful. "What's in the glass?"
       "Water." But the crafty look on Rassler's face said more.
       "What else is in the glass?"
       Rassler's grin faded, and the lines on his face settled into a grim appreciation. "Drink it and find out."
       The clawed fingers of the sea witch as she destroyed the Ruby flashed before Jason's eyes. "Magic. A potion."
       All humor drained from Rassler's face. "Drink, or die," he recited. "Drink and be bound to Cap'n Crow. Or don't drink, and die."
       Jason snorted. "What kind of choice is that?"
       Rassler nodded, satisfied. "I read ya right. Then bake. I come back in an hour to asks you again." He lifted up the table, glass and all, and stalked away, his stride easily timed with the ship's motion.
       Whatever state he'd been in before, Jason was well awake now and left only with his aches, his thirst, and his thoughts. An hour. An eternity. No time at all. When this Rassler came back, would he drink? His chest ached at the thought. He would not drink. He'd be no better off than the poor souls who'd perished in the Ruby's hold, and weren't they the better off for drowning instead of facing a lifetime of enslavement?
       But as the baking continued, he came around to a bitter conclusion. He would break, one way or another. At some point, he would drink the water. He wanted to live. He would face hard labor and worse treatment in the meantime, but it was what he deserved for sticking with Tille down a dark road he had known to be wrong. He wanted to live, and he didn't know of any kind of potion that could enslave a man forever. He would drink and make his vow, under duress, but it would only be to buy time for an escape. They couldn't possibly keep him forever.

       When Jason agreed so readily the second time, Rassler had frowned deeply and stalked away, yelling for Malak.
       Malak brought the captain and the witch with him. From the way the rest of the crew deferred to Malak as he passed, Jason guessed he was the First Mate. He certainly seemed to have the captain's respect.
       Malak and Rassler cut Jason down from the mast and hauled him over to face the captain. They forced him to his knees. The captain held the glass of water to Jason's lips. Jason meant only to sip it, but he lost control and ended up gulping it down.
       He immediately felt light-headed. He looked up to the vibrant man in red, who met his gaze with a knowing grin.
       The captain's fingers strayed to the bead at his throat. "I am Hawthorne Crow, captain of the Storm Tamer. Do you swear to follow my every order?"
       Crow's voice sounded deeper than Jason remembered. It echoed strangely in his ears. The rhythm of the sea came over him sharply, and then suddenly he was the sea, caressing the ship, pulsing out across the whole of the world-
       Malak shook him. "Answer."
       Crow frowned. His fingers tightened on the bead. "Do you swear to follow my every order?"
       Jason had to remember his voice -- force it from a throat that suddenly seemed small and choked. "Yes."
       As soon as the word left his lips, he regretted it. The answer swept over his body like a chill, shrinking him down to shove him in a shell, a prison, a forever place. He focused bleary eyes on Crow. "What's happening?"
       The captain's cocky grin was back in place, peeking out from his bristling black beard. "You just sold your soul, my friend. You're mine now." He took a breath and then rattled off his list of demands, a speech that sounded as though it had been delivered a thousand times. "I order you to never harm me in any way. To never take what is mine. To obey every order I give you. And to always answer me with the truth."
       The words washed over Jason, collecting at his throat and wrists where he swore they turned into rings of metal far tighter than the iron at his ankle. They bound themselves around his hands and his neck. He tried to grab at the choking sensation, but Malak and Rassler twisted him back into submission.
       Crow waved them away. Jason sagged without their support. "Tell me, sailor. What was your plan of escape? They all have one, those who drink in the second hour."
       To Jason's horror, his innermost thoughts -- hopes, really -- poured out of his mouth. "I was going to bide my time until I found a chance to escape. Better to serve, and watch and learn, than die."
       Crow nodded. "So, they all believe. We'll see if you chose wrong." He gestured to Malak. "Put him on the night shift. Cleaning detail."

       They hauled Jason down to the crew hold. To their credit, they fed him and gave him a real drink, a grog that was not so heavily laced as the water and whatever was in it. They dumped him in a hammock and left him.
       He tried to rest, knowing that one of the worst nights of his life lay ahead of him, but the water and its potion refused to let him. He fell into a fitful half-sleep, jumping from vision to fevered vision with each slap of a wave against the ship's hull.
       The Ruby Ring settled in matchstick pieces on a long drift to the seafloor, the hapless bodies of crew and slaves drifting with it.
       A whale, blowing out a breath and sucking in a fresh one before diving down and down and down.
       A pod of dolphins, chittering to each other as they leapt through waves, tipped with foam.
       A raging storm, the waves slamming into each other, the spray they made ripped away by a screaming wind-
       Jason was unceremoniously dumped from his hammock.
       A new crewman kicked him while he was down and groaning. "Get up."
       Jason scrambled to his feet. This new sailor was his height, gray hair shorn close to his skull. He wore an antique navy-blue tailcoat with the gold embroidery that spoke to the previous owner's rank in the Royal Marines. He wore no shirt underneath it, and his belly pushed the coat open in a way that suggested it would never close.
       "I'm Phibbs. Third Mate. I run the night crew." He grabbed Jason with a fist in his shirt and dragged him behind, turning to pitch him with more strength than Jason would've guessed at the ladder leading out of the hold.
       Up on the deck in the dark, Phibbs kicked and shoved Jason up to the forecastle. There, he found a smoking lantern that barely cast any light and a bucket with soapy water alongside a stiff-bristled hand brush.
       Phibbs delivered one last half-hearted kick. "Clean the deck. Don't make the cap'n regret taking you on. There's lashes plenty for shirkers." His gaze drifted beyond Jason, and he scowled. "And don't talk to the sea witch." He stalked away, his coat tails flapping in the stiff breeze.
       The sea witch. The woman who had crushed Jason's ship with a flick of her wrist. One quick glance over his shoulder had placed her at the starboard railing near the ship's bow. Her white linen dress, not much more than a night shift or slip, billowed around her in the moonlight. He fought back a shiver and applied himself to scrubbing with an enthusiasm he didn't feel.
       He felt her move toward him, even though she was out of his line of sight.
       "Why did you not drink the first time?" Her voice held that hum that spoke of taut rigging in the wind.
       Jason gritted his teeth. The tests began already. "I'm not supposed to talk to you."
       Her laugh was low and warm. "You're not talking to me. I'm talking to you."
       He sighed and sat back on his heels. He looked back at the ladder leading up to the forecastle for any sign of Phibbs.
       "I will keep watch." She stepped closer and angled herself so that she faced Phibb's direction. "He will not see us speaking."
       Resigned, Jason dumped the brush into his bucket. "You asked the wrong question."
       "Oh?" She arched her brow at him. An amused smiled played about her lips.
       "You asked why I didn't drink the first time." He fought to keep bitterness from his voice. "But the question is, why did I drink at all."
       She sat down across from him, folding her legs neatly beneath her shift. "No. I know that answer. You want to live. But there are some who drink the water the first chance they get. Men like Rassler and Malak." She made a dismissive gesture toward the ship's stern. "There are some who never drink, even when the madness of thirst grips them. Captains, soldiers, and priests too. They would rather die than submit to a pirate."
       She cocked her head at him. "Some men wait until the thirst drives them out of their minds. They tell themselves they didn't know what they were doing when they drank. As with Phibbs. But men like you, who refuse the first time but drink the second, are few."
       Jason shook his head. "I thought I could fight him. But he saw right through me."
       She clasped her hands in her lap and gave him an earnest look. "You are different."
       "Hardly."
       "Different," she insisted. She squinted at him through the lantern's spitting smoke. "Something in your mind. Something almost. . . familiar."
       He stared at her. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to that.
       She shifted her legs to the side, leaning on one arm. "Where are you from, Jason Taylor?"
       "London." He looked back at the main deck. He couldn't see any sign of Phibbs or any undue attention from the handful of crew playing dice by the opening leading below decks. "My mother was a seamstress, a widow." He didn't know why he was telling her this. "She had no name to give me, so she named me Taylor because she thought it sounded better than 'Seamstress.'"
       The sea witch smiled, a soft, encouraging thing. "And how did you end up at sea?"
       Jason snorted. She was turning on the charm for questions he would give her for free. What difference did it make, now? "I was a sea urchin from the start, always hanging out by the docks. I made some coin as a courier between ships and the dockmaster. One captain took an interest in me, taught me some letters and numbers." Tille, who had sailed to the Ivory Coast in desperation after a run of bad luck, and Jason too loyal to leave him.
       "And then Darden, his navigator, acquired a sextant, and he showed me how it worked and how to use the charts and I. . ." He trailed off at her sudden keen interest. "What?"
       "You speak the language of the stars?"
       Jason looked down at his hands. Hands that would quickly grow thick and cramped at his new job and lose their ability to hold and manipulate his trade's finer tools. "And the moon and the sun. I was trying to, at any rate. Last year was my first time at sea as the ship's navigator." He looked across at her, and the question he'd been holding back came bursting from him before he could censor himself. "What are you?"
       She frowned. With a quick, graceful move, she was back on her feet and standing at the gunwale, her back to him. "They call me the sea witch."
       He'd hurt her with the question, but it was too late to take it back now, so he plowed onward. "Did you really destroy my whole ship?"
       "It was not my choice nor my desire."
       The wind flipped her skirts, revealing an iron cuff around her left ankle. Even in the dark, Jason could see the skin above and below the cuff was red and blistered. He looked up to her face to find her watching him. He summoned the courage to ask the hardest question. "Why did you save me?"
       A little warmth came back to her eyes--a quirk of the lips. "I did not save you. You saved yourself."
       Jason threw her a skeptical look. "You made the air that let me breathe."
       The sea witch regarded him gravely. "You're different."
       Feet on the ladder made them both turn away. Jason hastily reached for the brush and began scrubbing.
       Phibbs's face appeared at the top of the ladder. "Sea Witch! Cap'n wants you. Now."
       She moved past Jason. Blocked from Phibbs's view, he caught at her skirts and pitched his voice for her ears only. "I offended you, and I'm sorry. Please tell me your name."
       She hardly paused. "Mora," she breathed, and then she was gone.
       Phibbs clambered up to the deck to make way for Mora. Jason heard him coming closer, and then a fist slammed into his ear. Jason fell to the deck. Phibbs yelled over the ringing in his ears. "I said don't talk to the sea witch."
       Jason managed a shaky "yes sir" and climbed painfully back to a kneeling position. He righted his bucket and scrubbed at the spilled soap and water. Phibbs hovered over him a moment longer, and then with a huff, left.
       Jason scrubbed, his mind roiling. He'd been taken in by the witch, easily answered her questions, and for what?
       And here he was, after his stupid plans for escape--the captain's words after he'd swallowed the water. You've sold your soul. His future lay before him, two possible paths: Phibbs's daily grind, his soul well and truly lost. Or Mora's caged despair.
       He eyed the gunwale where Mora had stood just a moment ago. Why shouldn't he jump over now, take the death he should've had? He willed himself to his feet. But his body would not respond.
       You're mine now. Never take what is mine. He let go of the brush. His hands clenched into fists. Still, he couldn't make himself climb to his feet, couldn't even convince himself that he wouldn't jump. He'd just look. His breath came short and sharp. And still, his body would not respond to his will.
       The wind, a pressure so constant he had forgotten it was there, faltered. Mora's voice carried to him in the silence, soft cries that he could not pretend were pleasure.
       He picked up his brush and scrubbed hard at the deck to drown them out.

       Jason was dead to the world as soon as he crawled back into his hammock, his hands cramped, his shoulders and back muscles burning.
       It felt like no more than an instant, not even enough time to dream before he was hauled out and delivered to Captain Crow's quarters. Jason tried not to stare.
       Shelves crossed the rear windows, backlit by a sun that was too fresh to be setting -- which meant they were headed west, and it was morning. The shelves were stacked with a magpie's collection of bobs and doo-dads: books, women's necklaces dripping with pearls and jewels, scrolls bound in ribbons and feathers and sealed in heavy wax, more silk sashes like the one at Crow's waist, in a rainbow of expensive colors, ivory carvings, odd pieces of driftwood -- the collection seemed to have little rhyme or reason.
       The collection did not extend to the captain's main worktable, though. The table dominated the space immediately past the room's entrance. A wood ship's wheel made a chandelier overhead, with candles burned low and replaced many times, wax frozen in pale drips and stalactites. Charts and more charts overlapped across the tabletop, an embarrassment of riches that put the jewels and silks to shame. A collection of navigator's tools sat in a pile at the center of the table, one brass astrolabe and a half-dozen wooden quadrants and octants, topped with an unwieldy cross-staff.
       Captain Crow sat at the head of the table, facing the door and framed by his chaotic collection on the shelves behind him. He gestured for Jason to sit at his right hand. When Jason sat, he caught sight of Mora sitting in the captain's bed tucked around to the left of the entrance. She sat at the edge of the bed in her white shift, her wild dark hair painted with gold streaks by the rising sun. She met his gaze fearlessly.
       Crow tapped on the table, redirecting Jason's attention. "You know how to use these."
       Jason looked down at the charts. Most he did not recognize. Some had compass lines, and some, yellowed and crumbling, did not have even that basic navigation guide. He shot a glance at Crow, and not finding any prohibition there, he reached out and slid a few aside to get a better look at others that hid beneath. He recognized the three-pronged confluence of rivers into Charleston Harbor, the town itself jutting out into its midst, and pulled that map to place it on top. The language was not one he recognized, German or Dutch maybe, and some of the place locations inland had the multiple syllables found among the Kiawah or Edisto tribes, but he would know the harbor and its tributaries anywhere. "That's Charleston."
       Crow leaned back in his seat, his eyes shadowed, his fingers tapping at his lips. "How close are we to it?"
       Jason bit back a sharp retort. How was he supposed to know? "Well, I would need to know your last known position and any dead reckoning or measurements you've taken since then."
       "With those." Crow thrust his chin at the jumbled pile on the table.
       Jason carefully moved the cross-staff off the top of the pile and sorted through the rest. One of the quadrants was so old and so long at sea, the weather had penetrated its finish, swelling the wood so that he suspected it was useless. He set it with the cross-staff.
       "Why do you put those aside?" Crow asked sharply.
       Jason fought his instinct to hunch protectively at the tone. He set his hand on the cross-staff. "This isn't as accurate as the others. It's hard to get a reading on anything but a becalmed sea." He moved to the quadrant. "This one has absorbed too much water and won't swing freely. And," he shrugged, "the octants have a greater range anyway." He bit his lip and the blurted out, "And the sextant is even more accurate." He suddenly missed its smooth, fresh varnish in his hands, its meticulous mirrors.
       Crow made a face. He sat up and beckoned to Mora. "Sea Witch. How far are we from land?"
       She bowed her head. The whisper of the sea against the hull grew louder in Jason's ears. She looked up, her gaze fixed on Crow. "A day's sail. More, if the wind does not hold overnight."
       Crow grunted at the qualification. "Which way?"
       She pointed, unerringly, over her shoulder in their current direction of travel.
       Crow shifted his gray regard to Jason. "Where would that put us on this chart?"
       Jason was taken aback by the question. Yes, he was a navigator, trained in reading the stars, the compass, the speed knots on the common log, and what charts Tille could afford. But Tille was nearly as capable as he was -- he didn't know of a captain who didn't know the basics. How could Crow sail the wide Atlantic without knowing where he was? This far from any chance of sighting a coastline?
       Crow tapped the chart impatiently. "Where?"
       "Uh. . ." Jason squinted at the chart's scale, did some rapid math, augmented by some guessing. "Not on the chart at all." He put his finger on a spot about twice distance the edge of the map made from Charleston. "Here." He traced a line that mimicked the coastline. "Or anywhere along here, really. I'd need to know our latitude first."
       Crow frowned. "With your sextant."
       Jason opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by a fist against the cabin door.
       "Come!" Crow shouted.
       Malak peeked his head inside. "Ship's been spotted, Captain."
       Crow lunged to his feet, waving at Jason. "Both of you. Come with me."