The lead boat hit sand with practiced violence. Two dozen Blackwater privateers disembarked in formation, boots splashing through the shallows with the confidence of men who'd done this before. Many times. To much wealthier towns.

  Their lieutenant surveyed the beach, hand on his sword, searching for the usual signs of prosperity worth threatening. What he found was... anticipation?

  The crowd wasn't fleeing. They were pressing forward through the seawall's gap, clustering where beach met market with the focused intensity of people who'd been waiting years for anything at all.

  "Citizens of..." He paused, trying to remember which poverty-stricken fishing village this was. His intelligence had promised a thriving trade port. "...this place. We are the Blackwater Company. Lay down your arms and your wealth, and some of you might—"

  "GRAIN!" The baker's voice cracked like his last good mixing bowl. "Please, your rates! What are your rates?"

  The lieutenant's mouth remained open, but words had abandoned him for better employment.

  "You don't understand. We're here to rob you."

  "Yes, we know how commerce works." Philus shouldered forward, deep in denial. "Rates?"

  "We're PIRATES."

  "Privateers," the priestess corrected, silver already peeping out from under her dress. "Very different legally."

  "We take things. By force. Without paying."

  "Oh." The baker's face fell. Then brightened. "But you do have grain?"

  A vein in the lieutenant's temple started keeping time with his pulse. Twenty years of successful intimidation, and these people were treating him like a traveling merchant.

  "Listen very carefully," he said, speaking slowly. "We are violent criminals. We are here to take your money and probably kill some of you. We are not, and I cannot emphasize this enough, grain merchants."

  "But your boats—" someone pointed at the cargo-heavy vessels.

  "Are full of grain we STOLE. From OTHER PEOPLE."

  "So... discounted rates?"

  The lieutenant turned to his men. "Kill one of them. Maybe that will clarify things."

  "Wait!" Philus stepped forward, almost spilling his wine. "You haven't even told us what you're looking for! We're very helpful when properly motivated!"

  The lieutenant grabbed this drowning conversational branch. "We're looking for the prophet. Foreign woman, pointed ears, ruins merchants."

  Behind the fish stall, Cassandra attempted to become one with the mackerel display.

  "Never heard of her," the baker said, at the exact moment Philus excitedly pointed at the fish stall and announced, "That's our prophet! Behind the fish!"

  The crowd turned. Twenty-four pirates turned. The mackerel offered no comment.

  "I'm not..." Cassandra's voice emerged high and thin. "I was just looking at the fish."

  "From beneath?" The lieutenant's patience had died somewhere between 'legally' and 'discounted rates.'

  "They're very... interesting fish?" Even she could hear how desperate that sounded.

  She stood slowly, knees protesting from crouching, seaweed clinging to her shoulder.

  "She's our prophet!" Philus proudly insisted. "Predicted grain ships! Which you technically are!"

  "We are NOT—" The lieutenant stopped, visibly counting to ten in some internal language. "Fine. You're the prophet?"

  "I analyze patterns. Economic ones. Very different from—"

  "Take her."

  The nearest pirate moved toward Cassandra. The crowd, still processing the shift from commerce to violence, reacted slowly. Except for the priestess, who stepped directly into his path.

  "You can't—!"

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  The blade was quick. The priestess looked surprised, then offended, then nothing at all. She dropped, silver scattering across sand already darkening with red.

  "Anyone else unclear about the situation?" the lieutenant asked.

  The crowd's collective intake of breath sounded like the sea pulling back before a wave. Then they scattered—not in panic, but with the weariness of people who survived these incidents.

  Except for the baker.

  Three years of savings. Four children who'd stopped asking for dinner. One sock, heavy with copper coins.

  He didn't charge. That would have been stupid. He just swung the sock in a beautiful arc that ended inside the nearest pirate's temple. The sound was unique—metal through wool meeting skull meeting brain.

  "Did..." Another pirate stared at his fallen comrade's holey temple. "Did Marcus just die from sock?"

  The baker, committed now to what would probably be a painful death, wound up again. The second pirate stepped forward hastily. His foot found a fallen silver coin, slick with blood. Physics took over. His thrust went wide, the sock crushed his throat, and he joined Marcus in discovering that poverty was indeed a heavy, suffocating burden.

  "KILL HIM PROPERLY!" the lieutenant roared.

  They did.

  "Well," Damon said from the end of beach, "that's going to complicate things."

  The lieutenant turned to find a single man standing in a gap in the sea wall, blocking their path. A fisherman, by his clothes. But fishermen didn't usually loom so menacingly.

  The old wall had protected the village from raiders two centuries ago. Now it stood crumbling, chest-high in some locations. The collapsed section created a passage three men wid, which was still two men too many for Damon's preferences.

  "Move," the lieutenant ordered.

  "No."

  "We'll go through you."

  "You'll try." Damon shifted his weight, and several pirates suddenly understood why the stance looked wrong. It wasn't a fisherman's stance at all. It was older, more deliberate. The kind of stance taught to young men who needed to hold narrow passes against superior numbers.

  "You're military," the lieutenant said.

  "Was. Fishing pays better." Damon's knife appeared in his hand with a casual motion. "Most days."

  The first pirate to reach him learned why retired soldiers took up fishing. The same patient precision that landed nets could open throats. He toppled backward, creating an obstacle for the next man, who discovered that Damon hadn't forgotten a thing. The third tried to flank and found out that twenty years of hauling nets had only made those trained muscles stronger.

  "He's one man!" someone shouted.

  "So was Leonidas," Damon replied, sidestepping another attack.

  The pass was narrow. Only three could attack at once. Bodies started creating their own fortification. Each pirate who fell made the approach harder for the next.

  But there were nineteen of them, and one of him.

  His wounded shoulder was opening. Each parry came a fraction later. Blood—his now, not just theirs—made the footing treacherous.

  "Stop!" Cassandra stumbled forward, a mackerel still tangled in her hair. "I'll come! I'm the prophet! I'll predict whatever you want!"

  The lieutenant, sporting a new appreciation for provincial determination, raised his hand. The attacks stopped.

  "You'll come willingly?"

  "Yes! Just... stop killing people over fish!"

  "We're not—" He visibly gave up. "Fine. Yes. The fish killings will stop."

  "Him too." She pointed at Damon, who was swaying slightly but still holding. "I need him. For... prophet reasons."

  "Prophet reasons."

  "Very personal ones."

  The lieutenant looked at Damon, who'd managed to create a small fortress of corpses. "Actually, the captain might enjoy that. Fine. Both of you. Bind them."

  As they were led to the boats, Cassandra caught a last glimpse of the beach. Most of the crowd had fled, but a familiar figure remained.

  "Athena, no!" Democritus was trying to drag his donkey away from the recently expired Marcus, but she was already working on his ankle. "That's not properly seasoned! You'll get terrible indigestion!"

  The rope ladder proved exactly as vindictive as expected. Cassandra clawed up to the deck, arrived sideways, and definitely kicked someone.

  "Graceful," Damon muttered, hauled up with actual competence. He rubbed his freshly-kicked shoulder.

  She tumbled over the rail to find herself face-to-hip with concentrated violence in tight leather. She looked up.

  The captain looked maybe thirty, but her eyes had done more accounting. Sharp jaw, sun-dark skin, the kind of mouth that made negotiations harder for everyone else. Good leather, better sword, a smirk that caught the light. She had the specific confidence of someone who'd killed her predecessor at nineteen and made it look good.

  Her gaze tracked over Damon first... scarred hands, fighter's balance, fisherman's clothes that didn't fool anyone. 'Well. That's unexpected quality.' Her attention shifted to Cassandra. 'And you're the prophet who...'

  The sentence died. Her pupils went wide. The perfect stance shifted, weight forward like she'd been slapped by possibility.

  The silence stretched.

  "Captain?" her lieutenant prompted.

  Anaktoria's brain restarted badly. "Who predicts trade routes. Yes. That." She took a breath that helped nothing. The prophet smelled like sea salt and something that made her pulse forget its rhythm. "You're valuable cargo."

  Cassandra tilted her head, studying the captain's white knuckles. "Are you having a medical event?"

  "No. I'm perfect. Completely perfect." Anaktoria attempted her usual circling assessment, made it halfway before catching herself staring at that impossible face, foreign features and the kind of oblivious beauty that started wars by accident. "You'll predict for us or..."

  The threat evaporated. She was still staring.

  "Or?" Cassandra prompted.

  "Or... consequences." A decade of successful piracy, and that was her threat? "Take her below. Good quarters."

  "The cells, Captain?"

  "Good quarters." She needed distance before her brain leaked out entirely. "Not too far from mine! Standard distance. For... guarding."

  "Yes, Captain."

  "The Spartan too." She looked at Damon, appreciating the view despite her scrambled composure. "Same quarters."

  "Generous," Damon observed.

  "I recognize quality." She attempted a dangerous smile, achieved something adjacent. "All kinds."

  She turned to leave, had to remember how walking worked. Three steps, then looked back.

  "You smell like f..." Her brain supplied exactly what Cassandra smelled like. She bit down hard. "Get her different clothes."

  She fled with as much dignity as someone fleeing could manage, which, three cups of wine later, she decided wasn't much.