The Reef By Moonlight

The shallows, or more Specifically the reef around Pirate's Cove, was a forbidding place to be. The Guardians of the Shallows, the Spira, kept jealous guard over their waters, which the Empire had tainted with unjust blood. To stray off the marked path was dangerous, for it put you in direct conflict with the Spira Lords themselves. I only had to pray that Marek's final act paid enough that we would be able to follow his Sendaru through the reef and into the deeper water beyond. I carefully cleaned my dagger, placing the small square of cloth in the very center of the sendaru, in the 'hold' as it were, and continued weaving the ship around it. I was careful to make it as close to the original ship as I could. As close to Justice as my memory allowed. And then I set the miniature sails, hung the pennants, and prepared to send Marek out as Pirate among Pirates. By the time the sendaru was finished we were nearing the Cove, the place from which all journeys started, and most ended. The waters here were blue when I was a child, but now, as they had been both times I stood on the gallows they were only quicksilver gray. Now, swiftly turning black in the setting sun. Coram climbed high in the rigging and opened a small music box that my mother had created. No one understood the words, but the beautiful, melancholy melody was said to sooth the Spira. It was simply known as Alira's lament. I affixed one of my hairs to the mast of the sendaru, breathing on it to make my phaeon abilities light it. And then I added a single drop of my blood, to pay for bringing low the crew of the Justice and stranding them in the Lands beyond without a captain. With the help of a hook, I placed the sendaru on the water and watched as it slowly bobbed, casting about like a compass shaken by a storm. A moment later it righted itself and began to sail away from the current. Without word or command my steersman followed the Sendaru, and we nosed between the masts of the ships brought low here. We all prayed silently that the Spira did not notice us. We were two hours in when the trouble started. Marek's ship had followed their own sendaru, in their case an entire fleet, but I didn't see one before the Empire ship. So they were following us. They made no payment for their passage. Their archers were still in the rigging, and their banners still sat at full, they hung no pardon, no honor for the dead into whose land we now crept. I knew that boded ill for all of us and began quietly to ready myself for deep water. I was one of the few who dared look into the quicksilver waves beneath the bow, for their illusions had no effect on my mother's people. And instead of crew I knew, and boards that were dear to me, I saw a long, black-hulled ship that ran beneath us like a dim shadow of our boards. But at the rails stood Spira, and the deaths-head banner floated above them, almost seeming to touch the air, it was so close. The Spira were sallow, like shades, and garbed in seaweed, and tattered cloth. Most of them appeared as they were the day the Empire sought to lay them low. Most didn't know what the Spira were, nor did they care, as long as the shades left them be. I knew what they were, and where they were from, my Mirana was a princess among them. And from her, I learned many things, such as they were not always bound to the shallows. But Malecrete destroyed their way of life, like everything else he got his hands on. It was another two tense hours before we saw clear water, but I was worried, the Sendaru had slowed considerably, and the Empire ship was nearing. When the Sendaru stopped suddenly I knew what they had planned, and ran to the bowsprit. "Parley!" I cried. "Masters of the Spira boards, I call Parley!" A sallow figure detached itself from the ship and floated to the surface. "What do you want man of Deeps?" He raised his hands and lifted himself up on a column of water until he was face-to-face with me. "You seek to bring low the Empire boards?" "Aye." He turned to leave. "I have not dismissed you." I let the anger boil through. This they understood, the righteous anger of a captain betrayed. "You will give me your attention or your boards!" The commander, a shade I knew by the name of Kem, stopped, a bit taken aback at my tone. He turned back and bowed my direction, the only pardon he would ask. "Kem, you know I am a man of honor, a Deep water man of the Highest regard, and so I ask a favor, I will not demand it, under the flag, but I will ask as the man who married your sister," I didn't want to force him, instead I appealed to his protective side. "These men-of-dragon may have information that can save her, and we cannot ask the dead." "But we can." The voice was thin, like the memory of a voice from a dream. "Aye, and what good would that do you?" I smiled. "If she be on land?" "True, or on boards, we have no power." He admitted flatly. I continued, knowing the Spira as I did, I could be confident of some things. "Aye, and they know well the law of waters and of land. It could be that they hide her on boards you mean to bring low, thus damning her to death before her time." If they attacked Empire boards to lay low all aboard, they could not stop for a passenger, their battle rage was legendary, and the last thing I needed was the only sympathetic soul among them killed for accidentally ordering the death of his sister. "What do you ask?" Now he understood that I had terms that affected the outcome of the battle. I held up a hand. "It is no big thing I ask Kem, simply this, when you face the Empire, do not take those not willingly bound to the boards. Most of the crew, I'm sure are Empire men bought and pledged, but some few, passengers, cabin-boys and prisoners, some crew too, are sworn against their will, it would be a shame to damn them for their master's mistake." He thought about it a moment before reaching out to me. "Aye, man-of bones, it will be so." I did what few others could, I reached out and shook his hand. "Thank you." "The only thanks I will take is to bring my sister back to me. She is bound to you Jalen, and your heart alone knows her fate, tell me, does she live?" I closed my eyes and reached out my mind, tugging on the melody of the sea I knew as my wife's mind. It reverberated with love, she was alive. "She lives, but her mind is closed." He nodded. "Then you will receive what you ask. Those that are not bound will not follow the boards. But the ship is ours." "Agreed." I smiled and bowed his direction. "You are released, our terms are set." He slipped back into the water, and my ship began to move, a wave built up behind us washing us the last few lengths to clear water, beyond the tendrils of darkness that reached for all dishonored boards. The wave also washed Marek's boards to deep water, but some ways beyond us so that we could not fight. A third time the wave gathered, but this time when it broke it revealed a ship rising out of the calm, still waters. Her sails were rags and tatters, and she moved against both wind and current. Aboard her men lined the decks, shields up in a posture of war. Her rigging crawled with soldiers, now appearing alive, now appearing as men of bones. We watched in horrified awe as she dropped boarding planks and her crew began to swarm the other ship. Wherever their feet touched the boards began to change, quicksilver ran up the lines knocking the honest into the sea, and those who truly held with Empire, began to change. "Men in the water!" I cried as the men began to fall from the boards. "Man the ropes, pull them in, we cannot leave them for the Spira." I knew what he hadn't said. Any who died in the water returned to the ship. "Quickly, quickly, now, pull them in." Some two dozen men found themselves in the water, and began to swim for us, a few more swiftly following. Few looked back, for few wanted to see what was going on behind them. And as swiftly as we could, we trimmed sail and began to pluck them from the water to save them a fate worse than death. We tried not to watch what was happening, but it was like trying not to watch a Melee unfolding before you, almost impossible not to watch. The Spira washed over the Empire ship like a dark wave, and everywhere they touched the boards darkened to the burnt but not afire look we knew. The ship of the Damned. Her figurehead, once proud and beautiful was now hung about with seaweed and stained ebony with the debts of the crew. And the once-white banner with the dragon was now black, with seaweed forming a cage over the green dragon, and seeming to drag it down to the bottom, leaving only dragon bones as proof it had once been an Empire banner. As swiftly as it had begun, it ended, the ship set its sails and began to majestically sail off across the reef, returning from whence it came, now bent on destroying those it had once served.