The Spit's (an interesting choice of name, Talon thought, for The Captain's most prized possession) deck was a hive of activity. Even more so than usual.

Crewmembers, grouped in twos and threes, danced amongst the masts, as if trapped in a trance. Barking orders left and right atop the quarterdeck, The Captain kept this organised chaos from splitting at the seams, without ever looking up from his wheel. Talon wagered the man could command the skimmer just as well if were mute. Where his face looked weathered and weary, the blue of his eyes had an ageless quality about them – all the darting sharpness of youth splashed with cold certainty. Any man who slacked, for even a moment, stiffened when those blue eyes turned his way. All those shouted words were just habitual, it was truly The Captain's eyes that did all the talking for him.

No matter how skilled The Captain was, however, the journey had not been particularly smooth. Even if it was, by The Captain's estimation, "quicker than Ducard's dreadnought do manage."

At the best of times, The Spit bobbed in the Narrow Seas in an almost hypnotic fashion that simultaneously made one's eyes heavy and their stomach turn. At the worst, Talon felt as if he were shut in a barrel wedged between two hills, rolling up and down relentlessly between the two amidst a thunderstorm.

There was nothing graceful about throwing up the day's meals over The Spit's railing, especially when he was seemingly the only one to struggle with the ship's incessant rocking. He doubted even Cleo, with her Queenly composure, could pull off dangling over the sea without earning the raucous laughs he'd garnered over the journey.

Not that his kidnapper seemed to be in the least bit bothered. He found her leaning coolly against the rails, green eyes watching bare-chested sailors scampering back and forth with ropes hauled over muscled shoulders. Her eyes seemed to narrow ever so slightly between the men and she'd cock her head a touch, as if silently evaluating each one of them.

He quickly regretted joining her where she stood, having already been knocked to his backside twice by oncoming crew. Some laughed as they went passed, others more irritable as they spat a 'watch it!' over the ropes on their backs. He may as well have tried to slip through a herd of charging bulls.

'You woke,' Cleo greeted him upon his arrival, more battered and bruised than when he had left his cabin.

Talon frowned at that. Her level tone made it difficult to tell whether she was poking fun at him.

His animosity towards the girl at his forced departure from Borne was slowly waning day-by-day. Perhaps it was because she had saved his life and perhaps for other reasons too embarrassing to put to words. As far as he was concerned though, she still owed him a life – a life she claimed she had never taken. He could feel the need to spill blood bubbling up inside him fierce enough to boil the Narrow Seas.

'Mornin',' Talon planted his forearms over the rail and drew in a deep breath to stave off the mounting somersaults of his empty stomach.

A dark grey haze rose up in the distance, vague square-shapes standing out from the sea like corporeal shadows.

He watched the shadows closely as they drew closer, becoming more defined, more real to his eye. Talon wasn't sure how long they stood there together, she staring past at one expanse of water, and he at another, before he broke the silence.

'Why did ye' bring me?' He thought he spied a wry smile touching the corner of Cleo's lips briefly.

'You decided to come on your own, farmboy,' she said. 'Besides, like I said, I know of someone who would care to meet you.'

Talon could hear his teeth grinding together at the effort of not reminding her again of the small fact that he'd had a dagger in his side at the time. Yet still, she wouldn't tell him anything. The girl guarded her words more jealously than a dragon its horde of gold.

'Where are we meeting him?' Talon rephrased his usual reply, hoping to trip the girl up a little.

'She.'

The correction was all he expected to get out of Cleo.

He turned back to the railing and contemplated whether his still healing wound would allow him to slip from the girl's clutches.

Into a land where the only thing you'll recognise is Ducard's flag? With nothing but the rags on your back? Idiot.

Talon shook his head bitterly.

Fine, he would play the girl's game and meet this woman of hers. After that though, he had someone in mind he'd care to meet too.

Resisting the urge to reach for the hiding knife rattling in his boot, he set his gaze squarely on Clovaine's largening silhouette. The coastline seemed to glitter all the sudden with opportunity.

*

The smell of fish struck Talon like a horse kick to the face, as The Spit drifted to a halt outside Clovaine's dock – Verne's port, one of the crewmen had informed him. The port-city of Verne. Talon had never seen a city before. All he had was a faint image of towering spires and thieves fleeing across rooftops. Funnily enough, it was always his father telling those stories, though it had been his mother who had actually been to a city. She never made it known however, how faithful the stories were to the truth. If they were, then Verne was an utter disappointment.

Flat topped buildings of a dirty grey, wider than they were tall, lined their approach into Verne's harbour. Small boats, smaller than that of The Captain's skimmer, were dotted sparsely around the thinning channel of sea. A handful, already moored beside the three timber jetties spearing across the water, were busily unloading quivering nets of fish. Men of Clovaine with dark hair and oiled moustache mixed with men of foreign lands; some tall and dark, others as wide as they were tall, and the rest short and pale.

Beyond this spectacle of man, the jetties lead to a street no less muddy than what Talon had seen passing for a path in Edgecliffe. Past the 'warehouses', smaller buildings of varying width and length, with white-washed walls segmented with a black timber frame, sat beyond the muddy cobblestones. V-shaped roofs, made of what looked like brown brick – 'tiles,' one of the crewmen had grumbled – pointed up at the grey sky.

A few men, garbed in armless shirts, carried crates to and from the warehouses but otherwise there was little in the way of commerce to be observed from Verne's docks. Above a thin dog lying asleep, he hoped, a wooden sign shaped like a hammer squeaked as it swung in the gentle breeze beside one of the black and white buildings. A faint clink clink reached Talon's ears as he and Cleo disembarked from The Spit.

'Is this it?' he wondered aloud.

A ringed hand clasped his shoulder as he was halfway down the gangplank.

'Don't suppose I could convince you to stay, little fish?' The Captain grinned down at him past his beard.

Talon half-expected Cleo to brush aside the weathered man's offer but she continued walking down the gangplank as though she hadn't heard him speak.

He mulled the thought of sailing the high seas with The Captain and his men, seeing what the world had to offer from The Spit's deck. He wondered if he stayed long enough out on the sea whether his face would become so beaten. How many stories had been carved in the crags of the man's flesh?

His eyes wandered past Verne's muddy, empty streets, beyond to the spires and the rooftop thieves he hoped lay further on. He fancied he could feel the hiding knife tugging him towards land, as if the promise of blood was a magnet against his boot.

Another life perhaps, he may have chosen the sea.

'Me'be later, Captain,' Talon replied.

The man bent his face in beside Talon's and drew his voice to a whisper. 'Do trust in her, little fish,' he indicated Cleo with a quick glance. 'Whatever you do see, trust in her. She'll keep you living.'

Talon wasn't sure what to make of that. There was something more than dubious in those words, "whatever you do see". He left The Captain with a nod, fearful that the answer to the question lingering on his lips might keep him on The Spit.

'The seas keep your eyes wide, Captain,' Cleo spoke from the jetty.

'The land keep your eyes sharp, girl.' The Captain gripped his belt either side of the buckle and bowed his head. His smile was warm but swift, quickly vanishing into the crags of his face.

They shared a look that seemed to last a lifetime before Cleo took Talon by his arm.

'Come on, farmboy,' she sniffed.

The Captain remained atop the gangplank as they passed sleeveless fishermen and Clovainey dockworkers. Those Clovaineys who saw Cleo gave her dark looks over their shoulders as they passed. One grizzled fellow, stupidly brave in Talon's opinion, actually spat a mouthful of phlegm by her feet after muttering, 'Tuscenian whore.'

Cleo left the dockworker with the sort of smile that apparently sent a man running off with a load he could previously only manage at a slow walk. Talon however, felt the sudden urge to ensure that the man could only limp along, until the girl pulled him up the street.

'Tuscen?' Talon said. The name sounded somewhat familiar.

'There's a war on, farmboy,' Cleo replied.

The dog that had been lying in the shade, raised its shaggy head as they ducked under the Blacksmith's wooden canopy, which extended out onto the street.

A man with a moustache too short to curl, his chin trembling against his chest, woke with a start as they entered. Immediately his hand snapped to the hilt of the short-sword at his waist.

'Customers?' he looked between them carefully.

'If you have a horse,' Cleo said.

'I have three, madame,' he licked his lips keenly, keeping his hand planted on the sword.

The man, Pierre, rose from the barrel he'd been sitting on and led them inside the stable. Only three of the seven stalls were occupied. Two of the mounts, both heavy looking, muscled geldings, had their muzzles buried in buckets. A grey dapple appeared more interested in the newcomers, poking her head out over the stall's door and snorting inquisitively.

Talon had only ever seen one horse before, a tired old mare with hair in her eyes, that used to help Uncle Jack till the land beyond the headsman's block. Brin, she was called.

'Business is good, monsieur,' Cleo noted.

'Business is poor, madame,' Pierre shook his head. 'His Grace took my three best horses for a pittance, such was his kindness.'

'The King took yer' horses?' Talon said.

Pierre frowned. 'Where are you from, child? Have you been living under a rock for the last year?'

The man made a dismissive gesture with his hand, as if the answer wasn't important, and slapped a stall housing one of the chestnut geldings.

'These two are fine breeds, madame, oh oui, Ducard would have taken them too if the war tithe permitted it.'

'What about her?'

Pierre stuck his arm out before she could reach the grey dapple.

'She bites, madame.'

The dapple snickered at that and shook her mane proudly.

'All ladies do, monsieur,' Cleo lowered the man's arm. 'But not without good reason.'

The stablemaster flinched as she held out her hand to the mare's snout, as though it were his hand she was proffering.

The dapple sniffed curiously at Cleo's fingers before nuzzling her nose into the girl's palm, rumbling contently.

Cleo pressed her head to the strip of white running up the horse's nose. 'I shall call you Mist,' she sighed.

'For thirty Starlings, you can call her whatever you like, madame,' Pierre said a bit stiffly.

'I'd be happy to stretch it to fifty,' Cleo ran her hand down the mare's neck. 'Compensation for the war, if you will.'

Pierre beamed at that.

'My lady is too kind,' he found his bow once more, though it would appear no amount of money would steal his hand away from the sword at his hip.

Once Cleo handed over more money than Talon had ever seen and had Mist saddled, (Pierre seemed reluctant to do it himself), she led the dapple out into the afternoon sun. The Captain, Talon noticed, had vanished from the docks, and The Spit with him.

'Might I ask, madame, where you and your... charge–' Pierre chose his words carefully, '–are going?'

The stablemaster looked abashed at his own question.

'Fearful I'll take news of your geldings back to Tuscen, monsieur?' Cleo said jestingly.

'Tread safely madame, its not safe for a Tuscenian in Clovaine anymore, certainly not one as–' he shot a cautious glance at Talon, '–prim as you, madame.'

There was something particularly sinister about the man's words that made Talon's stomach crawl. Suddenly he wanted to get away from Verne and its spitting dockworkers, as fast as he could bloody well manage.

Cleo drew up the hood of her woollen cloak, which swallowed all but her chin in shadows. 'Point taken, Monsieur.'

'God be with you, Madame,' the man shook his head resignedly as he returned under the canopy of his stable.

Cleo had no need for the stirrups, flinging herself onto Mist's back as agilely as if she weighed little more than a feather.

'Come on, farmboy,' she flicked her fingers down at him. He looked hesitantly at her hand before grasping it.

'What did he mean about Tuscenians?' Talon asked.

'I told you already, farmboy,' Cleo busied herself with Mist's reins. 'There's a war on. Hyah!'

Mist reared suddenly with a triumphant neigh the moment Cleo dug her spurs in the dapple's flanks. It was fortunate that Talon's first instinct had been to hold onto the girl's waist rather than the saddle, for he would have otherwise surely taken a painful tumble onto cobblestone.

Cleo rode like the devil himself was on her heels. Muddy streets and white-washed buildings tore by in a sort of hazel blur. On multiple occasions they almost ran over a wide-eyed pedestrian before Cleo directed Mist down another street, leaving behind a trail of cursing Clovainey's.

'Do we have to go so fast?' he spoke as loudly as he could against the girl's back.

'I don't like to keep her waiting,' Cleo's words rushed past Talon's ears with the wind.

Unwilling to ask who 'her' was again, he wrapped his arms more tightly around Cleo's waist as the dapple rounded another corner.

Feeling as though one lean too far might throw him off the saddle, Talon wondered if he'd truly made the right decision in rejecting The Captain's offer.

The hiding knife rattled approvingly in his boot with every clap of hoof on cobblestone.