Pasha the Storm

by Linda H. Codega

Genres: Coming of Age

Synopsis

Moby-Dick meets The Bone Shard Daughter in this swashbuckling queer fantasy adventure packed with piracy, political intrigue, and the eternal souls of the drowned, for fans of The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi and Black Sun. 

An exiled pirate queen hunts a killer whale on the high seas, while caught between a power-hungry empress and a revolutionary conspiring to end her reign . . .

Pasha the Northern Storm was once the most infamous Meridian pirate who ever sailed the sister oceans. Now, a decade into her exile, Pasha’s afterlife is being held hostage by Atle, an absurdly attractive noble who knows far too much about pirate magic—but not enough about sailing to realize how dangerous Pasha really is.

Minister Atle Itaavar is duty-bound to serve the Kingdom of Garda, but as Queen Thivaldís gathers support for her ambitions of empire, Atle turns to treason to stop her. In order to destroy the Queen’s new necromantic navy, Atle plans to steal the Queen’s flagship, kidnap a washed-up pirate to sail it, and track down a legendary killer whale to bring it down. 

But the hunt for the great undying whale drags Pasha, Atle, and the crew of the Dog into a cosmic reckoning as they face threats from ghosts and gods alike—and the Queen of Garda is close behind.

Release date: June 30, 2026

Publisher: Erewhon Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

PASHA’S KNEES CRACKED AGAINST THE STONE floor, the shock reverberating up her spine. The impact made her hips ache, and even her good eye rattled in its socket. She was getting too old for kidnappings. In her twenties they had been exciting. In her thirties? Still a good time, under the right circumstances. Now? In her late fifties? The experience was deeply, breathtakingly cursed.

She had woken up in the middle of the night in a smelly cart, already far enough away from the ocean that she wouldn’t even feel the pressure of the sea change. She had probably been drugged. It felt like drugs. Her joints ached like tight knots working against thick rope, but maybe she was just showing her age. Delightful. At least she had a sack around her head—nobody would notice the pain twisting her face.

The hands at her shoulders were tight and heavy, probably gauntleted. The sharp smell of the acerbic oil inlanders used on their leather to keep it supple meant these bozos had money to waste on comfort. That usually meant authority. Real inland law. Eikons, when was the last time she had dealt with lawmen?

“Remove the cover.”

One of Pasha’s guards wrenched the sack off her head. Her hair had gotten loose of its tie, obscuring her good eye. She flicked her head and as soon as the room came into focus she was able to make out marble floors with some kind of greenish inlay. Granite, possibly even jade. Fancy.

As she bent her head, stretching, she clandestinely glanced around the room. Six guards total, each with no-nonsense swords at their hips and big muskets that maybe had two shots each before they had to spend five minutes reloading. Fuck. How far inland had she been dragged? If she had any luck at all, her kidnappers would imagine her a washed-up old sailor, whom they could torture for more information. Which was, more or less, accurate.

A thick hand gripped her hair and pulled her head back harshly.

“Cute,” Pasha sneered, her throat working against the uncomfortable angle. “I’ve had rougher handling from my grandmother.”

“You’re old enough to be a grandmother yourself.” At the end of the hall, a tall, well-dressed person stood up and walked toward her, drawing Pasha’s attention away from the lawman.

“That should tell you something about the venerability of my dear granny,” Pasha said once she had found her voice again. The well-dressed figure was exceedingly distracting. “And the sort of tender touches your men have in comparison.”

Pasha couldn’t determine specifics of their gender; they were wearing a mix of clothings designated for women and men alike—which was far easier to do when you were rich enough to afford it. They could be any kind of rich: merchant, royal, government. Which one they were would tell Pasha how much trouble she truly was in.

Regardless, they cut an incredible figure, their shoulders draped in a dark green cloak and their chest filling out an embroidered steel-gray tunic that certainly cost more than most people’s homes. Even their short blond hair made room for luxury, with flashes of silver held in place along their temples, adding a striking, shimmering reflection across their face. Their narrow, pale blue eyes were highlighted by soft rouge and a chalk-white underline.

As Pasha was taking all this in, the lithe blond made a decisive movement with their hand. The grip on Pasha’s shoulders released. Pasha sagged forward, only slightly embellishing the movement; she really was exceptionally sore. She pushed her bound hands through her curls, slipping a piece of string off her fingers, tying her gray mane back with remarkable speed, even with her wrists lashed together.

“Truth be told, my granny has been dead a while,” Pasha said, smiling up at the guard with a shit-eating grin. “But I still think she could take you in an arm wrestle.”

He didn’t respond, and Pasha turned her attention again to the rich Gardariki. They were walking around her, inspecting her like an elk in a stable. Which, honestly, Pasha didn’t mind. Granted, she had to actively resist thinking very dirty thoughts about being tied up and thrown around a bedroom by a sharp-looking young thing with legs longer than your average mast, but that wasn’t an uncommon problem for her, even in dangerous situations like this.

“So, what’s the deal, gorgeous?” Pasha smirked up at the blond. “Come here often?”

The guard backhanded her with enough force to make her head spin, coming at her from her half-blind bad side. Blood seeped into her mouth from a cracked lip.

“You will curb your foul tongue when speaking to Minister Atle.”

Did she deserve that? She didn’t think she did. And after Pasha had been thinking such very nice thoughts about Minister Atle’s legs.

Pasha tongued her teeth (intact, eikons bless), and before she could recover her wits, a cool hand brushed against her forehead, sliding delicately into her hair. The very, exceptionally tall minister was leaning down, examining her face.

Pasha swallowed, still a little dazed. Ambergris. Atle smelled of amber and juniper. A rich perfume that spanned the massive country of Garda; the cachalots’ ambergris was collected off the western shores and the juniper had likely been harvested in the high Svæfar Mountains that bordered Garda to the east. Maybe she should lean in; maybe she should make a pathetic little noise to sell the old sailor ruse.

That’s when she realized that Atle was looking at her sunstone eye. They would see her iris shimmer, the sunstone chips that had been inserted into Pasha’s eyeball refracting the lamplight in yellow and blue flame. Pasha tried to jerk away, but Atle’s fingers tightened in her hair, keeping her still.

“She certainly has the correct markings—”

Atle’s hand was a vice. Pasha’s mouth went dry. Her heartbeat fluttered in anticipatory dread. Not attraction or a desperate pining for those hands to move down her throat; she had real problems—she couldn’t indulge in fantasies.

Atle didn’t look away when they asked the guard, “And her chest? Purple ropes along her ribs?”

Pasha resisted the urge to glance down. She knew her breast pads had long gone, but who looked twice at a flat-chested woman? Mentioning scars, however, meant her disguise was being dismantled with an efficiency that she did not appreciate.

“Scarred,” the guard confirmed.

Atle’s eyes were glacial, nearly silver. Pasha recognized the expression of someone used to having their orders obeyed, even at this minister’s tender age. Pasha was far too old to find this particular trait attractive, especially considering the situation she was currently dealing with, and yet here she was.

“I have spent a very long time looking for you, Storm Regnant,” Minister Atle said. Their voice was soft, in the way that snow is soft before it turns to ice. Pasha abandoned all thoughts of seduction.

“Who?” It was weak and Pasha knew it. Caught against rough ropes, her hands felt tight and bloodless. She had spent a decade evading the authorities and they’d caught her napping on shore in between sails? Maybe she was getting old.

“Xiofashalan of Jutland, titled the Northern Storm, the mistress of the salt-hound pack, who has one eye to the sea and another to the sky, commander of both the wind and the water,” Atle recited, standing up to pace around Pasha.

The declaiming was meant to intimidate. Pasha hated to admit that it was working. Her previously abandoned thoughts of seduction were now much less abandoned as she watched the fluttering bits of tufty fur on Atle’s pants as the minister practically paraded around. Her only relief was that Atle’s personality was quickly becoming inimitably annoying. Only people with too much time on their hands recited this kind of sanctimonious bullshit.

“Never heard of her,” Pasha snapped, testing her wrists against their ropes. “But she sounds incredibly sexy.”

“She is a pirate captain of the notorious Meridian Regnant order, a formidable sailor who has passed through ten Tropics, and—”

Nerves raced through Pasha like lightning down a mast. “She’s actually passed through fourteen Tropics,” Pasha said, shittily. “If you’re really trying to impress someone.”

“—and a starspeaker.” Atle’s mouth curled around the word, as if they couldn’t quite believe they were even going to say it.

Pasha hadn’t just been found, she had been sought out. That was quite different to just being hauled before an inland council for a reward ripped off a wanted poster. Intention like this came from need.

Atle laced their hands together, assessing Pasha quietly. The pause seemed like thunder.

“So. What do you want?” Pasha snapped, her voice drawn tight. The chill from the marble floor was starting to seep into her joints. Another glance around the room; the guards hadn’t moved.

Atle’s face was impassive. Their cheekbones seemed carved from marble, almost like an eikon, one of the many statuaries that were worshiped across Garda, and just as beautiful. “I want to kill the Vagnmyr.”

“You’re mad,” Pasha said quickly, a flare of panic loosing her tongue. She pulled against her bindings again, but they wouldn’t budge. “The Vagnmyr is a myth.”

“Our ships have seen its flukes along the Jeiya Island archipelago border, in the Eystrith Sea,” Atle said, almost impassively. “Once they confirmed the beast was no ordinary orca, they recorded its movements for some distance, heading north to the Korrin.”

The Sea of Eystrith was the largest of the sister oceans; its shores went west of Garda all the way to the islands of the Hathtic city-states and south to the rich, sprawling coastal cities of Nur. The archipelago border was about as north as you could get without being in the Korrin.

“You know, I’ve only met one idiot who claimed they saw the Vagnmyr,” said Pasha. “Went out fishing a couple weeks later, got eaten by a pod of orca. Only fools lie about leviathans of legend. Everyone else knows better than to invite their attention.”

Atle stayed quiet, utterly unconvinced and worse, completely unimpressed.

“So you see, I can’t help you. I’m not Meridian anymore.” Pasha tried again, her voice tight. “And I am far from the regnant Northern Storm.” This bitter truth stung like seawater in a wound. The minister ascended the small dais to sit on the understated chair.

“Regardless, you will sail with me.” They swept their cloak out behind them.

“I was a pirate, not a whaler.” Pasha fought to keep her voice even. She should be quiet, should plan out her escape when she had more time to think all this through. Nur was nice this time of year. She could go to Nur, maybe find a nice sweet, buxom pastry chef to marry in her golden years. But some combination of old age, repressed horniness, and vindictive anger made her foolish. “You can’t make me sail toward something I don’t know how to find!”

Atle nodded at the two guards on either side of Pasha. One stepped forward with a stool, the other wielding a rather large knife.

“What are you doing?” Pasha struggled against her bonds, fear picking up like a breeze at night. One of the guards pulled her arms up and twisted, laying her left hand on the stool. “What are you doing?!”

“You will find, pirate”—Atle’s voice was as sharp as the blade in the guard’s hand—“that I can make you sail with me.”

Pasha tried to pull away, tried to reach for a blessing, but there were no eikons here, no stars above her, no sea beneath her. This was why she had been dragged so far inland, away from salted oaths and blessed water. “No, don’t,” Pasha stammered. She didn’t make a habit of begging, but exceptions must be made. “Don’t, don’t! I’ll do it, we’ll sail north.”

She wanted to believe that she wasn’t a coward, that she wouldn’t flinch at the promise of pain, but when the guard slammed her palm down, pushed against her knuckle bones and forced her fingers to splay out, she felt her breath hitch. She scrabbled for purchase on the floor, trying to pull away. The knife rose in the air, and in the second that Pasha decided staying still would result in a less dire maiming, she looked up and caught Atle’s eyes.

Atle nodded once and the knife came down, severing the smallest finger on Pasha’s left hand, cutting through the tendon with an efficiency that screamed of practice.

Pasha howled, pulling her hand back, pain and fear lancing through her. Her bones! Fuck all the land, her fucking bones. How did this inland creature know about her cursed bones?

She lurched for her finger—she could eat it, maybe? Could she get there in time? But another soldier threw her back against the stone floor. The butcher picked up her finger and delivered it to Atle. Pasha’s breath seemed far away. On the floor, she turned on her shoulder, fixating on the finger that was staining Atle’s ermine fur cuff.

“It’s true then.” Atle’s eyes went wide, their voice hushed. They seemed almost awed. “A Storm’s bones are tied to the ocean.”

“You were bluffing?” Pasha snarled through the pain, trying to get up again, but the ropes and pain made her slow. With her reaction alone, Pasha had given the truth of her weakness away. How did this authority know Meridian secrets? Had one of the pirates turned to salt before the Garda law?

“You will sail for me, or I will rip all of your bones from your flesh and use them to decorate my ship’s eikonic figurehead,” Atle demanded calmly, almost gleeful. “I can imagine it will be a rather violent apotheosis.” The minister sat up straighter, any sense of wonder gone as they clutched Pasha’s finger, the pirate’s blood running through their fist.

There would be no peaceful rest in the sea now, only this fate worse than death: haunting whatever ship she lay on, transformed into a spectral oracle to serve at a Captain’s whim. At Minister Atle’s whim, enslaved to undying service by the curse on her bones, the star-magic carved into them by means known only to the Regnant Storms of the Meridian. Unceasing, eternal service was a fate far worse than death, and with just a few finger bones Atle had put Pasha on a short leash.

These were sacred secrets. Who told Atle? Who would have the knowledge, the daring, the disregard? What Storm had made landfall and decided they liked the taste of mud? Pasha forgot her pain as her anger rose sharply.

“You will drown us all,” Pasha spat as the two guards pulled her to her feet.

“We set sail as soon as possible,” the minister responded. “We are hunting the most dangerous creature in the sea. I’m sure it’s prepared for us.”

“You’re fucked in the head!” Pasha yelled, twisting to look back at the minister as she was dragged out of the council room. “There is no Vagnmyr!”

She caught one last look at Atle’s glacial glare and realized she was staring down a person gone completely mad.



Blood still dripping from her hand, Pasha was tossed into the back of some kind of carriage. She barely had a chance to protest before a rag was thrown at her and the doors slammed in her face.

“Well, fuck you too,” Pasha grumbled, wrapping her stump tightly. She slumped, trying to get comfortable in the cramped box, feeling exceptionally sorry for herself and rather annoyed that she hadn’t even had the decency to die at sea like an honorable Meridian.

If only she had kept her oath to die when her ship was destroyed ten years ago, she wouldn’t be in this situation. Thinking of the Temper threatened to open up a deep loneliness inside of her, but she distracted herself with the pain in her hand.

After a few seconds the carriage settled and the elks were snapped along, the whole thing lurching forward. Pasha braced herself, wincing as she knocked her hand against the wood. The minister wasn’t wasting time. They were likely to be in this carriage as well, here to make sure that Pasha was delivered without incident.

The depressing truth was that even as Pasha began to evaluate weak spots—hinges, softer wood, joins, even loosening sealant—she wouldn’t be leaving without her finger. Atle could have told her to keep up with the carriage and Pasha would have fucking jogged.

The small, calcified amount of pride that Pasha still held on to dictated that she at least attempt an escape, even if she wouldn’t follow through. This absurd obeisance lasted ten minutes before Pasha decided her pride could get fucked, and she instead settled on attempting to staunch the blood oozing from her hand.

This whole thing was embarrassing. Ten years ago, nobody would have dared to utter her name without putting on proper respect. She curled over her hand, her hair falling around her face, her sore knees cracking, her bad shoulder protesting, the scars across her chest aching.

Ten years was a long time away from Meridian Fay and fortune.



From the comprehensive Nurer treatise on Garda, Raiders, Cold-lands, and the Inghalla Court: Third Edition, commissioned by Lugal Tiri-Sin, Throne-God of Nur, as written by Qazimar’is-X in the year of Purple Songs and Harps.

I SPOTTED AT ONCE IN THE COURTYARD, made from olivine granite, a great dark elk with two sets of horns, and more jutting out of its back like spiny armor, portrayed bellowing. There was a small bowl in front of the statue that held sweet mead, oft replaced, my host said, with varietals: cherry, pear, and lynglyng berry. I approached the elk and went to make traditional obeisance, wanting to ingratiate myself to the customs of our seasonal enemies. As I bowed and poured out a dram of the sweet liqueur, the air in front of the elk’s mouth misted—it was hot! I stepped back quickly, not wanting to be gored by the animal, and wary of the trick, and confused. But my host just laughed.

She explained the phenomena thus: Sometimes old eikons, like this elk, which I had apparently insulted with my poor reflection, had more will to manifest its faith-well. Constant worship was needed, which was why I had been asked to make an offering. As much as I resented aiding a locus of power for a raider family I knew would set its hull along Nurer shores in just a few short months, hands full of spear and eyes full of lust, it was nevertheless instructive. I completed the ritual and followed my host inside, where she pointed out three other eikons, indicating a widespread ancestor worship among the Gardariki.



ONCE PASHA HAD BEEN PULLED OUT OF THE ELKLED carriage by a large naval officer, she noted resentfully that Atle’s ship was nothing short of magnificent. Possibly the most glorious ship she had ever seen. The beauty was a two-masted, sloop-rigged cutter, clearly built for speed, with a complicated series of halyards and sheets that Pasha assumed would hold at least a dozen sails. Dead gods, the rails were so polished that they reflected cloudy sunlight. It must be a brand new ship. The girl fucking glowed.

The carriage quickly disappeared off the docks with no fanfare at all. Odd. Pasha would have expected some kind of disembarkation for a member of parliament, especially one as rich as Atle. She tucked that thought away, allowing the uniformed officer the minister had addressed as Brekmarcus to escort her to the ship.

Pasha knew Brekmarcus attendance was a formality. If she truly wanted to escape, there was very little that could stop her now that she had the sea air in her lungs. But without her finger bones, she would be trading a few more decades of freedom for an eternal damnation at the hands of a Gardariki minister. So she allowed the lawman to put his pale hand on her shoulder and lead her as she walked up the gangplank, following Atle to the stern.

Pasha had to hold her maimed hand with her whole one to avoid running both of them over the wood railings. She tilted her head to trace the lines upward, watching with mounting annoyance as the sails began to go up at the steady rat-a-tat of the officers’ whistles. She had yet to spot a single issue with the ship’s construction. Even as she ungratefully admired beauty of the ship, Pasha couldn’t help but notice the minister standing behind the helm as the bark maneuvered smoothly away from the pier.

The greenish sunset was rather fetching against Atle’s cool skin, highlighting their hair and jawline in a way that Pasha found deeply upsetting, emotionally speaking. The ex-pirate sauntered over, resentment and fear at war with admiration and the relief of being on the water. She was still Meridian—it was unlikely that being aboard a beautiful boat would ever fail to please her. Even press-ganged as she was onto a law-abiding Gardariki vessel.

Officer Brekmarcus respectfully stepped away, attending to the crew. The whole ship was far less civilized than what Pasha had expected of a government vessel; three gangs of sailors, none in uniform, were all being directed by a few officers with ocarinas that hung from their necks. It didn’t look military.

“The ship is the first-made of a new Garda fleet, especially commissioned to sail darkwater. She takes a complement of fifty,” Atle began as soon as Pasha was in earshot. “Nearly sixty-five feet overall, the widest beam at twenty feet, and her keel is fifty below the deck. She has ten twelve-pounder carronades and a light armory of muskets and blades for engagements.”

“Is this her first voyage?” Pasha asked, refusing to acknowledge how deeply attractive it was when exceptionally hot, well-dressed, and generally mean people spoke about ship dimensions and armament with authority. Despite the minister diverting her attention, the fact that this ship was the first of apparently many that Gyard’a Olkyunen had commissioned had not been lost on her.

“She doesn’t even have a name.”

Pasha swallowed. If there was any ship that could find and keep up with the Vagnmyr—which she was sure didn’t fucking exist—it would be a boat like this. Her left hand pounded. It was the only thing keeping her from comparing this ship to the Temper, measuring it up against a memory.

With some effort, Pasha dragged her eyes away from Atle—and landed on the boat’s wheel, turning under the hands of a child.

At least she seemed a child to Pasha, who was close enough to sixty that it frightened her. Sailors seemed to get younger every year, but the helmswoman was possibly sixteen. Her uniform was neatly tailored and had a bit of distinctive embroidery that surely meant something impressive. Her dark coloring wasn’t typical of a Gardariki, but over twelve hundred years of Garda raiding its southern and eastern neighbors meant that the country had developed discrete cultural enclaves of freed thralls all along the Ple River.

Pasha focused on Atle again. “Does the ship have an eikon?” She brushed her right hand against the railing. It was a light touch but almost immediately she was driven into the ship, the wood and pins against her bones, water and line echoing through her. She wrenched her hand away.

Atle’s eyes followed Pasha’s hand. Their voice held flecks of ice. “I’ve heard that Meridian captains determine the eikon after her first night spent at sea.”

“Something like that,” Pasha muttered. Again she wondered who had betrayed the Meridians. On any other ship, an eikon typically took months, even years to accumulate power. But some fucker had clearly told Atle … Graveyard take her. Near everything: how quickly a Meridian could create an eikon from whole cloth, that such an eikon would have a near-unlimited supply of magic, that this was the key to Meridian supremacy on the free oceans, that only Regnants were ever taught the midnight rituals. Someone, somewhere, had talked. A lot. Atle almost certainly knew the word star-binding; Pasha wondered idly if the snitch had bothered to teach them slang like star-fucking.

“And are you eager to chase death?”

“I am not interested in your judgments, Meridian,” Atle said sharply.

“I’ve renounced my titles,” Pasha snapped, a little too quickly. “I’m just a sailor.”

Ahead of them, the crew moved across the ship with an unhurried inefficiency that did not—to Pasha’s trained eye—indicate an exceeding amount of comfort. Not merchantmen either.

“Humility won’t earn you any friends here.” Atle took a step toward her, and Pasha did not like the way her stomach clenched when they encroached in her space. “You may not seem like Xiofashalan the Storm, but acting Pasha the Fool will make your life difficult, turn the crew into unwilling creatures, and thus ensure that we do not find the Vagnmyr. And that, pirate, will make me very unhappy.”

“I love it when you threaten me,” Pasha said, raising her chin to look Atle in the eye as something dangerous flitted across their face. “Going to be a new hobby for you, I can tell.”

“You will love it far less when I start cutting off more fingers.”

Pasha shivered. If the trade-off wasn’t undying magical subservience, she sincerely would have had to give it some thought to determine whether she really minded the idea of someone like Atle chopping off a couple fingers for fun. Maybe Atle would settle for a few knife threats while Pasha was tied up and they were both naked. She lowered her voice in turn. “Who here knows that you have found and blackmailed the Northern Storm Regnant to captain your pretty little ship on a suicidal endeavor?”

Atle swayed, their legs locked at the knees. For the first time the minister seemed unsure. Their frown deepened. To their credit, they didn’t look at the crew downdeck or the child, who was doing her best to ignore them completely. “Just the six officers.”

“Keep it that way. Install me as your pilot instead.” Pasha stepped to the side, her knees soft as she looked out over an unfamiliar set of mountains, gray and green and capped by snow that refused to melt even in the summer months. All the while, the cutter slid like silk across black sand. “Have one of your officers promoted to captain. The kid seems capable.”

“Officer Viveca Manunavuk,” the teenager said, smiling at Pasha.

Pasha’s eyebrows went up. “No relation to Gorvina Manunavuk?” Before Pasha’s time, Gorvina had been a Meridian Regnant famed for her ability to sail through ice. She had died in semi-mythic circumstances, and she—and her famed ship, the Roaring Beast—was said to haunt the Korrin.

Viveca shrugged, looking disinterested in the connection Pasha drew. “I couldn’t say.”

Atle was still frowning, their mouth pursed into a fine line. The pause went a little too long.

“What is it?” Pasha asked. “She’s clearly got the pedigree. Make her captain.”

“Why don’t we speak about this in my berth?” Atle took a step forward and nearly lost their footing in the sway of the ship, having no sense of sea legs about them. It was luck—fuck that, it was by design—that Atle fell into Pasha’s waiting arms, their slim fingers gripping Pasha’s thick biceps as the pirate steadied them. Pasha grinned through the pain in her hand. The minister had enough decorum that they didn’t show any outward sense of discomfort as Pasha set them back on their feet, but Pasha didn’t miss the way their whole chest stiffened and a touch of color appeared along the very tips of their ears.

“Easy, Minister,” Pasha murmured, sliding her right hand up Atle’s shoulder as she took a step back, a jolt of pain arcing through her left. “Might take a minute to get your legs under you. A ship like this moves different.”

“I’m more than capable of walking across the deck of my own ship,” Atle said, brushing down their expertly tailored jacket. Their legs were still locked.

Pasha leaned in, the wind pulling at her, the ship swaying, every part of her in congress with the cutter under her. She felt her hair loose from its tie, her own jacket unbuttoned and flying up with the wind. She was Meridian, even renounced.

“A ship you barely know how to sail.” Her voice dropped to a growling purr that she had mastered decades ago. Low enough to slide under the sound of waves, strong enough to reach the ear intended. She let the subtle threat carry on the wind.

Atle stared at her, no trace of embarrassment darkening their complexion, and brushed their jacket down again. “My berth, now,” they said, voice clipped.

Pasha watched Atle make their way across the deck, one delicate hand out toward the railing as they descended belowdecks. Pasha swayed and glanced at the kid at the helm, who, she could tell, was just barely keeping from laughing—her mouth sucked in, her hands firmly on the wheel.

“Enjoyed that, did you?” Pasha asked, waggling her eyebrows.

“No, sir,” the young officer said, her eyes on the bow as the ship’s sails filled out beautifully under the incoming night breeze. “I don’t think I saw anything at all.”

“Sharp girl,” Pasha said, turning away. She didn’t immediately follow Atle’s course belowdecks. The boat was preparing to tack as they left the shelter of the harbor’s breakwater, and Pasha attempted once again to place the unfamiliar mountains that surrounded them; the cloud cover made it annoyingly difficult for her to determine her exact placement on the Garda coast. Somewhere southern, but the rest of the details eluded her. She spotted a large eikon on the rocky coast, almost obscured by the tree line, surrounded as it was by low greenery and shrubs.

At a distance, it appeared like three large disks placed one on top of the other, arranged to look like giant cross sections of the spr