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“Pull the oars!” Frija roared, and the rows of oars froze. Then, they slowly began retreating into the Marin.

From the seat of a Monoxylon, even one as luxurious as Chloe’s was, seeing a ship as huge as the Marin’s head straight for them was enough to make shivers go through Alessia’s spine. Galleys like the bireme were not just one of the most versatile ships in the Warm Seas. They were also the premier warship of any single polity that would war in the water.

The heave prow of the Marin was reinforced with a bronze ram that lapped above the water as the ship smashed through waves. It was like a Cetus from myth, a gigantic sea monster that could neither be turned aside nor avoided once it made you its prey.

But this wooden Cetus didn’t smash into Chloe’s small boat like Alessia knew it could. It veered slightly as it came for them, missing them by meters. Without oars beating against the sea, the inertia of the vessel was quickly eaten up by the waves and the Marin slowed down as it slid beside them.

Biremes didn’t sit very high above the water in particular, but the type that Frija used had a huge platform that doubled as a roof for the people working the oars. Thick beams formed walls between the hull of the Marin and its navigable roof, only allowing small openings for the oars to extend out. It made the ship look like a floating long house.

Bright and biting as the sun was, peering through the small “windows” proved next to impossible, and Alessia could only see furtive figures inside the ship moving around.

“Release the mooring ropes!” Alessia’s mother ordered atop the platform as she ran the length of her ship to keep up with Chloe’s boat, “And get a ladder!”

“Aye, Captain,” voices inside the ship said as Frija looked down upon Alessia with panic, desperation…

And befuddlement.

The coils of rope thick enough to tie a ship to a pier unfurled in the air as someone threw a wheel of the thing at them. It was slightly wet as it smacked into the middle of the monoxylon, making both Chloe and Alessia flinch.

“Moore it!” Frija commanded them, and Alessia and Chloe began threading the thick rope through the rings and mast of the small boat.

“That fishing boat’s a whole lot of dead weight, Captain,” Sabina non-maliciously noted as she also peered from atop the Marin and made eye contact with Alessia.

A small smirk slipped onto Alessia’s face as she saw how confused the Anilan also was.

“We are already in the ebbs of the purple path,” Frija distractedly replied, Alessia having to lean to catch her words, “There is no other choice.”

“Couldn’t you-” Sabina began to ask but Alessia missed out on the rest of the conversation as someone tossed a ladder made of rope down at them.

“Ok, ok,” Chloe said as her hands twitched, looking over the knots that they had secured her boat with, “I think this is good enough. I’ve never secured my vessel against another one, let alone a big one like this, but this should be fine. This should be ok, yes? This is going to be just fin-”

“Chloe!” Alessia grabbed her by the shoulders and kept her from going into a full-blown fit, “You are right, ok? Things will be fine.”

“Ok,” the older woman replied in a small voice.

Alessia took hold of the rope ladder and offered it to her ex-best friend’s mother.

With an expulsion of breath, Chloe climbed into the Marin and Alessia followed her.

Chares and Diana were there, the husband stripped down to a chiton that only covered his lower body, while Diana maintained a bigger semblance of dignity with an exomis: a tunic that left her right arm, and right breast, bare.

Tense as the situation was, Alessia couldn’t help but notice that Diana’s nipple was a darker shade of red than her lips.

Sabina’s sea-going wear was, surprisingly, the most modest among them: She wore a hat that provided her shade, but Alessia had to assume that was because it was what she was wearing before Alessia and Chloe turned up. She, however, wore a very un-Parsemoni cloak that covered her tunic. A tunic that reached her ankles. Her large bust shone through all the same, but Alessia couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t a working woman’s outfit.

And then there was her mother.

Frija, divine as the first time that Alessia had seen her naked in the Tritos pier, only had a loincloth to protect her privates and a strophion, a breastband, to hold her large breasts. Showing as much skin as a courtesan, her skin remained as unblemished as that of an aristocia who never left her home. Even the sweat in her hair just made it shine.

Even the anger that her worry was starting to birth looked magnificent on her.

“-I want to know is how we missed a boat my daughter was on until we almost rammed into it!” Alessia of her first mate.

“She literally appeared out of nowhere,” Sabina responded back in a warning tone.

“That’s garbage!” Frija replied before she noticed Alessia, “We’ll-hm, we’ll talk about this later.”

“Of course, Captain,” Sabina kept all expression out of her face.

The middle-aged blonde woman turned to Alessia and, for a moment, her anger remained.

Then it softened.

“What are you doing here?” she all but whispered.

“No-how are you here?” she shook her head.

And what else could Alessia say?

“We are here for you, Mom,” Alessia answered the most important of those questions, before clicking her tongue, “That is, I am here for you, Mom. Chloe merely lent me use of her boat to arrive.”

“Permission to board the ship, Torch Captain?” Chloe swallowed once Frija’s attention turned to her.

“...granted,” Frija tersely said.

And then she sighed.

“Do you have any idea what you did, coming here?” Frija asked her daughter.

“Besides besmirching the ‘mercy’ of kind Tritos by ignoring your unofficial exile?” Alessia asked, “Or turning up the chance to be a Priestess or a so-called ‘happy’ life simply being an aristocia?”

“Or making my life significantly harder than it has to be?”

“Suffering isn’t the ultimate evil, nor is happiness the ultimate good,” Alessia looked her mom in the eye, “I am quite happy braving the uncertain future just to be with you.”

“You don’t know that!” Frija exploded with frustration, “You don’t-”

She stopped and turned on her feet, pointing a finger at Sabina, “Have the slaves set the oars and hoist the sails; gods willing, the easternly wind will keep for a while.”

“Hold, what is happening?” Gadise asked. The black woman stepped up from the single compartment the ship had.

“We are going back to Tritos.” Frija declared, “I will tend to the Torch, and have another path made back. I want the ship turned around by the time I’m done!”

“You can’t do that!” Alessia gasped.

“I may be many things,” Frija frostily told her daughter, “But I will not be the reason you throw your life away. We go back.”

“No,” Sabina the Anilan stepped up and met Alessia’s mother’s eyes, “Your daughter’s right.”

“We can’t go back.”

“...are you really doing this, Sabina?” Frija hissed.

“Captain Frija, due all respect and all, but…they do not sound wrong,” Gadise nervously licked his lips, “Given how we left, going back like this is going to be bad. There will be consequences.”

“Then I’ll pay them!” Frija stepped forward.

“No-” Sabina was shaking her head, “-you won’t.”

“....all of us, will.” Dina softly said.

“I’ll go in the fishmonger’s boat!” Frija said, “None of you even have to set foot on land!”

“What is happening?” Chloe huddled to Alessia’s side and whispered in her ear, shying away from the legends in the ship and their spontaneous but intense argument. She had been lost ever since Triol moved their ship, and the fight brewing here and now wasn’t giving her any rest.

“I…hope it’s nothing,” Alessia whispered back, but she could see it on the shape of the crew’s back, and on the sharpness of their gazes. Having to compromise with the destination of all things, it felt as if her mother wasn’t fully in control of things…

This was bad.

Things had turned BAD.

“We’ll be without a Torch Captain,” Chares laughed, “In a Torch Ship. That sounds like rightful spoils for any opportunistic bastard in Tritos. Even without that danger, we don’t have the supplies to sail to any port without the help of your stupid purple god!”

“We go back, and we’ll be at the mercy of the backwater imbiciles of your barbaric island,” Sabina spat on the floor, all but offending everyone on the walkway of the Marin. But it wasn’t Sabina that the crew was turning on.

It was Frija, Alessia’s mother.

“I am the Captain,” Frija pointed at a lonely torch at the head of the prow, alight with an unnatural purple flame, “The Torch Captain.”

“Without me, the ship will be lost at sea.”

“Frija, you stupid…WHORE!” Sabina screamed, “Don’t you understand that THAT is not much more different than what you are asking from us?”

“The ship’s heading towards Anila as it is, right?” Dina said, “I would bet that, should the Path close, we can keep the heading steady and just about get there, anyway.”

“WAIT!” Chloe spoke up and all eyes set on her, making her take a step away from Alessia.

“I-I just came here to deliver Alessia,” she gulped, “If you’ll allow me to get back on my ship, I can just sail back.”

“Please, I-I just want to go back home.”

It evidently took the rest of the energy that the older woman had to say that, because she deflated a bit as the crew kept staring at her.

“You…don’t know, do you?” Gadise asked.

“Once the Captain’s god sends us on our way, once we are inside one of its paths,” Chares explained, “We don’t have to sail as far, because the Path makes us go faster.”

“You must have wandered into the Path, too, when our ‘Captain’s’ divine cast its spell,” Sabina dismissively said, “You could get on your little boat and ‘try’ to go back. But we are, as we speak, dozens of leagues away from your insignificant island. And we are only getting farther, as we speak.”

“You’ll be lost and adrift in high seas,” the sole black woman on the crew said, “Sorry.”

“This is just one more reason to go back,” Frija interjected.

“Oh,” Chloe merely said, exiting the conversation.

She then slumped as she looked at the floor.

I am sorry, Alessia immediately wanted to tell the woman who had done her this favor.

But no.

No, no, no.

Alessia closed her eyes and willed herself to pay attention to what was happening in front of her.

There would be time to make it up to Chloe later.

“Better her with us, then her in Tritos and us dead,” Gadise opined.

“We don’t have to port in Tritos!” Frija shot back, “There are dozens of coastal villages and towns in Parsimoni. We could go there!”

“It took days before we could come back to the ship,” Diana said, “And your scandal wasn’t small. How much are you willing to gamble that we’ll find one that hasn’t heard about what happened in Tritos?”

“We can raid one of them if they have!” the descendant of the Norsi exclaimed, and that, at least, created a thoughtful pause.

“...no,” Sabina shook her head, “We don’t have enough people for a raid; there are only 5 of us, yourself included Frija, because we couldn’t count on the slaves.”

“I-it doesn’t matter,” Frija growled, “I am the gods damned Captain, and I set the course of things!”

“Oh, and what a BEAUTIFUL mess you set us on!” Chares laughed again, this time his mirth sounded brittle, “We should have seen this coming. Oh, we all should have.”

“Not now, Chares,” Diana, his wife, said, but it sounded more like it was just an automatic thing, born of long practice. She sounded as hopeless as her husband did.

“If…you turn on me, you’ll never make it to any port alive,” Frija, out of room and out of responses, went to the first and last refugee of the desperate: threats.

“If we don’t, we’ll die in yours,” Sabina spoke and, in that moment, it was clear to Alessia that she was speaking for all the women and man that her mother led.

There was stress in the air, like a line about to snap. All the camaraderie, all the friendship, all the respect that Alessia had seen these people have with her mother was past the breaking point. And she, Alessia, was the little speck of dirt that was about to make it rip.

Why had it come to this?

Why did her following her dreams just seem to hurt her mother?

Because regardless of what happened, it was clear to Alessia that these were the last few moments that her Mother would carry out as Captain.

Everyone knew what mutiny meant, just as they knew how harshly its punishment was. The words that were just said, their implications, could not be taken back and, so, her mother could not remain a Captain even if she chose now to change her mind.

And it was all because Alessia had wanted to be with her.

Was this divine law? Was this her punishment for not bowing her head and simply doing as she was told?

“Is this it, then?” her mother said with a face that might as well have been cast from bronze.

“I guess it is,” her first mate replied and Chares, Diana and Gadise all straightened.

A scene like this had almost played out the same way days ago in the biggest temple of Tritos. For the second time in a week, everyone would turn against her mother.

So Alessia did the one thing she wished with all her heart that she had done when Lex opened his putrid mouth and cast her mother aside.

“Wait!” Alessia said as she stepped in front of her mother, managing to stop this calamity if only for one more moment.

“Alessia…” her mother seemed perplexed at what Alessia was doing.

“Shut up!” Alessia replied, knowing that they hung on a knife’s edge, “This is not the time for you to try and be a good mother.”

She looked at the crew that she now had to win over, “This is the time for me to take over- Sabina! Gadise! Chares and Dina!”

“We are not going back!” Alessia told them.

Her mother’s crew looked at each other.

“Well, yes, we know,” Gadise replied.

“Alessia-” Frija hissed.

“But that means going to wherever our destination is,” Alessia talked over her mother, “Would I be correct in assuming that’s the city of Anila itself?”

“It IS our best chance at making something out of this fiasco,” Sabina confirmed.

“Without a Torch Captain, you will not be able to navigate the Paths of the…purple god, yes?” Alessia asked to gain some time as she fully developed the desperate idea that she had in mind.

“Does it matter?” Chares asked, “We can sail forward without its benefits.”

“But you don’t HAVE to sail without the purple god’s help,” Alessia said.

“Alessia,” Dina sighed, “We can’t trust your mother not to take us to the depths out of simple spite. Not now.”

“Perhaps not,” Alessia agreed, “But you can trust ME to not do so.”

They stared at her.

“How?” Gadise voiced their question.

“I can speak to this purple god,” Alessia gestured at the Torch burning at their prow, “I can gain its blessing.”

“You are not a Torch Captain,” Chares chuckled, laughing evidently, looking to be the way he expressed anxiety.

“But I AM a Torch Bearer,” Alessia replied. Captains of Torch Ships were not priests and so were not Miracle workers, not really. All the same, they needed to be able to communicate with the gods that blessed their ships and, through that means, allowed their vessels to do what they did. The ways they did so had to be different than what Alessia did, but it didn’t matter.

Because whether on a ship or in a temple, Alessia was confident of her ability to appeal to the gods.

“Chloe,” Alessia made the older woman look up from where she was kneeling in the ship, “How did we get ahead of the Marin?”

“O-one moment we were being left behind by this vessel,” Chloe despondently said, “The next you said you’d light a Torch for Triol and then…and then here we were.”

The crew frowned, but Alessia felt the fight flow out of them.

“With me here, you don’t have to choose between sure death and a hard trip,” Alessia assured them, “I can intercede for you with this divine.”

“I CAN make a miracle happen.”

The crew finally stood down and looked at themselves. They didn’t say anything, but their gazes held all they wanted to say.

They nodded.

“Well, in that case,” Sabina cleared her throat, “I suppose we can let you be our guide-”

“-Your Captain,” Alessia interrupted her.

Everyone looked at her as though she had mispoken.

“I beg your pardon, but I don’t think I hear you quite right,” Sabina said.

Because, yes, it was audacious. It was ridiculous.

It might even have been insulting.

But Alessia could see the future playing out in front of her, and she did not see how she could do it any other way.

“I said I’d guide you out of an uncertain death, or a sure one, but I can only do that as your Captain,” Alessia said, putting it all on the one sure way to protect her mother.

The women and man in front of her were not untrustworthy, but she did not trust the bad blood that lay between them and her mother today. There were many ways in which it could spike and flood the vessel between here and the Capital of Anila.

There were many in ways in which it could drown them AFTER arriving in Anila.

It wasn’t audacity that drove her, because this grab for power was the only one she saw a future in.

“Y-you don’t even know anything about sailing vessels!” Chares laughed again.

“How fortunate, then, that the gods have blessed us with capable sailors,” Alessia replied.

“Is that a bad thing? For your Captain to depend on you? You already know how far I am willing to go for your approval,” Alessia added, and she could see how the memory of a hot night in a tavern but a few weeks ago worked in her favour.

“That’s not enough to make you Captain!” Dina replied.

“Not enough to back my claim?” Alessia asked, “Or not enough to not be against it?”

“But that’s…” Dina started to say, but then bit her lip, “I guess-I guess if you can convince everyone else.”

Alessia looked at Chares.

“We are kind of fucked whatever we do,” Chares helplessly shrugged, “So it doesn’t matter if you are Captain or not.”

“Captain should be an old girl.” Gadice, on the other hand, wasn’t convinced, “Not an almost woman child.”

“And yet I can bear this burden and handle this responsibility,” Alessia echoed words she had said on the alcove of a noble house once upon a time.

“Would you like me to prove it again?”

Gadice blinked, then laughed, “Ah, well, gods, that’s-I suppose that IS fair. Is this you calling your favor?”

“Only if you fulfill it,” Alessia replied.

“I suppose I, too, don’t really care who is Captain, so long as someone besides Frija is,” the ship warrior backed out, “I will not be for it, but I will not stand against it.”

Alessia didn’t show it, but she was elated at actually making this much progress. That left one other person whose consent she needed.

Alessia now looked at Sabina.

Sabina looked back, unimpressed.

“You know what I did,” Alessia reminded her.

“And I would give you a nice house with many servants somewhere for it,” Sabina replied, “Not the Captancy of my ship.”

“Without me, you’d not be able to do either,” Alessia returned, “And the Captaincy is the going price for that certainty.”

“I know you like to haggle, but look me in the eye and tell me that being able to intercede with the GODS is something you can afford to underrate me in,” Alessia dared her.

Sabina managed to keep eye contact for a few moments, pushing back as she seemingly tried to do just that.

But the situation they were in was really precarious, and this fight, evidently, was not worth more than the Captancy because she eventually looked away.

“It’s as you say…Captain.”

“Alessia?” Only one voice there remained opposed to it.

Sadly, it was the one voice that no longer mattered.

“Mother,” Alessia finally turned her back on HER crew, and looked at the Captain she had technically helped dispossess.

Frija was looking at her as if she had never known her. No, worse, Frija was looking at her as if the little girl she had once known had died at some point along the way.

The tears streaming through her cheeks were a clear tell.

“You can rest,” Alessia promised her.

“I am taking over for you.”