It was approaching mid-morning, which meant there was a lot of activity on the top deck as Zhen made her way to the ladders going below. There was no chance of her making it from the captain's cabin and across the deck unnoticed. It was an even smaller chance for her passage to go without comment. She earned a glance at the least from everyone, though most of the hands limited themselves to a few snickers. Only a handful called out to her, giving voice to one hateful comment or another. Zhen tried her best to ignore them all.

She reached the ladder and climbed her way down. Once she was belowdecks and out of sight, Zhen felt able to breathe again. She hoped all this would be worth it when all was said and done. Chances were slim and getting slimmer with each passing week, but Zhen held out hopes that Jaysa was going to find what she was looking for.

It was snug below the main deck, in contrast to Jaysa's spacious cabin. Cramped hallways ran between rooms used for cargo storage and to house the machinery keeping the Sojourn aloft. Wood plank floors creaked a little as Zhen made her way towards the stern of the ship. Some of the more important facilities aboard the Sojourn were kept that way. There was an infirmary and officer quarters, but it was the retrofitted study which Zhen headed towards.

The professor's lair didn't have a door. Salazar maintained a semblance of privacy by draping a burlap curtain across the entryway. Zhen gave the wooden frame a few taps of her knuckles before calling out.

"Your pardon, Professor."

There came a groan of a reply that barely formed itself into words. "Stones take you."

"Professor? Captain asked me to bring you this."

The professor's response was marginally more coherent this time, but it was far and away from what Zhen would call amiable.

"Aye, come in. I don't have time for all these interruptions."

Zhen pursed her lips. In her estimation, the professor had nothing but time on his hands. And who ever interrupted him anyway? The crew barely cared to remember Salazar even existed. Sighing quietly to herself, Zhen pushed her way through the burlap curtain.

The professor's study was tiny, though still somewhat larger than the cabins given to officers like Idak. It had once been part of the airship's infirmary, a room for injured crewmen to rest in during their recovery. At some point before setting sail, it had been converted into a miniature library and living space for Captain Jaysa's hired scholar.

There were three separate tables. One held instruments of cartography and navigation, another had the sorts of tools Zhen recalled seeing in the possession of book binders. A smaller version of what looked like a printing press stood beside a series of weird, glass instruments that were presumedly for the professor to make his inks. The third table, large enough to crowd out the little cot serving as the professor's bed, held a staggering amount of books and loose papers. The room smelled of brine, dust, and plant fiber. Not unpleasant by any measure, but it was unusual enough to make Zhen want to cover her nose.

The professor sat on the end of his cot as he scribbled notes into a pocket journal. He would've had copper skin, but something of his manner almost gave it a greenish cast. With every sway of the Sojourn cutting through the wind currents, he closed his eyes and looked ready to swallow his gorge. The professor was a reedy man, thin and willowy. His hair was black with thin streaks of gray and slicked back with oil over a receding hairline. A thin mustache was on his upper lip, and it made an unsuccessful attempt to connect with the pointed goatee on his chin. He was a younger man, likely not yet thirty despite the first signs of going bald and the thick pair of spectacles worn over his brown, almond-shaped eyes.

Professor Salazar Carolêna, on retainer from the Summit Academy of Drok Moran, looked the sort of fellow who would wither into a bent old man by the age of forty and then live forever. It was as if Fate conspired to turn him into the venerable grandfather he was born to be as quickly as possible.

He looked up from his writing to peer at his visitor through the enormous lenses over his eyes. "Oh, it's you, Zhen. Thought it was that damned cabin boy again. What is it?"

There remained a touch of grumpiness in his bearing, but he seemed to be making an effort to push it down. Salazar had a way about him that wasn't dissimilar from a surly tomcat lording over his stretch of alley, but he attempted to keep his tone respectful around women. There being only four women among the eighty-odd souls aboard the Sojourn— Zhen, the captain, Izara with the engineers, and Fiona the cook— that meant he didn't often keep a civil tongue.

Zhen approached, weaving her way carefully between the tables so as not to bump anything. She held out the journal Jaysa gave her. "From the captain."

Salazar reached for the book and plucked it from her hands. He looked down his nose at it, blinking twice, before letting out a sharp exhale. "Right, right. She wanted to compare her charts with Tristram's notes from his attempt to cross the eastern ocean. That was some time back, before the rebellion." As he spoke, Salazar leaned over the side of his cot and rummaged through a stack of similar journals on the floor. "These are the rest from his voyages. Her ladyship will want them next."

"Sorry, Professor," Zhen said, holding up her palms while offering an uneasy smile. "Will have to wait for midday. Captain said she'd come see you around then."

Upon hearing that, Salazar appeared to wilt to the point he'd topple from his perch. It was like every scrap of wind had just left his sails. "Stones take her," he muttered. His voice rose sharply as he sat straight again. "Stones take that woman!"

Zhen shrank back and adamantly told herself not to cry. Men raising their voices never failed to distress her for reasons she didn't quite get.

Salazar got to his feet and stormed over to the cartography table. He slammed the journal Zhen handed him down onto a pile of scrolls. His back to Zhen, he lowered his voice to a tense and angry mutter. "Three months. Three months, and not once has she made the slightest effort to make use of my expertise. Why in the king's name did that damned harridan pull me from my tenure if not to listen to a damned thing I have to say? She hasn't spent her entire adult life compiling everything known of lands beyond the Five Kingdoms. She didn't go to Shoto to study native wayfinder folklore. She, certainly as shite, didn't earn her doctorate with a thesis that refined all estimates of the globe's circumference to a margin of error of less than a single percentage!"

He spun around with a finger leveled in Zhen's direction and likely intended to continue his rant, but he stopped short when he got a look at her expression. Despite all efforts to the contrary, Zhen sniffled back tears and used her sleeve to wipe away what got through.

Abashed, Salazar swallowed and averted his gaze. He shuffled his feet in discomfort. "Yes, all of that, but not your fault. Not by any measure."

Embarrassed, and angry at being embarrassed, Zhen only managed a nod as a response.

Perhaps taking her silence as tacit agreement with his opinions, Salazar pressed on. "It's just that it's frustrating. Clearly, that woman recognizes no authority but her own. I'm beginning to think she only secured my services so that she could use my reputation to beg more funding from the houses sponsoring this mad endeavor."

Zhen decided that Salazar was burdened by an unmanageable excess of opinions and unburdened by humility.

"As you say," Zhen said, not really caring if the professor took that as agreement or not. She just wanted the encounter over with. "By your leave, the captain ordered me to my hammock."

Salazar's expression soured again. There was a long pause before he responded. "That woman touched you again?"

Zhen opened her mouth to give an answer, but the red in her cheeks seemed to be all the answer Salazar intended to listen to.

"You don't have to let her," he said, and he continued roughshod over any attempt Zhen might have made to set him straight. "It's not right, how she thinks she can do whatever she wants to whomever she wishes. We may be hundreds of leagues from civilization, but this damned ship isn't a kingdom and that woman is certainly not a queen."

Zhen startled as Salazar then took a step closer to her and looked as if he meant to reach out his hand.

"You could be safer if I insisted on making you my assistant. Surely, you'll be more at ease helping me with my books than... whatever horribleness that woman makes you do for her."

With each additional step Salazar took, Zhen made one back. She glanced behind her and considered making a break out of the professor's room to her hammock. "Um... No, it's alright, Professor."

"It isn't alright," Salazar said. "You deserve better than being made her whore."

"I'm no whore!" Zhen shouted, surprising herself. She cringed.

"I know you aren't," Salazar said, "but the captain has her own ideas."

Zhen shook her head but didn't have the words. It wasn't as if she could come out and say what her arrangement with the captain really was.

She had her own issues with the captain, but Zhen gave her word. Nadian alley cats didn't have much else besides their word, and Jaysa chose her because she believed Zhen knew how to keep a secret.

Zhen's back bumped against the wall beside the entryway. Salazar stepped up to her, and his hand reached out for her face. Zhen hunched her shoulders as he took a lock of her hair between his fingers.

"You're a pretty girl," he said. "I couldn't call myself a man if I let this depravity continue."

Zhen panicked. This felt too similar to previous times men decided she was theirs to do with as they wanted. Three times since boarding the Sojourn, more times than she could count on the streets of Drok Moran, and the worst day of her life when someone she looked up to and trusted decided Zhen owed him more than she was willing to offer up on her own.

"I have to go," Zhen stammered as she tried to scuttle her way out of the room. Salazar's hand seized on her forearm and held tight enough to hurt.

"You shouldn't be afraid of me," he said, close to shouting. "I'm trying to help you."

"I don't want your help," Zhen whimpered, and she tried prying his grip loose. "Let me go. Let me go!"

"You're too young to know what you want. I'm telling you what you need!"

Zhen geared up to start really struggling. Maybe claw at him with her nails, even bite. She wasn't strong but was willing to do whatever it took to protect herself.

It was unnecessary.

"What is all this?" Idak demanded. The first mate pushed his way through the burlap curtain and into the room. He interposed himself between Zhen and Salazar, grabbing her arm and yanking it forcefully out of the professor's grip. Idak let go of her as soon as Salazar backed off.

Salazar scrambled back to the cartographer's table, though he kept his chin held high in a defiant posture. "None of your concern, damned mongrel."

Zhen hid behind Idak's large frame, and she had to restrain herself from clinging to his red coat. She hardly counted Idak as among her friends, but she couldn't have been happier for his arrival if he came bearing a platter of pastries.

Idak snorted. "Mongrel, eh? Well, Professor, be grateful it was this mongrel who chanced upon your little attempt at courtship and not the captain. Else you would already be halfway down to sea level."

The open threat was ignored. Salazar craned his neck to look around Idak to Zhen. "Don't you know what this half-breed is? There's ogre blood in his veins, mark my words."

Zhen had no reason to disbelieve it, but she couldn't bring herself to care. All her efforts were dedicated to stopping herself from getting hysterical as she clutched her arm to her chest; her forearm throbbed from the rough treatment of two separate men.

"Mark my words," Idak growled. "I will choose to overlook this incident. That said, if I so much as feel an inkling of you pursuing this further, there will be nothing of you left for the captain to pitch overboard. Am I understood, Professor?"

Salazar gritted his teeth and turned an unsightly shade of red.

"I will accept your silence as an affirmative. See to your books, Professor." Idak turned and took Zhen by the shoulder to guide her out of the room. "Come along, crewgirl."

Zhen kept her eyes on the deck and let herself be pushed along. She nearly breathed a sigh of relief when the burlap curtain fell behind her. Once she was taken a dozen paces along, she found her voice. "Thank you, sir," she whispered.

Idak grunted as he pushed her ahead of him, and Zhen could feel his tension through his grip on her shoulder. "What happened?" he asked quietly.

"I don't... I'm not really sure," Zhen murmured. "I brought him a book like the captain asked, then... I'm not sure. It happened so fast."

Idak grunted again and appeared content to leave it at that.

Zhen glanced sidelong at the first mate. He wasn't taking her in the direction of the hammocks. She didn't have any idea where he was taking her. Fear started welling up again.

"You do not mind?"

Zhen bit her lip. "Mind what, sir?"

"You do not mind what the professor said about my parentage?"

She quickly glanced towards him again and found his gaze on her. It made her shoulders itch as it stole her voice. All she could do was shake her head.

"Would be for the best if you forget that nonsense. The fool had no idea what he was talking about."

Zhen swallowed. "As you say, sir."

"It is a bother how often this keeps happening to you," Idak said in a growl. "Diaz still sits on his arse tender from the flogging, and I was disappointed to see a good navigator like Corzan get left behind in Gaulatia. But it was watching the captain pitch Cassanta overboard that smarted. There never was a better carpenter."

Zhen's steps came to a stop. Her fists clenched as she kept her eyes on the deck in front of her. "You say it like I had something to do with it."

Idak took another three steps before noticing she wasn't heeling beside him anymore. He turned back to face her. "Did you not?"

"You think I wanted them to put their hands on me?" Zhen demanded, still refusing to meet his eye. "I just wanted to come aboard and do my job, so why won't you arseholes let me? My job's to learn the helm and mind the captain. It isn't my job to keep grown men from acting like they never felt their cocks get hard before."

"I would ask you keep a modest tongue in your head, crewgirl," Idak warned. "Talk like that sounds an invitation to..."

"Stones take you all," Zhen snarled. "It don't matter. I could talk like a nun, and all you shites would still think I'm asking for it. You're no better than animals, and you, Master Idak, think its just fine to let it go on."

Idak opened his mouth, whether to refute or rebuke her, Zhen couldn't care less.

"Call me crewgirl again!" Zhen shouted. Her glare landed on his face, and Idak actually took a step back from the fierceness behind it. "Every time you do, it lets them all know you look down on me just like they do. You think I'm not part of the crew just like they do, that I'm just a toy to be played with just like they do!"

Her fury gave way to crying a lot sooner than she wanted them to, but Zhen had given up hope of ever managing to keep a lid on her tears.

"Sod off," Zhen sobbed. "Just sod off and leave me alone. Why's that so hard?"

She ran away and expected to hear Idak's heavy footsteps chase after her to dole out the harshest disciplinary action the Sojourn had seen since the Isles of Shoto. Zhen hadn't just pushed past the boundaries of insubordination, she sprinted on out at full steam. Crewmen got dangled under the keel for hollering at an officer like that.

For whatever reason, Idak didn't bother with a pursuit. Zhen figured she'd already wasted enough of his time, so he was happy to delay her punishment until he wasn't sick of looking at her. Either that or Idak wanted to clear any action against Zhen with the captain first.

That last one seemed the likeliest reason.

The problem with fleeing aboard an airship was that there was an extreme lack of places to flee to. Zhen had sprinted off in the opposite direction of her hammock, but she doubted she could find anything resembling sanctuary while surrounded by the snoring of the other hands from the night shift. The professor's cabin was out of the question for more reasons than there were yesterday, and Zhen would sooner save Idak the trouble and leap overboard by her own volition than appear on-deck in her current state.

That left heading down as her only available option. Zhen clambered down ladders and narrow stairwells through Sojourn's lower decks. Nobody milling around the main boilers and the steam engines paid her any mind, and the few hands going through the cargo hold barely took note of anything beyond their manifests. Zhen went all the way down to the very bottom of the Sojourn, into the bilges.

Unlike a nautical vessel, the bilges weren't clogged with brine and filth. It could grow damp from the exhaust off the steam engines, and it definitely grew uncomfortably cold when at high altitudes, but it was more or less the most secluded spot on the ship. Zhen crouched down, hugged her knees to her chin, and then buried her face against them.

She expected to spend the next few hours sobbing, but she somehow skipped past all that and immediately dropped off into an exhausted sleep. Between a long night shift, giving blood, having an academic try to manhandle her, and then popping off at the first mate, Zhen had had enough for one day.

Her dreams were strange, but they usually were after a session with Jaysa. They grew confused, and Zhen couldn't tell how much of the dream came from the weird effect a vampire's bite had and how much came from legitimate attraction to powerful women. Whichever it was, Zhen dreamt of the captain's hands and her tongue, of the many varied and pleasurable places they could get to on Zhen's body, and of how— just maybe— Lady Jaysa Dominico might start looking at Zhen as something more than a chalice.

Familiar dreams. Nothing new. The only change was the fear that she'd bungled it up and had as good as tossed it all overboard.

Waking was uncomfortable for a number of reasons. Beyond the cold putting a powerful soreness throughout her limbs and back, Zhen had slept against her knees funny. Straightening them caused sharp pains to stab through the entire joints, almost making her cry out. Worst, however, was how Zhen became aware by degrees that she wasn't alone in the bilges.

Her first thought was that it was Idak, come to string her to one of the gyros and get it spinning until she vomited. Impossible, because Idak could never fit his huge frame in the bilges. The second terror was that it was Professor Salazar, or even Diaz, and they found her here while she was alone and vulnerable with no one to hear her if she screamed. It wasn't either of those fears. It was much worse.

"What am I going to do with you?" Jaysa lamented as soon as she noticed Zhen waking up. She sat beside her in the bilges, twirling a knife in her fingers.

Jaysa sat more at ease, her legs splayed out in front of her and leaning back on one hand. She wore a long and sleeveless, open coat, black and trimmed with red. The dark gray shirt underneath carried white lace at the cuffs and collar. Her trousers were tight around her hips before disappearing into thigh-high boots with crimson lacings. Her black hair was tied up into a loose bun and secured with a fine, tortoiseshell comb. But it was her eyes that held Zhen's attention. They were red again, and her fangs weren't concealed.

Jaysa had forgone her illusions for this conversation, and the possible reasons why put a seed of terror into the pit of Zhen's stomach.

"Captain?" Zhen hated how her voice trembled. "W-why are you..."

"She's my ship," Jaysa said. Her eyes bored into Zhen's. "I can go anywhere I want."

"Aye, but..."

"Don't talk just yet," Jaysa ordered. There was a hard bite to her words, the sort that wouldn't allow for disobedience. "Dereliction. I ordered you to your hammock, but you failed to comply. Insubordination. Oh yes, Idak passed on the garbage you spouted at him."

Zhen pulled her knees to her chin again, praying that she wouldn't start crying so soon after the last bout of it.

"But the worst— the absolute worst— is something I've just realized you've been doing since the Sojourn left Drok Moran."

Fearful and confused, Zhen looked at Jaysa, and she didn't know how to react to how the captain put a hand to her cheek and spoke with a gentle tone.

"You've been keeping all that bottled up for far too long. You're a different sort of animal than the usual alley cats who look for a new life in the skies. Any other would've beaten in a shipmate's head to earn some respect by now, and it'd be over with. I kept expecting to hear you halfway killed someone who looked at you wrong, because that's how this always goes, but it turns out you have too much control over yourself."

Zhen snorted incredulously. It was much too ridiculous. She gestured towards the bilges that she'd made her hideaway and indicated the tear stains under her eyes. "Do I look like a girl in control?"

"You take it where you can," Jaysa said. She returned her knife to its sheath. "You didn't like where you were told to sleep, so you chose a place for yourself that fit what you needed. Even this-" Her fingers brushed gently against Zhen's cheek. "-is so you don't scream and rage at the entire world."

"I tried it, you know?" Zhen murmured while looking away. "Being angry. It just makes everything worse."

"Worse for a certain sort," Jaysa agreed. "Your sort, seems like."

"Like hollering at Idak," Zhen muttered. "I'm sorry, Captain. It just got to be too much, and..."

"There wasn't a thing you said was wrong," Jaysa interrupted. "And he heard you. I made sure he thought back on the things you said and heard you, because you are right." She swallowed. Almost anxiously, but that wasn't something Lady Jaysa Dominico would ever do. "I... haven't been a very good captain to you."

Zhen dared to glance towards Jaysa's face. It was a shock to see her cheeks flushed. "What do you mean?"

"You're my chalice," Jaysa said, "and I allowed myself to think that was all you were. You're also a part of my crew, and it's my responsibility to protect my crew. I've done a piss poor job of protecting you from the scum who made their way aboard."

Zhen cocked her head to the side at what she saw as a contradiction. "Aren't they a part of your crew, too?"

"Not for long." Jaysa leaned her back against the bilge wall. Her eyes grew distant, as if staring at something a thousand leagues off. "While you've been napping down here, I had a talk with the professor. More like he talked at me. Seems he's had enough of the sky for some reason and started in on demanding I turn around and take him back to Nadia."

Zhen wrung her hands and tried not to think about what might've pushed Salazar past the limits of his patience.

"Probably for the best," Jaysa said quietly, still distant. "We're coming close to half our supply. You could say it'd be smart to turn back now in case bad weather delays the return trip. One must be prudent in uncharted skies." Her knife stopped dancing between her fingertips and was returned to its sheath. "That would be the smart course of action."

"What then?" Zhen asked.

"Try again," Jaysa said. "Maybe, if I can beg the funding off people who owe my house favors. Next time with a crew who can go a few months without turning into animals. Maybe I ought see about hiring more than one or two girls for the deck crew, so you aren't such a damned spectacle."

"Maybe you ought get a whole crew of girls," Zhen suggested.

"Gods, I'd never get any rest," Jaysa muttered. "Can you imagine it? Week after week of a whole crew carving out their little cliques and pecking orders. Men are animals, but women are damned vicious, and half of them would start acting like they're captain before the Sojourn left the Continent."

Zhen blinked. "That sounds too specific to not be from experience."

Jaysa snorted. "I was young and stupid once. Let's just say there's a reason I minimize how many female aviators come aboard my ship."

Sounded to Zhen like the captain once tried to have herself a flying harem, and it turned out more poorly than anticipated. That is, if the captain truly did prefer girls, and Zhen was starting to suspect that might've been the case.

Jaysa raised an eyebrow. "What's that look for? You seem a little too pleased with yourself for some reason, and I don't think I like it."

"N-nothing. It's just..." Unexpectedly, Zhen felt a sudden spike of warmth in her cheeks. "You're talking like you'd have me around for when you try to find another continent again. I thought this post was one time only."

"If you'd rather just have your sack of gold and some well-wishes..."

"No," Zhen blurted hurriedly. "I mean, I just figured out the difference between port and starboard and everything. I'd hate to quit right after becoming an expert helmsman."

Jaysa blinked before seeming to decide that was a joke. She chuckled and tapped an encouraging knuckle to Zhen's chin. "Come on out of the bilges, you damned fool. I know you're an alley cat, but the rats down here are nastier than the ones you're used to."

"Shite, there's rats?" Zhen grabbed onto Jaysa's arm and looked about fearfully. "Wouldn't've come down here if I thought there was rats."

Zhen heard a squeak and immediately believed it was one of the little, scurrying monsters. It took a moment for it to register that the noise hadn't come from a filthy rodent, but from the captain. Zhen slowly turned her head to regard Jaysa and realized what provoked such an unseemly and very... un-Jaysa-like... sound.

By clinging to her as she was, Zhen had pressed her chest rather firmly against the captain's arm. Jaysa's cheeks were a dozen shades darker than normal, and she looked halfway towards getting a nosebleed.

The captain cleared her throat, endeavored to look anywhere but in Zhen's direction, and helped her get to her feet. It looked like she meant to pretend she'd never made any such noise, and Zhen thought it wisest to let the fiction pass.

As they emerged from the bilges into the cargo hold— and feeling emboldened by the idea of Jaysa getting hot and bothered over her— Zhen dared to push her luck. Just a little. "Say you do set out on this expedition again, would you have me as your chalice?"

Jaysa pursed her lips and kept her eyes forward. "Never took on the same girl twice."

"Maybe because you just never found the right one," Zhen offered. "The sort who won't spill what she knows about anyone. Maybe one who knows how you like it."

"How I like it?" Jaysa turned her head to squint at her. "Don't make it sound dirty."

"Could be, if you wanted it to be."

"I told you already, girl. You don't want to be my whore."

"Wouldn't be whoring if you married me."

The sputtering sound Jaysa made perfectly communicated both her incredulity and her surprise. She gaped at Zhen for a solid five seconds before barking a wry laugh. "Wicked girl. So that was your game all along, was it? Marry up?"

"Course not. Only occurred to me a second ago."

"Well, forget it. A noblewoman can't betroth herself to some upstart alley cat just because she asked nicely. I don't care how pretty you are."

Zhen smiled, glad that she at least got Jaysa to admit she was pretty. "I'm only messing around. Figured you'd like me a little better if I could make you laugh a bit."

The captain took in a breath and let it out as a long exhale. "I like you just fine. So long as this insolent streak ends immediately. I hear of you popping off to an officer again, I'll have you in irons so fast it'll make your head spin."

"Aye, Captain."

Jaysa stopped cold in her tracks and pointed a finger at Zhen's nose. "And don't you ever think of slapping me again."

Zhen winced. "Aye, Captain."

Jaysa frowned at her for another moment before resuming her course. She didn't lead Zhen to her cabin or even to the crew berths. Jaysa brought Zhen to a place at the bow of the ship, on the same deck as the steam engines. There was a small and mostly out of the way post with a large, forward-facing window. Zhen knew it to be a lookout post for a crewman to keep an eye on the surface below. With the Sojourn flying exclusively over empty waters at present, there was no need for it to be manned.

"To answer your question," Jaysa said once she closed the door behind them. "Yes. I'd have you as my chalice again, if you consent to it."

Zhen tried to hide how hearing it made her heart skip a beat. "Why would you want me again?"

"Don't look too much into it," Jaysa muttered. She ran a hand over her hair and averted her eyes. Her cheeks hadn't lost their spots of color, either. "You want to keep flying, and I don't want more people in on my secrets than I need. It's convenient."

Zhen bit her lip and turned to face the window. "If it's going to be a new arrangement, I'll ask for a new condition added to it."

Jaysa grunted. "Alright, let's hear it. But while we're throwing in ridiculous amendments, it should be clearly stated that you're forbidden from falling in love with me."

"Too late for that," Zhen mumbled under her breath.

It hadn't been quiet enough to escape Jaysa's sharp hearing. "Zhen... It's not real, you know. What you feel is just what my nature does to you. It's an illusion."

"Then it's no different from anyone else," Zhen said. "It's always just the illusions people put up, and it's hardly ever magic ones. But I think you're wrong. I learned more about you while enchanted than I ever could any other way."

Jaysa didn't respond to that, but Zhen heard her boots scuff against the boards.

"You said you'd never take what wasn't offered." Zhen started unbuttoning her shirt, the one the captain leant her. "So I'm offering. The only catch is you can't bite me whenever you collect." She turned around as she let the shirt fall from her shoulders. "I want you to see how I really feel. No doubts. Just me."

The captain's eyes strayed across the length of Zhen's bare torso. Her breaths came through her mouth, desire painted plainly over her face. "You're suggesting separating feeding time from play time?"

"At first," Zhen said. "At least until you start believing me when I say I want you."

Jaysa took a step closer. "You caught me at a bad time. Right when I decide to give up my dream until the next voyage? Wicked girl, coming at me like this when I desperately want a consolation prize."

Zhen maintained eye contact as she lowered herself to her knees. She could tell by the way Jaysa's pupils dilated that it had the desired effect. The captain caressed Zhen's cheek, then began unfastening her leggings.

Midway through unbuckling her belt, Jaysa's fingers went still. Zhen reached up to assist but found that the captain hadn't just stopped. She'd frozen in place as if turned to stone. Zhen looked up and saw that Jaysa was gaping out the forward window with her mouth hanging open.

Annoyed at the delay, Zhen looked over her shoulder to see what the captain was staring at. It was an empty ocean, far as she could tell. No different than the view had been since leaving the Continent behind.

"Captain? What is it?"

"Every god on the wind," Jaysa whispered breathlessly. She turned on her heels and ran for the door.

"Captain!" Zhen hissed. "Illusions."

Jaysa hesitated, then swore. She retrieved her bottle of eyedrops from a belt pouch and returned her red eyes to hazel. A moment later, she was darting through the lower deck corridor as if all the dragons of Shan Alee were snapping at her heels.

That left Zhen to mutter to herself as she put the shirt back on. She'd heard men complain about being left unsatisfied. Something about purple marbles. Zhen had never had a frame of reference to sympathize, but she felt she understood it now. Once her modesty was preserved, Zhen went out after the captain.

On the bright side of things, Zhen had the feeling that she'd improved her lot aboard the Sojourn. All it took was confirming every ill thought the rest of the crew had about her.

Zhen couldn't care less.