There was no sound but the sea.

I’ ll serve you, Arin promised.

His god didn’t answer. Arin was close enough to see the barnacles on the ship’s hull. He looked up. No one looked down. He pushed forward.

How can I serve you, if I drown?

And now the fear. Weariness. His limbs felt as if they were plowing through mud. Salt in his throat. His lungs. His death wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

By the sword. Please.

Not like this.

Not alone.

Not yet.

A current sucked him away from the ship.

Arin almost surrendered himself to it. You can’t fight the will of the gods, and never this god.

A tattered desolation fluttered through him. Again: Not alone, not yet. But he was alone. He had been alone for a long time.

I wish, he thought, that I could hear your voice again. He wondered if he would, in the end.

The current still gripped him. But it turned on itself. It flung Arin forward, muscling him swiftly through the water until he slammed against the hull’s side.

He almost blacked out. Head ringing, vision weird, Arin went up and down. He swallowed water. Scrambled against the hull. His hands sought something, anything.

And hooked hard. Squeezed.

The hull ladder.

Arin looked up and saw the line of rusted rungs leading up the hull. For a moment, he couldn’t move. He was rapt with wonder.

In your name, Arin swore. I’ ll bring glory to you.

Shaking, grateful, he climbed.

The next day broke clean, like it had been spat on and polished to a shine.

The black powder stored in the magazine deep in the ship’s hold had stayed dry. Some sacks, though, had been kept at the ready on the gundecks. They were soaked. The sea had swamped the gunports before the sailors had hauled back the cannons and bolted the ports.

Arin and some of the sailors opened the sacks and spread powder out in shallow pans laid out on the quarterdeck. The sun was hot on his bare shoulders. He bowed with the weight of a full sack. The powder was damp and cakey as he jostled it out of the bag and sifted the grit with his hands, spreading it into a fine layer. His palms became black. They looked familiar. Not so different from how they’d used to look after a day in the forge. A normal day.

But today was not normal. He kept his eyes on his task. The black powder, made from sulfur extracted from Dacra’s northern plateau, was precious. The eastern supply was limited, so it was important that the powder, useless when wet, dry well. It was important that Arin take care. And it was very important that he keep his gaze averted from the other sailors, who kept sneaking glances at him.

Because Arin was not normal. No one fell into the sea like that and lived.

He felt the stare from the girl scraping scales from a freshly caught fish half her size. Other sailors stared, too. The ones mending a sail and tarring the rigging. Those nearest to him, emptying their sacks.

Sweat dripped from his brow and vanished into the powder in its pan near his bare feet. Arin wondered when that powder would be used. He wondered what damage it would do, and if, when the powder exploded, some essence of himself would burn with it.

He wondered if this was a normal thought.

The sacks were now empty. He brushed his black palms. He needed to rinse. He was a walking fire hazard. A bucket of seawater was kept near the mainmast. He went to it, dunked his arms in up to his elbows, and splashed a little over his shoulders, feeling the water go down the runnel of his spine. He’d itch once the water dried to salt.

“You look none the worse for drowning.”

Arin straightened to see the captain leaning near the shrouds, watching him. Arin remembered the man’s expression during the storm, when Arin had hauled himself over the railing, slopped down onto the deck, and retched a bellyful of seawater.

Arin asked, “How long until the Empty Islands?”

“Ithrya’s near, but we must give her a wide berth. Two, three days, then, to sail south around Ithrya and up to the islands. Should the winds stay fair.”

“Do you think they will?”

“Ask them, why don’t you, and see if they will for you.”

The sun was in the captain’s face. Arin couldn’t read his expression. The man’s voice could have either been mock serious, or dead serious. Arin cleared his throat. “The gunpowder should be dry by day’s end. No one’s to smoke. Even one stray spark—”

“We’re not daft, boy.”

Arin rubbed the nape of his neck, nodded, and thought the conversation was over. He looked out at the sea. Green and dazzling, like his mother’s emerald. He remembered the day he’d traded it away, and wished he’d kept it. He thought that every one should have one precious thing to hold with his whole heart, to know to be incontrovertibly his own. He held the emerald in his mind, felt its cool facets. He imagined placing it in the palm of a hand he knew well, and wondered if it would be accepted, and how it would feel to have someone else hold what he held with his whole heart.