When the first of the ships were ready to head north, the Voice of Reason was on the largest of them. It had taken almost as long to make her tiny fleet seaworthy as it had to make her new skin fight right. It did now, though, and it was worth the effort.

As she stood in her deep red dress on the aft castle of her refloated Caravel, she admired the way her skin fit like a literal glove on her hands as she flexed and moved. It was only after that, that she looked back at the tiny, black sailed fleet, she wondered if she would return or if she would die on her fools errand far away from her master and his power.

Some of those ships contained soldiers and powerful constructs, it was true. She was hardly defenseless. Beneath her, somewhere were even a few aquatic monstrosities that lurked somewhere beneath her should the gods of sea and storms give them trouble.

She was well protected and had all the resources that she would need for her mission, but most of the ships that followed her contained only the skeletal remains of a few sailors, along with a hold full of poisoned and diseased rats powered by a god that was not her own.

The Lich had planned to send a scouting mission along the coast to weaken the enemy. It was she who proposed that any such mission should have a diplomatic component to it. It had, after a few considerations and some questions, agreed. She’d argued that such dialogs could sew discord and panic and discord among nominal allies, but the Lich had been far more interested in the prayers of the living.

That was why her master’s high priest, Verdenin, had sent along a few of his black-robed monks. They were the only living souls in the entire armada, but if her efforts were successful, then they would be the most important. Apparently, its war machine was a hungry thing, and in lieu of blood and souls, prayers to the dark could ameliorate a great many of its concerns. She would have done it for any reason if only to be useful. In this thing, she was the carrot, and the ships behind her were the stick.

The thought sent a shiver down her spine as she flicked her eyes back to them. The Lich could do no wrong as far as she was concerned, and any new abomination from its flesh forges was beautiful in her eyes. Even the dread leviathan that had been so critical to its attack on Rahkin had been a work of art, but a hundred thousand squirming squealing rats packed into the holds of her fleet just waiting for her negotiations to go wrong so that they could be unleashed and despoil everything they could find?

She found something about all of that deeply unsettling. Not only were they ugly, unsettling things, but they were somehow independent of the one true master of the world in a way that she would never be. She shook her head and walked slowly back to the prow of the ship.

She hoped that she would never need to unleash them. She shouldn’t have to. Not when she had such powerful allies of her own. The Dreamer and the Puppeteer had both joined her on this voyage, and though neither of them would be much better in a fight than her own fragile form, they would both be very helpful in determining who might want what, and where the political fault lines of a given kingdom might be.

At this point, they were little more than dots on a map to her. She’d read a few dusty tomes on the subject of the Kingdoms of Zum Jubar, but it still made little sense to her, and beyond the most important trade cities, little was known about them in the south. She’d summoned and consulted the spirits of a few sailors and merchants that had been there, but apparently those that were more knowledgeable had fled long before the Lich’s forces had completed their conquest.

“Those will be our most fearsome opponents,” she said to herself in a voice no louder than the breeze. “The ones that fear what they do not understand and have just enough knowledge for others to believe them. Something will have to be done.”

Two monks stood not so far from her, but they neither looked at her nor spoke to her. They couldn’t. Their eyes had been sewn shut long ago so that they could only see darkness, and their vows of silence prevented them from making any noise except for singing the discordant psalms of the Lich.

Part of her resented that the living had any place on this mission, but it was not her place to question her master, so she ignored the urge to strangle them or push them off her ship and drown them. Instead, she focused once more on the view. And the destinations that lay far ahead. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Somewhere in the distance, passed endless dunes and alabaster cliffs, lay Tanda. It was an ancient, walled city ruled by a sultan that tended to focus on trade rather than on warfare. It was often thought of by southern merchants as the gateway to the north, and though she was journeying there for something other than the dates and ivory that were the mainstays of their trade, she was confident she’d find what she was looking for.

They needed allies, and leaders that cared more for the fate of their subjects than the vanity of the gods that lorded over them all. If she didn’t find those things in Tanda, then she’d keep going, and in Bastom, or somewhere even further north she was sure she would find what both she and her master were looking for.

The voyage from Rahkin to Tanda would take a good crew and a fast ship about three weeks. They, unfortunately, had neither, thanks to the limitations that daylight imposed on their vessels. Each morning, they lowered the sails and drifted more at less and random. After a month at sea, though, they still had not arrived.

It was only the magic imbued into the ships that kept them even somewhat together, especially after the storms that she was sure that the Gods were tormenting them with. Still, they met no opposition from mortals, until they were passed all the dunes, and reached the White Gates.

There, they found a small armada of well-trimmed warships waiting for them. Fortunately, thanks to the wraiths that were released each night to scour the ever-shifting seascape for hazards, they saw the enemy long before their sails crossed the horizon.

As far as the Voice of Reason was concerned, the best course of action would have been raise the flags that communicated the need for a parlay, and work things out with the opposing captain. She was sure that she could reach an amicable solution. Unfortunately, with dawn a few hours away, that was impossible, and in the light of day those sleek white sailed ships would easily sink her helpless black sailed vessals.

Such an outcome was intolerable. So, instead, she continued to sail forward directly at them, and when she was close enough, she unleashed a swarm of death’s heads. They had hundreds of those cursed skulls in the hold of her ship, and they were not strong enough to sink a large ship on their own; the fires they caused would do that in an hour or two.

As much as she might have liked to keep survivors and merely send a warning shot, that outcome was equally intolerable. Knowledge of how easily the Lich’s forces might sink the local navies could be valuable in establishing a reputation in a new area. Unfortunately, that was not the reputation she wanted, which meant that there had to be no survivors.

Thanks to the Lich’s magic, that’s exactly what happened. Fire rained from the sky, and every vessel, no matter how small, received its share. They went up like so many candles, and though the Voice’s heart felt heavy that she had not found a way to bring about a peaceful solution to this impasse, she looked at her lovely hands and decided that she would much rather have them stained with blood than be ruined by weapons and wooden shrapnel.

That dawn, as everyone fled below decks to escape the distant blue rays of the first sun, the black fleet floated there at rest, surrounded by the flaming wrecks of their burning enemies. In the morning, they would harvest what corpses they could for spare parts, and the Puppeteer would do what it did and sniff out secrets that might aid them in their quest.

That sinuous monstrosity learned a great deal in the night that followed. They sadly could not find the corpse of the fleet’s admiral, but they found a captain and several quartermasters, and it was able to confirm her worst fears.

“We came to stop yer foul kind before you could stain the holy lands with your evil!” the Puppeteer growled in an unfamiliar voice through the mouth of a dead man, “And even if you make your way past us, you’ll find neither quarter nor succor inside the walls of our beloved home!”

Those sentiments were echoed by the other drowned souls, which they harvested for their dark god. Those sentiments worried her but not so much as to deter her from her plan. All they had come away with from this encounter was maps and warnings, but they had lost nothing of value in return, and that would have to be enough.

Less than a week later, they reached the verdant coast where Tanda stood like a glittering gem. It was gifted by nature and clung to both sides of a fertile river that provided so much of its wealth. The Voice became instantly suspicious of what small gods of city and nature might lurk in such an old place, but ultimately, she still unleashed her wraiths and the Dreamer to learn what they could from the sleeping populace while her black fleet rested at anchor far offshore.

It would be hours before any of those shadowy servants returned with useful information, of course, but even so, the Voice could not tear her eyes away from the glittering white spires that dotted the city and the starlight blue domes that sparkled in the moonlight.

It was the most beautiful place she’d ever been, and she dearly hoped that she could find a peaceful solution that would bring these people into the fold. She would hate to ruin such a lovely place just to make a point that the other local lords would better understand, though she would if she had to.