The chase was on, and every man and woman aboard felt it, and heard it.

Maimun stood forward and starboard, holding fast to a guide rope, his brown hair waving in the wind, his black shirt half unbuttoned and flapping refreshingly and noisily, bouncing out enough to show a tar-black scar across the left side of his chest.

“They are close,” came a woman’s voice from behind him, and Maimun half-turned to regard Overwizard Arabeth Raurym, Mistress of the South Tower.

“Your magic tells you so?”

“Can’t you feel it?” the woman answered, and gave a coy toss of her head so that her waist-length red hair caught the wind and flipped back behind her. Her blouse was as open as Maimun’s shirt, and the young man couldn’t help but look admiringly at the alluring creature.

He thought of the previous night, and the night before that, and before that as well—of the whole enjoyable journey. Arabeth had promised him a wonderful and exciting sail in addition to the rather large sum she’d offered for her passage, and Maimun couldn’t honestly say that she’d disappointed him. She was around his age, just past thirty, intelligent, attractive, sometimes brazen, sometimes coy, and just enough of each to keep Maimun and every other man around her off-balance and keenly interested in pursuing her. Arabeth knew her power well, and Maimun knew that she knew it, but still, he couldn’t shake himself free of her.

Arabeth stepped up beside him and playfully brushed her fingers through his thick hair. He glanced around quickly, hoping none of the crew had seen, for the action only accentuated that he was quite young to be captaining a ship, and that he looked even younger. His build was slight, wiry yet strong, his features boyish and his eyes a delicate light blue. While his hands were calloused, like those of any honest seaman, his skin had not yet taken on the weathered, leathery look of a man too much under the sparkling sun.