Chapter 2: In the Wolf's Shadow

TALATHIS

6th of Calfenaris, 1081 AV
Averos, Therysian Colony of Avyr

To exist as a shadow is a curious thing. I was a memory of a memory, a legacy of a love that could not be named. I yearned for the warmth of the sun, yet I was born of the twilight, forever bound to the space between light and dark.

—Excerpt from Anguish of the Heart, First Book of the Revelations from the Lost Soul

Talathis was drowning.

It wasn't the clean, cold drowning of the ocean. He feared and respected that kind of death his entire life. This was suffocation. Hot air and thick wool, and still he felt like he was swimming in the dark. He swam blind through syrupy water toward a surface that refused to break.

A distant and rhythmic thudding echoed through the dizzying haze—thump, thump, thump! Beneath it, a lower sound vibrated in his teeth, in the hollows of his skull. A steady, copper-tasting hum.

The Rigging? he thought sluggishly. Is she singing?

He clawed upward. His chest tightened with panic and his throat felt raw and burned as if he’d swallowed a gallon of brine. He gasped, half-expecting water, but inhaled stale air that tasted of cheap wine and old sweat.

Then the surface resolved. It wasn't water. Instead, he found the rough-hewn planks of the floorboards pressed hard against his cheek. Now that he could see, the rhythmic roll was much gentler than it felt a moment before. This was a ship at anchor, not underway. The hum was just the idle vibration of the wind in the lines. 

The Sea Wolf. He was on the floor of his berth.

He tried to push himself up, but his arms were unsteady. The world tilted violently on its axis. Why was he on the floor? The last thing he remembered was... soft light. The smell of jasmine. A laugh that sounded like singing chimes on a summer’s breeze. Aelia.

"Talathis!"

More thudding. He searched for the source, swinging his attention toward the sound. It was the door. The wood groaned under a heavy assault.

"Talathis? Are you in there? Open this door before I take it off the hinges!"

The voice cut through the fog of his hangover like a serrated blade. Father. But not anger. Fear.

Talathis opened his mouth to answer, to shout a confirmation, but all that emerged was a dry, retching cough that doubled him over. He squeezed his eyes shut to push out the gathering dew as the pounding stopped, replaced by a heavy, deliberate silence. Then came the sound of metal on wood—the snap of a lock giving way under immense pressure.

CRACK.

Splinters rained down on him as the door flew inward. Some rebounded off the bulkhead with a force that shook the small cabin. Light from the passageway flooded in, blinding and accusatory.

Talathis scrambled backward, his boots skidding on the floorboards, until his back hit the frame of his bunk. He shielded his eyes, squinting up at the silhouette filling the doorway.

Duke Cedrik Dawntreader did not look like a father checking on a son. He looked like a mountain that had decided to fall on someone.

He was dressed for the deck, not the court—a heavy, weather-stained frock coat over a linen shirt that had seen better days, his saber belted high on his waist. Even in the dim light, he looked every inch the legend the stories painted: grizzled, imposing, carved from sea salt and old battles. The grey in his beard seemed to catch the light like iron filings.

Cedrik stepped into the room, making Talathis feel the same weight in his chest that he felt lying on the floorboards. The air suddenly felt too thin to support two men. He looked down at Talathis—sprawled on the floor, reeking of the previous night's excesses—and his expression didn't even flicker. It was a look of absolute, professional appraisal. He was assessing damage.

"Get up," Cedrik said. His voice wasn't loud. It was the deep, resonant groan of a hull under strain.

Talathis reached for the edge of the bunk, and hauled himself up. His legs trembled, threatening to betray him. He swayed, and for a single humiliating second, he thought he would pitch forward.

A heavy hand shot out, gripping his forearm. Cedrik didn't pull him up; he simply held him there, a living anchor, until the world stopped spinning.

"You okay, son?" Cedrik asked, releasing him once he was steady. "You look like you went five rounds with a kraken."

Talathis rubbed his face; his hand came away slick with cold sweat. He winced as his fingers grazed a tender, swelling mound on his temple he hadn't noticed until now. "I... I think so. What happened? Why is the door..."

"You missed the fight," Cedrik said flatly. “Glad you’re alive.”

"The fight?" Talathis blinked, trying again to clear the grit from his eyes. "What fight?"

"Seems a few locals thought it wise to go poking about the Sea Wolf while the watch was changing. We showed ’em the error of their ways." Cedrik’s lip curled into a smug, wolfish smirk, the kind brought by a successful boarding action.

But then the smirk vanished, replaced by something colder. "Seems that girl you took a fancy to was with them. She was screaming for you when we dragged them off the gangplank. Said she thought you were dead."

The blood drained from Talathis's face, leaving him cold.

The memory hit him with the force of a physical blow. Aelia.

He remembered the tavern, the Siren’s Song. He remembered her dark, cascading curls, the way the lantern light danced in her big, brown eyes. She had been so interested. Not just in him—though her hand on his knee had promised plenty—but in his life. In the Sea Wolf.

“A ship like that must go to dangerous places,” she had cooed, pouring him another cup of that sweet, heavy Dark Imperium wine. “Where is a hero like your father off to next?”

He had been so eager. So desperate to be the man she seemed to see. He wanted to impress her, to show her he wasn't just the quiet shadow behind the famous Duke. He wanted to be important.

“Off to enforce the king’s will,” he had whispered, leaning in close, drunk on her attention. “We’re going to the Eleysian Island Council. In Vagnithane.”

He had traded a state secret for a smile.

Talathis looked at his father, and the shame burned in his gut, hotter and more corrosive than the bile rising in his throat. His fingers twitched at his side—a reflex he hadn’t used since childhood. Index and thumb brushing against his thigh. Guilt. Broken.

Cedrik’s eyes flicked to the hand movement. He recognized the sign—the silent language of his son’s mother—but his expression hardened, refusing to acknowledge the plea.

"Son?" Cedrik’s voice was quiet, dangerous. "What did you say to her?"

Talathis opened his mouth to lie. It was the instinct of a child facing punishment. I didn't say anything. She's lying. I was drunk. But he looked into those rheumy blue eyes—eyes that had stared down Stornir raiders and King’s inquisitors—and he knew a lie would only be the final nail in his coffin.

"I..." Talathis swallowed hard. "I told her about the Council. I told her where we were going."

The silence that followed was terrible. It wasn't the silence of anger; it was the silence of confirmation. Cedrik didn't shout. Nor did he strike his son. He simply pressed his lips together until they were a thin, white line, and looked away, staring at the splintered remains of the door latch.

"We are the King's privateers, Talathis," Cedrik said softly, speaking to the wall. "We carry the weight of the Treaty of Rida on this deck. You know why we run dark. You know why we paint false ports on the hull."

He turned back, and the disappointment in his face was worse than a blow. "The Sea Wolf is fast, son. She sings when she runs. But she can still be run down by an ambush if they know where she's going to be."

“I'm sorry, Father,” Talathis whispered. The words felt pathetic, a sand castle crumbling against before the wave of growing shame. “I…I let my guard down.”

Instinctively, Talathis’s hands twitched at his sides. His right hand formed a fist, placing it over his heart, then twisting it downward—the Pidgin-Elowyn sign for Shame and Submission. It was a reflex, the language his mute mother had taught him before he could speak, the only way he knew how to beg for forgiveness when words failed.

Cedrik saw the gesture. His eyes flicked to Talathis’s hands, and for a moment, the iron mask cracked. He flinched, as if the silent sign had struck him across the face. He looked away sharply, unable to bear the ghost of the woman he had left behind in Svarg.

“You didn't let your guard down," Cedrik corrected him, his voice hardening into command. "You abandoned your post. You traded the safety of my crew and my ship for a warm lap."

Cedrik crossed his arms, leaning back against the doorframe. He looked massive, immovable. "I can't trust you at my right hand, Talathis. Not right now. Not when a pretty face can turn your head and loosen your tongue."

Talathis felt the blow coming before it landed.

"I'm demoting you."

Talathis flinched. "Sir—"

You'll remain Sailing Master," Cedrik continued, talking over him. "You know the winds and the currents better than any man aboard, and I need that skill. But the duties of First Mate fall to Yosif until you prove to me—and to the crew—that you've regained your focus." 

The demotion settled over him like a lead cloak. First Mate wasn't just a rank; it was the affirmation he had spent years clawing for. It proved that he was more than just the Captain's bastard. And he had thrown it all away in a single night.

"Yes, Sir," Talathis managed to say, his voice thick. "I understand."

"Good." Cedrik pushed himself off the doorframe. The father was gone now; only the Captain remained. "Get yourself cleaned up. You smell like a bilge rat. Once you can stand without swaying, check the cargo manifest. Make sure our 'guests' didn't pilfer anything before we tossed them."

He turned to leave, then paused, looking back over his shoulder. "We leave with the tide, Sailing Master. Plot us a course. And Talathis?"

Talathis looked up, hope sparking briefly in his chest.

"Don't make me regret giving you the helm."

Cedrik vanished into the passageway, leaving Talathis alone in the broken cabin.
Talathis sank back onto the edge of his bunk, burying his face in his hands. He was twenty-six years old, a veteran of the sea, a man grown. But in that moment, he felt like a child who had broken a precious and irreplaceable heirloom. He was the bastard son of a legend, and he had just proven exactly why he didn't carry the title.

He sat there for a long moment, letting the shame scour him clean. Then, slowly, he stood up. The room still spun, but he forced his legs to hold. He walked carefully to the basin, splashed tepid water on his face, and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. The eyes staring back were red-rimmed and hollow, but the jaw was set.

He had lost his rank. He had lost his father's trust. But he still had the ship. He still had the sea.

Plot a course, his father had said.

Talathis grabbed his jacket. He would plot a course, alright. He would plot a course that would remind his father, and the crew, and the whole damn world, why he belonged on this ship.

†                                          †                                          †

On the Next Tide

If the straight line to Lithrys was three weeks of suicide for a standard ship, the Sea Wolf’s path was a week of calculated pain.

Talathis stood at the helm, the spray stinging his face, his hands gripping the wheel until his knuckles went white. He felt the eyes of the crew on his back—Yosif, who was now doing the job Talathis had worked so hard to do; the deckhands who whispered about the door Cedrik had kicked in. He would buy their silence with perfection.

"Helm, come to Starboard Tack! Heading three-one-five!" Cedrik’s voice cracked like a whip from the quarterdeck.

"Three-one-five, aye!" Talathis spun the wheel.

They were executing the "Northern Beat," a counter-intuitive run sailing North-Northwest. To a novice, it looked like madness. To a navigator, it was the only way to catch the Eleysian Gyre—or Gaily'a's Embrace, as the superstitious called it. They fought the prevailing westerlies by riding the current, letting the ocean carry them while the wind fought them.

For forty hours, they beat hard through the Sound of Sparks. On either beam, the scattered, forested islands of the archipelago blurred past in the mist. Talathis didn't sleep. He couldn't. The shame of Averos was a physical weight in his gut, heavier than the cargo in the hold.

Fatigue started blurring the edges of his vision by the second night, but the most dangerous turn was still ahead. To the north, a distant wall of grey mist rose from the water like a cliff face—the "Vapor Shroud," where the freezing currents of the northern Frostfang collided with the warm Gyre. Entering that fog meant sailing blind into a chaotic sea.

"Helm, hard to port!"

Talathis hauled the wheel over. The ship groaned, heeling violently as they broke west through the archipelago toward the Gyre's northern edge. The copper rigging began to buzz—a low, discordant vibration that rattled the teeth.

She's growling, Talathis thought. Too much tension.

He flashed a signal to Yalli at the rail—flat palm pressing down. Ease. Yalli nodded and slackened the line. The growl smoothed out.

"Steer two-five-zero!"

"Two-five-zero, aye."

More than two days had passed. They were running West-Southwest now, a precision run through the dark heart of the archipelago.

Ahead lay the lighthouse of Isk, a pinprick of salvation in the gloom. Ninety miles to its west waited the Stacks—the "Shipcatchers"—stone fingers waiting to tear the hull open. Drifting south meant wrecking on the rocks; drifting north meant vanishing into the fog bank.

Talathis fixed his gaze on the binnacle. It lacked the erratic, swinging magnetic needle of a common merchantman. This was a Vesprian Star-Compass, a marvel of engineering rarely seen outside Vespria’s Navy. Few within the Trident, Therysia’s Royal Navy, boasted such a device. Suspended in a globe of stabilizing oil that hummed with a faint resonance, the compass card floated with an unnerving, absolute stillness instead of dancing with every sway of the ship. The rim was etched with cardinal points, but the Star-Compass bore precise, numbered graduations—"Marks"—allowing for a surgical course that no ordinary pilot could hold.

He held the line at exactly Mark 250.

Now began the "Thread of the Needle."

Talathis knew this ship better than he knew himself. He steered not just by the compass, but by the Howl. As the wind hit the harmonic sweet spot of the rigging, the low buzz lifted into a clear, singing note. It was the sound of the Iron-Heart keel cutting the water.

When the light of Isk finally winked directly abeam to port, signaling the turn that would carry them through the Eye of the Needle, he didn't celebrate. He just corrected the course to due West.
By the fourth afternoon, they passed the massive lighthouse on South Point, Bralmord. Sometime during the previous night, they had passed silently and blindly through the gap in the Stacks. The obstacle course was over. Now, the grind began.

"Clear water!" the lookout cried as they entered the open Eleysian Sea.

"Set final tack," Cedrik ordered, his voice rough with fatigue. "Bring her to two-eight-zero."

Talathis adjusted the course. The Sea Wolf settled into a rhythmic, powerful motion, cutting through the waves of the open ocean. The "Drizzle Engine" had engaged—the constant, grey dampness of the deep sea.

It had been nearly one hundred and sixty hours since Averos. Talathis slumped slightly against the wheel, the adrenaline finally draining away to leave a bone-deep exhaustion. His hands were cramped into claws around the spokes. He had slept only when the danger eased long enough to step away, managing only short naps. He was sure he had not had enough sleep combined to fill a whole night.

Ahead, through the mist, the crisp coastline of the Isle of Eleys was just becoming visible, a boundless wall of trees black against a dark sky.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. He flinched, expecting a correction.

"Land ho, Sailing Master," Cedrik said quietly. He stepped up beside him, his eyes on the horizon where the lights of Lithrys would soon appear after their turn into Blood Rose Bay. "She's clear. Go below. Sleep. I have the helm."

It was the pendulum of their life: the harsh Captain who stripped him of his rank, and for a brief moment, the quiet Father who took the wheel so his son could rest. Talathis nodded, too tired to speak, and stumbled toward the hatch.

†                                          †                                          †

The Next Morning in

Lithrys Harbor, Isle of Eleys

The Sea Wolf rode high on her anchor chain, the water of the harbor glass-still compared to the violence of the open ocean.

Talathis stood on the quarterdeck, a mug of kaf warming his hands against the morning chill. He took a sip and made a face matching the bitterness of the ship's brew. He found himself thinking of the warm highlands of Callette where they grew the good kind—the aromatic beans the high-born drank in cities like this.

He watched the port of Lithrys waking up. It was a city of spires and white stone, elegant and alien. Vesprian ships glided in and out of the docks—slender, avian vessels that looked more like sculptured works of art than mere naval transport.

He looked down at his own ship. The Sea Wolf was a deception in wood and iron. To the dockworkers, she looked like a wealthy Therysian merchant galleon—broad-beamed, gilded with gold leaf, her high stern castle speaking of comfort and cargo.

But Talathis knew the lie. Below the waterline, her hull tapered sharply, race-built for speed. Her "broad beam" was an illusion created by the tumblehome. And behind the ornate carvings of sea serpents and stars along her gunwales lay the sealed ports of ten Iron Dragons.

"She looks like a wolf sitting among swans," a voice grumbled.

Talathis turned. Cedrik stood by the rail, dressed in a fresh frock coat that did little to hide the weariness in his shoulders. He was staring at a nearby Vesprian cutter with a mixture of professional appraisal and distinct Therysian disdain.

"She's faster than the swans, Captain," Talathis said, keeping his voice neutral. "And she sings louder."

"Aye. And she has teeth." Cedrik turned his gaze to Talathis. The anger from Averos was gone, replaced by the flat, efficient mask of command. "I've sent word to the Anchor Rose. I’m to be there by sunset, ready to meet our passenger."

"The Vesprian Acolyte," Talathis said. "Is she another diplomat? Like Lirynel?"

"Something like that," Cedrik said, elusive as smoke. "She has a writ from the Qyen. That's all you need to know."

He paused, his eyes drifted to the empty spot on the deck where Talathis usually stood during inspections as First Mate. Yosif was down there now, barking orders at the crew. A muscle in Cedrik's jaw jumped.

"You sailed a good passage, Talathis," Cedrik said abruptly. "That run through the Stacks... the way you held the wind in the wires... I haven't seen a pilot thread the needle like that since the War. Definitely the best I’ve seen you do."

It was a crumb of praise, dropped from the table of a starving man. Talathis straightened, gripping his mug tighter. "Thank you, Sir."

"Don't let it go to your head. You're still Sailing Master, not Mate. You plot the course; Yosif runs the crew. Be ready to weigh anchor the moment our guest is aboard." Cedrik adjusted his cuffs, the brief moment of connection already gone. "I have business with the Port Authority. Keep the ship secure."
He stalked away, leaving Talathis alone with his kaf, now cold, and the lingering sting of near-forgiveness.

"He's terrible at that, you know."

Talathis sighed, a genuine smile finally breaking through. He didn't need to turn to know who it was. "Terrible at what, Lyn?"

Princyn Lirynel Torryaenen stepped up to the rail beside him. She was dressed in her practical travel leathers, looking less like royalty and more like a dangerous shadow that had taken solid form. They watched Cedrik's retreating barge.

"At telling you he's proud of you," she said softly. "It physically pains him. I think he believes if he compliments you too much, you'll dissolve."

Talathis chuckled darkly. "He demoted me, Lyn. In Averos. I'm surprised he's letting me stay on deck at all."

"I heard," she said. She leaned over the rail, looking at the reflection of the wolf figurehead in the water. "He sees himself in you, Tal. The mistakes he made. The reckless streak. He clamps down on you because he's trying to strangle the parts of himself he hates."

"He sees a bastard," Talathis muttered, the bitterness surfacing. "A loose end from a time he’d rather forget."

Lirynel turned, her green eyes sharp. She reached out, her hand hovering over his arm before resting there, a warm, grounding weight. Her fingers moved slightly against his sleeve—a quick, subtle twitch of the index finger against the thumb.

Strength. Family.

The sign was mostly hidden from the crew below, but Talathis felt it burn through his jacket. It was his mother's language.

"No," Lirynel said. "He sees the only person he trusts to steer his ship through the eye of a needle. I heard the ship singing in the Stacks, Talathis. I know what that run requires. The Wolf doesn't let just anyone take the helm in the dark."

She squeezed his arm, then released him, turning back to the city. "Tomorrow night, you'll meet Krysaalis. She... she is different. She’s spent her life in books and towers. Be patient with her."

"A scholar on a privateer," Talathis mused, watching the Vesprian flags snap in the breeze. "She's going to hate it here."

Lirynel smiled, a secretive, dangerous glint in her eye. "She might surprise you. She's looking for something lost. People who look for lost things... they tend to have a kind of steel in them that doesn't show until it's struck."