Throne

Prologue

There was something about the Adomina River right before the flooding season, M'Lerlic Secarn mused as he stared into its crystalline waters. Small brightly colored fish darted around the boat freely, no predators in sight. He smiled. That was a sure indicator of the start of the flooding season, the snakes and larger fish all went upstream in preparation for the chaos to come.

"Secarn! Get your kalla ass over here!" The captain called.

Secarn mentally rolled his eyes and tried to guess what he had done wrong this time. He maneuvered past other water mechanics who gave him sympathetic looks. They knew what it was like to be on the hit list of Captain D'Oliya Ta'Saora.

The captain was a woman of average height, with copper skin, piercing hazel eyes, and long braided hair. The scar under her left eye and down her right arm from shoulder to wrist finished the story that her intricate row braids across her head started. She was a force to be reckoned with, something that one would sense even before they saw captain emblem pendant on her chain necklace and recognized it as belonging to the Empress's trade forces.

She was standing at the head of the boat with the map of their route and the flooding charts hovering flatly in front of her as if they were on a table.

"Yes Captain?" Secarn asked.

Her hazel eyes narrowed and she pointed at a section of the map. "Look at this, then look at our surroundings and tell me what you observe."

He blinked at her, pleased that he wasn't getting chewed out again, but a strange feeling of foreboding crept into his stomach. In the five years that he'd sailed the waters of the Aralase Empire with the captain, he'd never known her to ask for confirmation of anything on the map. She'd been sailing for over twenty-five years and had a familiarity with the waters that was unparalleled outside of water mages. And they'd made this trip before in all sorts of circumstances with the weather as clear as it was today, to pitch black with buckets of rain pouring down.

The section of map she'd indicated was where they were. He highlighted it and brought it up further so they could see it in greater detail. There was the great Kohla tree whose roots they would pass under in a few minutes, the hanging Snake vines that they had to remain wary under lest they be caught in its grasps, and the moving rocks which they had to secure as they floated by. They were coming up onto the Redan pass, in fact.

He looked up to visually confirm his findings and paused.

The hanging Snake vines and the Kohla tree he could see, and further along the bubbling of water that indicated the moving rocks. If he strained his ears, he could even hear the crash of water that was the Redan pass. But they were at the wrong angle. The entire river was at the wrong angle.

"The river is in the wrong position." He said.

The captain nodded, frown in place. "Yes."

He thought back to the last time port they'd stopped at. "No one handed out anything about changes, unless we missed a broadcast."

Captain D'Oliya looked down her nose at him. It was a look that had him quailing and backtracking.

"Not that I'm suggesting that you would miss a broadcast or-"

"Shut up Secarn." The ship's first mate, D'Assula Ta'Falia sniffed. "She just wanted another confirmation. Not your excess ramblings." She rolled her eyes as she worked at the ship's broadcast system, turning the dials that would pick up any messages being put out over the Empire.