"Here she comes, right on time! The Pruh-zerv-er-ance!" Sauter hollered.

"Do you mean the perseverance?" Nori asked in an attempted correction.

"Nope!"

While Nori watched the distant Harper ship, Sauter cheered and welcomed the arrival of his ship.

"Lookadat, Nori! You ain't ever seen such a beaut!"

In fact, Nori had. And presently did. In that same harbor, other ships had colored sails, chiseled mastheads, and wood of one color. Sauter's had white sails with splotches of dirty brown and black and green, a single lantern dangling from the plank of wood that extended in front of the ship, and mismatched varieties of wood that had diversified its color even further with the darkening shades of rot.

On top of its ugly appearance, it was also one of the more strangely put together ships. It had two masts, but hardly enough deck to fit them without the sails overlapping. In order to give the overcrowded front sails something to tie down to, the plank at the front of the boat extended out twenty feet, nearly half the size of the deck behind it.

But as the Preserverance got closer—with great effort by the six sailors that worked partially open sails and puny oars—Nori understood why Sauter had overloaded it with extra sails. In the middle of the deck, a wooden trap door with little air holes in it covered the top of a well that extended to the lowest part of the boat, carrying water that allowed them to keep their catches alive out on the ocean in order to preserve them.

"A well-smack," Nori marveled. With all of the ways Uroko regulated Khalyan fishing, having approval for a well-smack meant that Sauter was a much bigger deal than Nori had initially believed.

"That's right!" he boasted. He sighed at his perceived beauty. "That's why she's the preserv-erance. Ah. The sight of 'er brings a tear to my eye. Especially knowing we might be saying goodbye soon."

"What? Why?"

Sauter sighed, this time with sadness. "Grumblings about new rules and regulations. Uroko might get rid of the well-smacks. They already pushed me to bad waters last time around." Anger replaced his sadness as he wailed with a drunken lament. "What's the point of having a well if you can't fill it?"

Nori didn't need any further explanation. Few knew better than her how Uroko controlled the sea. Her family members were the ones enforcing things.

As Sauter's ship pulled in, Nori noticed a Urokan girl about her age waiting for the ship to get tied up. Nori identified the girl as a student of the Uroko Institute by her jacket. Whereas the Academy's jackets were made entirely of kalypo fibers, the Institute's had silk patterns woven in that didn't change color like the kalypo fibers, resulting in beautiful designs. Even from afar, Nori could see the silver silk dragonflies that decorated the girl's yellow jacket.

Sauter noticed Nori's gaze. "Come on," he said. "Let's get you two meetin' while we get the fish in. Hey! Shiso!"

The girl turned to them, her face displaying a mild annoyance upon seeing Sauter.

"Shiso, Nori, Nori, Shiso," he said with a slurred rhythm. "Nori's here to help—"

"Sauter!" one of the sailors on the boat yelled. "Grab that rope!"

"Oh, oh," Sauter mumbled as he ran out near the water, his uncontrolled and zigzagging footsteps putting him dangerously close to falling in. "On it!"

"Nori?" Shiso asked. She looked at Nori's jacket, her mouth hanging open as her gears turned. "Nori, as in—"

Nori cut her off before she could make any conclusions. "Hi. Nice to meet you."

She bowed her head gracefully, prompting a rushed repeating head bow from Shiso.

"Yes, nice to meet you too, so nice," Shiso said in a rush. She sucked her lips into her mouth, leaving a swath of porcelain above her chin and elongating her already long face.

Between Shiso's widened eyes, awkward bow, and blubbering speech, Nori determined that Shiso had already figured out Nori's last name. In the Uroko Institute, they probably traded rumors about the Harper named Nori that ran off to the Academy.

Nori and her fellow travelers had spoken about getting padded, Khalyan-style jackets, but she hadn't considered how identifiable she was in an Academy jacket. Nori decided she would take matters into her own hands and raise the money herself. Surely the busy harbor would have plenty of odd jobs for her.

"A Yellow Jacket," Shiso observed as she looked Nori up and down. "What year are you going to be?"

"Second."

"Ah, you're a year younger than me!" Shiso squeaked. She showed her the advancement stripes on her sleeve and spoke a mile a minute. "Barely missed the green jacket—I aced my conjuration score but took too long on my nigiri and totally flubbed my squid prep—but this service credit will give me the bump. Do they have service credits at the Academy?"

Nori blinked repeatedly at Shiso's ramblings, finally processing it all and responding with a simple, "no."

"Oh." Shiso only let the silence last half a second—probably twice as long as she was comfortable with. "Who's your sponsor? Must be someone famous. Is it someone famous?"

"Rowan Knapp," Nori stated flatly. "He serves stew."

"Oh…" Shiso looked at her feet then popped back up in a way that reminded Nori of Blanche. She even looked a bit like Blanche. Her features weren't as sharply Urokan as Nori's. "Well, stew can be interesting!"

The boat thudded against the dock, Sauter hollering and cheering at the sight of the fish in the well.

"Shiso!" he yelled. "Get Nori set up, the fish're comin'!"

"Oh!" Shiso hopped in place. "Come on Nori, this way."

Shiso led Nori to a wooden stand with a slate countertop just to the side of the dock. Nori noticed the wooden crates and the leftover fish guts from the team before them and sighed. She hadn't expected a Urokan level of fish handling, but she had hoped for something a little more put together.

"Okay," Shiso cheered. "So we have some knives here, and a spike, and…"

Nori pulled a small leather knife roll from her pocket and unfolded it on the table. The knives were a marvel to behold with one consistent exception—each handle had a crudely painted black spot, having been done with no desire for uniformity or clean edges. To others, the spots appeared as blemishes, but to Nori, the spots kept her from having to see the Harper emblem carved underneath.

"Ooo!" Shiso hovered over the finely crafted knives. "That'll do it! Okay, we filet and seal, the other boys handle the fish heads and guts."

The sailors scooped nets down into the ship's well to retrieve the fish, first pulling out any fish that didn't survive the journey. "Monastery gets those," Sauter commented as the sailors dumped dead fish into crates. Finally, they pulled out the first live fish, a twenty-pound cod that bucked relentlessly in its net.

"Don't let it flop around!" Shiso whined. "You'll ruin the flavor!"

The sailor laughed as he stepped off the boat and slammed the fish down on the slate slab. Nori took the lead, grabbing the head of the fish and retrieving her spike as Shiso helped hold the tail—not that Nori needed it. In a flash, she found the brain and drove her spike into it, the cod's fins flexing and its tail whipping one last time to mark its death.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The last time Nori had felt bad for the fish, she had been only five years old. Her father had caught her crying. As punishment, he forced her to kill hundreds of fish over the next week. Somewhere around the sixtieth, she stopped feeling bad for them and just wished they would stop flopping around and making her job harder.

"Ooo, you're quick with it," Shiso cheered. Then her face sunk into a complaint. "They don't bleed them. Khalyans don't have the same standard for flavor as we do in Uroko."

Nori put her knife just behind the cod's fin and paused. "I don't know how to seal it."

"Oh." Shiso looked taken aback. "I figured a Har—Um, okay. Tell you what, go ahead and filet that, and then I'll show you."

Nori needed no further instruction. She gripped the cod with a thumb in its eye and the rest of her fingers in its gills and in two quick movements got her knife through the skin and down the tail. She withdrew her hand from the cod's head and stuck it under the peeled back flesh as the knife did all the work, slicing once, twice, three times just above the ribs to produce a perfect filet.

"Wow," Shiso gasped. "That was fast."

By the time Shiso picked her jaw up off the floor, Nori had already flipped the cod over and finished the first cut. Ten seconds and three cuts later, Nori placed the second filet next to the first.

"Show me," she commanded.

"Okay. So not only does fish spoil quickly, but its essence does too…so…" Shiso ran her fingertips softly over one of the filets. "The way it was described to me…Imagine that you're turning some of the essence into a new skin. But you have to be real gentle, because otherwise you'll touch all of the essence and affect the taste."

Shiso ran her fingertips over the filet again as the sailors continued to fill crates with dead fish. Nori watched Shiso, even if there wasn't much to watch.

"There," Shiso declared with a nod.

Nori wiped her dirty hand on her pants and then put one hand on each of the filets. She felt the difference—the one Shiso had touched had half the essence of the other one, but that essence seemed structured and firm compared to the untouched filet, which leaked essence freely.

"Wouldn't it be better to do it while making the cuts?" Nori asked.

"You mean manipulate essence through the knife? Yeah, that's the eventual goal. I can do it, but it makes me cut too slow."

"Hm. Okay." Nori picked up the unsealed filet, putting the skin flat against her palm as she lifted the piece of meat up to Shiso. "Do it again."

With Nori's hand on the other side, Shiso gently dragged her fingertips across the meat. Nori felt the change as it happened, the outermost essence hardening. Nori had felt something like it before—it was like tapping unorganized papers against the desk so that they would fall into uniformity.

The smacking of a live fish against the stone countertop disrupted Nori's concentration. Sauter laughed at the sailor that seemed proud of making Nori jump.

"Gotta get moving!" Sauter roared. "Gotta clear out the fish before they decide we've been here long enough."

"Barbarians," Shiso muttered under her breath as she grabbed the floundering fish and her spike. She slid the fish around, wincing as she tried to find the right angle to the brain. Finally, she drove her spike into the fish to kill it. She had the skill, but still lacked some of the temperament.

Nori stepped aside for another sailor to place a second fish, which Nori dispatched in no time at all. As she cut, she tried to reenact the sealing sensation she had felt, but channeling the essence through the knife was an extra step of expertise that she didn't have yet. Instead, she resorted to sealing the filets individually, mimicking Shiso's technique and handing the first filet over to Shiso.

"Wow, this is already pretty good," Shiso said. "Like, almost all the way there. I thought I'd have to do it all. This is…" Shiso lost the words to describe how quickly Nori had picked up the skill.

A set of thudding footsteps came running down the dock behind Nori. She turned to see two boys, no older than ten, holding dull, rusty knives and slipping into the water between the Preserverance and the dock. The waves splashed around and combined in the confines of the dock, creating a dangerous turbulence that threatened to pin someone between the dock and the boat as they clacked together. But despite this danger, Sauter cheered and welcomed the boys.

"Looks like there's some big ones, boys!" he yelled.

One boy cheered while the other dove beneath the boat. The boy on the surface used one arm to keep enough distance to keep the Preserverance from crushing him, his other arm working a knife into the wood.

"What're they doing?" Nori asked.

"Boys from the orphanage. Gettin' barnacles," Sauter answered. "Not much meat on 'em, but that there is is delicious. Good for stewin', too."

"That's dangerous. They could get crushed. They could drown."

"At least drowned men ain't hungry."

Nori sliced another fish and looked over the edge of the dock as she sealed a filet. The diving boy emerged with a slab of barnacles that were calcified together into a honeycomb with little clam-like creatures in its holes. He tossed it up onto the wood with a clank!

"They clean my boat and get a meal out of it," Sauter explained. "Used to be I donated some of my catch to the orphanage, but…" He sucked on his teeth and looked at the sun. "Well, not allowed to catch as many fish as I used to. Barnacles are all I have left to give 'em."

"We're preserving the ocean population," Shiso grumbled under her breath.

Nori looked at Shiso, barely able to contain a frown. Nori knew all the ways her family justified ruling the ocean with an iron fist. Ocean population was hardly a concern. The only real concern of the Harpers and Uroko was the precedent of control. At any opportunity, they looked to extend that precedent. To push their boundaries. It didn't matter if an orphanage in another kingdom went hungry. What mattered was that bit by bit, the rest of the world got a little bit more comfortable with Uroko running things.

Nori slammed her spike into a fish's brain.

For a while, Nori and Shiso alternated between cutting and sealing. When Nori sealed the fish's essence, Shiso had to double check and add a little bit of her own magic to finish the seal, but Nori's quick work with the knife kept them on track.

They worked for a tiring hour before they ran out of fish. The fish heads and lesser cuts all went into a cart that was pulled to the Monastery, while the best filet cuts were kept by Sauter.

"I'm sticking around to help the next boat," Shiso told Nori. "You can stick around if you want."

Nori looked past the cove and watched the Harper flag dance in the wind.

"I think I've had enough sea air for the day," she said.

"Good!" Sauter declared. He held one wooden crate of fish filets in his arms and nodded at another. "Help me carry that crate around to the market and I'll give you a silver."

"Two," Nori countered.

"Fine, fine," Sauter groaned. He leaned back to an uncomfortable angle to accommodate the crate's weight. "Come on."

Nori looped her fingers into the gaps of the crate's wood and groaned as she lifted.

"Will I see you tomorrow?" Shiso asked with a puppy's eyes and eagerness.

"I don't know." Nori did her best to shrug, but the weight of the crate kept her shoulders slumped down. "Depends on if the Monastery assigns me again."

As Saunter and Nori carried the crates to the market, he talked to her through groaning exertion.

"Shiso really seems to like you," he said.

"Yeah."

She's just hoping a Harper can put in a good word for her.

Nori returned to the Monastery after dark, eager to wash the stink of fish off. The others must have already eaten since Blanche was in their room to greet her.

"You're back!" Blanche cheered as Nori entered. She had already shed her jacket in favor of a thin cotton gown that draped from her chest. She pointed a tan arm at a piece of cloth-wrapped bread on their shared nightstand, her gown trickling up her arm and showing her farmer's tan, a pale bicep shining like a beacon. "I saved you a bite."

The gesture pierced through the day's fatigue and touched Nori's heart.

"Thanks, Blanche. I already ate, though. You ate, right?"

"Yep!"

Nori shed her jacket and kicked it across the floor into the corner—the kalypo cloth would purge itself of the fish smell overnight, but she didn't want it spreading to anything else before that happened.

Despite her words, she grabbed the bread and flopped down on her bed, worrying but not caring enough about the sweaty smell of her undershirt getting on her sheets. She could deal with the smell of sweat. It was the smell of fish that reminded her of home. With her back rubbing against low-quality sheets, stinking of a day's labor, and Blanche in the room, this was close enough to the Academy for Nori to feel relaxed—something she hadn't achieved once that day with the Harper flag looming out in the bay.

"You got a letter," Blanche said. "Next to the bread you didn't want. Some soldier-looking guy came by."

Nori shot her a playful glare, grabbed the envelope, and sighed at the addressed name.

Nori Harper.

She flipped the envelope to see a wax seal that had been pressed with an emblem depicting an eagle with a fish in its claws.

"I've only been here a day…"

"Your secret admirer must be fancy, using a wax seal and all," Blanche commented.

Nori ripped it open and read.

"Wellllll?" Blanche leaned over to sneak a peek.

Nori sighed. Just for a day, she wanted to be Nori, not Nori Harper.

"My presence has been requested for a dinner…"

"Oooo…"

"With King Tritsun."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.