“Finally! You traveled very quickly,” the brunette mermaid told me. “I wouldn’t have been able to find you if the dolphins weren’t so noisy.”

I shrugged, then stood, leaning against the railing. “Sorry,” I said. “We were in a hurry. The men of Constantinople were angry at us.”

The mermaid pulled her head back in a gesture of surprise. “Oh? Must have been something bad in the Bosporus waters last night, my own sister turned on me.” She shook her head, then swam higher in the water. “She bit me!”

As the mermaid jiggled the affected portion of her anatomy, I found that my eyes were drawn away from her face and down, to where a ring of circular dark marks defaced a particularly feminine part of a display of mermaid anatomy. “I see.”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes! All I wanted was a few bites of-” She clapped a hand over her mouth, then finished with an entirely different sentence: “-really unkind to bite your own sister. We left her behind.”

I sighed heavily. “We also had to leave someone behind. Ragnar. Also through fault of his own, sadly.”

“Did he bite you?” The mermaid rubbed her bite mark distractingly.

I forced my eyes back up to the mermaid’s face. “No, no. He caused the trouble with the men of Constantinople, though, and I think it’s his fault that I now have to deal with this woman.” By way of illustration, I reached down and grabbed the rope handle of the bound auburn-haired woman, lifting her into the air with my right hand; she squeaked through her gag in an alarmed manner.

“Oh? Is she dangerous?” The mermaid frowned. “Sorry, my sisters and I rarely have much experience with females of your species. I’ve heard they’re a little more buoyant.”

“Well, most of the time, people account women less dangerous, but this particular one is a bit of a menace. I’ve been told I’ll either need to keep her under close watch or toss her overboard.”

The mermaid licked her lips. “She looks quite tender.”

“High-born. She’s the sister of the ruler of Constantinople,” I said. “Doubtless reared on the finest delicacies, and likely never had to labor a day in her life.”

The mermaid licked her lips again, then lowered herself back fully into the water to swim closer to the ship. The auburn-haired woman made a series of repeated rhythmic squeaks, trying to speak through her gag as she squirmed involuntarily with a strongly emotive affect. I wondered what she was trying to tell me; then wondered if Zaneta was right about my resistance to enchantment and decided to take the risk.

“I will remove your gag for a moment to talk, but if you attempt to enchant me, I shall toss you overboard straightaway,” I told her, flexing my arm to bring us face-to-face. “Is that clear?”

She nodded with wide eyes. I pivoted my wrist to turn her around by the handle, and with my free hand, I delicately untied the knot at the back of her head. A quick twist of the wrist later, I was able to pull the knot of fabric out of her mouth. She then proceeded to emit a steady stream of terrified Turkish, begging me not to throw her overboard and talking about how it would be a terrible waste if I were to let a beautiful woman be torn apart and devoured by sea monsters. Not that there were any vicious woman-eating sea monsters present as far as I could tell, but the Turks would not be unique in having unfounded superstitions about what dwells in the open sea.

I will grant that there are many books that document the existence of leviathans and krakens and great serpents of the deep. However, as any dolphin will readily tell you after extended conversation on the subject, the largest beasts of the ocean are concerned primarily with one another, and only occasionally mistake ships for other large beasts; humans are largely irrelevant to their concerns, being at best a small and exotic snack with dubious fibrous coatings (i.e., clothing) that are likely to cause indigestion.

Not that I said as much at that point; instead, after she began to repeat herself, I tucked the index finger of my free hand under her chin and pushed gently up, my way of indicating that I wished to change the subject.

“We’re not turning around and going back to Constantinople,” I said, figuring I should start with basic facts. Then I let my finger fall.

The auburn-haired woman introduced herself in greater detail (her name was Gulben), described her close and dear relationship with her older brother (Sultan Allaedin), and promised great riches would be given to me if I would but return her to the Sultan unmolested and uneaten. I had trouble trusting this, and touched my finger gently to her chin again; she paused mid-sentence, closed her mouth, and swallowed.

“Sorry, but I have urgent business to the north.” This seemed kinder to say than telling her that I did not expect to live to spend any such ransom payment if I put myself back in the territory of the Sultanate. “I could hand you off to a third party, but I don’t think many third parties would be willing to advance me even half of a sultan’s ransom without having heard from Constantinople.”

I sighed, staring into Gulben’s dark eyes. “And, since you’re an enchantress, just your voice is enough to set you free from any chains I might put you in. You’ve already tried to take over my ship once, and that marks you as quite a nuisance to keep around. I’m afraid I don’t really have many options here.” I really didn’t want to keep her gagged for however long it took us to sail across the Axine Sea and reach land.

Gulben looked past me and into the sea. I risked a quick glance away from her to see what had drawn her attention; I could now see three heads bobbing along in the water in our wake, each one attached to flowing brunette hair. I looked back at Gulben, and she met my gaze, swallowing nervously. “I… I could sign a blood oath,” Gulben said.

I looked confused; she looked surprised at my confusion; then she described what we would need to do that. A freshly-plucked quill; a bowl of purest silver; a little alcohol and gum arabic for mixing the blood into ink; and a clean blade.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“And you are willing to sign such a blood oath?” I frowned. A magical oath seemed like a lot of fuss to avoid being gagged and bound for most of a week. The latter scenario was uncomfortable, but it did not seem entirely “You understand, I am not forcing you to do so, there are other alternatives.”

She looked past my shoulder. “I… do not know how to enchant creatures of the sea,” she said meekly.

I shrugged off her non sequitur, stuffed the gag back in her mouth, and called over one of the sailors, giving him a set of instructions to pass on to Felix. After he repeated them back to me (and I corrected his mistakes in memory), he went off to fetch Felix, and I waited.

Katya arrived before Felix, her trusty rifle slung over her shoulder. She looked at me, looked down at the bound auburn-haired woman propped against the railing in a sitting position, and then looked back up at me. “You did not come up to bed,” she said, jerking her head up toward the crow’s nest. Then she stood up on her toes, grabbed my shirt, and kissed me thoroughly. When I came up for air, she pointed down at the bound auburn-haired woman lying at my feet. “Who is this, and how did she get aboard the ship?”

“Ah. This is Gulben. She’s an enchantress who tried to turn the ship around.” I paused, trying to think of how to explain exactly what happened. “Ragnar dropped her off. Georg said… well, either I personally need to guard her nearly constantly, I can toss her overboard, or she’ll likely have a chance to try to turn the ship around again. She suggested she could take a magical oath instead.”

Katya looked down at the trio of brunette mermaids trailing the ship. “So, she swears an oath to behave well or you throw her into the sea?”

I shook my head. “I’m not heartless. How long could it take to cross the Axine Sea? A few days? A week, maybe? I can put up with having her around constantly for a little while. I could chain her up in the back of the captain’s cabin at night while I sleep.”

Gulben’s body relaxed as she let out a muffled sigh. While the corners of her mouth could not move, I could see a smile enter her eyes.

Katya looked up at me, then down at Gulben, balancing on her mechanical leg while prodding experimentally at Gulben, first with a toe prodding at the auburn-haired woman's side, and then running her fingers through one of the dark-red locks of Gulben's hair before tucking a bright red strand of her own hair behind her ear. Katya turned back to me, giving me a quick but thorough kiss and grabbing at me possessively for a brief moment in a way that I did not think was appropriate in the sight of other humans. “You are a very sweet man,” she said. “Ragnar chose poorly when he decided to rescue her.”

Gulben emitted an angry-sounding series of grunts through her gag, losing enough of her composure to try to express some passionately-held opinion related to Ragnar and her relocation from the imperial harem.

Katya ignored the noise, caressing my face affectionately. “I would be sad if you had to lose sleep guarding her.” She pulled her hand away from my face, drew her jeweled wolf-mark sword, and began the process of cleaning and polishing it. Gulben swallowed, shifting in place. It was at this point that Captain Felix Rimehammer showed up, with Lieutenant Teushpa, and Georg in tow. (I had asked Felix to round up all the magical expertise he could, except not to bother the weather-witch, who was in dire need of sleep. I assumed that number would include Zaneta and exclude Teushpa; I didn’t realize Felix still believed Lieutenant Teushpa could perform anything more arcane than sleight-of-hand tricks for casual entertainment.)

A tray held a quill from one of the shipboard fowl, a familiar-looking silver bowl with a little bit of clear liquid in it, and a brightly cleaned and polished knife. Felix held a curled scroll of paper out to me. “With a little help from Georg and the lieutenant on what would and would not work, I believe I have come up with appropriate terms for Gulben to sign.”

I nodded. “Good,” I said.

“Don’t you want to read it?” Felix asked.

“Do I need to sign it?” I asked. When Felix shook his head, I nodded. “Then I’m not the one who needs to read it to make any decisions, now, am I? I trust you, Captain Rimehammer. I’m trained neither in law nor wizardry, I doubt there’s anything I could do to improve what you’ve come up with.”

“She will need to read and understand to sign,” Lieutenant Teushpa said. Fearlessly, he undid the enchantress’s gag and then untied her hands, the latter being a rather more complicated process. I tensed, ready to grab hold of her and fling her away into the sea at the slightest sign she was trying to use her subtle yet powerful magic to beguile a magicless man who merely pretended to have real talents in the area of illusion.

But there was no sudden motion, no glimmer of red light. Instead, Gulben just rubbed her wrists one at a time before taking hold of the offered scroll. For a minute, she sat in silence, reading. She frowned, then looked over at Katya, who was still polishing her sword. She swallowed, then glanced briefly over her shoulder at the mermaids swimming in the ship’s wake. She unrolled a little more of the contract, rolled up the section she had read, and then unrolled more of the contract. As she read, her lips narrowed, and by the time she’d unrolled the last section of the contract, there was only a thin short pursed line in the middle of her face.

She looked up at me. “I must sign this?”

I shrugged. “There are other options,” I said. “I could just tie you back up. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s just a few days of discomfort. And if you really can’t bear staying on this ship and being abandoned far from home, you can disembark. I know we’re pretty far from land, but if you ask nicely, I expect that one of the dolphins would be willing to take you to the coast. Maybe even to part of the coast controlled by the Sultanate. It shouldn’t be more than a day’s swim.” I’d read plenty of stories in which dolphins had rescued fishermen and brought them to shore, at least.

Gulben’s eyes flickered briefly over to Katya, and then she turned her head to look back out at the mermaids for a long moment. Then she turned her head back to the scroll of paper in her hand and sighed. “I will sign,” she said, in a very soft voice. Her eyes glistened. “I will need the knife now,” she said, holding out her hand.

Katya turned, stepping between me and Gulben. Gulben gasped; Katya stepped back; a thin red line had appeared on Gulben’s cheek. “That should do,” Katya said. She flicked her blade again over the railing, a couple of drops of blood flying out into the sea. One of the mermaids lifted her head out of the water and shook her hair loose, then dove back all the way under the water.

And so, Gulben signed the contract. Teushpa claimed he was certain that the oath had taken hold; I asked Georg her opinion, and she nodded while Teushpa glared at me with a level of annoyance that nearly verged on insolence. After waiting for the signature to dry, Felix attached one end to a wooden rod and rolled the whole thing up, five and a half feet of paper bound up tightly for archival.

I thanked Felix, gave him my condolences on his cousin Ragnar having been left behind in the waters of the strait, and did my best to reassure him by telling him that Ragnar had the friendship of a mermaid who’d gone to help him. Perhaps she had simply lost her way, I added, and might show up shortly with Ragnar in tow; though privately, I suspected that after getting into a fight with her sister mermaid, she had gone a different way.

Gulben’s face went through a remarkable series of contortions as she controlled her expression, keeping her now-ungagged mouth sealed of her own accord, but I could hear her heartbeat race as I discussed Ragnar. At the end of my attempts at reassurance, Felix only shook his head sadly and limped away, his peg leg thumping more heavily than usual against the wooden deck.