"Will I succeed in my deal with Solna?"
The words were a soft litany, barely escaping his lips, a whisper lost in the noise of the common room. His fingers moved, the coin spinning, the light catching it, the metal warm from his hand.
"Will I succeed?"
He let the question form, rise, become something that was almost a prayer, almost a demand.
"Will I succeed?"
For a heartbeat, the veil thinned. The luminous threads of the Karmajala-Loka flickered behind Ashan's eyes—infinite strands of causality, consequence, and choice, stretching forward into futures uncountable. He caught a glimpse, a whisper, a fragment of what might come.
Then the vision released him.
He flicked the coin upward. It spun against gravity's lazy pull, sunlight glinting off the ascending sun crest, and landed with a decisive thak. The sun faced upward.
Hmm. Favourable. I will succeed—if the threads hold true. His mental voice was cautious, disciplined. But divination is not prophecy. Higher-ranked sadhakas could be weaving their own patterns, their own futures, tangling with mine. Who knows what connections I might have brushed against?
His face contorted briefly. Sigh. Now paranoia joins the party.
But a little paranoia is cheap insurance. It's the lack of it that costs everything.
My first encounter with Solna went well—better than well. But arrogance is a luxury for those who don't need to survive. I am Vidhishar. I should act like it.
Across the table, Toric's eyes remained fixed on the coin with an intensity that bordered on mystical, as if the bronze disc contained the secrets of the universe.
"If I recall correctly." Ashan's voice was light, almost casual, as he pocketed the coin. "The Saffron and Emerald War concluded nearly two hundred years ago." He leaned back, met Toric's eyes. "What's the current situation between Suryazar and Vanasthala?" His voice sharpened. "More importantly—what's the situation in these waters? Around the islands?"
Toric's lips pursed in annoyance at the coin's disappearance, but he answered. "You've got the timeline right. War started 20 Marchaka, 100 DC—that's the official date, anyway. The border provinces between Suryazar and Vanasthala? Same as always. Tense. Armed. Occasionally on fire." He shrugged. "Nothing new under that particular sun."
His tone shifted, acquiring weight. "But our situation, Captain? That's becoming... complicated."
He raised three thick fingers. "First: the Hunter Union. Founded by Janadhani Rajyam in the Marhavan Isles. They've got the Bramley tribe and a dozen others helping them—some join as actual Hunters, others just provide support, resources, safe harbors. They're not absorbed, not conquered. Just... allied. Which might be worse for us. The tribes know those waters like we know our own ships."
The second finger joined the first. "Second: Suryazar Rajyam's naval expansion. They're not just patrolling anymore—they're clearing. Pirates who've held these waters for generations are finding their hideouts burned, their ships sunk, their crews hanging from harbor gallows."
The third finger rose. "Third: us. Still breathing. Still floating. Still—by the grace of the Lord of Storms—alive." He exhaled heavily. "For now."
His eyes met Ashan's with sudden, sharp curiosity. "Speaking of which, Captain—you follow the Varuna Veda, yes? The Storm Lord's path?"
There it is. The question I've been waiting for.
Almost all pirates claim allegiance to the Varuna Veda. The irony would be amusing if it weren't so lethal—islanders and pirates, both praying to the same god, both convinced the deity favors their cause. Does the Storm Lord differentiate? Does any god? Or are we all just waves on the same ocean, believing ourselves unique?
His hands rose, fingers interlacing loosely at his chest, then swirling outward in a gesture that mimicked flowing water. His voice dropped into the cadence of a believer. "In the name of the Ocean's Roar, Pathfinder of the Nameless."
Toric's face lit with recognition. He repeated the gesture, the words, with the unconscious ease of long habit.
Good. Memorization and observation pay dividends again.
Ashan rose. "We have work."
Toric drained his cup in one final, greedy swallow, smacking his lips. Damn, these berries... that aftertaste is something special. He hurried after his Captain.
The streets of Ogefil swallowed them.
Workers streamed past—dock laborers, fish cleaners, rope makers—all the anonymous thousands whose labor made piracy possible without ever benefiting from it. Pirates themselves moved through the crowd in smaller numbers, distinguishable by their weapons, their swagger, the space others instinctively gave them. And always, everywhere, the children. Gaunt-faced, quick-footed, feral-eyed.
The air was a living thing—a composite organism of poverty's sweat, bloodlust's copper tang, hunger's hollow ache. Underneath it all, the eternal bass note of the sea.
Ashan walked through it like a ghost who remembered being flesh.
"Toric." His voice was conversational, almost idle. "How would you prevent pregnancy?"
The question hung in the salt air.
Toric's brow furrowed. He walked in silence for a full twenty paces, visibly processing. "Well... I don't know the details of how it works exactly. The whole... process. But the way I see it, if you knock a woman enough times, either her belly blooms or it doesn't. And if it doesn't... you knock her again. Eventually you get results. Or you don't. That's the gamble, isn't it?"
Ashan's hand rose to his face. It made contact with a soft smack. "Is that genuinely the best your admittedly limited cognitive apparatus can produce?"
Toric coughed. "Well... maybe... if there was a way to keep it from getting into her? You know, your thing—can't connect with her thing. Or the stuff you release can't... get where it needs to go? If such a thing is even possible."
Ashan's smirk bloomed—wide, genuine, almost predatory. "Now you're thinking correctly."
Toric blinked. "I am? What do you mean?"
"Listen carefully, Toric. You're about to witness the invention of one of humanity's greatest achievements."
He stopped walking at the shoreline.
Toric halted behind him, utterly lost. Before them stretched the beach—not sand, but coarse gray gravel that crunched underfoot. Fishermen lined the shore at regular intervals, their poles extending over the gray-green water like a forest of desperate hope.
"Captain... is this thing here? On this beach?"
"No." Ashan's eyes scanned the shoreline, assessing, calculating. "But one of its essential components is."
He moved toward an empty spot between two fishermen.
"You little shit!" The shout came from behind—rough, drunk, aggressive. "That's my spot! Move your bony arse before I move it for you!"
Ashan's expression flickered toward annoyance. Which idiot is volunteering for an early grave in broad daylight?