Uri’s knuckles cracked like gunfire as he stepped forward again, the floorboards groaning under his boots as they entered the harbor office. Tam, bless him, didn’t flinch. He clapped his hands together like they were old friends meeting for drinks, not on the brink of violence.

“Uri, Uri, Uri,” Tam said, retreating slightly toward Elmira, one hand raised like a peace flag. “I thought we had something special. A connection forged in the fires of mutual backstabbing.”

Elmira leaned against a cargo crate, arms crossed, unimpressed. Much like Uri whose expression had turned a dangerous tone of dark.

“Get out,” he snarled.

“This is just a misunderstanding,” Tam told Elmira with a helpless shrug. “Uri’s upset because I won that bet fair and square.”

“You cheated,” Uri growled.

“Fine,” he said, throwing his hands up. “You said I could win it back. Prove it.”

Uri laughed. “You serious?”

“She’s with me,” Tam said, adjusting his coat like he was headed to a royal banquet. “That means we play doubles.”

“Doubles?” Elmira hissed. “What are we-”

“Don’t worry,” Tam murmured. “You play cards?”

“I stab people,” she muttered.

Tam paused, one brow ticking up, weighing the situation with the kind of calm that made Elmira want to strangle him - or possibly applaud. “Alright, cool,” he said, voice light. “Plan B.”

Uri looked at Tam like he was debating whether a fist or a table would make a better punctuation mark. Elmira, on the other hand, was already scanning the bay, weighing her exits. The Scarlet Sphynx loomed behind Uri like a promise half-kept, sleek and predatory, its hull kissed with burnished gold filaments and that rare glimmer of solar silk stretched along its wing-like sails, folded now but unmistakable.

Elmira had only heard stories of ships like it. Myths. Vessels spun from the fabric of fallen stars, able to glide on thermals and slipstreams like birds of prey. Even grounded, it pulsed with restless energy.

And this idiot had lost it in a bet.

Uri didn’t say a word. He just jerked his head toward a rusted side door and led them into the belly of the beast. This was more of Varu than she had ever seen before and it boggled her mind that such different worlds could co-exist.

The backroom was a coffin of stale smoke and sour breath, thick with the ghosts of spilled secrets and heavier debts. A single lantern dangled from a splintered beam overhead, casting a sickly yellow light that swayed with every footstep, making shadows twitch like they wanted to leave the room themselves. At the center sat a round table, its surface worn smooth by years of coin games and poor decisions. Deep grooves crisscrossed the wood, knife marks, scorch patterns, you name it. It was less a table and more a battlefield for the keen eye.

Two figures were already seated. One was a stocky, hunched dwarf with a face like cracked leather and a single scar that cut clean through one eye. He gnawed absently on a redwood pipe as if chewing it helped him think faster. The other was a larger, older half-elf with nimble hands stained with ink, solder, and graphite; slicer’s hands.

Elmira’s eyes flicked over them both. Reading posture, breath, hands. She didn’t see opponents. She saw threats. And patterns. This was like being back with Korp’s men.

"Well, if it isn’t Captain Bad Luck himself! Come to lose something else?" the dwarf said, his voice deep and soaked with idle glee.

Tam threw his arms out like he was the host welcoming his guests. “Grulf!”

“Grelf,” the darf snapped with a growl. “Captain.”

Tam clapped a hand on Grelf’s shoulder like they were old friends, despite the way his jaw coiled with barely contained ire. "Actually, I was hoping to win something back, Cap. Figured I’d give you a sporting chance to return my ship before I have to do something crazy."

Grelf barked a laugh, slamming his tankard down. "Crazy? Like what? Talk me into giving it back?"

The chair creaked beneath Elmira as she sat, back straight, eyes sharp. Tam lounged into the free seat beside her like he was settling in for drinks at a noble’s masquerade, one leg crossed over the other, coat flared dramatically behind him.

The slicer flicked a switch on a battered arcane deck-shuffler. The device hissed, coughed, then spat out a stack of cards etched with shifting sigils that shimmered faintly in the dim light. It smelled faintly of ozone and cheap wax.

Crow’s Bones.

Tam’s chuckle reached her ears and she tore her attention back to the men. “Could be. Could be I swindle you so smooth you won’t even notice ‘til I’m halfway to Oliria. Could be I just set your sails on fire and see who’s the better swimmer. Or… we could play for it. One game."

The half-elf did not hide his amusement. "You’ve got no coin."

Tam flicked a small, shining key onto the table. "This opens a chest on the east dock. What’s inside? Let’s just say, if I lose, you’ll have more than enough to retire.” He leaned forward, voice dropping. "But if I win, I walk out of here with the Scarlet Sphynx, no fuss, no fight."

Grelf stared at him, calculating. The air between them was thick. "Deal,” he said producing a small, worn chit, the Sphynx’s seal etched on it, and placed it next to the key. The half-elf nodded an affirmation. A cue for Uri to set up the game.

She didn’t know every rule, but she knew enough. The game was chaos wrapped in strategy, part dice, part deck, part bluff. Each hand a war. The kind of game where people walked in with names and walked out with debts, bruises, or missing fingers.

Elmira looked from the cards to Tam. “You sure we can win?”

Tam grinned. “Absolutely not.”

“But?”

“But I look damn good trying.”

Elmira snorted despite herself As the first cards were dealt, she reached beneath her coat and subtly checked her hidden daggers. All resting neatly in their sheaths along her ribs. None had tried to take them from her yet. Tam caught the motion and gave her a wink.

“See? Team from hell,” he whispered, his lips brushing against her ear. Something fell into her pocket before he retreated back into his seat.

Grelf cleared his throat with a rasp. “I do not believe we’ve had the pleasure, dear. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Harimore Grelf, Ghost of the High Seas, Plague of the Western Route, and Victor of the Black Spires. That’s Yori, my first mate.”

Elmira didn’t flinch though Tam made a strangled noise between a snort and an impressed chuckle. She offered a cool, nonchalant smile, the kind that said she’d seen plenty of self-important men and buried most of them in her wake. “Pleasure,” she said. “Call me El.”

Grelf tilted his head. “Anything more than El?”

“No.”

His grin widened, revealing two missing teeth and a gold cap stained with whatever passed for wine around here. “I know those colors, lass. I flew against banners just like yours in the Strait of Gales. Blood ran so thick we could smell it in the rigging.”

She held his gaze evenly, the smile never leaving her lips, though her fingers twitched. “Then you’d know better than to ask any further questions.”

The weight in her voice had changed, subtle, but sharp. Tam, bless his chaotic soul, looked cheerfully oblivious, leaning on the table like they were catching up with old friends.

“Just saying,” Grelf said with a shrug that was anything but casual, “there was a raid not long ago. Some sangoran trying to push the Akati out of the water. Nasty business. Hundreds dead. Shipwrecks on both sides.”

Elmira’s jaw tightened. She knew the story. Seen the survivors limping back, huddling around barrel fires. It hadn’t been just a raid, it had been a message. One soaked in fire and blood, with precision too sharp to be a coincidence.

“You don’t say?” she murmured, tone icy-smooth. “Funny that.”

Grelf leaned in a little, eyes narrowing. “You hear anything about who led it?”

“I heard whoever did it wasn’t interested in prisoners.”

A long pause followed. Not silence exactly, but a lull.

Tam broke it with an affable chuckle. “You two sound like you’ve got some shared history. Should we order drinks or start placing bets?”

Elmira exhaled slowly, the edge in her posture easing just a hair. She didn’t look away from Grelf.

“Not history,” she said, her voice low. “Just old wars and bad memories.”

Grelf leaned back with a grunt, the moment breaking. “Hells, ain't that the same thing?”

Tam took that as his cue to scoot in a little closer to Elmira, whispering from the corner of his mouth with the conspiratorial air of someone about to commit a particularly dumb miracle. “Just follow my lead.”

“If your lead gets us killed, I’m stabbing you,” Elmira whispered back, hand still resting casually on the hilt at her hip.

“Noted,” he said, straightening his lapels. “And slightly arousing.”

Uri grunted and began to deal. The cards fell one by one, clacking against the table like bones dropped onto a crypt floor. They weren’t ordinary cards, etched in arcane ink, each one shimmered faintly with shifting glyphs that flickered at the corners of the eye, whispering half-legible things no sane mind ought to decipher.

The half-elf slicer’s eyes never left the spread. His fingers twitched in rhythm with the flow of magic humming through the deck, like a gambler tuning into the pulse of fate itself. Across from him, the scarred dwarf took a long, slow drag of his pipe. Smoke curled around his face, veiling the gleam in his narrowed eyes as he studied the table, studied them.

He wasn’t here to win. He was here to watch who broke first.

Tam glanced at his cards and beamed. Broad. Foolish. The kind of smile that could charm a priest out of his robes or into a riot. “There we go!” he said cheerfully, laying his hand down with a flourish. “Off to a smashing start!”

Elmira barely had time to blink before the slicer laid his hand with a flick of the wrist. Five cards in sequence, each from the same glowing suit, alive with runes that pulsed like breathing embers.

A straight flux.

Rare. Precise. Deadly.

The slicer - Yori, was it? - didn’t even smirk. He simply reached forward, scooped the winnings with a surgeon’s grace, and returned to stillness, eyes glittering like obsidian glass. His lips twitched, but the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth was cold, more a predator’s satisfaction than a gambler’s. His eyes flicked to Tam, a quiet acknowledgment of his victory, but no triumph. There was no need to gloat. The slicer didn’t need to prove anything. He was the kind of man who let the cards speak for themselves.

“Not bad, Captain,” Yori said, his voice low and languid. “But you’ll need more than charm to win this one. You forgot the first rule of the game.”

His gaze shifted back to the cards in front of him, fingers smoothing them with a casualness that betrayed the tension in the room. Yori continued, his tone deliberate, almost taunting. “The house always wins. If it plays its cards right.”

Tam’s smile twitched. “Huh.”

Elmira blinked at the empty space where the chips had been. She hadn’t even placed her bid. Her eyes cut to Tam like a blade. “You said follow your lead.”

Tam scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “That might’ve been... a bluff.”

A snarl curled her lips. “You’re the worst,” she hissed.

“No stabbing!” he said quickly, palms raised in mock surrender. “It’s fine. It’s just one hand. You gotta bleed a little before the magic kicks in.”

“Magic, huh?” she muttered. “Try bleeding again and see what kicks in.”

Captain Grelf, on the other hand, couldn’t contain his amusement.

“Well now,” Grelf rumbled, leaning back in his seat, “ain’t that a shame. I thought you had it in you, Captain. Guess I was wrong.”

His eyes glinted as he cracked his knuckles with a bone-jarring sound that echoed through the room. “But still,” he continued, his grin widening, “I reckon you’ve got more tricks up your sleeve. You wouldn’t be so damn confident if you didn’t..”

He sat back, an air of patience in his posture as if he were savoring the game’s unfolding. Grelf wasn’t one to rush, especially when he could savor the taste of victory on the horizon. He motioned for Uri to deal the next hand.

Tam turned back to the cards, the last hand already a fading memory. He had no intention of going down without a fight.

“Alright,” he muttered to himself, “let’s make this interesting.”

The second game didn’t go any better. Tam played a bluff so bold even Elmira had almost believed it, until the scar-eyed man revealed a buried crest card and wiped the table clean. Chips slid away. The pouch on their side of the table thinned alarmingly.

“Alright,” Elmira muttered, hand already drifting toward her thigh. “Time to stab.”

“Still no stabbing!” Tam hissed. “We’ve got this.”

All she could do was stare at him, unblinking, jaw clenched. She wasn’t convinced. Neither was Uri, whose expression had settled into something smug and predatory. Perhaps she could buy passage from him instead?

Elmira leaned forward during the next round, watching, really watching. The slicer always tapped his index finger three times when he had a bluff. The brute twitched his pipe left whenever he drew a mirrored card. Tam, for all his chaos, was starting to fall into rhythm, laughing too loudly when the tension got thick, dropping out early on bad hands to let others overplay.

By the fifth round, the mood had changed. Uri’s eyes were narrower. The slicer fidgeted with a loose wire. The captain stopped puffing entirely.

Tam tossed out chips like confetti, his grin returning. “You know,” he said casually, “I once played this game with a death priest. He cried by the second hand. Said I reminded him of a prophecy.”

“Shut up and play,” Uri growled.

Tam shrugged and played. His hand won that round. Barely.

The next hand followed fast, too fast.  Elmira’s pulse began to match the rhythm of the cards hitting the table. She folded early, eyes on the table, but she could feel it: the tide was turning.

The slicer overbet. Tam folded with a chuckle. Uri snarled, accused him of stalling. Tam raised his hands and asked if he could order drinks. Elmira had no idea how he was doing it, but he was getting to them.

When the lantern burned dim Tam leaned back and pulled a hand through his hair, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His voice was easy, almost casual, as though the stakes had yet to rise.

“You know, I heard a rumor,” he said, his tone light, unhurried. “That the Erid Straits weren’t always cursed. That there was once a city beneath the waves, full of mirrors and echoes, and something woke up down there... something it shouldn’t have.”

The room fell quiet for a moment as the others processed his words.

Uri scowled, his lips curling around his tusks in irritation. “Shut up and play,” he demanded.

“Right, right,” Tam said, his voice a mock surrender, but his hands didn’t stop moving. He tossed a handful of chips into the center of the table with an almost careless flourish, his fingers flicking them like they were worth nothing. “Just saying… sometimes the only way out is through.”

His words hung in the air, a cryptic suggestion that neither invited nor demanded further questioning. It was the sort of thing he’d say just to unsettle the calm, Elmira had noticed. This was a man who knew how to twist a moment, make it something heavier than it needed to be.

Another hand passed, and then another. The game proceeded with its usual rhythm, the shuffle of cards, the clink of dice, but the atmosphere had definitely shifted now.

Elmira watched closely, her sharp eyes picking up on subtle details that the others might miss. The slicer was adjusting his grip on his cards more often now, fingers twitching with the telltale sign of someone who was beginning to second-guess their next move. His calm, unflinching demeanor had cracked just a little.

Captain Grelf stopped grinning altogether. Even when watching her make her move. His gaze turned more calculating, his thick fingers holding his smoke with a stiffness that wasn’t there before.

Uri, too, was changing. A fine sheen of sweat dotted his brow, making the dim light above him glisten in a way that felt uncomfortably intimate. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.

Elmira couldn’t help but wonder: How was he doing it? The way the tide was turning… It didn’t make sense. Tam wasn’t playing smarter, he was playing dumber, more reckless than ever, but still, it was working.

Maybe it was dumb luck. Maybe it was a trick, some sleight of hand she hadn’t spotted yet. Or maybe… it was something else. Maybe it was just the way the world bent itself for reckless bastards who believed the sky belonged to them, who saw the rules of the game not as boundaries but as suggestions.

She glanced at Tam, sitting there with that grin still plastered on his face, eyes gleaming with the kind of mischief that could burn through the night. For all she knew, he was dancing on the edge of disaster. But damn if he didn’t make it look like he was the one in control.

Last hand.

Cards were dealt, and Elmira’s fingers danced.

Two aces. A wild. A jack. Another ace as the dice rolled snake eyes.

She kept her face impassive.

Grelf slammed in his full pouch. “All in,” he said, voice low and tight.

The slicer hesitated, then pushed in what little he had left, as did Elmira. Now or never. Tam didn’t blink. He matched the bet and added a single, shining token to the pile, the key itself. Uri’s eyes twitched, but Grelf barked a laugh and tossed the Sphynx sigil onto the pile.

“Let’s see who the gods favor tonight,” Tam said.

Grelf revealed his hand first, a high run again. Clean. Impressive. A winning hand on most days. Elmira dropped hers slowly, with relish. Silence.

Tam let out a whoop so loud it made someone in the bar outside shout. “Hot damn, El! But…”

Tam smiled, almost softly, like he felt sorry for them. He spread his hand: three matching flux stones. A wild rune card. And at the center, the mirrored crest.

A celestial slam.

Yori cursed and sprung to his feet so fast his chair toppled. The dwarven captain actually whistled. Uri just stared, unmoving, stone-faced.

Elmira leaned forward slowly, one hand drumming on the hilt of her dagger.

“Well?” she said. “Deal’s a deal.”

The captain’s face darkened, but a wager was a wager. He gave a curt nod and Uri shoved the Sphynx’s token across the table, hard enough to spin it. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to.

"Storms take me," Grelf muttered, knuckles white. "You’re the luckiest bastard alive."

"Or the best bluffer," Tam said, pocketing his winnings, snatching the key from the table as an afterthought. "Pleasure doing business, Cap’n Grelf."

Grelf just growled and shook his head. Elmira didn’t need a voice in her head to tell her to move to the door as fast as she could. They might have won, but it was an expensive victory. Tam sauntered after her, stretching his body after all the hours of sitting at the table.

“Don’t worry,” Tam said, giving them a wave. “We’ll be out of your hair before sunset. Probably.”

“Hopefully,” Elmira corrected.

“Eventually,” Tam winked.

The moment they stepped out of the harbor warden’s office the scent of saltwater and old wood filled Elmira’s nose as they crossed the threshold, slipping out into the cool embrace of the night. The night was thick with fog, the kind that rolled in from the sea and wrapped around the city like a shroud. The sound of the waves slapping against the docks, the creak of rigging, and the distant murmur of late-night sailors working under dim lantern light filled the air.

Tam walked beside her, the faintest smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Told you,” he said. “No plan survives contact with me.”

Elmira shot him a glance, her eyes already scanning their surroundings. Her gaze flicked to the shadows, the flickering lanterns, the slow-moving figures who drifted through the night. She could feel it, the weight of the city pressing in on them, the tension of a thousand unsaid threats hanging in the air.

“We sail,” she said, her voice low but resolute. “Before someone gets clever.”

Tam didn’t need to be told twice. He tucked the sigil into his coat, slipping it securely out of sight before heading toward the door. “Couldn’t agree more, partner,” he said, his voice lighter now, teasing. “Time to spread our wings. Let’s see if the Sphynx remembers how to soar.”

And just like that, the world around them seemed to expand, the air charged with the potential of the moment. There was no looking back now, not when the sky called and the sea was theirs to claim.

The Omored Dock stretched out before them as they made their way over to Pier Two. The scent of brine, salt rot, and lamp oil hung thick. She could hear the faint clink of metal, the murmur of voices, the ever-present sound of the city breathing. At the far end of the pier, in a private sector, the Scarlet Sphynx loomed in elegant silence, her solar silk sails folded close against the rigging.

As they reached the crook of the dock where it split, Tam slowed his pace just a fraction. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Careful now,” he murmured, just as Elmira felt a presence shift behind them.

A figure emerged from the darkness of the alleyway, a slim man, moving with purpose and a grin that had seen too many corners of the world. His clothes were nothing fancy, but the gleam in his eyes told Elmira he wasn’t someone you crossed lightly.

“Captain Winmore,” the man said, his voice smooth, almost too smooth. “Word travels fast. Seems you’re in need of a crew.”

Tam’s smirk only deepened as he turned to face the man. “Depends. You offering?”

The stranger chuckled, a dry sound that rasped against the night. “Let’s just say I know some folk who might be willing. If you can keep them alive long enough to reach Kael-Vora.”

Elmira's brows furrowed. Kael-Vora. The name hung in the air for a moment. Tam’s gaze cut toward Elmira, a gleam of something dangerous flickering behind his eyes.

“Tell them to pack a bag,” he said, his voice already losing the playful edge. “We sail at dawn.”

With that, the deal was made between them, unspoken but understood. The figure in front of them nodded, his grin widening as he melted back into the shadows, vanishing like mist before the sun.

Elmira looked at Tam. “You think we can trust him?”

Tam gave a small shrug, his hand already resting on the wheel of fate, as it always was. “You never trust anyone, El, but sometimes you take the deal anyway. Keeps you on your toes. Now, and this is important: Have you seen anything quite as magnificent?”

The Scarlet Sphynx rocked gently in the water. The fog clung to her rails in gossamer threads, curling around her figure like a lover reluctant to let go. Where not long ago there had been armored guards and a chained gate, now there was only absence, a twisted length of iron chain swinging idly from the open gangplank, creaking softly with each shift of the tide. The dock, so recently tense with danger and watchers in the shadows, had gone eerily still.

Tam exhaled slowly. Something in his shoulders unwound. His eyes roamed the ship's form with quiet reverence. Moonlight caught the Sphynx’s sigil as it shimmered briefly across his knuckles, a flicker of spell-ink responding to her presence. A bond, deeper than iron and oath, humming between captain and vessel.

“She waited,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.

Elmira stood beside him, the cold air biting through her coat, wrapping around her bruises like a second skin. She didn't speak. She didn’t have to. They stood like that for a heartbeat too long, caught between what was behind and what waited ahead. Elmira was still processing the fact that Tam had managed to win the ship back.

“In the end it is only a matter of how hard you fight, child, to choose your destiny.”

Elmira wanted to laugh and rage at once. “Where in esirno have you been?”

“Me? Enjoying the show.”

“Smartass,” Elmira muttered, but if Tam heard he showed no sign of it.