who ruled as much through fear as wisdom. It’s said he went mad in his later years, believing himself to be a living vessel of divine grace and therefore infallible. On his deathbed he decreed that no word of the laws he had set down were ever to be altered. And so, as lesser sons sought vainly to match the glory of their forebear in ever-changing times, they found themselves increasingly constrained by the laws that had once seemed so vital to the empire’s well-being.”
“And yet it lasted for a thousand years.”
“Yes, with many wars, famines and bloody dynastic feuds along the way. Theories differ as to why the Emerald Empire eventually fell apart, but I tend to subscribe to the notion that the imperial bloodline had become so corrupted by inbreeding and luxury it simply lacked the ability to produce an heir capable of effective rule. The last emperor was widely rumoured to have never actually walked on his own two feet or been taught to read. However, it was a series of floods, droughts and subsequent famines that brought the ultimate crisis. Above all else, the favour of Heaven is said to reside in the weather. Faced with so many submerged cities and ruined crops, who could doubt that the emperor had lost its blessing?”
“And so the empire split into the realms of the Merchant Kings.”
“After two decades of chaos. The provinces of the empire were each governed on a tripartite basis consisting of a civil governor, a military commander and a financial minister. When the empire collapsed, power coalesced around the financial ministers since they held not only the keys to the provincial treasury, but the knowledge of how to administer the tax system. In time, these masters of coin became masters of all, and the realms of the Merchant Kings were born. There was another decade or so of warfare as small regions were gobbled up by the larger neighbours so that today there are three Merchant realms: the Venerable Kingdom in the north, the Enlightened Kingdom in the south-east, and the Transcendent Kingdom to the south-west. Technically, the Free Cantons that comprise the major islands of the Golden Sea could also be termed a kingdom, but they govern themselves according to old imperial law rather than Merchant statutes.”
Hearing a shout from above, Vaelin glanced up in time to follow Sehmon’s untidy fall from the mainmast. The youth’s descent was partly arrested by some rigging before he collided with a crossbeam and tumbled into the sea off the port side. Vaelin went to the rail to see the outlaw thrashing in the ship’s wake. The winds were strong today, swelling the Sea Wasp’s sails, and he was soon swept towards the stern. Vaelin looked up at Ellese standing in the crow’s nest and gestured expectantly at Sehmon’s struggling form.
“Will you leave your brother drowning?” he called to her.
He watched her head tilt back in a brief spasm of annoyance before she bent to retrieve a coil of rope from the base of the crow’s nest. She quickly tied one end around her waist and fixed the other to the mast before clambering down to the crosstrees below and sprinting forward to propel herself into the air, arms sweeping out and down to form a spear-point. She left a small splash as she completed her dive, surfacing quickly and striking out for Sehmon. Reaching him after a few strokes, Ellese wrapped her arms around his waist, sputtering out some colourful language to quell his struggles.
“Make ready to haul ’em in, lads!” the bosun called, taking hold of the taut rope.
“Leave that a while, if you please,” Vaelin told the man as a trio of sailors ran to join him.
“You want us to leave them in the water, my lord?” the bosun asked, his heavy features bunching.
“I do.”
“For how long?”
Vaelin glanced at the sky, judging the sun at an hour past noon. “Until it gets dark,” he said. “Or it looks like they might drown. Whichever is soonest.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Ellese’s hand shook as she spooned stew into her mouth, chewing and swallowing with a somewhat mechanical determination. Since being hauled from the sea she had kept her gaze firmly averted from Vaelin’s, he assumed in order to avoid any temptation towards unwise words. She had lasted over an hour before finally losing her grip on Sehmon, whereupon the bosun had ordered her hauled in and another line thrown to the outlaw. Vaelin was struck by the