My life has never been complicated. I've never been one of those men who dream or scheme or plot their future course. I fight in the navy because it's what I've always done. I hear the summoning drums in spring and think, why not, it's better than gutting fish all the live-long day.

As such, I've never really had any plans for my life. Oh, I'll probably fight until the war is over or I can't fight any more, and then I will go home, build my own pier into the water, find a wife, and fish, like a thousand men before me. Maria and I do not have any kind of understanding, but she hadn't talked much to the other boys, either. Still, I'm not picky; so long as I can find a girl who's a good hand at the oars and has a sense of humor, I can ask for nothing more.

Or so I always thought.

But in the space of one look, my life has suddenly become complicated indeed. Where else, than the monks' priory my desperate men had dragged me to, would I have ever seen the legendary General Superior Asotegi?

Then again, I can just image what a ruckus would have gone down if he had seen me on some ship inspection. I wince and thank my few, tiny lucky stars. The teasing alone...

I still am not sure what has happened. The General said he loves me. Auntie had said those words to me, and once in a while one of us cousins will say it to another, but I couldn't think of the last time I'd heard those words. They must embarrass him as much as they do me, for him to blush so often.

Saints above, if my life has taken a distinct turn for the bizarre, his is sinking in eel-infested waters. They say love makes a slave of even the freest of men, and... what had he said, that I can do with him what I want? Who says that to someone else, anyway? Either he doesn't mean it, and only wishes to turn my mind to mush, or he does, and should be exiled for his insanity. I groan and rub my hands over my face. What a mess.

I drift off despite myself, because the next thing I hear is the sound of the General leaning back in the bedside chair, the room in complete darkness but for those rushes. They look fresh; someone must have come by and changed them recently.

He does not. The shadows the light cast aren't the only ones under his closed eyes. Before today, I wouldn't have thought a dzalin could look tired.

In my grandfather's day, dzali were legends, half-remembered tales parents told their babes in the cribs. When my aunt was just such a babe, they came across the western mountains, which everyone had always said were impassable, and successfully claimed the throne, which had been in dispute for some generations.

I didn't know much more than that; it hadn't affected my fishing village that closely. No one had ever even seen the lord and lady of our land before. But one day a pair of beautiful, bizarre, and well-dressed figures came down to the docks and introduced themselves to each ship captain. After that, well, you didn't hear too many complaints about fairies, or angels, or whatever the dzali really, are moving in and setting up shop.

Most of them have a similar sort of look: wide slanted eyes, high cheekbones, a complexion unmarked by pox or youthspots. I've never been this close to one, though, so I can't tell if his thicker lips and straight nose are his own, or just typical. His golden skin looks dark as a fisherfolk's in the flickering fires, his short-sheared hair all but invisible. A scar casts a shadow on the side of his face, running a hairsbreadth from his left eye. I've been lucky to avoid any marks on my own face, though I bet I have one beneath my hair now.

Looking at the General, I can't help but get The Mud Crown dancing through my head, the catchy one about him and the Queen and the throne. "The hair 'neath his cap is as black as twilight, oh-de-le-hi oh-de-le-hi eh-hi-hu,

his gold as large as a maiden's birthright, oh-de-le-hi oh-de-le-hi eh-hi-hu!

Ice in his eyes and a voice like thunder...

His sword as stiff as a matron's udder..."

The tune gets more bawdy and questionably rhymed as it goes on, but the kids always get to shout the nonsense bits at the end and I'd loved the song for as long as I can remember. Strange indeed to meet the man in it—stranger still to have him looking at me that way.

It takes me a beat more to realize he has woken. Embarrassed, I turn my eyes aside. I could play that song a thousand times more in my head and be no closer to understanding what has happened then before.

"Did I disturb you?" he asks softly. "I am sorry. Please, do not mind me."

I nod, mind still humming along, until I catch his words and jump like I'd spotted an enemy flag on the horizon. "Do... do you mean to stay there the whole night, sir?"

"After two nights it is beginning to feel like home," he replies, stifling a yawn. "I've considered sending for pillows, but I do not think they would fit."

"Ah." What else can I say?

In a moment, he is all attentiveness again, leaning over me alarmingly. "You do not care for the arrangement? Please, tell me how I have given offense so that I may correct this."

Do you have any other complaints about the way I run my ship? the lieutenitza sneers in my mind. "Well, it can't be doing any good for your bones, sir," I say cautiously. "Also, begging your pardon, it is a strange thing to have someone watch while I sleep. I'm used to folk around, of course, but they tend to keep their eyes out to sea. They keep their distance, like."

His face is a crisis of guilt and sorrow, as if I had just torn his heart out instead of speaking my mind. I curse myself a little for having said anything at all. "Of course, that is because our seas are warm," I say, babbling to cover it, "and the nights are humid. None can be close because of the sweat, see. The way the boat rocks, people learn to hold still, or they get tied down; the one who rolls into you might roll off the edge, next."

When I pause for breath, he looks a little less like I've crushed his favorite pup. "Then you do not follow the Otto codex?" he asks, his dark head tilting.

"Er," I say, and know I'm blushing despite myself, because while I'm no longer shy about sex around the crew, it's not something one discusses with a superior officer. "No, my lo—sir. That's a city thing. I've slept in the same room as people all my life, but Eassea fishermen don't share their blankets with anyone they aren't, er, intimate with, and that's only in port. And certainly not, not, boys in the summer and girls in the winter."

His dark brows draw together. "Your people defy the gods' will?" At least he sounds perplexed, not angry. I've always found people on land to be touchier about worship than sailors. It's not that we are less godly; if anything, it tends the other direction. Rather, it's that we've met so many people who do things in so many different ways that one either has to hold fast to all traditions or to none of them.

I run a hand over my face and pretend I'm talking to that new recruit, the speckle-faced shrimpy rower, instead. "I obey the rest of Saint Otto's words, sure, sir. And I've never slept alone, save for the times when I've taken the little skiff out for a look-see at moored rebel ships. We just figure if we're dead, then we won't wake up, and I don't need to keep a reminder around to know I'm only sleeping."

"So I see. I will, of course, respect your traditions."

I can't figure out at all what he means by that. "Sir," I agree. It's always a safe bet.

He touches the tips of his fingers together, and that to his lips, looking nothing so much like the image of St. Frerico the dzali like to fly on their flags. Otto and Frerico are the only saints of ours the dzali worship; the monks always say they saw their own gods in them, but theology is beyond me. "Regarding these boats," he says. "You are in the navy?"

"Yes sir," I say with no small pride. "Eight seasons beneath the sail, and two before that running supply skiffs between the big ships."

"Eight," he repeats, his brows rising. "And—how many years have you seen, then?"

"Twenty-two." My lips twitch at his expression. "When my cousins and I hit fourteen, we did our parts out of volunteering, just for the fun of it, and when we were sixteen and could be conscripted, they snatched us all up. Two of us boys, three girls." I give him a bit of a look, waiting to see if he'll comment, but the dzali often send their women to war and he only gazes thoughtfully back. "I went out on the Bluefish on her maiden run, and have sunk slowly with her ever since."

"Sunk?" he repeats uneasily. Dzali, long-lived as they are, consider the sea to be some sort of lure with a hook buried inside. None will even go near the water if they can help it. They love fish, though, so they are only too happy to have humans venture out in their place. "It is not a good ship, then?"

"Terrible," I say immediately, then remember just who I'm talking to and snap my mouth shut. "Begging your pardon. It's not that I'm not grateful for the post."

He waves my concerns away with a graceful gesture. "Never mind that. Your aspirations, then, are not to stay on this ship?"

I blink and scratch my chin—would need to be shaving that soon, I notice—a little stumped by how to be diplomatic with that one. "I follow orders, sir. I'm a steersman, answering only to the shiphead and the lieutenitza. I feel I'm doing some good, but it isn't my life's goal."

Oh, I realize a moment too late. This is one of those lucky breaks they talk about in hushed whispers. My real goal is to command my own ship, I think hard into the air, in case he or any of his gods are listening. One where I call the repairs and the courses. Give me two ships, and I'll be yours as surely as you say you are mine.

His shoulders go down and his face breaks into another one of those warm smiles that seem so utterly alien on his stiff features. "Good. Wonderful. I will have you transferred to my division immediately. Can you ride a horse?"

I imagine I bear a close resemblance to a landed fish, mouth opening and shutting helplessly. I know from seeing the men drill on land that the General Superior and the officers beneath him lead mounted units. Nobles can afford to armor the beasts, bred for decades to be as big and fast as possible; each horse is worth something like my family's haul for the year. The only nag I might be able to borrow would come up somewhere below those horses' noses.

"Sir," I manage. But if he even thinks of adding me to those ranks... I feel pressed to add, "I don't imagine the nobles will enjoy my company, sir."

His eyes half-close, going black as they disappear in the rushlight. "They will not object."

They will and I will! But there is an art to disagreeing with those above you, and it doesn't begin with 'no', "It will not do good on your reputation, if you'll need to fistfight every soldier in your upper ranks, sir."

He watches me through that dangerous expression, and I hold still, not sure what he contemplates. "What if it is not possible for you to remain a sailor?" he asks.

"Then you will need every horse in your stables to chase me down." I didn't mean to just say it, but I can't bring myself to retract the words. "The sea is my life, sir. If your division has a navy, I'd be glad to serve in any way you deem me suited. But nearly any of us would tell you we would rather desert than serve on land."

The General looks as affronted as I deserve, but not as insulted. "You mean it," he says softly. He swallows and turns his head away, the firelight dancing across the conflicted planes of his face. His gaze is distant, the set of his mouth uncertain. "This will take some thought," he murmurs, "but I will not take your life from you."

I relax with a grateful puff of air against the pillows. "Thank you, sir. I mean it. I mean, I really do appreciate it."

He smiles, a quick twitch of lips. "It is late, and this conversation can wait for another time. Sleep. Wake well in the morning."

It is too easy to obey the voice of command, to let the light go and fall into slumber. There is some reason that I shouldn't... then it hits me, the real reason why he shouldn't be in my room.

If the General is in here, then who is directing this gods-damned war?

"Hush," he murmurs when I try to put words into a mouth too tired to shape them. "It isn't your concern. Let it go."

I reluctantly obey. But just like a suckerfish hangs onto a shark, I can't let go of the idea that this is probably all my fault. Or, more likely... that it will be blamed on me either way.