The city of Port Augustine was not quite fully awake yet, unlike Elodie Fleetwood. The morning painted the sky the same bright colors as the row of houses along the main river that fed the harbor. The uptown of the island was quiet, except for the occasional carriage passing by or an errand boy beginning his rounds. 

Technically, a young lady like Elodie should not be out at this hour, and certainly not making her way to the marina. She was not a merchant or sea-captain’s daughter, and as such had no acceptable business there. 

Well, she wasn’t a living captain’s daughter. That was beside the point. 

Elodie supposed her independence was a benefit to having become the mistress of the house so suddenly as she had three months ago. No one questioned where the mistress of the Fleetwood House had gone, as it was not their place to. Besides, they were long accustomed to the unusual requests and activities of the Fleetwood women. The previous mistress of the house, Elodie’s own mother, had been far more eccentric in her tenure than she. 

Of course, that was also the problem, the reason she was in this situation now. 

As Elodie neared the marina, she crossed over into where Port Augustine was already awake. The industrial industrious, the working class had risen before the sun and were already working in clockwork harmony. A harmony that Elodie had learned to be a part of, in the last three months. She weaved between carts and horses and workers, disappearing into the crowd like she wasn’t a young lady of “aspiring class” as her grandfather would put it. 

The marina was the most awake of any of the city, as the titular port that had been Augustine’s claim to fame. Already there were many new ships in the harbor, filled with sailors and workmen loading and unloading the cargo within and preparing to depart once more. 

Elodie found one of the quieter parts of the marina, a lone dock that saw no incoming ships, for it was a private dock within the marina. Technically, that meant Elodie herself was not supposed to be there either. But she was never there long enough to run into trouble. 

Once she had found her usual place, she reached into the deep pocket of her skirt to remove the old spyglass. It was once her father’s, as evidenced by the F.V. hastily carved into the side. She pointed it to the ships in the harbor and rotated the rings around the barrel to zoom in and read the carefully painted names on the sides.

Always look for the Albatross in the marina, if you’re in any trouble. She and her captain will come to your aid. 

Elodie could hear her mother’s voice as clearly as she had the night before she’d disappeared. It was one of a great many cryptic things she had said that night. Although these words more cryptic in that they were spoken with no context. For Elodie had long heard the name of the Albatross and had been taught it was an ally to her.

Just as she had been taught to use a compass and a spyglass, to tie all manner of knots, to swing a sword, and that red in the sky, like the scarlet in the clouds on this fine morning, were a bad omen for sailors. 

Red at night, sailor’s delight. Red in the morning, sailor take warning. 

Those were just a handful of the things her mother had taught her. All of it being things a lady of aspiring class was to have no need for. 

As she scanned the harbor for the ship she sought, she could not help but take note of the characters who worked aboard such ships. Most were the gruff sorts, the rough kind of working man that a lady like Elodie should stay shy of. Some were merely young men who dreamed of adventure, with stars in their eyes and a bounce in their steps. Only a select few were true gentlemen, with silver words and charming smiles and all the genteel manners of high society. They were naval officers or merchants with high enough profits to integrate into the gentry. 

But all were the same in their work on the high seas and low skies. They were the ones who took great risk for the love of the wind or the gold in their pockets—and perhaps both. They were the ones who faced the cruel fickleness of the wind and tides, pirates, and the horrors that could be found in only the open sea and sky. 

Some of these men might even be pirates themselves, Elodie supposed as she set down her spyglass. She had not found the Albatross to be among the ships that had come in this morning. If they arrived later in the day, they would likely stay overnight, as was the official policy of the Albionese Trading Guild, and so she would see them tomorrow morning. 

She did not yet want to go home, however. Instead, she observed the men at work and wondered—which of them did her father resemble?

Any of the three could fit the enigmatic figure of Captain Felix Vance.

Her mother did not speak of him often enough for Elodie to carry a clear picture in her head. What she did know that he was charming, enough so to convince her mother to run away with him. And that he had been hanged for piracy with all but two of his crew-members four months before her birth.  

It was for that reason that Elodie did not carry the surname of Vance at birth. 

“A bastard is better than a hanged man’s daughter,” her mother would say. “Trust me, I’d know.”

For her mother had not been born within the confines of marriage either. 

Elodie sighed and stowed her spyglass away. She would never have an answer as to what her father was like. He was long dead, and every sailor knew that dead men told no tales. So rather than wait for the dead to speak, she might as well get on with her day and the ceaseless tasks of running the house on Brighton Row. 

Still, she could not help but look out to the ocean and open sky just in time to see one of the ships take off. Starting in the water, as the sails billowed and filled with the wind, it achieved liftoff and took to the red-tinged sky. 

She only could hope that they would take heed of the old adage. After all, she was no sailor so she had no need for it. 

Three months ago, Keira Fleetwood was the mistress of the house and Elodie worried about nothing other than her upcoming debut. 

But then her mother had disappeared in the middle of the night with only a cryptic note left behind and all of the responsibility. Perhaps the responsibility of taking care of the house might have been bearable if Elodie did not need to hide that she was the one doing so, or that her mother was gone at all. 

Keira Fleetwood had been a very eccentric mistress of such an expensive house in the uptown of Port Augustine indeed. She had no patience for social events and parties, and shunned all engagements. 

Instead, she was a recluse who dressed as a man would, in trousers and loose-fitting, practical garments. The kind that she had once donned on the high seas and the low skies. She drank the kind of rum that was preferred by smugglers and men of action, rather than the champagne of the would-be duchesses and political maneuverers. 

And she could not leave the house on Brighton Row for doing so would be a violation of her terms of parole from the Albionese government. 

It was one of the many conditions that had been set for her release, a deal made by Elodie’s grandfather under the table. A hefty price he’d paid for his daughter’s life—first in the bribes to the judge, and then in buying the house that he would imprison his daughter and her unborn child in. 

It was nothing compared to the price her mother had paid to outlive her lover. 

These were the resentments that Elodie was caught between for her entire childhood. Her birth had saved her mother’s life. But in doing so, she had returned her mother to a gilded cage she had fought so desperately to escape. And Elodie herself had become a pawn between her mother and her grandfather. 

He would not hesitate to put out a bounty and alert the armies of Albion if he discovered that Keira had broken the terms of her parole. And knowing the disposition of the headstrong and ruthless daughter he had raised, he would likely have an ear to the ground for rumors of her activities.

As such, Elodie knew the morning she saw the note that she had to keep her mother’s disappearance a secret at all costs. 

So had begun her new life. She’d told the servants that her mother had taken mysteriously and severely ill, and it was not safe to visit her chambers. She could see it in their eyes, that they suspected the truth. But tattling to the true owner of the estate was beyond their pay grade and would jeopardize a comfortable position. So they would not tell. 

But Elodie would still need to keep up with the finances, the maintenance, and any other such business that needed to be attended to. To make it look like her mother was still handling it behind her closed doors. All the while maintaining her own engagements so no one would be any wiser to her secret. She would attend her etiquette lessons and any social events that it would be expected for an unpresented girl at her level of society to attend. 

That was all well and good, and Elodie had managed her routines. But there was one aspect to it that imposed a clock on the whole affair, a sword hanging over her bed. 

When her mother disappeared, Elodie was six months off from her debut ball into high society and the marriage mart. 

Her grandfather had made it clear at her last birthday that her debut was to be the event of the season. Some of it was due to pride, that her barrister grandfather had invested so wisely that he would be able to afford such a party. Some of it was to compensate for Elodie’s parentage and how that would affect her prospects. Carrying her mother’s surname was better than her father’s, given his fate—but it made it very clear that she was a bastard. Just as her mother had been. 

For all the dowries of glimmering gold, it would be difficult to find anyone of the status that Brendan Fleetwood desired for a grandson-in-law who wanted to marry a bastard. 

Still, because it was to be the party of the year, Brendan Fleetwood himself would be coming to oversee it personally. Which meant that Elodie’s mother needed to return before then. Or else Elodie’s grandfather would inform the Albionese courts that her mother had broken the terms of her parole and would be subject to the same fate as Elodie’s father. 

And that was something Elodie couldn’t let happen, at any cost.