Flash Fiction: Guard the Gates (687 words)

Trad’s grandfather had owned and captained a dozen ships. When Trad was thirteen years old, he took him aboard one, showed him deck and cargo, canvas and lines, wheel and rudder and the dance of the waves which really only earned a tempo once they left somber port behind. The port gates was the midnight line: All respectable folk stayed tucked on the proper side of it, while the rest of them made a revel of the open night on the other side.

The crew had laughed at him as he swayed on his feet, and his cheeks had burned. Clinging to the rail and the lines, he made sure it was the last day they had the opportunity to take their fun at his expense. He walked up and down the deck until dark, until he found the sweet balance of his feet. He learned every lesson his grandfather had to teach.

A decade later, it still wasn’t enough to keep him from gaping as he woke for his watch and found the horizon flattened to a perfect line of blue-green water touching blue-white sky.

Flash Fiction: Clerks in the Dark (1099 words)

There was a certain set of codes and etiquettes that snapped into place when one sneak met another unexpectedly.

The least of them was the sudden understanding that neither sneak would screw anything up. Whatever job they were in the middle of springing, if they’d wanted to perform anything less than larcenous perfection, they should have done it on their own time. Now that there were two players, two heads that could be seen, caught, bashed, and imprisoned by the city guard, they would do their thieving duty and get away with everything they had planned. Plus a little more.

The greatest of them was an understanding that one sneak would believe that the other was as invisible as the air, inaudible as hearth tale cats, and absolutely magnificent at their job. They would hold onto that belief until it was absolutely impossible to do so, and then one moment more.

So, when Imalie realized that she was skulking around the same house as a woman twice her age and half as quiet, she ignored her. Of the four items that she had dropped through the window to find, Imalie already had three of them, which made it doubtful that they were there for the same reason, or if they were, that the woman would beat her to the last of it.

Flash Fiction: In the Dark (1364 words)

Brance once told Ineli that it didn’t matter how large a ship was, it was always too small to keep secrets. The masts might have stood far apart, but the lines and canvas tied them neatly together and the decks were stacked neatly together, with just enough space to walk between them. The open sky seemed wide, but the water stayed close to the hull, better walls to echo words back than anything man had built. Her brother smiled down at her as he spoke, rustled her hair, lying in his usual friendly.

There were more doors than Ineli cared to count onboard The Wave Crest, and they had a habit of swinging shut when she walked by.

Ineli paused, sliding her gaze along the straight panels of the Captain’s door. Her father had been locked inside the cabin for hours now. That wasn’t usual, but she would have to have been deaf and blind not to notice the flurry of people that came and went on his orders, and the quick way they open and shut the door.

“Are you ready?” Donnemey asked. He touched her elbow, gently retaking her attention, then let his hand drop. He was almost a foot taller than her, and she rocked back a step to put the sun behind his head so she could meet his eye. His hair was combed back from his face, cheeks freshly shaven. The high collar of his sleeveless keimon’s coat was buttoned tight, while his shirt cuffs had been loosened and rolled back from his hands. Clearly, he was ready to go.

Ineli rubbed her thumb across her palm, slow.  “I don’t know how I could be,” she murmured.