Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale - Colin McComb

We spent that night inside, playing cards and drinking ale, cursing the weather. It poured
through the night, filling the hilly streets of Westport with the water the clouds’d reclaimed from
the sea. When we stepped out the next morning, I was surprised there weren’t fish flopping in the
gutters and dying on the stones. The alchemical smears from the presses had been washed away,
down to harbor, leaving the streets momentarily bright and clean. The day was dry, though the
sky promised to unload some more water on us later. It was under that sky that our first full day
of leave began.
What does a sailor do on leave? What do we do when we’re off that boat after a month or more
cooped up together?
That’s an answer I’ll leave to your imagination, but I can guarantee that most of us spent
the day in the seedier parts of town, the kinds of places with proprietors who give their cut to the
Bhumar thugs who stand quietly in the corners. And despite having seen the same faces in close
quarters for all that time, I can guarantee that most of us spend our leave in the company of our
shipmates—from what I hear, it’s like how small-town folks never move away for fear of the
strange, how they stay and marry the same people they’ve seen all their lives and never cut the
apron strings that hold ’em close to home. In our case, though, it’s different. Every day we’re
someplace else, every day we’re cast on the waves.
But even sailors need someplace to call home. Our shipmates are our anchors, the islands
in the sea of time. So we find our homes in them.
We spent the day doing those things that make vice lords richer and us poorer, and who’s to say
who came out of it better? Of course, we split off from each other at one point or another and
took care of our own business. Me, I went looking for the scenery and for new people to talk to.
Over by the steamworks, I found a pilot who called himself Dracogen, who flew in the Deng
fleet, but he'd got himself drunk and they lifted off without him, so here he was, stranded and
without a paycheck, and would I be so kind as to lend him a coin or two. Seeing as he'd worn out
his welcome with the pressers, I took him with me back to our part of town and introduced him
around. Some of our crew'd been drifters once, and they put him to the test. Maybe he was what
Colin McComb Oathbreaker, Book 1: The Knight's Tale
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