The song of the sea was one of desperate seagulls, creaking oars and waves crashing against the hull of the ship; it was loud, reaching out to the horizon as if to test if anyone ashore would listen to it. The novelty wore off right at the time she was chased off the deck by the increasing weight of the damp foam that stuck to her when they crossed a particularly choppy section of the sea. She traded the sun and the prickly feeling of the salt on her skin for the vision of a hundred and twenty sweaty men working away at the oars amid sing-song under the deck. There were young and old, athletic, skinny and fat; an international bunch, as one might expect from a crew assembled by parts over successive stops at other ports. Hyperion had assured them they were all very reputable, as much as sailors could be, and that they were hard working, able to carry his ship across the expanse of the sea in only seven days.

She felt a hand on her arm, and turned to see Phobos leading her to the small space he and Aristides had cordoned off at one end of the shed. Much had been said about her safety in the hours before they’d set sail; Hyperion, for the sake of expediency, let the Phrygian men do as they saw fit as he dealt with the Caudicean authorities. She was, after all, the sole woman in a ship full of men, and although by now she’d detected that Phobos and Aristides were on the more conservative side of things by her world’s standards, she felt relieved that they had taken the initiative to deal with it on her behalf.

It was all very crude, of course; there was no first class boarding and reclinable seats with on-demand movies. Her self-proclaimed chaperones had arranged racks of amphoras with the ship’s cargo along a small line, acting as a makeshift wall to separate her from the rest of the crew. The space wasn’t big, but it was enough for her to lie during the night, with Aristides or Phobos at her feet to watch over her. They’d proclaimed to Hyperion that one of them would stay at all times with her; the other could do a shift at the oars, or work as part of the crew – a stipulation from the Chaldean as he made it clear he didn’t like idle stowaways.

It was Phobos’ time to rest now, and as he had taken to, he used his break to hover over Ophelia. “I thought the Chaldean was with you,” he said as the woman handed him some of the snacks she’d packed along for the journey, courtesy of Felicia.

“He was going through the books with Eon, I didn’t want to inconvenience him,” she showed him the little wax tablet she was practising on. “I’ve been trying to learn the Akkadian script.”

Phobos took the tablet, and asked for the small stylus she was holding. With surprising dexterity, he inscribed the same phrase she had been practising. The signs looked swift, elegant, its sophistication underscored by the rough and wobbly lines she’d produced. “Oh,” she caught herself, sighing in admiration. “I suppose it makes sense. A regent should know how to read and write.”

“So they say. However, my father always kept a scribe near him at all times. Royal fingers are made for swords; a stylus will not defend a kingdom,” he looked up, returning the tablet to her. “I take it it’s not common to write in Byzantium?”

“It’s the norm, actually,” Ophelia answered, and wrote something in English to show him. “This is how most of the folk in my country write. You have this script… and this one.”

He marvelled at the cursive, laborious the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. “They look like two different scripts,” he commented. “Were you a scribe in Byzantium?”

“No. I worked at a… in something similar to a tavern. I went to university to study law but I didn’t finish my studies.”

“You studied in a university?” Phobos exclaimed, eyes wide. “Law? Is that how magistrates are chosen in your country?”

“Yes, you need to study law to be eligible to become one. But you can also become a…,” she struggled to find a similar word in the language she’d borrowed, until her mind came up with “iuris consulti. A sort of advocate who knows the law well enough to help laymen through legal procedures.”

Ophelia smiled bitterly, remembering her time in college. “I can’t say I felt very passionate about it. When things became tough, I abandoned my studies, and haven’t felt the need to go back. I just didn’t have anything else I wanted to be.”

Phobos tapped the wax tablet in her hands. “And now you want to be a record keeper?”

“I don’t mind it. I need a place to stay, food to eat, clothes to wear.”

He locked eyes with her. His gaze felt scorching. “You can come with me. I can provide all that for you.”

Ophelia sighed. “I need something to do,” she braced herself. “Or I’ll waste away.”

Phobos opened his mouth, ready to argue, when the men beyond their little cubicle began to raise their voices. An argument had broken out amongst the oarsmen; the loudest spoke in Iberian, shouting at the other to keep their silence. Grumbles and comments flew from all directions, all in different languages. A frenzy took hold of her brain; jumping from a piece of one conversation to the next, it tried to make sense of it all. Without meaning to, the ear tends to search for pieces of meaning in whatever it can capture; when this process is forced to quicken, the results are quite painful to the self. She grit her teeth and covered her ears with her hands, trying to stop the barrage of shouts.

Phobos had jumped to his feet and was on his way to address the situation when she heard yet another voice join in the fray – Hyperion.

“What is the matter?”

The chorus of voices died down as the one question washed over the crew. Relieved at the silence, Ophelia relaxed, and walked out of her little hiding hole to see what was happening.

“A mere argument, my lord,” explained the helmsman. “One of the men saw something in the water, stopped his work, and was berated for it.”

At that, the young man next to him who couldn’t be more than twenty, opened his eyes wide and shouted, “I swear I’ve seen it! A monster!”

The helmsman shot him an irate look. “Silence!”

As the oarsman was not about to comply, the helmsman looked at who seemed to be the man’s friend, and ordered him to do something to calm the hysterical youth. “Please, you need to listen…!” the oarsman continued his please, “this is an omen, it was screaming in the waves…! The monster…!”

“What did you see?” Ophelia asked as she approached them. The youth, delighted to see someone who would understand him, took a step towards her and gesticulated wildly as he answered “I saw a creature with many tentacles, barely visible above the water. It had teeth at the top of its head, and something like a mouth that opened and closed. When it was open, a horrible scream would come out, like the wail of a dying baby...”

“Did anyone else see anything like that?” she looked at the man’s friend, who resolutely shook his head.

“It’s an omen, lady! A curse!”

“Is there anything we can do?”

The question seemed to agitate the man more, and she asked his friend to help her calm him down. He sat the frenzied oarsman back down on the benches, hands on his shoulders, and began to whisper something to him.

Ophelia turned to Hyperion, frowning. He was looking at her with clear interest, waiting for her to translate what had transpired. “Yet another language to add to the list,” he commented pointedly. “I suppose you didn’t just pick it up in the two days we’ve been at sea.”

“He talked about a curse,” she explained in Iberian for the benefit of the helmsman. She pretended she didn’t hear Hyperion’s comment; there was no point trying to find an excuse for it. She could delegate that work to the man’s imagination. “He said he saw a monster in the water. A bad omen.”

“Ah,” the helmsman said, almost rolling his eyes. “So that is what it is.”

“I’d have thought a helmsman would be able to assemble a crew that knew what the amber line was,” Hyperion’s ruthless words were soft, dispassionate. It made it somehow altogether more brutal; the helmsman visibly flinched.

“I did tell them about it. Maybe they didn’t hear me correctly; their Iberian is very poor.”

“Perhaps we should debrief this matter later,” Hyperion suggested, although it was clear that his subordinate was in for a very strong-worded meeting. “I suggest you put your crew in order, trierarchos. Ophelia will be kind enough to assist you this time.”

Hyperion nodded at her, and left for the upper deck. Phobos, frowning at his retreating figure, walked up to her. “What is he doing, ordering you around like that?”

With a gesture, Ophelia made it clear they would discuss it later, and turned towards the helmsman.

“What is the amber line?” she asked. The man sighed, rubbing his temples with a tired expression.

“Well, you’ll need to tell him,” he answered, almost as if it was against his better judgement. “The route we’re travelling is quite famous amongst experienced sailors; they call it the amber line, as it was used in great numbers by ships carrying amber to the east. It also has an unfortunate number of disappearances, and many strange tales are told about them.”

“It is said that one might encounter strange creatures, and all sorts of demons when out in the open sea, in this route,” the man continued. “It is true that the sea is a dangerous place; I have certainly seen my fair share of disasters. Most of them I would say had little to do with monsters; yet superstitions make young men fear the unknown more than a regular storm. Tell this man to do as he’s told, and to be more wary of gathering clouds than strange visions in the sea: they’re far more likely to come to take his life.”

Ophelia did as she was told. It was a strange experience to have someone else’s words in her mouth, trying to convince the young oarsman about something she had no personal experience with. It took several tries and more one-liners from the exasperated helmsman until the youth finally accepted the inevitable truth that no one else in the crew cared about his vision, and that no one would do much about it. The increasing aggravation from the strict Iberian man made it clear that at some point the suggestion would be put out to throw him off the ship, and that was always a good persuasive argument that could not be won against.