The Clan of Outcasts [Season 3]

Part 25: "Breach"

Five Years Ago...

Bright torches lit key areas of the camp at the edge of The Sea—just enough for the watch to see more of the immediate area, but not enough to be noticed. Or at least, that was the plan.

The twenty-man crew had been selected for an elite mission intended to take place on the water, but they had not yet boarded the ship they would take.

Brigadier-General Feldt, the man in charge of the team, glanced around the camp to make sure the watch were at their stations, and then withdrew into his tent to review the maps and comb through the meticulous details of every move he would make on the morrow, one more time. Those pirates had stormed their last port, as far as he was concerned!

If Feldt had been a little less distracted by his future, he might have noticed the slight shift in the shadows around the tree line behind the camp. He had instructed the watch to be as randomized and unpredictable as possible, changing positions regularly, but switching up their pathing and the directions they were looking--

Yet somebody had managed to identify the gaps in their surveillance, and that person now crept toward the camp, staying well within this series of blindspots. The infiltrator headed straight for one tent in particular, in the middle and along the perimeter. The watch traded positions, and in the brief moment during which none of them were paying any attention except to the very spots where they were meant to stand, the security of the Brigadier's camp was well and truly breached.

The young man occupying the tent in question settled in his cot, feeling agitation that made him want to tear out his sleek red hair by the roots. Did they really stand a chance of catching the pirates the next day? Would the Brigadier honor his agreement if they did?

He sensed there was something amiss just seconds before the intruder materialized in front of him. The young man sat up straight on his cot, and before he could cry out, a narrow finger rested on his lips, and a hushed voice asked, "Are you the navigator?"

The young man squinted and backed away from this person's touch. "Who's asking?"

"Someone who knows," replied the person, pushing the hood back from their face. Soft golden ringlets fell free around a fair face. "I've heard what you can do... what you are." She searched his face with practiced eyes. "Is it true?"

The navigator could have dismissed her right then--raised the alarm, sent her packing, or denied everything the implied. Instead, he gestured to the smoldering lantern hanging from the roof of his tent. "Watch," he instructed.

He made a simple movement, just a twitch of his fingers, a balanced hand posture. A focused gust of wind streaked through a gap in the tent's stitching, and stirred those not-quite-dead embers. Steadily, the spark reignited, and soon the lantern cast a dim light around the tent.

She balked, pulling up on her hood, in case the light was just bright enough to be noticed from outside. "Flame? But I thought--" She caught him staring and ducked her head with an embarrassed tilt to her lips. "They say you could summon the wind, or push it away--that even a ship in dead, glass-smooth water could still move because you brought wind to move it, or that a vessel in the most turbulent storms would survive because you deadened the air around it. Is this not what you can do--what you've done before?"

The young man flicked his fingers again, and a tiny gust picked up the few flickering embers from the lantern, and carried them right into his palm, where he caught them in a small dish, reducing the amount of light to just enough to see each other's faces. "I can," he admitted. "My name is Tristan. What is yours?"

"Corinda," she answered with a gentle grin, but whether it was relief at seeing her suspicions confirmed, or the fact that she was genuinely starting to like him, remained to be seen.