The Dry Ship

The buyer is a warship's surgeon named Ilse Varga, whose own fingernails bear the silver tint of Dust exposure. "It's for our ship's fire mage, Joss Hallet," she whispers urgently. "He maintains our warship's battle wards, and he can't channel without Dust anymore. If the crew find out he's using again, the Articles require them to vote him off the ship—leaving us defenseless. Can your ship take him somewhere quiet to detox for a month?"

After dark, Ilse brings Joss Hallet aboard wrapped in a blanket, pale and trembling, along with the chest of Dust. "You have a month to get him clean before our warship returns from patrol," she says. By midnight, Joss is shaking so violently his bunk frame rattles, and the cabin lamp flame bends toward him with every ragged breath.

Captain Bram Holloway, a broad-shouldered Ursine, hears your report and rings the assembly bell. Forty sailors gather on the main deck around Joss Hallet and Surgeon Varga. "Under the Free Captains' Articles, the accuser speaks first," Holloway announces. "Tell the crew what you delivered, and for whom."

By the time you reach the quiet port a month later, Joss's head is clear and he has taken to fixing your galley stove out of boredom. "My old crew will never take me back after missing a patrol," he says, holding up his silver-stained fingers. "How shall I repay you for pulling me through?"

That night the crew vote by dropping tokens into a bucket. Rules are rules: Joss Hallet is voted off the ship, and Surgeon Varga resigns to go ashore with him. By dawn their warship has sailed without a ward-mage or a surgeon, leaving the two of them sitting on their sea chests at the end of the pier.