Storm-gate, Naime celebrated with the apprentices in the workshop, and the Master of the Yard, who was a patron-cousin of her elder-father on the Iskra side. A delegation of fresh-faced cadets and students from the New Academy came all the way out from the shore of the Inland Sea on the fast train that several Zoia clan-branches and two branches of the Iskri had constructed in honor of the peace of Naime the Just, now most of a century ago.

The snowy volcanic reaches of North Continent, with its Water-Temple guest-houses built around hot springs, and the steppes and mountains of South Continent, where the journey-ships’ horse-stocks roamed wild and recombined in all their glory, not to mention the Colonies within a Jump, all sent their youthful tribute to the New Academy.

Desnaray of Iskra, the clan-branch famed for the terraforming of the first colony-planets, had its own little group of cadets, whispering together. They raised the flaming punch in its goblets, extinguished the flames with a single sharp out-breath, like a voice-blow in grappling, and tipped their heads back to drink.

Indeed, a voice-blow. On the right shoulder of each of them, a shoulder-cord and ribbon-rosette of white and red, slashed diagonally so the cut ends hung loose. The knot, cut through: one of the other traditional props of Martis-Mortis, the sword and the cut-knot, the sword that erased difficulties by severing them through to show white of nerves, red of blood or flesh.

***

From Camp NaNoWriMo project Shipwright, Captain, Figurehead, short stories in the Ship’s Heart universe.

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