The wave reflected off the stone wall of the harbor shoving the Weather Witch out into the harbor channel. Bits of debris pattered into the water like rain, hissing as they were quenced in the murky water. Calliope had to admit that she was secretly impressed having always had a soft spot for the violent and the dramatic. She jumped up the three steps to the slightly raised poop deck and flung the wheel over. There was only just enough way on to allow the ship to answer the helm but the bow sprit began to ponderously turn towards the Sea Gate. The Sea Gate had once been the natural cleft where the Caldrea that formed the Great Harbor had shattered, over the centuries however it had been smoothed with construction. Now, two great white towers stood, each bearing a large luminous spell which provided constant light to draw ships into harbor without the expense of fuel. The Gate could not be closed per se, although there were great iron chains that could be run from one tower to the other to prevent entry. Using them however would take hours of work and was not something that could be improved. Both of the Tower fortresses sported powerful guns but those batteries were high in order to give them range to fling heated shot at would be attackers, a small ship with shallow draught could hug the coast line without ever presenting a target. Unfortunately the Sea Gate wasn’t the only problem across the harbor one of the guard ships was moving towards the explosion. Unlike the Weather Witch the guard ships were equipped with banks of long oars that pushed them across the bay smoothly. The Guardships were squat looking vessels, their masts removed to mount oarsman and to make place for the large carronades which they mounted fore and aft on reinforced platformed which could be swiveled to make aiming them easier. The purpose of the ships was to enforce customs duties, but at close range the guns were a deadly threat. Worse still each ship carried a core of marines, or at least did in theory, it wasn't unusual for a captain to claim he had twenty men when he had five and pocket the extra pay. Even with her mizens loosed, the Weather Witch was barely underway, her stained sail flapping in the listless wind. At dawn when the sea began to warm a brisk wind flowed down the cooling rock of the city, making it the customary time to set sail, just as nightfall was the best time to approach the port. Unfortunately dawn was still several hours away. “Marduke or whatever your name is, we are about to have company!” Calliope shouted to the swordsman. “You need to keep them occupied for a few minutes,” she declared and reached into the small bag of treasures she had been able to rescue before fleeing. Nestled in its bed of jewels and worked gold was a small book. The Trentian Codex was one of the great treasures of Calaverde and one that Sebastian was going to be furious when he realised it was gone. The book was bound in strange leather and the pages were made of an oddly golden parchment, with a consistency more like that of silk than paper. Black writing in the arcane script marked pages that were covered with fantastic illustrations and strange sigils. Even scholars who had examined the book could only make sense of a tiny part of the coded writings. Where it had come from was obscure, though Triantan, the great palace city it had been recovered from was a real enough place. Legend held that it had been scoured from the sea till nothing remained but a reef and a single pillar of stone, atop which rested the bok. Calliope didn’t know how much of that was true but she had studied as much of the book as her court scholars could translate and could at least guess at the shape of some of the more basic spells it contained. Opening the book to a remembered page, she sat cross legged next to the wheel and began to chant in slow sonorous syllables, weaving intricate gestures with both hands in disturbing asymmetry.