Calliope nodded and drew a roll of parchment from her black sea leather jacket, spreading it out over the table. The parchment was  chart that Roderick had given her, showing the whole sea of swords in some considerable detail. Even so any chart that spanned so wide an area was only useful in the most abstract way for actually sailing. This one bore the seal of Tregellian, a family of cartographers reknowned for their accuracy.

“According to what Roderick told me, we have a bit of a job ahead of us.” That was something of an understatement, taking the dowry seemed downright suicidal given what the Sea Lord had been able to share with her. She lay a slender finger far to the southwest.

“The dowry is going to be coming with the treasure fleet from Harada,” she said. The Andred treasure fleet was a convoy of large powerful ships which made a two year circuit with the trade winds. On the way out they carried manufactured goods, particularly steel, for sale in the distant colonies scattered along the Green Coast and into the Vesterdam. On the way back they carried the fabulous wealth of the untamed southern lands. Silver and gold as well as precious stones beyond measure, coffee and sugar and purest ambrosia all flowed back into Andreedi ports. Harada was the oldest of the Andreedi colonies, once it had been a simple port city but the wealth of the colonial administration had built it into an imposing metropolis, as large as anything to be found on the eastern side of the Sea of Swords.

“They won't sail for another three month, maybe four,” Calliope said. Makus was nodding, evidently understanding that the trade winds that blew west to east for half the year would need to reverse before sailing would be possible. That meant that the flotilla had to get underway and out of the tropical waters before the hurricane season began.

“We won’t stand much chance against an entire fleet,” Markus stated bluntly. Calliope nodded her head having made much the same statement to Roderick the night before. The idea of attacking the treasure fleet was not a new one, but even a real naval power would struggle to slug it out with the massive galleons that formed the convoy.

“We have three months, two once we get there,” Calliope said.

“I think our best bet is to try to delay the fleet however we can, if we can keep them from sailing until too late in the season, they will have to risk swinging south along the coast of Angkar, the storms are severe down there I’m told. The greatest admiral in the world couldn’t keep a convoy together down there, they will be forced appart one way or the other and we might be able to make our move.”

It sounded simple when she said it like that, but Calliope had no illusions about the difficulty of what they were about to attempt. They needed to find guns and powder to properly arm the Witch, they need local knowledge, allies and information about their quarry and they needed to keep the crew together, something they couldn’t do on the promise of a distant pay day. Pirates worked for wages and for shares and if either of those things were lacking it wouldn't’ be long before one of them figured that selling them out to the Andredi was a more lucrative proposition. They needed to find targets along the way to keep the men happy and to blood them so that they would be ready when the time came. The only bright spot was that although Andred employed competent sailors, their officer class tended towards the unemployed sons of the nobility who rarely had the aptitude or the training for real sea faring. The state of their mages was similarly woeful, as often as not the post of mage was given to someone who couldn’t so much as light a candle but whose parents had paid to get a position in the fleet.