Babel Clash

As promised!

Araminta, or The Wreck of the Amphidrake (8200 words)

Lady Araminta was seen off from the docks at Chenstowe-on-Sea with great ceremony if not much affection by her assembled family. She departed in the company of not one but two maids, a hired eunuch swordsman, and an experienced professional chaperone with the Eye of Horus branded upon her forehead, to keep watch at night while the other two were closed.

Sad to say these precautions were not entirely unnecessary. Lady Araminta—the possessor of several other, more notable names besides, here omitted for discretion—had been caught twice trying to climb out her window, and once in her father’s library, reading a spellbook. On this last occasion she had fortunately been discovered by the butler, a reliable servant of fifteen years, so the matter was hushed up; but it had decided her fate.

(Read more!)

This story was originally published in Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s fantastic pirate anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails, which is well worth picking up, with heaps of fabulous fantastical and science-fictional pirate stories.

And it fits nicely into the conversation, because this is an example of my using a historical voice and details for flavor, but signaling as wildly as I can from the beginning that this is significantly more a fantastical than a historical universe, unlike Temeraire.

So give it a read, let me know what you think, and more tomorrow!

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