The Blade Baroness

Prologue

When I left Thorncove looking for adventure, I knew one day I might find myself aboard a sinking ship in monster-filled seas.

I just didn’t expect it to be this ship.

“Nothing in there’s worth risking your life for,” I shouted after the short-haired elf woman storming down the corridor, salt water sloshing to the hem of her long dress, insistent on fetching some gilded knickknack.

“I do not require assistance, sir.” She stood easily a hand taller than I and strode with a fierce determination that said that the ship could have been on fire, sinking, and had kraken tentacles writhing through every porthole, and she’d tell the kraken to leave a message.

I glanced at the lower corner of the watertight hatch, where gurgling water crept toward the state-of-the-art clockwork trigger for the hatch. Empire clippers weren’t supposed to sink exactly because of technology like this.

It would be idiotic to follow her into the sinking section of the ship.

I clenched my eyes shut.

I jammed the screwdriver of my pocket knife into the mechanism and stepped through. “Wait up, princess!”