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Yalb hangs in the rigging of a Thaylen scout vessel — salt in his face, an open blue road in every direction, windspren tumbling past — and reflects, as he often does, that people fear the sea for no good reason. Pay her a little respect, he thinks, and she will carry you anywhere and feed you on the way and sing you to sleep at night. The only thing that comes close to a morning like this is the chance to win a few spheres off the new guy.

Today's new guy is Dok, an Alethi hand competent enough to reef a sail without hanging himself but still landsman enough to clutch the rail when the deck rolls. Since Yalb makes a point of keeping an eye on fresh sailors, and since the Alethi queen wants more of her people trained in Thaylen ways, the task of education has fallen to him in the form of a long-running prank. He and a few mates have been making sure Dok overhears them whispering about "sailorspren" — vast yellow things with tentacles and a red stripe — long enough that Dok now knows exactly what to claim to see. Yalb feeds him a few chips of easy winnings to encourage him along; eventually they will let him sink a much larger bet on actually catching one, after which the whole crew will laugh, admit there is no such thing, and use his spheres to buy everyone (Dok included) shore-leave drinks. To Yalb's mind, that is how a fellow becomes a real sailor — if you are gullible enough to be pranked, better to lose your spheres to your mates than to a stranger.

Dok, settling into the rigging once the chips are pocketed, asks the question every new hand asks: is it true Yalb once went down with his ship? Yalb deflects with a line about swallowing half the ocean and being a poor witness afterward, but inwardly he is already plotting to sew shut the hammock of whichever shipmate has been spreading the other, truer story. The Wind's Pleasure did not sink. It simply vanished out from beneath its crew, with only three sailors plucked from the water alive, all of whom remembered the same impossible thing — assassins worse than mutiny, and then nothing under their feet. For months Yalb had thought himself mad. Then the world had gone mad in its own way, with Voidbringers back and a new storm blowing the wrong direction across Roshar, and there had been less to explain. Even so, no captain will hire all three survivors at once; he has Alethi on his ship now, and his eye on every new face.

Reaching back for the bright mood the morning had started in, Yalb leans out and spots a smudge marring the blue plain off the port bow. Up in the masthead Brekv raises a spyglass and swears softly. A ship — listing to port, sails in tatters, no banner, no one moving on deck. Wrong on its face: a merchant alone in wartime would want an escort. Yalb slides down the line past a startled Dok, sprints aft, leaps the steps to the captain's post, and reports. Captain Smta — tall, eyebrows curled to match her hair — glances at her helmswoman, swings the scout vessel toward the derelict, and assigns Yalb to lead the boarding party in case his "special experience" is needed. The rumours, he reflects without complaint, are not the truth, but everyone aboard believes them, and the captain took him on when others would not.

The strange ship does not vanish beneath their feet. They spend an hour pulled alongside, picking through it. No bodies, living or dead. No blood on the deck. No log. Only the painted name on the hull: the First Dreams, a private vessel the first mate half-remembers as having disappeared five months earlier on a quiet voyage of her own. While the officers in the stern debate what to do with the find, Yalb leans on the rail of his own ship and looks at the derelict drifting beside them — empty even of ghosts. He knows already what the captain will decide and what Queen Fen will personally demand of her: break out an extra sail, rig the First Dreams under fresh canvas, tow her home. They will not waste a hull in a war. And someone will have to ride her for the voyage. The man whose ship vanished, joining the ship whose crew vanished. He is certain of it.

The sea, he thinks, is a strange mistress: open, welcoming, inviting. And sometimes, a little too much so.