I have walked a tightrope before.

On the deck of a ship, with salt in my lungs and wind in my teeth, it was almost a comfort. The sea teaches you balance. It tells you plainly when you lean too far. The ropes creak. The mast groans. The world sways and you sway with it. I have always trusted that kind of uncertainty.

But on land, the rope does not move. It stretches taut between people and promises and pride. It is strung between ledgers and loyalties, between silver and gold, between what is right and what is survivable. And instead of waves beneath me, there are eyes.

I find myself hanging things. Weighing things. Measuring words before I let them leave my mouth. Deciding when silence is strength and when it is surrender. Parsing politics that feel more suffocating than any storm. Trying to understand a life built without freedom.

My blood burns at the sound of certain words.

“Slavery.”
“Dredges.”
“Forced.”
“Taxes.”

Each one tastes bitter. Each one a chain dressed up as necessity.

To sit at a table and consider them calmly, to calculate which injustice must be swallowed first so that another might be undone later, feels like betrayal of something sacred inside me. And yet I must. Because there are people who follow me. People I love. People who trust that when I step forward, I will not step blindly. My community needs me just as much as I need them. I need to protect them.

It is in moments like these I remember why recklessness should be a sin.

I needed to think quickly. I needed to speak with certainty. But all I could hear in my mind was a number.

Ninety silver is not twenty gold.

How could anyone call it close? Why ninety? Why not half? Were the tools, the labor, the planning, the risk not worth more? Did they see only the grain I laid at their feet and none of the hands that harvested it? Did they think the food appeared from air and goodwill alone? Did they want the yield but not the roots? I decided to just ask her, after everything was said and done.

And then, my contract. Someone save me from my own ignorance. What did it truly say beyond “tax exempt”? What promises were inked that I cannot read with my own eyes? In these moments I curse myself for never learning more than the single vulgar word Santiago once grinned and pressed into my vocabulary. Bless him. One word is better than none, I suppose.

It has been a year.

I watched it signed. I remember the scratch of pen. Her mark. Ragnar’s mark. I remember it spoke of work, of answering when called. Of serving when summoned. But no summons has come. No call to labor. We were to act as point of contact for trade from the Reich, to move excess goods outward.

The Reich has barely enough to sustain itself, let alone surplus to send across waters. And yet we have built. We have planned. The shipyards are not some indulgent dream. They are survival. They are promise. They are the means to fulfill what we agreed to do. Tomaso sees them not as vanity, but as lifeblood. With them, we reach distant shores. With them, distant shores reach us. Trade flows. Safety grows. Futures widen.

How dare anyone call that self-serving.

And then, salt in the wound. After brokering my deal with Lady Dragomir, after standing as shield and speaker for myself and my crew, whispers reached me. All I had hoped to do was release my crew to show that everyone else could soon follow. It was meant to be a stepping stone in providing an example to the city of what happens when your love, your aid, your time and more are freely given. Yet, the Valerians are plotting to kill me.

After I extended an olive branch with steady hands. After I paid them more than most merchants would have dared for their aid. After I surrendered coin and materials my weary hands bled to gather, because I believed in sharing burden and reward alike. It feels like betrayal carved with deliberate care.

Their resentment sears through me. I thought we would stand shoulder to shoulder. I thought we would divide the labor, the risk, the triumph. Instead I find myself alone on this unmoving rope, the ground very far below.

I am devastated.
I am afraid.
I do not want to die.

And for the first time in a long while, I do not feel like death would be a fair price for my choices. Of all the moments, this time I was not reckless. I was not cruel. I did not act for greed.

All I did was try to help.

And somehow, that feels like the most dangerous thing of all.