The war banner had been commissioned in secret, carried folded in a leather tube through three cities before it reached the merchant-captain who'd ordered it. She unrolled it in her quarters, and even in the dim light of her cabin, the red seemed to burn. The white was bright enough to read by. She'd lost three ships in the last three years to pirates. She'd lost friends. The banners she'd flown before were warnings. This one was a promise. When her fleet raised these colors on the Trackless Sea, merchants would know safety was coming. And the wolves hunting them would know they had one last chance to run. She flew it the next morning. By the third day, three pirate sloops had already turned for open water. By the week's end, three more. The dyer who'd made the banner never knew she'd changed the tide. But the merchant-captain kept it flying for fifteen years, and in that time, she brought more merchants home than any captain on the Coast...