Beginning

Know, young lord, that the archipelago of the Tékéles extends like a handful of white pebbles thrown between the blue of the sky and the sea. A string of islands, more or less large, covered with forests and surrounded by high cliffs, continuing until the fires of the Far South, where great lizards laze on pebble beaches and where immense stone porticoes erected by unknown peoples stand. To the east lies the mysterious Shamanka, with its black kingdoms numb under the fiery sky of the heat waves. To the west, beyond the vast ocean, are the jungles lined with pink beaches of Shamayan, its fierce kingdoms lost in the heights of the steep cordilleras where condors soar.

And then there is Meryne... A city built on an island in the Inner Sea, by an unknown race, amidst forests of olive trees, pines and green beeches. Hidden by the forest, entrenched behind its cliffs, with a sheltered anchorage, it quickly attracted buccaneers, pirates and sea adventurers who found refuge there. It pleased them to restore it, to settle there and to impose their laws. Since then, if all of them travel without a break seas and oceans, they all end up returning one day. Meryne has become their anchor, their home port. The buccaneers gather there to elect a king who will govern them and to whom all pledge allegiance. A crown often balanced on the edge of the sabers...

Carenque, for the education of Prince Saphir.

Meryne... You know every alley, every house, every gambling joint. You the cursed, the "marked", struck by the seal of fate from birth. The gods must be laughing, they who made you be born bisexual. What crime, what defilement have they thus sanctioned, pushing your parents to abandon you to the waves? You would have died without Sirmion, the young and brave doctor who, walking on the beach after a stormy night, found you, crying in your bassinet washed up on the shore. He took you, you whose existence was only a wavering candle, giving you life.

Under his caring, you grew, making a **** of this open wound, of this wound never closed. And since it was the sea that carried you, you turned to it. You are the Ambiguous, the hermaphrodite, the being with two sexes. You are their secret desire, their unavowed fear, their rejection and their fascination... You are everything they want, no matter what. You wear this difference like a familiar cloak now, you whose exploits are sung everywhere the scum of the seas meet. In Meryne, everyone knows and everyone bows. Old captains who have found fabulous treasures, intrepid adventurers, men thirsty for vertigo, adventure and space, but also sharp-eyed fences, brothel keepers, calculating merchants and skilled traffickers... Escaped slaves, escaped prisoners, mercenaries, fallen lords seeking refuge or ruined colonists.

As for those who chose mockery and insult, they are no longer here to regret it. Only one has never bent the knee before you, Atreus the Ferryman, another contender for the title of King of the Pirates since the **** of Teophano the Mad. A title that you do not inherit. A title that is earned. A title that cannot be shared...

However, did you let yourself be dazzled by your own brilliance? When Atreus asked you to join him, in great secrecy, on this marshy outcrop of land, to speak to you about the succession of Teophano... When he expressly asked you to come alone...

You came and, leaving your ship, the Tiresias, you went forward, confident and with bare hands. And the trap closed!