Melody was the swampkin telepath on search boat #2, the same boat Ned had gotten on. They were several days into the search mission and had seen nothing. Suddenly, Ned started yowling, like really upset yowling. The sound a cat makes before it's going to puke. Everybody started trying to figure out why. Now, cats are more sensitive to magic than any human; it is just how they are made. Cats are anti-magical because their own natures are so closely tied to the non-magical parts of the world. Ned was reacting very badly to something that was going on, and it seemed to be getting closer. Much closer. Those aboard looked all around them, but they could see nothing....because what was there couldn't be seen. Suddenly, they felt something smack into the side of their ship.
Melody called out to the other telepaths, "Help!" just before she was knocked unconscious. The others all tried to contact her, but she did not respond. Arya got the ping that something was up. She called Ming and Thomas in. They spread a map and tried to pinpoint the location of ship #2 when this happened. They had a rough location, and she sent out messages to everyone to aid that ship. Ships #1 and #3 rushed towards the location. Portsmith on the Kaiya had his telepath respond to the call, saying they were close and would check it out. The Kaiya was reaching a speed of 30-35 knots on its maiden voyage, and Portsmith pushed it with wind affinity power. As he felt the wind on his face, he estimated they were doing 40 knots. They reached the location in a few minutes, but could see nothing. There was no ship nor any debris that might show if one sank. The telepath aboard said, "She's right here somewhere, I can feel she is here." Portsmith heard something, and he told his crew to be quiet. There it was again, just ahead of them, the sound of a cat hissing. He ordered the ship forward towards the sound, and suddenly, as the two statues came into range of it, the back end of the ship appeared as if from a fog. One of the crewmen shouted, "She's being towed; there is a small ship in front of her."As the Kaiya moved forward, two Zonian soldiers trying to yank the forward gun out came into view. They wrenched the gun loose and grabbed powder and ammunition and leaped onto the back of another ship just beyond view. Two crewmen jumped aboard ship #2 to secure it and started looking for survivors. Portsmith jumped to the deck gun, shouting, "Down on deck, that gun must not fall into their hands!" He fired as the lead ship began to move away. As the shell clipped the back of the fleeing enemy ship, the spell cast over it vanished. It appeared to them fully, and it was still fleeing. Portsmith could see a mage on its deck starting to cast another spell when ship #1 crashed into its side.
No one had noticed them speeding into the area, and they rammed the enemy ship hard at full speed. As the Kiaya pulled alongside, grappling hooks whipped out from her rails onto the enemy ship. The crew from both ships swarmed aboard her. Fighting broke out between the enemies and the crew. Serious injuries were occurring on both sides. Portsmith swung into the fray on a rope, knocking one combatant enemy into another, and the fight was done. They found the enemy captain in the cabin, with a knife to Melody's throat. He was going to kill her if they got any closer, but just then Ned ripped his arm with both front claws, and the knife clattered to the deck. They leaped on him and freed Melody. Two exhausted treekin girls were slumped over their wind affinity stations, and they freed them as well. They stripped the ship of anything of value and papers. They threw the prisoners on deck in irons, and they headed for home. The enemy ship slowly sank as all 4 vessels made for home. The maiden voyage of the Kiaya had been quite an adventure.
Ming, Tse, and Belaletrix questioned the prisoners, and Ming wrote up his report. The treekin took the mage to try to figure out the spell he used to make their ship vanish; it was a spell they had no understanding of. Once the mage recognized his life was at stake, he began to help them understand.
The council met and began trying to figure out how to watch for an invasion without putting themselves at risk of easy capture. All information, reports, and prisoners were sent to King's Landing in the end. Bran read the reports and shook his head. There had to be some way to tell when the invasion was coming. He had his maesters meet and discuss the issue, but none of them came up with an answer that could be put into use. The only thing they could suggest was to get somehow high enough to see that far from land. This was a task that would take some real intelligence and luck to figure out.