“Would you shut up, girl? People are trying to sleep.” The voice is female and hollow. And Tirik. Bodies shift with displeased grunts as a woman with frizzled hair crawls toward me. She is only in her twenties but the stooped shoulder and hollow face make her look old and frail. There is something not quite sane about her gaze, which darts about the hold without ever stopping on any one point for more than a heartbeat. She stops before me, her hands fiddling with the rope binding my wrists.
The knots come loose, and a whimper I can’t swallow quickly enough escapes my lips. The rough hemp has cut into my skin, making both rope and flesh slick with blood. “Thank you,” I start to say, but she’s already moved on to untying the next captive.
“What’s your name?” I call after the Tirik woman.
She turns back and looks at me as if just realizing I’m there. “Polman. It doesn’t matter. Your name doesn’t matter either, so don’t bother sharing.”
My eyes dart about to the other people in the hold in hopes of finding someone with better faculties, but everyone else is Diante and as new as me. Polman it is, then, crazed gaze and all. “Polman,” I say with a soft voice, the kind used to calm spooked animals. “How long have you been here?”
The woman turns her arm over and stares at her forearm. It takes me a moment to see the lines of thin scars that line it in neat rows. Each mark is about half an inch long and not quite straight. Polman runs her fingers over the scars. “Five months, one week.” She presses a nail of her free hand into flesh until blood flows freely and another small mark decorates the skin. “Four days.” Bringing her mouth to the bubbling blood, she sucks at the wound as if trying to swallow a mouthful.
Bile rises in my throat, and I turn my head for a moment. No wonder the woman is isolated in the hold. I return to Polman’s words. Five months—that’s several months after the earthquake. After we—I—denied the Tirik access to the supplies in the Siaman. The crippling blow had quieted the People’s Republic of Tirik for several months, and then…then the war escalated exponentially. The surprising Tirik victories, the unprecedented suicide attack.
Polman’s attention wanders, and I call back out to her before she scampers off completely. “Where is Lester taking us, do you know?”
“There is no us.” Polman growls at me. “I am going to stay here. I’m useful. Andres himself has said so, he said, Polman is useful. Only those who the Bevnians find useful are granted the privilege of serving them directly. The others go to the village.”
I shift position, and my bruised temple thumps in pain. “Lester spoke of the New Tirik Republic,” I say once I find my voice again. “What happened to the People’s Republic? What were the terms of the alliance?”
“Alliance?” Polman laughs, then interlaces her fingers and bends them in and out. In and out. “The earthquake destroyed us,” she whispers. “There was nothing. There is nothing. Then the Bevnians came. They took us in. Like stray dogs. There is no alliance.”
Storms.
“The Bevnians are superior.” Polman’s words trip on themselves, and she dissolves into muttering. “We must all fulfill our potential in our own tier. An ordered world. A clean and powerful world.”
My head pounds. The People’s Republic of Tirik has been dead and conquered for months, with no one in Lyron knowing. None returning alive from battle to tell. “The Bevnians boarded my ship and took everyone prisoner,” I say, hoping to get something more out of Polman before she loses her hold on sanity. Or I lose the hold on mine. “They took my friends prisoner. Do you know what they want with us?”
“Lester is growing his fleet. Extra people go to the village. Your friends might be here. Might be elsewhere. Might be dead. Are your friends useful? Andres was upset. He needs more useful people to build up his ship, and he got you.”
The door opens, cutting off what passes for conversation between Polman and me. A man appears, the dim lantern in his hands giving his milk-white skin a sickly yellow haze.
Polman crawls toward him, her hands trailing along his thighs. “Hello there, Saarik,” she purrs. “Have you come for me at last?”
Saarik kicks Polman out of his way and counts the prisoners while Polman whimpers. “Nineteen plus the dimwit,” Saarik calls back behind him. “Here is fine.”
“It looks tight, sir,” a younger man replies. He sounds a bit like Andres, but softer, not as jaded.
“There’s only so much quarantine space to pen them,” Saarik barks, shoving another prisoner inside before slamming the door shut.
Relief floods me so hard that I press my palm into the deck to keep steady. “Domenic.”
Domenic’s back is quarterdeck straight, neither the lack of uniform nor the fatigue lining his eyes dispelling his aura of authority. The prisoners who’d cursed me shuffle to give Domenic as much berth as the small space allows. He squints, still adjusting to the gloom. “Nile?” The word escapes his lips and hangs between us. “Goddess. Are you hurt?”
“No.” I shuffle forward and reach for his bindings. Domenic holds still as the knots protest, the hemp biting into bleeding skin. I did this. To him, to me, to everyone. Domenic had told me not to. Asked me not to. “I’m… Domenic—”
Twisting around, Domenic encircles me with his arms, pulling my battered body tightly against his chest. The thump thump thump of his heart echoes against my cheek, the warmth of his body embracing my skin. I only realize I’m crying when the tears cascading down my trembling face overflow onto Domenic’s raw wrists.
Chapter 32
Kyra
Kyra landed on hardwood, which was an improvement after being manhandled between ships, the prisoners’ agony and fear gagging her. The taste was still there, shoving itself down Kyra’s throat, but duller now, as if the emotions of the past hours had scalded her taste buds. At least hardwood was more stable than a rowboat. The thought of water made Kyra shake again. So much water and nothing to drink, so close and so unattainable.
The Bevnians had kept her kneeling half-naked on the deck for most of the night before shoving her into clothes and a boat. Hours of cramping muscles and fear and men’s eyes. And now, still bound, she was here, wherever here was. Kyra had shut her eyes tightly after her first glimpse of the small hold, the world of darkness preferable to reality.
Something—something that was very likely a rat— brushed over Kyra’s calf, and she screamed.
A hand clamped over her mouth.
“And open your bloody eyes,” a voice said into Kyra’s ear, its familiarity making tears stream down her face. She somehow hadn’t cried yet, but now, hearing Catsper, feeling his hand slip from covering her mouth to a calm pressure on her lower back, she shattered into pieces.
Catsper’s voice hardened. “I said, open your eyes.”
Kyra obeyed, blinking to adjust to the gloom. They were in a space three paces wide and four long, the only light coming from a small slit near the overhead and a single lantern. The shapes of two dozen others, all Stardust’s Diante, huddled in what little space they could claim. She could make out the faces of those close to her, but nothing more.
Drawing a shaking breath, Kyra focused on Catsper’s chest, unable to meet his gaze. Although he held his emotions as tightly as ever, Kyra could do the math. He was solid, strong, brave; she was the weakness he found deplorable. “How long have you been here?” Her voice was hoarse.
“Three hours or so.” Cool calm with a trace of annoyance. “Long enough to get myself out of the bindings. Tying everyone up was a fruitless exercise, by the way. No one is doing much moving with or without ropes.”
Kyra swallowed. “Were you expecting an armed uprising?”
“Wouldn’t have been the worst idea.”
She chuckled. Actually chuckled before reality hit again, and so did tears. “Will you let me out of my bindings? Or are you waiting for me to plead?”
Catsper leaned forward on one knee, bringing his lips to Kyra’s ear. “I’m waiting for you to let yourself out of your
bindings.”
Kyra glared at him and pulled against the knots until her shoulders screamed. The hemp only bit deeper into her skin. It hurt, and Kyra hissed as blood beaded on skin.
None of the two dozen Diante men so much as bothered to glance her way. They just sat, breathing the thick air, which felt as though it might end altogether. At least Kyra had been on deck before, out in the open. The hemp scraped her again, and Kyra lowered her trembling wrists. If it took a trained Spade almost three hours to free himself, her pulling would be futile. This whole—
Catsper grasped her shoulders. Not painfully, exactly, but hard enough to draw her full attention. “Stop being a victim.”
“Stop being an ass.”
“If you can burn me, you can burn the ropes, Kyra.”
Kyra blinked. Yes. Yes, she could do that. A small, controlled flame at the rope’s core, just enough to weaken the strands. She should have thought of it herself, but after the effort to ban herself from reaching for fire aboard the ship, she’d overlooked that route entirely.
Tapping into the weak magic pulsing in her blood, Kyra focused the heat to a single point at the rope’s core until the crackle of fiber told her the rope caught alight inside.
“Easy,” Catsper said, his voice steady as he shielded Kyra’s efforts from view. Not that anyone in the hold cared. The two dozen Diante huddled into themselves and prayed.
The rope snapped, flooding Kyra’s shoulders with whimpering relief. She rubbed first her wrists, then the tops of her arms, with aching hands.
Catsper’s gaze surveyed Kyra’s every moment with disconcerting intensity. “Are you injured?”
“I hurt.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Kyra shifted herself to a more comfortable position. Her tears were drying, and her annoyance with the marine was shoving her despair aside. “I’m not dying, which appears to be your only definition of a problem.” She blew out a breath and rubbed her temples. She was a prisoner, stuffed into a hold of a ship run by insane cannibals. Her muscles screamed, her wrists bled, and there was a raw patch on her left hand where the flame had bit her skin. Her mouth was as dry as her stomach was empty. If the Spade wished to pretend none of that was worth consideration, then he was welcome to suffer in self-important silence. This didn’t mean that the rest of the people in the hold had to follow the same Spardic absurdity.
Brushing her hands through what remained of her lush, dark hair, Kyra surveyed the room. Fear and pain hung thick in the air, but that was hardly insightful. What she needed was to talk to these people. Bond.
“Where are you going?” Catsper’s hand clamped around her arm as she started toward the sobbing youth a couple of paces away.
Kyra little bothered wasting strength on trying to pull loose from his grip. “To get everyone calmed and see what they know. Unless you’d like to order everyone to stop whimpering and just cooperate? Maybe they can do some push-ups while they’re at it.”
Catsper’s fingers released her. “Push-ups never harmed anyone yet,” he said, sitting back against the bulkhead, which was as much of a good luck as Kyra was going to get.
Kyra made it three steps before an unfamiliar voice behind the door shouted an order in Tirik.
The prisoners exchanged confused glances.
The order sounded again, and, just in case, Kyra backed away from the door. It swung open a moment later to admit two Bevnian officers into the cell. Both men wore loose black pants and sleeveless vests despite the chilly air. A red-and-black insignia matching the New Republic flag the Arrow flew decorated the men’s left breasts. The larger of the two carried a coiled whip at his belt. The brew of anger and disgust simmering from him blanketed both the prisoners and, if Kyra was correct, the man’s own younger companion.
The younger man, who looked similar enough to Captain Andres to name them brothers, grasped a prisoner’s shoulders and rotated the man to face the bulkhead. Repeating the Tirik command, which seemed to mean face the wall, he similarly manhandled a second prisoner. Firm motions, but not cruel ones. Not until a third prisoner, a proud young Diante whom Kyra had last seen guarding the Stardust’s water caller from accidental injury, stepped back before he could be grabbed.
The older Bevnian officer had his whip free quicker than Kyra could find voice to scream.
“Saarik.” The younger man’s palm rose in a calming gesture, buying the would-be mutineer time to comply before the confrontation escalated.
Kyra’s eyes darted to Catsper. See that? Don’t get stupid.
The marine’s gaze narrowed on hers.
Please.
Catsper sighed and rotated crisply to the bulkhead when the order sounded again, the other prisoners following suit. Another command and more manhandling—efficient if not brutal—translated the new instruction to mean line up and follow. At least there seemed to be a plan, whatever it was.
On deck, Kyra found the other prisoners already sitting in ordered rows. There had to be over a hundred of them, but the three Lyron amid the sea of Diante called attention at once. Lord Vikon sat in the corner, staring dully at a bowl of mush his line had been given. At the other end of the group… Kyra’s gaze met Nile’s, and her chest tightened as the princess bent her head low in an unmistakeable gesture: I’m sorry.
Sorry? Nile was sorry for trying to save the ship? For failing to do the impossible? Kyra shook her head, even though she knew it would do no good. Not yet.
With Kyra’s group settled alongside the others, the Bevnians distributed bowls of something lumpy but fortunately meatless. Kyra’s stomach rumbled, and she made herself swallow, trying to neither taste nor think about what she was eating. The younger Bevnian officer, whom the others called Piranha, nodded his approval to her.
Over the next few hours, the Bevnians initiated an apparent regimen of evaluation and training. Andres, Saarik, and Piranha issued orders in Tirik, then demonstrated the required responses. Prisoners too slow to understand or too unenthusiastic to obey were encouraged with Saarik’s whip, while a unit of armed sentinels wearing bandoliers of prefilled gunpowder cartridges patrolled the deck, their muskets as straight as any marine’s. Around them, over a hundred Tirik prisoners, dressed in worn versions of Kyra’s orange trousers and shirts, watched the initiation with a curious mix of hate, empathy, and satisfaction.
Kyra followed along with the crowd, kneeling to scrub decks, climb up the rigging, and haul a rope when she was told. Nile, Dana, and some of the Diante hands who’d been sailors instead of stewards on the Stardust were quickly pulled off for more advanced work. Catsper, unsurprisingly, managed to get himself assigned to dangerous work aloft, which earned the marine displeased glowers from Dana and Nile both while making Kyra’s throat tighten with each gravity-defying leap.
Finally assigned to laundry duty, Kyra had almost convinced herself that the Arrow was a typical—if harsh—naval ship, when two prisoners who’d failed to make themselves useful were hauled onto the quarterdeck. Kyra recognized the first as the sobbing youth from her hold, now frightened into a stupor. The second, whom Kyra hadn’t met, howled over his crushed left leg, which had fallen victim to a loose gun carriage earlier.
There was no ceremony. Andres and Saarik conferred quietly for a moment, then ordered the two killed.
No, not killed. Butchered.
Bile rose up Kyra’s throat and she darted to vomit over the rail as a Bevnian cook efficiently cleaved and eviscerated the bodies, dumping the entrails overboard before chopping the meat into neat chunks. When Kyra returned to the two troughs set up middeck as her laundry station, a pair of Bevnian Gifted were summoning wind and water to clean the deck while the Bevnian sentinels made a show of drawing powder cartridges from their bandoleers and loading their muskets. Not that any of the remaining prisoners needed a reminder to behave.
After the midday murders, the day became a haze. Catsper, Nile, Domenic, and Vikon appeared and disappeared from Kyra’s field of vision, all busy with one task
or another. As she watched Catsper lope through the rigging, disappearing to a small speck eighty feet above deck, Kyra’s throat closed. The ship swayed with the waves, the masts teetering over open ocean with each wallow. Not that falling onto deck would be much better than slipping into the sea.
The Bevnians allowed only Tirik to be spoken on deck, which effectively gagged the Lyron and Diante prisoners. At one point, mugs of water and weevily ship’s biscuits were distributed, the Bevnians patrolling to ensure that everyone ate and swallowed their portion. By the time Piranha herded Kyra’s group back to its hold, Kyra had energy for nothing but collapse.
The next day began with the same routine, though there was less movement between different tasks as the prisoners’ strengths and weaknesses were better assessed. Some of the daily routine, such as scrubbing decks with a book-sized stone, Kyra recognized from the Helix. The standards appeared less stringent here, the Bevnians demanding speed over detail.
Kyra remained washing laundry, the screaming of her arms and back drowned only by the fear of what awaited her if she stopped. By the third day, however, even the fear failed her. Kyra’s back cramped, the skin on her hands cracked and bled, and, thanks to Saarik’s displeasure as her slowing pace, a welt seared the tender flesh between Kyra’s shoulder blades. By nightfall, Kyra was shaking violently as she collapsed to the deck of the holding pen, her body a heap of exhaustion and pain.
“Sit up.” Catsper’s voice. A foot nudging her ribs.
Kyra shut her eyes tighter, buried her head deeper into her arms.
Catsper nudged her ribs again. In his world, this was likely the equivalent of a friendly embrace, but they weren’t in his world. They weren’t in any world Kyra knew. “Sit up,” said Catsper. “Curling into a ball doesn’t help. I’ve tried it.”
Kyra’s head lifted.
Gripping her shoulders, Catsper hauled her up like a rag doll. His eyes, green and demanding, found hers. “In case you failed to notice, our captors have you valued somewhere between a milking goat and a tolerably good work mule. There is no rescue coming. So make your choice: stay strong and healthy and alive, or feel sorry for yourself and die.”