“Don’t talk like that,” the first sailor said gruffly. “We have an Adessian captain. If anyone will know how to negotiate, he will.”
“We’re goin’ t’die,” the young sailor said, louder this time. “We’re all goin’ t’die!”
“Shut up,” said the first sailor.
“Why should he?” asked the third. “It’s death or slavery, since Adessian pirates have a better market for slaves than silks these days. They’ll kill us or sell us. We’ll be lucky if they kill us.”
The boy began to whimper.
“Cap’n will handle it,” said the first, but there was doubt in his voice this time. “If he can’t negotiate, he’ll fight. He won’t let his ship go — or his men go — without a fight.”
The other sailor scoffed. “Fight? With what? Sheep? The Cap’n won’t fight. He’s Adessian, like them. He’d sell us before he’d die for us.”
Joslyn had heard enough. She followed the Captain’s voice to the far side of the ship, bracing herself for an argument she knew she had to win.
The first mate saw her approaching first.
“Why aren’t you working?” he growled at Joslyn. “Go help the men hide what we can while we still have the chance.”
“Hiding won’t help,” Joslyn said.
The Captain whirled to face her, the stars tattooed around his left eye crinkling as he scowled. “He gave you an order, woman. Now stop your insolence and go help.”
“We can beat the pirates,” Joslyn said. “I’m a veteran of the Imperial Army, and — ” She’d been about to add that she had been a member of the palace guard, but they wouldn’t believe that. Women weren’t palace guards. Especially not Terintan women. “Give me a handful of fighting men to organize, and I promise we will beat them.”
The first mate cocked his head thoughtfully. But the Captain huffed impatiently.
Joslyn had told them that she was a veteran heading home from the Eastern front to Paratheen when they’d hired her on at Reit. It had been her intention to sell her services as a guard, but they hadn’t accepted that. Instead, they’d offered free passage and quarter (in the ship’s hold, it turned out, with the livestock) in exchange for being a “seaman’s assistant.”
“Seaman’s assistant,” apparently, meant that Joslyn was obligated to clear the waste of both livestock and sailors each day, scrub the decks when requested, and join the other “assistants” in pumping out the stinking bilge water.
It was alright. Joslyn had been a slave before. She could be a slave again, so long as her internment ended the moment they docked in Paratheen.
“We can beat them,” Joslyn told the ship’s captain for the third time. Her tone was placid — soothing, even.
“No,” the Captain said. He turned seaward again, gazing at the rapidly approaching longship. When he spoke again, it was more to himself than to Joslyn or the first mate. “I know their type. If we negotiate, their Rizalt will take what he wants and send us on our way. If we fight, he will show no mercy.”
“You’re right,” Joslyn said to the Captain’s back, her voice still calm and unhurried. “The Rizalt will take what he wants. But what he wants isn’t mushrooms, Captain. Imperial slaves fetch high prices on the Islands.” She paused. “You know this to be true. You know it better than most of the other men on this ship.”
The first mate, still facing Joslyn beside the Captain, shifted uncomfortably at this. He was an Empire native, probably a Port Lorsiner, and Joslyn guessed he hadn’t thought about the possibility of the pirates demanding slaves. The first mate’s eyes darted skeptically from Joslyn, to the Captain, to the crewmen behind them.
A slave raid would leave any Adessians untouched — that was the unwritten rule. But Empire men?
“Captain?” the first mate said warily. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe we’re better off taking our chances in a fight.”
The Captain squinted at the rising sun. The longship, though still only a smudge on the horizon, had grown noticeably closer, close enough that Joslyn could see the longship’s oars moving up and down in the water.
“Eight men,” Joslyn said. “Give me eight men who can hold their own in a fight, and I will make sure that this ship retains both its cargo and its crew. And I will make sure their Rizalt ends this day at the bottom of the sea.”
“Please, Captain,” said the first mate, putting a hand on the Captain’s shoulder. “I promised me wife I’d come home again. I don’t want to leave her with a son and baby girl to raise by ’erself.”
The Captain hesitated. Then he spat over the railing. “Very well,” he said. He jabbed a sausage-thick finger in Joslyn’s direction. “But if we lose, you’re the first one I’m giving to the pirates.” He looked her up and down. “I’m sure they’ll enjoy a fresh piece of desert arse. Especially if you don’t make it easy for them.”
Like an ocean swell, fury rose from deep within Joslyn, and for a moment she thought she might make the ship’s captain the first one to flail like a speared fish on the end of her sword. But the wave of her anger dissipated, and Joslyn only lifted her chin.
“We won’t lose,” she said.
2
~ THEN ~
“…Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Ready or not, here I come!” Mylla called.
Beside her big sister, Adela squirmed and pressed a hand to her mouth, suppressing a giggle. Tasia grabbed the girl’s free hand and squeezed it, put a finger to her lips. They certainly had a good hiding place, a narrow closet in Adela’s bedchamber hidden by a false panel that Tasia’s new handmaid was unlikely to detect. The palace was full of secret places like this one — closets that were invisible unless you knew where to look, passageways that wormed their way between bedchambers and beneath kitchens, entire rooms built by long-dead monarchs whose existence even the Wise Men didn’t know about.
But Tasia knew them. Before Nik died, he and Tasia had drawn up their own maps of the palace and its grounds. Now Tasia would pass on her knowledge to little Adela, even if the only way the girl, who didn’t share Tasia and Nik’s passion for exploring, could be convinced to learn them was through playing endless rounds of hide-and-find.
Thinking of Nik brought tears to her eyes, and she squeezed her sister’s hand tighter. Tasia still had Adela. Her mother was gone. Nik was gone. But she still had Adela, and she would not lose her. No matter what.
“Oww, Tasia,” Adela hissed in the darkness, shaking her hand loose from Tasia’s. “Too hard.”
Through the narrow crack of the panel Tasia had left open, she saw Mylla cross first this way, then that way. At the sound of Adela’s whisper, she stopped, rotated in the center of the room.
Tasia cocked her head, watching the handmaid. She liked being able to watch the girl without her staring being seen. Two days earlier, on the one-year anniversary of Nik’s death, Mylla had kissed her. Tasia had been sitting at her vanity, and Mylla had been seated just behind, brushing out her hair. Tasia’s thoughts turned towards her brother, turned towards the way Father hadn’t even mentioned the anniversary, and silent tears had fallen from her eyes, rolled down her cheeks, hung, then fell, from her chin. Mylla must have seen it all in the mirror, because she set the brush down and began to undress the Princess. It was a normal enough ritual, for a handmaid to undress her mistress. But there was something loaded in the careful movements of Mylla’s fingers as they loosened the ties of Tasia’s brassiere. A few seconds later, to Tasia’s breathless surprise, Mylla had bent to catch one of Tasia’s exposed nipples between her teeth. After releasing it, the handmaid had taken Tasia’s chin in one hand, turned her face, and kissed her.