Long after the sun had set, when the passengers were nestled neatly in their cabins, the crew gathered on the deck of the Dove. They’d been at sea for a fortnight, playing the role of any passenger vessel crew — all “yes, sirs” and “no, miladys” — seeing to the needs of the stiff-legged landsmen with exaggerated obsequiousness. But no more.
Rake stood at the helm, just below the Nameless Captain, as was his place. The ragged crew below them were the captain’s men, chosen for their savagery, their drunkenness, and their predilection for thievery and murder. But it was Rake they answered to at sea.
“It’s time,” Rake said, and the men scattered belowdecks.
Sleep-fogged passengers were pulled roughly from their bunks and dragged, questioning and sputtering, to the foredeck. The captain scoffed; even their nightwear was finery, silks with careful stitching.
As was ritual, the strongest man was pulled from the ranks of the passengers and forced to his knees. On this particular voyage, he was a spice merchant named Mr. Lam, headed to the Floating Islands without his wife and his children to see about the famous marketplace there. He could be no more than twenty-five.
“Come on, then, Florian,” Rake said. “Time to earn your britches.”
It had been Rake’s idea: The name change. The men’s clothes. Being a slip of a girl may have been tenable in Crandon, but it wasn’t here on the Dove. Not among these men. In taking this man’s life, Flora could start a new one. Her life as Florian.
The cost was simple. Rake slipped Florian a dagger.
“Show them,” Rake whispered. Not just the passengers, as was Florian’s official charge, but the other sailors aboard the Dove. They needed to see who this child was, the man this girl had become. Rake could tell from the solemn nod Florian gave that he understood Rake’s words exactly.
The child stepped forward, and though he was small-boned and skinny from strict rations, the passengers fell silent. The long, silver dagger in Florian’s hand shone like the moon in an otherwise black night.
The Nameless Captain cleared his throat, all theater and cruelty. “It gives me no great pleasure to announce to you fine people that the Dove is no passenger vessel. She is a slaver. And all of you aboard are now her chattel.”
Sobs and cries of dissent rippled through the passengers. One foolish old man even cursed at the captain. A blow from Rake across the man’s chin crumpled his aged and spindly legs for him, and he hit the deck with a crash of bone on wood. The scuffle only caused more shouting and wailing until the captain raised his pistol into the air and fired once.
Silence returned, save for the sound of the sea lapping against the Dove.
“If any of you are thinking of mutiny, I can promise you” — he motioned to Florian, who slipped behind the trembling Mr. Lam, dagger poised —“we don’t take kindly to mutineers.”
Though the man begged for clemency at a whisper, Florian dragged the dagger across his throat. Lam’s blood spilled down the front of his nightshirt, and his thick, muscled body fell to the deck. Two of the crewmen hauled the dying man up by the armpits and held him for passengers to witness how the last shudders of life left him. Florian wiped the blood from the blade on his sleeve.
With the passengers now sufficiently terrified, the captain had them locked into the slave quarters, in the hold of the ship. The Dove’s spacious cabins would be used henceforth by the crew, who until then had been taking turns in the hammocks strung up in the stores.
Belowdecks, the passengers wept.
Abovedeck, the crew chanted, “Florian, Florian, Florian, Florian!”
He was a captain’s man now — Rake had seen to that. As safe as he could be among his peers. The child had competently changed stories more than once, and swiftly, too. Rake had seen it happen. What was one more seismic shift? From child to adult. Innocent to murderer. Girl to man.
And Florian, who still had Mr. Lam’s blood on his sleeve, smiled into the darkness.
Evelyn washed her hands again. The telltale sand under her fingernails stubbornly resisted the fine soap from Quark that her mother, the Lady Hasegawa, had imported especially for her. Her mother claimed that only a foreign soap meant for rice-paddy farmers could possibly conquer Evelyn’s dirty fingernails, since her habits were far too coarse for a good Imperial girl.
It was a rude thing to have said, but more so because the Lady said it in front of her lady’s maid, who was from Quark.
And sure, maybe digging about the shore near their home looking for shells was not a most ladylike activity. The whole coastline was black from the filth of the Crandon port. Crandon was the capital of the Nipran Empire, and nearly every type of trading vessel passed through her waters. But it was not so dirty that lovely pink and white shells could not be excavated by those with the patience to do it.
Evelyn had convinced her own lady’s maid, Keiko, that the Lady Hasegawa would never again find out that she’d been scrounging on the shore. But now Evelyn was carelessly close to breaking that promise, which could lose Keiko her job, not to mention any reference the Lady Hasegawa might give her. But still. Somehow Evelyn could not be called away from her messy hobby. It was as though the sea called to her especially.
“Miss, the Lady has called for you again,” Keiko said. She was a little frantic now. As Evelyn’s maid, she’d been subjected to all manner of admonishment for Evelyn’s many irresponsibilities, but mainly her tardiness. This afternoon’s tea would be no exception.
“I’m sorry, Keiko. Truly. But look at this one!” Evelyn held up a whelk shell. A spiral of blue worked its way from tip to door, and only the very point of its apex had been snapped off. “It’s practically intact!”
“Hold still.” Keiko grabbed Evelyn’s hands and, finger by finger, dragged the blunt end of a sewing needle beneath the nail, scraping out the grit. It hurt, and one of her fingers bled, but Evelyn was glad for Keiko’s help. She always was.
“Thank goodness for you, Keiko,” Evelyn whispered, “or my mother would’ve disowned me years ago.”
Keiko smiled, gave Evelyn a nudge with her shoulder. “Thanks to the Emperor, you mean. Now go, please. Before I’m sacked and you’re cut out of the family.”
Evelyn gave Keiko a quick kiss on the cheek and ran to the sukiya, where her mother’s tea ceremony was held every day.
The Lady Hasegawa and Evelyn had been staying in their Crandon home since Lord Hasegawa had been forced to take a consultancy role in the family’s shipping company. The Hasegawas had come upon hard times in recent years, and though the Lady Hasegawa would never admit it, they had all but abandoned their country manor and nearly all of their staff. And though they were still attended to by a handful of footmen, ladies’ maids, guards, a cook, and a gardener, one could scarcely ignore the conspicuous lack of service in their household. Hasegawa was an old name, and it was her father’s dishonor that they were not better kept.
So many servants gone meant that Evelyn had hardly any family left, either. The servants had been the ones who had raised her, after all. It had been her nanny who’d kissed her skinned knees, the stable boys who’d played chase. She barely knew her parents, and they certainly did not know her.
However, without fail, the Lady Hasegawa still demanded the high tea ceremony each afternoon, and Evelyn’s presence was mandatory. Evelyn wasn’t exactly sure why. While she liked a good rice ball as much as anyone, tea was invariably boring and painfully tedious, especially in the summer, when there was so much to see and do.