The Guild of the Cowry Catchers
Book 3 Ashes
Deluxe Illustrated Edition
By: Abigail Hilton
* * * * *
Smashwords Edition
Published by: Abigail Hilton
Cover Art by: Sarah Cloutier
Map and Cover Design by: Jeff McDowall
© 2010 Abigail Hilton. All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This material may not be reproduced, modified, or distributed without the express prior permission of the copyright holder. Artwork is displayed by agreement with the artists. All artists were paid for their work and hold the copyrights to that work.
Special thanks to the people who read this book as I wrote it.
Amy
Anita
Hughes
Jeff
Mistie
Molly
Patsy
Table of Contents
Chapter 25. Thank You and I’m Sorry
Chapter 27. A Stupid Thing to Do
Chapter 31. Good Days and a Bad Night
This is an illustrated book. Some of these illustrations are rich watercolors. They look good on a black and white screen, but they look stunning in color. To enjoy this book fully, I urge you to open the document at least once in one of the numerous free eReaders or apps that have been created for computers, phones, and tablets.
The Prophet of Panamindorah
The Guild of the Cowry Catchers
Out of the Ashes, Illustrated
Shores Beyond the World, Illustrated
The Complete Series (Not Illustrated)
Other Books
Crossroads: Short Stories from Panamindorah
Feeding Malachi, an Illustrated Children’s Chapter Book
Gerard Holovar, Captain of the Temple Police, was only trying to do the right thing when he spared the life of a pirate. He gambled. And he lost.
Now, mired in grief and choking on despair, he stumbles through days of slave labor, mourning his loved ones and trying to understand where he went wrong. His life as a prince and Captain of Police becomes a hazy memory. When Gerard’s luck finally changes, he emerges from the slave deck of a ship—free, but numb and scarred. He plans to leave Wefrivain, believing that everything he knew and loved is dead.
Gerard may have let go of his past, but his past hasn’t quite let go of him. While struggling to survive as an escaped slave in the wilderness of the Lawless Lands, Gerard finds a friend in even more desperate straits—a friend who betrayed him, a friend he thought was dead. Gerard realizes that, while he could not save everyone, he may be able to save one person. And perhaps here, in the ashes of their lives, there may still be time for second chances.
Ashes is the third illustrated book in the Guild of the Cowry Catchers series. This 60,000-word book is DRM-free and carefully formatted. It includes 5 character portraits, 17 full-page illustrations, and 2 versions of the map (one optimized for color and one for black and white). Cowry Catchers looks beautiful on a black-and-white viewer, but you can also open this eBook on a color screen and view the illustrations in their full glory. Learn more at www.cowrycatchers.com.
Map optimized for color.
Map optimized for black and white screens.
Now we come to the nadir,
the twilight of the tale,
where even music stutters,
and all words fail.
—Thessalyn Holovar, ballad
Gerard woke in a dark place. His head was throbbing. He was naked. He knew something bad had happened, but he couldn’t remember what. He tried not to remember.
He heard voices muttering nearby. “Never get that one past inspection.”
“He’s got the tattoo. That means it’s alright.”
“It means it’s legal. It doesn’t mean it’s alright.”
“Some harbor masters—”
“He’s too good to waste in a galley. Look at those legs. He’d run like a zed.”
“No airships until spring, though.”
“Mill, perhaps?”
Gerard slept again. He dreamed of wind chimes. The noise they made was like weeping.
He woke with someone shaking him. “You’ve got to eat, Black Boots.”
He saw light—a tiny candle. It blinded him. Someone shoved a cup into his hands. Stew. He started to put it down, but something slapped him in the back of the head—not hard, but it hurt. He had a bruise back there. Spider bite? No, that was longer ago. This happened more recently when…when… A horrible thing. Don’t remember.
“Eat.”
Gerard drank the stew. It tasted like ashes and tears. He lay down again.
Gerard dreamed that something was searching for him, something terrible, and it hurt his head and made the muscles in his eyes twitch. But he dreamed that the thing wandered around in his head and could not find him, that he’d changed beyond all recognition, that it looked him in the face and did not know him, and so it withdrew, disappointed, still searching.
The shelt with the stew came several times. Occasionally Gerard heard voices. He didn’t try to make sense of them or connect the things they said.
“He may look like a racer, but I think you got a bad deal. He’s sick. Didn’t they have an outbreak of jungle plague in Maijha?”
“Yes, but it only killed fauns.”
“Whatever. Something’s wrong with him.”
“Well, wouldn’t something be wrong with you if you woke up in a cage with a leon tattoo?”
Laughter.
“No one will believe it. He’s just too big.”
“I’m telling you, that’s the chief inspector’s tattoo, and the papers are legitimate. Whoever his enemies are, they have connections. You can sell him anywhere.”
“It would be easier if he didn’t look so healthy.”
“We can fix that.”
Sometime later, Gerard woke with half a dozen shelts holding him down. “Easy, Sad Eyes. Hold still.”
“What are you—?” began Gerard, and then someone slapped him across the face.
“None of that.”
Someone was cutting his hair. He could hear the click of shears. He forced his eyes open in the candle light. He realized his face was swollen. Someone had beaten him. Several grishnards were at work on his legs, shaving patches of hair. Gerard stared at them, then suddenly kicked with his claws. They leapt back, unable to hold him down. One shelt was gripping his arm where Gerard had scratched him. Blood began to ooze between his fingers.
“Well, that won’t work.”
They tied him. They hardly ever spoke to him, not directly. Gerard didn’t care what they did, but he didn’t like sharp pain. It woke him too much, brought the world into focus. He wanted to sleep, just sleep.
They shaved his head, nicking him frequently. They shaved his legs and flanks in random patches, so that he looked mangy. Then they cut his claws. They cut deep, to the quick, and wrapped his paws in rags soaked in alcohol. It hurt terribly. They let him scream, but whenever he tried to talk, they hit him.
“None of that, Boots. You’re a leon now, and we don’t want any of your mouth. Keep it shut unless you want us to cut out your tongue.”
My name is Gerard, he thought with the first flare of anger in…what? Days? Months?
Wind chimes. Don’t remember.
They left him trembling with pain in the corner of his cage, his bloody paws drawn up beneath him. He slept and woke and drank the tasteless stew and slept.
Sometime later, a grishnard came, wearing plain, sturdy clothes. He looked at Gerard, poked him, opened his mouth, and then took him away on the end of a chain. They tied his hands and put a hobble on his feet. They didn’t give him any clothes. The clink of the chain reminded Gerard of something. Bells? No. Chimes.
He staggered in the doorway of the building. It was night, but the cool evening air smelled of the sea, reminded him of a foggy dawn, a twisted harp. Gerard retched, choking on bile and tears. Thess.
The strange grishnard pulled at his chain. The one who’d been feeding him talked rapidly. “He’s a bit temperamental, just takes an occasional touch of the whip, but he’s strong. Look at him, very strong.”
“And very big,” said the new grishnard sarcastically. “Huge, in fact, for a leon.”
“Yes, amazing, isn’t it?” chattered his previous owner. “Would you like to look at his papers again? You’re getting an amazing bargain.”
“You’re lucky to even sell him,” growled the merchant. “Give him a smack for me. I want him out of the street and into my cart.”
They loaded him into some sort of box on the back of a cart. Gerard watched the lights of the buildings pass and wondered which island he was on. He didn’t really care. He just wondered. They rode for a long time, and Gerard fell asleep. When they brought him out of the box, Gerard found he was in the high mountains beside a river. A mill sat on the river, and he was to turn a windlass that operated part of its machinery.
I must be on Haplag. The large, fertile island produced much of Wefrivain’s grain.
They unchained another shelt before chaining Gerard to the windlass. The previous slave was some sort of faun. Gerard couldn’t tell what kind because he was nearly hairless or featherless from parasites and poor nutrition. He’d also been blinded. The ruined sockets of his eyes turned toward the noise of Gerard’s entrance. His head jerked around like a beast, sniffing. He never tried to speak as they unchained him and led him away. Gerard never saw him again, but the stew they fed him for the next yellow month had tough, ropy bits of meat that Gerard had to chew and chew.
He turned the windlass. He walked when they said walk, and he stopped when they said stop. He supposed he saw the same shelts come and go each day in the mill, but he did not try to memorize their faces, couldn’t have picked them out in a crowd. He tried to speak once to tell them that sand had fallen into the mill with the grain. They beat him. He stopped speaking to them.
His claws grew again. He understood now why the slavers hadn’t truly declawed him—hadn’t cut off his toes at the first joint as he’d seen done to some house slaves. He needed his claws for traction on the stone floor. His hair and fur grew, but not as thick or glossy as before. He finally saw the tattoo on his right shoulder—the mark of a leon, a lion shelt, inspected and declared to be non-grishnard and suitable for slave labor.
At night they lengthened the chains on his wrists, which ran through eyelets in the beam he pushed. The chains could be made long enough for him to lie down. He received one blanket. He was often cold. It was wintertime, and the mill was high in the mountains. The windlass stood in an open-sided structure, and sometimes snow covered the ground a few paces from where he lay.
At first, he slept well in spite of this. All he wanted to do was sleep. He slept even in the daytime, dozing on his feet whenever they didn’t need him. But as one red month drifted into the next, sleep became more difficult. He had terrible dreams. Sometimes he woke screaming, sometimes sobbing. He saw Thessalyn everywhere. Once he thought he saw her at the mill. It was just a female grishnard come to pick up flour, but for a moment, the back of her head reminded him of Thess.
Sometimes his dreams were cruelly sweet. He dreamed she’d come to get him, that she appeared one day and purchased him from the miller, and they ran away to live in the mountains. He even dreamed of Silveo, dreamed he came to the mill, that Gerard had been sold without his knowledge and he’d been looking for months, that Thess was alive and they all ran away to the Lawless Lands. He dreamed that Alsair came to rescue him, that Gwain came, that Leopaard came.
But no one came.
The cold days slipped away, and Gerard grew thinner. The ration they gave him might have been just enough to sustain a shelt the size of a faun or even a leon, but it was not enough for a grishnard, certainly not one of Gerard’s size. He sat awake at night, shivering and hungry, tormented by fleas, and thought.
Why did you do this, Silveo? Did Morchella make you? Was it Arundel’s idea? Did killing me seem too much like an act of mercy? Did you have to prove you were right—show me once and for all that you’re not a nice person? Was it not enough for me to have my heart ripped out in that room? Did you need to give me time to think about it, lots of time to think and hurt? Did you need to know I died in chains, exhausted and lonely?
Gerard wondered what his father had said when he heard the news. Did you think that Thess and I got what we deserved? Did you shed any tears for us?
He wondered if Thessalyn had been right about her pregnancy. Did I lose another child as well as my soul mate? Did the wyverns take that, too?
Gerard was tormented by what-ifs and might-have-beens. Where did I go irrevocably wrong? When did this become inevitable?
He thought sometimes that he had done a horrible thing by ever loving Thessalyn. If I had kept my hands off her, she might be on Holovarus right now, my unofficial mother, birthing my bastard siblings. She would be alive, and so would her children, and Alsair and I would be in our rightful places.
What if I’d obeyed when Silveo told me not to come to Maijha Minor? If I’d never read that book, would Thessalyn and I have escaped in the spring with a new baby?
What if I hadn’t saved Gwain? What if I’d tied him up and taken him back to Lecklock for Morchella’s dragons? Would that have saved Thess?
He even wondered what would have happened if Leopaard hadn’t fallen in love with a fauness from Maijha Minor. If Gwain had never been born, might Thessalyn be harping, even now, in one of the wealthiest courts in Wefrivain, a lovely and dignified queen?
What if Silveo had succeeded in killing Leopaard all those years ago? Then Gwain might not have had the resources to create the Guild of the Cowry Catchers. Gerard might never have saved his life, never made Morchella angry.
What if I’d tried to kill Morchella in her temple that night? What if I’d drawn my sword and struck? Could I have succeeded? Even if the wyvern came out of the pool…Silveo said they can be killed. Did I doom us all with my cowardice?
Sometimes he hated Silveo. I should have let him wash overboard during that storm before Holovarus. He stabbed me for saving him. That should have been a sign. Stupid, stupid, Gerard. I should have killed him when I found him poisoned on Mance. That was the last time he told me clearly what he was going to do, and I didn’t listen! Alsair was right! I shouldn’t have thrown him off the Watersprite when it was full of spiders. Why did I do that for someone who kept threatening to kill me?
Other times, Gerard missed Silveo. He couldn’t help it. He missed his jokes, missed his smile, missed the complexity and challenge he’d brought into Gerard’s life. You said it would kill you when you had to kill me. Did it?
He missed Alsair, missed his warmth and his chatter and the wind of their speed as they flew. He missed feeling like a boy again—that peculiar way Alsair made him feel, the parental way he’d always looked after Gerard. Morchella looked through his eyes at the end, and it destroyed us, but that wasn’t his fault. He didn’t want it. He didn’t know.
When he was honest with himself, Gerard felt certain Alsair was dead. They probably shot you in the courtyard as soon as they had me down. Or maybe you came crashing through the window, tried to save me, and died on somebody’s sword. That would have been like you.
More than anything, he missed Thessalyn. He missed her smile, her music that had always soothed and quieted his guilt and fears. He missed her council, her body, her love. He felt as though a warm place in his soul had been cut out and filled with vinegar and ice water.
He grew desperate to speak, to hear his own voice. He would talk, sometimes, to the wild animals that came to the river to drink at night, and when there were no animals, he began to talk to the moons.
I’m going insane.
He thought of the blind faun who’d turned the windlass before him. What would it be like to be trapped inside your own head that way? Did I live all my life on the blood and tears of shelts like that? Did I eat food made by them, made of them? Sleep in buildings they constructed, serve on ships they rowed? Gerard had always considered himself a merciful person, aware of suffering, correcting it where he could. Now he realized he’d been quite oblivious.
He was intensely, achingly lonely. He wondered what Thessalyn would have done—and then he knew. He stopped talking to the moons and started talking to the Firebird. He told him about his grief and anger and sorrow, and when he was done with that, he told him stories about Thess and Silveo and Alsair, and even Jaleel and his father.
That helped. He wasn’t sure it meant anything, wasn’t sure he believed in the Firebird the way Thessalyn had, but it helped. He sang sometimes, too. Gerard’s voice was too low for good solo singing, and he didn’t have the training, but he sang anyway at night in the moonlight, every song he could remember that Thessalyn had sung. He was particularly distressed when he couldn’t remember the words to some of her songs. He badly wanted to remember the one she’d sung with the pegasus on the way to Lecklock. He could recall some of the tune, but the words had been High Grishnard, ancient and unused, and he’d not understood most of them to begin with.
The days began to lengthen and the nights got a little warmer. The spring rains came. Gerard heard his owners commenting that the rains were particularly heavy this year. Then, one night, the river flooded.
The river exploded down the mountain in a roiling wall of snowmelt and debris, crashed over its banks, and swept through the mill. Gerard barely woke in time to leap up onto his beam, but that was as far as his chains would allow. He stood on the beam and pressed himself against the lee of the windlass. The icy torrent rose rapidly to his chest. A branch caught him in the ribs and nearly swept him from his perch. Something metal from the mill sliced into his leg.
He could hear the cries of the miller and his family, who lived in the upper story of the building. Soon he saw them racing down the stairs, grabbing equipment that had not yet washed away, trying to salvage some of the grain.
Gerard shouted for help. He didn’t care if they beat him, so long as they didn’t leave him in the cold, dark water. He saw the miller hesitate, lantern in hand. Gerard could see the fear and disgust in his eyes. You’re going to leave me, Gerard thought numbly, because you’re afraid of me. You’ve been cruel to me, and you hate me because you’ve been cruel. You know I could kill you. You’ll never let me off this chain.
He had a sudden clear memory of that morning after the storm on the way to Holovarus. “We couldn’t keep up with the leak,” Silveo had said, “and all the rowers drowned.”
I was sad and disgusted, Gerard thought, for about a count of ten, and then I forgot about them. He had some idea of how they must have felt as the water rose around him. Snow was floating in it, bitterly cold. It rose to his chin and hovered there. Gerard was jerked off his feet twice as something caught his chain, and both times he was sure he would never get back to the surface. The chain dragged him down, and the cold water shocked the air from his lungs. The current wrenched him back and forth like a weight at the end of a fishing line. His wrists were on fire. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes or tail. Every time cold water began to feel disturbingly comfortable, a wave of warmth from some mountain hot spring would churn around him, bring the pins and needles into his hands and feet.
Half my life I’ve spent at sea, and I’m going to drown in a mill!
Silveo would think this is funny, reflected Gerard as he regained his perch for the second time. Not in a mean way; he would just appreciate the irony.
Even regaining the beam offered little comfort. The mill groaned around him, shifted on its foundations. He wondered whether the whole building might come down on his head, miller’s family and all.
He stood in the freezing flood all night, teeth chattering uncontrollably, and at some point, he realized he was fighting to survive. If I want to die, all I have to do is take a step. He did not want to. He wanted to live.
Morning found the water at chest level and not so icy. The sun came out. The current no longer seemed to be carrying quite as many tree branches, but he remained pressed against the lee of the windlass. Gerard could feel exhaustion like a hand on his shoulders, pushing him down. He caught himself slumping, unable to feel his feet or even his legs. Several times he dozed, and his face slipped below the surface. Then he would rise, sputtering and panicking, desperately resolving to stay awake. The water didn’t feel cold anymore. It felt warm. He wanted to dip his head and shoulders, get them warm, too.
“Look up, Gerard.”
Gerard looked up. No one had spoken directly to him in so long. He blinked. There was a griffin sitting in the rafters of the mill—not a very big griffin, maybe half grown. Its feathers were the most beautiful color he’d ever seen—like beaten gold, and so smooth the creature could have been made of metal. It seemed faintly luminous amid the rafters.
“Where did you come from?” asked Gerard.
The griffin shook its feathers. “From far away, although I used to live here. You’ve been calling me.”
I’m hallucinating, thought Gerard, but it was more pleasant than thoughts of drowning. “I don’t think I have,” he said. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Phoenix,” said the griffin.
“Can you get me out of the water, Phoenix?”
The griffin didn’t answer him. Gerard hadn’t entirely expected it to. Instead, the creature dropped down gently on its golden wings, and Gerard was sure then that he was dreaming, because the griffin seemed to melt into him. He felt warm all over, as though he had a flame in his chest. He could feel his fingers and toes again, his tail, everything. And he remembered the words to Thessalyn’s song about the pegasus. He sang them quietly to himself until evening, when the water finally receded.
* * * *
Much later, Gerard was vaguely aware of someone nudging him with a boot. Gerard lay crumpled against the windlass in the ankle-deep water. The miller gave a startled hiss as he moved. “Wyverns in waterspouts! It’s alive!”
It’s alive, agreed Gerard in his head. I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.
But he wasn’t well. The miller’s wife tended him and seemed surprised that he didn’t have frostbite. However, he was bruised all over. One of his wrists felt broken, and he had a gaping wound in his flank where some sharp bit of debris had cut him. By dawn of the next day, he was feverish. He lay in the blankets they’d given him and shivered while grishnards worked to clean up the mill.
He was no better the next day, drifting in and out of consciousness. He saw Thessalyn walking around the millhouse, and he was hurt that she wouldn’t speak to him—not even she, now that he was a slave. He saw Silveo, wearing his white selkie leather hat and bright blue wool. He tried to speak to Gerard, but no words came out, only the sound of wind chimes. Gerard’s dreams grew nightmarish. He could no longer distinguish what was real. He felt dreadfully cold all the time, although he heard voices murmuring that he was burning with fever.
In one of his more lucid moments, he thought, They’ll give me to the pots now, because I can’t turn the windlass. I’ll be the first month’s meal for the next slave. And then he dreamed for a long time, and when he woke, it was dark and he could smell the sea.
Gerard woke to the familiar motion of a ship. He was lying in a hammock. He could hear voices.
“—if you can make something of this one. He wasn’t expensive, so not much wasted in any case. If he’s a leon, then I’m a hydra, but it keeps down the price, eh? He’s got wonderful arms for rowing.”
Gerard saw a shadow bending over him. In the dim light of the swinging lantern, he made out a girl’s face. That surprised him—light brown skin, dark eyes, black hair, probably in her twenties. She looked at him minutely. “You’re Gerard Holovar.” Her voice was utterly emotionless.
Gerard felt a moment of panic. He’d grown almost comfortable in his
anonymity. Was this some shelt he’d wronged? Some relative of one
of those grishnard prisoners he’d killed so long ago on the Foam?
A friend of Resistance workers? A friend of one of those countless
fauns who’d died on Maijha Minor (and, for all Gerard knew, all
over Wefrivain)? Was she even a grishnard? He couldn’t tell from
where he lay. Her skin was the right color, but gazumelle
had
skin that shade, too.
The girl watched him. Her face was difficult to read. Curious, maybe? She didn’t look angry or excited. Gerard started to relax. He risked words. “Where am I?”
“The Mantis,” she said at once. “We’re an escort for merchant ships.”
Gerard thought about that. It felt amazing to speak and be spoken to
and not
hit.
“You’re very sick,” said the girl.
As if to illustrate this, Gerard began to cough—a thick, bubbly
sound. “Who
are you?” he managed between hacking.
“Ship’s healer,” said the girl.
Gerard stared at her.
“I’m new,” she added, as though that explained things.
“I’ve never met a female ship’s healer.” He tried to sound friendly, although his voice felt like an unfamiliar instrument. He didn’t want to insult her. At this moment he would say or do almost anything to retain her goodwill.
She nodded. “I don’t think they would have hired me, except they were all too sick to argue, and then I got them well.”
Gerard thought about Basil’s story of how he’d met Silveo. “Was
the ship in
quarantine?”
She nodded. “In Merdent.”
“You must be a good healer.” Gerard felt like he was babbling, but he couldn’t stop. He coughed again, nearly gagged.
“Rest,” she said.
“What’s your name?” asked Gerard.
She hesitated. “Dark Heart.”
Gerard was taken aback. “That’s what your mother called you?”
She looked at him, her face a perfect blank, and didn’t answer. Gerard felt himself bristle, but her eyes weren’t especially dilated, and the pupils weren’t ragged. Finally, she said, “The sailors didn’t like that name.”
I should think not. A female aboard who calls herself Dark Heart.
“They shortened it to Dakar,” she continued.
“I like that better,” said Gerard. He could have kicked himself. Idiot. Stop blabbering as though you were at a court dinner. You’re a galley slave. Why should she care what you like?
But she didn’t seem annoyed. “It’s a good name, then?”
“It’s a name,” said Gerard, wondering where in Wefrivain she could have come from. “It won’t frighten the sailors, at least. Did you grow up in the crescent, Dakar?”
She thought for a moment and nodded.
Something else occurred to him. She looked like a young adult, and
yet... “Dakar,
how old are you?”
She just looked at him—that perfectly blank expression. Then she walked away.
Gerard slept for most of the next few days. He was exhausted from his ordeal, but he had an idea that Dakar (who turned out to be a grishnard) was dosing him with sleeping drugs. The room he occupied contained a dozen hammocks and places to hang several more. It included her little dispensary, and Gerard was pretty sure she slept somewhere in the back. He had no sense of day or night, because the infirmary was below decks and windowless. Gerard was dimly aware of other shelts coming and going, sometimes occupying the hammocks for brief periods.
As time passed, he slept less, and Dakar gave him less medicine. She fed him well and eventually let him get up and walk around the room. He was wobbly, but improving. She rarely initiated conversation, but she never scolded or hit him for doing so. Sometimes she even responded.
Gerard wondered whether she was a prostitute. He could not imagine an unconnected, unprotected female remaining unmolested on the average grishnard ship. She was beautiful in her way. Mountain grishnard ancestry, he thought. Her black hair had the sheen of a raven’s wing, and her black eyes in certain lights seemed to show the same dark rainbow—like the colors in an oil slick on water. She didn’t dress like a prostitute, nor did she act like one. Gerard concluded that she must have become the mistress of the ship’s captain, or of some other important person on board. That would give her protection and legitimacy.
He thought this until one day when a grishnard sailor came into the infirmary for an injury he’d supposedly received after falling from a spar onto the deck. He came in and shut the door, then took off his clothes. Gerard was watching from his hammock.
“I don’t think you’re badly hurt,” said Dakar.
“Oh, I’m hurt,” he crooned. “I’m aching. Here, Black Eyes, let me show you.” He placed her hand on his crotch. Gerard could see the pink tip of his erection beginning to show through the fur.
Dakar didn’t pull away. She looked puzzled. “I think you’re alright.”
“I’m more than alright.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
She struggled then. “What are you doing? Stop that!”
Gerard hadn’t been planning to interfere, certainly not if this was what she wanted, but he wasn’t about to watch a rape. “Hey!” he shouted with his quarterdeck voice. He scrambled awkwardly out of his hammock. “Get away from her, you sack of piss! I’ll give you something to ache about!”
His outburst had the desired effect. The sailor whirled from Dakar to stare at him. “You’re that half-dead galley slave.” His mouth twisted in a snarl. “How dare you speak to me?”
Gerard had expected a beating. It might at least give Dakar time to get help or a weapon. Instead, she reached out and put a hand on the sailor’s arm. He unhinged at the knees and dropped like a felled tree.
Gerard stared at him, lying motionless on the floor. Dakar looked at the sailor as though he were a strange and mildly interesting fungus. She nudged him with a paw. “He was going to hurt me, wasn’t he?”
Gerard nodded, still staring.
She looked up at him. “Were you trying to protect me?”
“Well. Yes.”
“Why?”
“I—” Gerard wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t like seeing anyone hurt.”
“But I work for this ship,” said Dakar, “and they’ll hurt you. The galley slaves don’t usually live more than a year.”
Gerard looked down at the planks. “Nevertheless.”
She thought for a moment. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Don’t do it again, though.” She dragged the sailor out of the room. Gerard had no idea whether he was dead or unconscious, but he never saw the sailor again. He asked Dakar several times what she’d done to make him collapse, but she never answered. Any healer would have access to poison, so he concluded that she must have stabbed her would-be rapist with some kind of poisoned dart or needle. Gerard didn’t know much about poison, and he supposed anything was possible. Still, it had been an extraordinary performance.
No wonder no one bothers her.
Dakar came in one day and gave him some clothes—just basic sailcloth, but they’d obviously been retailored to fit him. Gerard hadn’t worn clothes in so long, he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Less vulnerable.
He reflected ruefully that if, in his past life, he’d been put under the care of a female healer, naked, with his fur mangy and thin and full of fleas, he’d have felt dreadfully embarrassed. He even thought she’d bathed him with flea soap at the beginning when he was mostly unconscious, and it never occurred to him to be embarrassed until she gave him clothes.
He was spending a great deal more time on his feet and beginning to have a sense of day and night even without the sun, because Dakar kept regular hours. He was still wearing a splint on his wrist, but he was well enough to become bored, so he cleaned the dispensary. He swept the floor and dusted the shelves of bottles. He scrubbed the counters. Dakar seemed pleased and mildly amused by this. Sometimes she gave him minerals or plants to grind or cut up. He would have hauled water and fetched her meals, but she wouldn’t let him leave the room.
Although she dressed in black, Dakar liked colorful things almost as much as Silveo had. She owned a collection of colorful rocks, which she occasionally took out and spread along her countertop to admire. Gerard knew for a fact that she always carried at least one of the bright little stones in her pocket. She also kept an array of bizarre trinkets dangling from hooks above her counters—dried purple seahorses, bits of silk, feathers, dried flowers, dried reef fish, shells. As far as Gerard could tell, these had no medicinal value, although he fancied the sailors thought so, and this probably added to her mystique. Most of the sailors were clearly in awe and fear of her. However, even Dakar could not do entirely as she pleased forever.
One day, a shelt who was obviously some sort of ship’s officer came in and looked at Gerard. He was arguing with Dakar even as they stepped through the door. “—can get you an assistant if that’s what you want, but this one isn’t it. Look at him; he’s made for rowing.” He got a better look at Gerard and shook his head. “You don’t even keep him hobbled! Dakar, that’s dangerous. Do you even know what dangerous means, girl? We’ll get you another helper. You’ve done splendidly getting this one well, and now I’m taking him to do what we bought him for.”
He stripped Gerard, tied him, and led him away. Gerard watched Dakar’s face. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. He wanted to say, “Thank you for keeping me here so long. Thank you for trying to keep me longer,” but was afraid to speak with the officer present.
Just before they stepped out the door, Gerard heard Dakar mutter under her breath. “Dangerous means me.”
The officer turned out to be one of the warders in charge of the slaves. He led Gerard down a level and stopped in an empty hallway. Gerard could hear the distant beat of a gavel. “So,” said the warder, “you’re the reason she’s so reclusive. What a nice pet you must make.” And he hit Gerard in the belly with his fist. Gerard could have stayed on his feet, but he crumpled and sank to his knees, partially as a submissive gesture to avoid being hit again.
The warder didn’t seem satisfied. “Think you can bed grishnard girls, leon? I can smell a slave who hasn’t been properly broken. Proud eyes! Don’t you dare look down your nose at me.” And he hit Gerard again, this time across the back with something made of leather. His belt?
“Don’t—you—ever—raise—your—eyes—again!” The warder emphasized each word with a blow. He held nothing back. Gerard yelped on the last word. He wanted it to stop. He knew he was bleeding. The belt buckle had cut him.
The warder kicked him over onto his back and put a foot against Gerard’s belly. His bare paws splayed over Gerard’s flesh, pricking him with long claws. Gerard was getting frightened. He wondered if the warder meant to kill him. He struggled against his bonds, but they were well-tied. “How long do you think it will take for her to get hungry without you?” he asked, leaning close. “Want to tell me what she likes, leon?” And he began pummeling Gerard in the face with his fists. Gerard couldn’t even hold up his hands to protect himself, tied as they were behind his back.
At that moment, someone shouted from down the passage. “Is that the new one, Ruel?”
The warder hesitated. Gerard heard the sound of feet.
“He was being insolent,” said Ruel. “I thought I’d teach him a lesson.”
“I hope you haven’t damaged his arms,” replied the other petulantly. “Looks like enough of a lesson to me. Get him up and in here.”
In the days that followed, Gerard wondered whether he really had been anything more than a useful pet to Dakar. She came down to the slave deck occasionally to treat slaves or render her opinion of their condition. She never looked at Gerard. They’ve gotten her a new assistant, he thought. One that’s better company than me.
He found the rowing itself pleasant at first, even though it made him sore. Gerard had always been an active person, and he’d been growing restless in the infirmary. He could see a piece of the sky out the oar’s porthole, and smell and hear the sea. However, the misery in which the rowers lived soon swallowed up any joy he took in the wind and sunshine.
The benches sat six to ten shelts each, and they were so close together that if the shelts in front didn’t lean fully forward on the sweep of their oar, they were hit in the back by the oar of the shelts behind. The slaves were chained to these oars day and night. Gutters ran between the benches, and the excrement that collected there was swilled out twice a day by a warder with a bucket. It stank most of the time and grew worse as the summer heat increased.
Gerard soon realized why the slaves of the Mantis had such dismally short lifespans. Unlike the Temple Sea Watch, the merchant ships and their escorts did not treat slaves as a maintainable resource. Apparently, the cost of swiftly transporting their cargo outweighed the price of a few slaves, so they used the rowers heavily whenever their activity would increase the speed of the ship by the smallest margin. In contrast, Silveo had exercised his rowers enough to keep them in shape, but otherwise saved them for times of emergency when sudden bursts of speed were required.
Sometimes the Mantis used its rowers nearly all day and all night, with less than a watch of sleep. The warders beat the rhythm with their gavel and periodically one would come down the line with chunks of bread or meat soaked in wine, which they placed in the mouths of the wretched slaves. Whenever this task fell to the warder Ruel, Gerard failed to receive any food, and sometimes he got a cuff instead. The same thing happened when Ruel was responsible for the water bucket. Even at full rations, the amount given to a slave wasn’t enough to sustain most shavier fauns, let alone a large grishnard. Gerard began to lose weight again.
If a slave fainted, he was beaten. If this failed to wake him and his condition was poor, he was taken out and tossed overboard. Sometimes Gerard saw the body splash into the sea. If the slave was deemed to have some value left in him, he might be thrown into the cells in the back to recover, but not before being thoroughly and publicly beaten to discourage anyone from feigning illness. If such shelts returned to the benches, they did so with eyes swollen shut and noses broken.
Gerard grew lean and hard as old leather. His arms, back, and belly were in as good a shape as they’d ever been, but he was constantly hungry. He would have liked to talk to the slave beside him—a shavier faun with deep purple feathers and hair, thinning with malnutrition, but still striking. However, the warders beat anyone who said a word, and a warder was always on duty. They even beat shelts for making small signs to each other, for writing in the air during their brief rest periods, for nodding or smiling.
Gerard grew lonely again. He wondered whether he shouldn’t have taken his opportunity to die in the mill. It would have been quick and easy and relatively painless. He tried to daydream about his past life, Thessalyn’s songs, his family and friends, but the past was becoming surreal. He could not bring the images and words to mind in the reality of the squalid slave deck with its stinking gutters. He nearly cried one day when he realized he could not properly remember Thessalyn’s face. He could not even hear her voice in his head the way he once had.
Did I only dream I was a grishnard, a prince, a Captain of Police? Did I dream that I loved a minstrel girl, that her songs made wild pegasus sing? Did I dream I rode a griffin through the skies and fished with him on disserted islands? Did I dream I had a friend I didn’t want to leave behind, a friend who kissed me and betrayed me?
One day Gerard was pulling at his oar when a warder came in at an unaccustomed hour—not their usual change of shifts. He had someone with him—an inspector, Gerard assumed. The Mantis had been inspected a couple of times, and each time the warders had to show Gerard’s papers as well as his tattoo to prove he was a leon. The inspector moved down the row slowly, looking at each shelt.
Then Gerard saw his face. Yellow eyes. Black hair. Arundel. Gerard felt his chest constrict. He didn’t know why. He assumed Morchella must have had him sold on purpose, should be pleased that he was suffering, but he didn’t want to be seen. He was terrified.
Arundel came closer and closer, looking at each slave. Looking for me?
And then the door of the slave deck opened again, and Dakar came down the steps. She walked rapidly to Arundel, put her hand on his arm, and spoke with him for a few moments. Gerard had no idea what she said, but Arundel turned and walked away. Dakar glanced at Gerard over Arundel’s shoulder—the briefest of glances, but it was the closest thing to a friendly communication he’d had in a red month.
Dakar knows who I am, he reasoned. Maybe she knows the Sea Watch have reason to hate me, consider me a traitor. Maybe Morchella is regretting her decision to sell me. Maybe she lost track of me and wants to make sure I’m dead. He wished he could tell Dakar thank you. He wished everything didn’t feel so hopeless.
One day in the sweltering heat of midsummer, the Mantis encountered one of those storms that sometimes blew down from the north. They weren’t as dangerous as the winter storms, because they usually didn’t last as long, but they could be fierce and often crackled with lightning. The seas grew rough enough to prompt the warders to stow the oars and shut the portholes. The Mantis had been in several storms already, and Gerard knew the procedure. Two swinging lanterns were hung fore and aft so that one or two warders could keep an eye on their charges.
Gerard sensed the tension in the air as the ship began to pitch. Storms always made the slaves nervous, since they knew they would go down with the ship, should it founder. It did not improve Gerard’s spirits to hear the warders whispering about a recently sighted pirate ship. He was pretty sure, based on the size of the waves, that they were not sailing in the crescent. They were almost certainly sailing between Wefrivain and the Lawless Lands. He had no idea how close they were to the coast, but this would be the right area to encounter hunti pirates. They preyed on traffic between the two regions, relying on the lack of organized law enforcement in the unclaimed trade route. For all he might hate his life on the Mantis, Gerard had no interest in the ship’s capture by hunti.
The seas grew rougher. Gerard had to cling to his oar—locked in place in front of him—to avoid being thrown painfully against his chains. To make matters worse, the warder on duty turned out to be Ruel. He gave Gerard a smack with his whip every time he passed.
Wilder and rougher. The warders ran a rope line down the center aisle so that the one on duty could safely make rounds. Then all but Ruel departed, presumably to help on deck. The swinging lanterns threw wild shadows this way and that as the ship pitched up one wave and down the next. Thunder crashed outside, deafeningly close. Gerard felt completely helpless. He wondered how much sail the captain had decided to use, whether he’d set a proper sea anchor, whether he had decent ship’s scouts and maps. He wished he were on deck, helping, doing something.
He was staring at the ceiling, wondering how good the crew was and counting the seconds between the thunder, when he realized Ruel had stopped right behind him. “I thought I told you never to raise your eyes, you mangy beast.”
Gerard dropped his gaze to the deck. He was not surprised to feel the whip slice into his back harder than usual, but then the butt slammed into his ribs and that did surprise him. He gasped, tried to catch his breath. Ruel was raining blows on him, using his fists and the metal whip butt. Gerard jerked instinctively at his chains, tried to crouch down, huddle away from the onslaught, but there was no escape.
He shouted. The other warders would have stopped this if they’d seen it, but the chaos of the storm and the crack of the thunder drowned Gerard’s cries. “Let’s see you row now,” sneered Ruel, and he brought the butt of his whip down so hard that Gerard heard his rib snap. Pain followed like thunder after lightning. Gerard screamed, tried to pull away, but Ruel was still hammering at him. “Soon,” he snarled, “we’ll throw you into the sea.” Then he brought his fist down again, and Gerard fainted.
The storm blew itself out by morning. Gerard woke to a different warder poking the customary hunk of meat into his face. He was sure the warder saw his bruises, probably guessed what had happened, but he made no comment. He doesn’t care enough, thought Gerard. He has to work with Ruel, has to live with him. It’s not worth the life of one slave to make a fuss.
He took a deep breath and felt the pain spread in a scalding spider web through his chest. Can I row? The warders rarely tolerated a slave who was too hurt to row for an extended period of time, certainly not the red month it would take for his ribs to heal properly. Any physical malady that set a slave behind could start him on the long decline that ended with a plunge into the waves. Gerard was already behind because he wasn’t getting enough to eat. Now he was injured.
Ruel could have broken my arms or my fingers, he thought. Then I would have been obviously incapable of rowing, and they would have thrown me over today. But he wanted to watch me try.
Gerard thought about not rowing, about simply sitting still on his bench until they beat him senseless and tossed him into the sea. But he didn’t. He wrapped his hands around the oar and pulled. Every stroke felt as though he were sucking fire through his lungs. The day grew sweltering. Gerard knew he was slick with sweat, but he felt cold.
In the late afternoon, the slaves were given a rest. The oar had hardly gone still before Gerard slumped against it. He woke with a yelp a short time later. Gerard glanced up. He saw sleeping slaves all around him, collapsed across their oars. His chest ached terribly. He looked behind him and saw Ruel making rounds. He jabbed me, Gerard realized, in my injured rib.
Each time Ruel walked past, he did it again. Gerard began to dread falling asleep because he knew he would wake to excruciating pain. He began the next bout of rowing feeling desperately ill and hopeless. They rowed through most of the night, rested for about a watch, then rowed on at noon. Gerard pretended the oar was his pain, and he had to pull against it—pull and pull and pull. I won’t faint. I won’t faint. I won’t faint.
Someone fainted, but it was not Gerard. He saw the shelt two rows in front of him slump and topple limp against his chains. It was a zed—a little too big to be getting enough to eat and growing thin. The heat must have been too much. The warder beating time called a halt. No one could row properly with an unconscious slave leaning on an oar. The zed was unshackled, thrown into the center aisle, and beaten savagely by the two warders on duty, neither of whom was Ruel. Gerard watched through dull eyes. That will be me before long. However, the zed did wake and began to scream his willingness to continue rowing. The warders assessed him and decided to call in Dakar for further consult.
Gerard watched her come down the aisle. He wished he could tell her… What? Good-bye? Thank you for being the last person who was ever kind to me?
Dakar assessed the zed, told the warders he had heat exhaustion and would probably recover after a period in the holding cells. Then she continued on down the aisle. She did this occasionally, not often, and Gerard felt a little better. She didn’t really look at him as she passed, just laid her hand on his arm.
Dakar’s head snapped around as though she’d been stung. Her eyes narrowed, raced over Gerard, returned to his face. He knew he was bruised all over. When she ran a hand over his ribs, he flinched. Dakar bent closed to his ear. “Who did this to you?”
Gerard was surprised. He’d been expecting something more medical or even personal. “Ruel.”
Dakar nodded. She went back up the aisle and spoke to the warders. To his utter astonishment, Gerard was then unshackled and placed in the holding cells along with the zed. He was not beaten. He’d never seen a shelt leave the benches without a beating.
The holding cells contained dirty straw and moth-eaten blankets. They looked to Gerard like the most luxurious quarters in the world. He could not have said how many days it had been since he’d slept horizontally. He curled up in a corner under a blanket and slept like the dead.
* * * *
Gerard remained for a yellow month in the holding cells, which was an unprecedented length of stay. He slept at least half of it, and Dakar came to see him every day. She brought medicine and extra food, at least doubling the ration the warders gave him. Sometimes she talked to him. She also brought a game she liked—a complicated game with a board. She used her collection of colored rocks as the pieces. Gerard had never seen the game before, but she taught him to play. Sometimes she just sat with him. Dakar had a very comfortable silence and an almost feral ability to remain still and quiet for long periods.
After a yellow month, Gerard returned to the benches for the day, but at night he was unchained and taken back to the holding cells to sleep. His ribs still hurt as he rowed, but he could tell he was recovering. The pain grew daily less, and Dakar continued to give him medicine. By the end of a red month, he was healthier than he’d been before the incident. Gerard wondered how Dakar had managed to convince the warders to do this.
Strangest of all was the way Ruel treated him. Gerard had seen nothing of his enemy during his confinement in the holding cells. He’d almost wondered whether Ruel had been promoted elsewhere or left the ship.
Instead, he found Ruel still performing his accustomed duties, but with the bizarre addition of a tendency to favor Gerard. Now instead of withholding Gerard’s ration, Ruel gave him an extra piece. He gave him extra water, too. At all other times, he avoided Gerard and made rounds as infrequently as possible. There was no mistaking his expression whenever their eyes met: sheer terror. Then one day he disappeared. Gerard heard the warders whispering that he had gone mad.
One cool, crisp day in fall, the rowers were wakened from a morning’s nap to instant double time at the oars. The warders announced, loudly and publicly, that hunti pirates had been sighted. This added an edge of personal investment to the rowers’ activity. No one wanted to be blinded, deafened, or castrated.
They worked desperately all day. The warders gave them a little extra food and a little extra whip. Near evening, someone came downstairs to speak to the warder beating time, who stopped suddenly and left. He didn’t even give them an order to continue rowing.
Gerard suspected they were about to be boarded. Again, he felt that sensation of helpless fear. If he’d been a sailor on this ship, he would be standing on deck, sword in hand, to meet the invaders. He would have had a chance to influence the outcome of the battle. But here he sat, his future in the hands of shelts whose competence he had no way of knowing.
The slaves on the opposite side of the boat were whispering to each other, and Gerard realized that the pirate ship must be closing from that direction. The slaves on that side hunkered down as far as their chains would let them. A moment later, the light from their portholes vanished amid a snapping of broken oars. The warders should have stowed them, thought Gerard. But it took several warders to do that. The captain tried to outrun the pirates until the very last, Gerard guessed, and then he suddenly needed every hand on deck. This did not improve his opinion of the competence of the shelts whose skill would decide his fate.
The broken oar handles jerked wildly. Some of them crashed down onto the benches. A few slaves stood and tried to free themselves, but even if the oar could be pulled from the porthole, it was still a desperately heavy beam with six to ten shelts attached to it.
At last they all quieted and sat straining for noises from the decks above. Gerard could hear shouting. Soon there could be no doubt that shelts were fighting on the lower deck immediately above their own. They could hear the screams, the crash of swords, the thump of running feet.
Then the door to the slave deck burst open. A heartbeat’s pause, and suddenly the slaves near the front set up a cheer. Gerard didn’t understand until he got a look at the pirate. He wasn’t a hunti. He was a faun.