by L M R Clarke
“Throw him to the sea!” Kelom said, rubbing his claws in glee.
“Shut up,” Pesmam snapped. Kelom recoiled. “Too easy.”
Pesmam cupped Zecha’s chin in one hand. Zecha tried to look anywhere except at the Masvam, but found himself forced to stare into his eyes.
“Far too easy, it would,” he purred. He rubbed a gentle circle on Zecha’s cheek. Zecha stiffened and tried to jerk away. “Need I to make example of Zecha.”
He released Zecha’s head and turned towards the rows of cages. Yamor pinned Zecha’s arms.
“A lesson, this is,” Pesmam said in a grand voice. Despite the oddness of his language, the meaning was clear. “Prisoners of Masvam Empire, all you. Escape you, or try, will you to afterlife hastened—lingering and painful it be.”
He turned to Zecha and stared, chin held high. His orange eyes flickered. “First, you be.”
Pesmam jolted forward. There was a dull sucking sound and it took a long moment for understanding to dawn. Time stilled. Zecha stared at Pesmam. Then he looked down—at the dagger jutting from his abdomen.
Emmy couldn’t even scream. All she could smell was blood.
Pesmam yanked the dagger out with a twist and Zecha finally howled, clutching at his stomach and falling to his knees, tail between his legs, his talons turning red.
The captain stepped back and wiped the dagger on his salt-stiffened trousers. His lips curled and he took a long look at the sets of eyes that stared at him from the darkness of the cages. He pointed to the prone form.
“Watch him die,” Pesmam said. “Decide you to follow him, know you what awaits.”
At that, Emmy found her voice again. “Zecha, no!” she cried.
Pesmam grunted, lips twisted in a mordant grin.
“Come,” Pesmam said. “These pchak, no food.” When the Metakalans’ fear rose, it fed Pesmam’s satisfaction. He spat on Zecha’s head. “Thank you, your dying friend.”
With that the three Masvams strode off. They sealed the hold behind them. The slam rattled Emmy’s teeth. Once more they were left in grim darkness. The sweetness of the sea air was gone.
Emmy didn’t care about that. “Zecha!” she cried.
The only response was a sudden thump, followed by a whimper just audible above the creaking ship.
“Zecha, can you hear me?” Emmy continued, her voice rising. “Zecha, please!”
“Zecha, answer her!”
Charo’s voice was a sharp strike. Zecha moaned again and struggled to rise. He slammed, facedown, onto the filthy deck. Detritus lapped around him. Blood coursed from his wound.
No matter how hard they tried, they could elicit no further response.
“Zecha, no,” Emmy whispered. “Don’t leave me. I need you.”
In the darkness, truth shone. It wasn’t until those words were uttered that Emmy realized how true they were. For the longest time, Zecha was the only one who never judged her appearance, never called her a Moon Rogue, never cast her aside. Until Charo, he was the only one she called a friend. He was always there with kindness in his eyes and joy in his heart, despite his longing to be something he couldn’t be.
And now? Emmy’s gaze slid sideways to Charo. She was slumped against the bars, one claw stretching for Zecha’s hand. For the sweetest of moments, Emmy had had two friends. Now, it seemed, she would be left with one again.
No.
Determination rose. She wouldn’t lose Zecha, not if it took everything she had. Not if it killed her. Drawing in a deep breath, Emmy reached for her lock again.
She rattled it, wrenched it, planted her feet on the cage front, yanked as hard as she could. Emmy grunted, growing more desperate with every minute. Zecha was below her, and he needed her. She could save him, she just knew it. Somehow, she knew she could. Her mind was reeling, but she knew if she got to him, was able to lay her hands on him, somehow she could save him.
Everything else fell away. The sounds and smells of the hold, the sharp taint of others’ desperation. All that mattered to Emmy was saving her friend.
“Zecha,” she said over and over like a mantra. “Zecha, Zecha, Zecha...”
Fatigue pressed upon her, but Emmy kept going, until her mantra turned into a series of sobs.
Her despair was interrupted. “Emmy, don’t torture yourself.”
Blinking, Emmy looked to the source of the voice. In the darkness, Charo’s eyes were lost in black shadows.
“You need to stop,” Charo said. Her words were leaden. “It’s pointless. You’ll never open it.”
Emmy shook her head, desperate claws aching as they kept working at the lock. “What choice do I have?” she asked. “Zecha’s going to die. I need to help him.”
Her gaze slid to Zecha. He still hadn’t moved. Her heart clung to the hope she could get out, or that they might be rescued, that they could get Zecha help...
“Maybe...” Charo started. She trailed off, as if the words she was to speak cut her tongue. “Maybe Zecha’s better off dead.”
Her voice hitched as the name passed her lips.
No.
There was a frantic scrabble as Emmy yanked at her cage again. Her shoulders rose and fell. Her fists clenched and unclenched to the rhythm of a sudden, silent battle-chant. “I won’t accept that. I won’t accept that!”
“Emmy...” Charo began.
Ignoring her, Emmy kept working at the lock. The tips of her talons bled into the metal.
“Emmy!”
This time it was Charo’s voice that struck like lightning. Emmy stilled.
“Listen to me,” Charo continued. “I don’t want to be a slave again. I’d rather die. And I mean that. I’d sooner cut my own throat.”
Her voice hitched. Tears tracked down her face, cutting a sharp line through the grime. Her hands and shoulders pulsed as she stared at Zecha’s prone form.
“But working and working at something,” Charo went on, “that will never come to anything is pointless. It’s madness. So stop. Just...stop.”
The sting of Charo’s words sobered her, and Emmy reluctantly released the lock. “Charo, I...”
Emmy knew Charo needed words of encouragement. She knew, as a friend, that it was her job to keep trying, in spite of everything. That was what was supposed to happen. That was why she’d pulled and pulled at the lock until blood coursed down her claws and her hands. But the naked honesty of Charo’s words took her own words away.
Charo filled the silence between them.
“Maybe Zecha is better off dead,” she repeated. Her voice was flat. “I say that because I know what our future holds. It’ll be filled with humiliation, servitude, and an eventual lonely death when we’re no longer of any use. I’ve been there. I’ve lived as a slave, and it’s no life at all. You’re not considered a living thing. You’re passed through families like a possession. You’re bought and sold in the same way as livestock.”
“Charo...” Emmy said, but nothing further came.
Charo kept talking, the words monotone.
“I was taken into slavery when I was six,” she said. “It was the Valtat. They got me. The Masvams let them through their borders, into Linvarra, where I was hatched. I don’t know if I had a moi or a poi, or siblings, or any family at all. I was chained by the neck and pulled onto a podium, and they were shouting things in languages I didn’t understand. Then I was bought. My first job was as a potwash in a scullery, where I was chained to the wall for nearly all the day. I’ve been bought and sold five times—five times from six to fourteen. And then I found you.” Her voice changed, suddenly thick with tears. “And I found Zecha, and everything was all right—until the Masvams came. But that’s why I say Zecha is better off dead, and we might as well be, too.”
Tears flowed down her grime-encrusted face again.
Emmy swallowed against her own tears. It was the first time Charo had spoken of her life before the apothecary, apart from the mention of the mistress who stabbed her.
“I understand all
that,” Emmy said, “but I have to try and save him. He’s my friend. He’s—”
Emmy’s words died as a muffled boom sounded in the distance. Cries of fear gave way to the numbness of shock. Then the Metakalans burst into whispers.
There was another blast. Charo’s anguish broke. She stared with a twist of confusion that mirrored Emmy’s own.
Cocking her head to the side, Emmy listened hard. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “They’re shouting.”
Sure enough, the crew’s cries rose with further blasts. The hold erupted with a barrage of shouts. Above, the explosions drew closer.
“What’s happening?” someone cried.
“Is this it? Is this the end of us?”
Emmy ignored them and gritted her teeth. She didn’t care about the others and their fears. She didn’t care about what was happening outside. She had eyes for only one.
Zecha’s prone form slid on the deck, covered in filth. If this is the end, so be it, she thought. If we must die, I’d rather we died together.
At least in death, perhaps they would be free.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Emmy
Screams and cannon blasts sounded overhead, muffled by the thick wood of the hull. Tremors shook the beams above and rattled in tune with the captives’ terror. The Masvam ship rocked like a cork in the great sea. Emmy clung to her cage as fear took hold. Those who hadn’t grabbed their bars were bucked and tossed inside their tiny prisons. Emmy kept her eyes on Zecha and tried to keep her tears at bay. His body rolled with the waves.
As the ship lurched, he tumbled across the length of the hold, landing in a crumpled heap at Charo’s cage. She pushed her hands through the bars and wound her talons into his filthy shirt to stop him rolling again.
The ship jerked again. Surrounded by shrieking and screeching, Emmy felt like a character in one of Krodge’s bedtime tales of Moon Rogues and demons. Metakalans pounded on bars and rattled doors with desperate claws. Some even came loose. The momentary bubble of joy didn’t last long. They were trapped below the deck of a beleaguered ship. There was little elation in that.
Above them there were more blasts. Emmy’s breath came faster and faster. What was happening? Who was attacking? Could they be friends, or would they be more enemies? There was no way to know, and that made Emmy’s heart hammer. She scrabbled forward and clawed at her lock again. If some of the other cage doors came loose, surely hers could, too...
An ominous creaking came from above, followed by what sounded like a tree being felled. Whatever it was hit the deck above, sending deadly tremors through the hold. Emmy stopped her work and listened. The hold was silent, every ear listening.
There were more vibrations.
Then came screams, thundering footsteps, and the clash of sword on sword. The ship was being boarded. That was the only explanation Emmy’s spinning brain could find.
The fighting above seemed to last for eternity. Emmy’s fight with her lock continued. She was about to give up when there was a flash of cold and clack—something happened, and the lock dropped to the deck.
“I did it!”
She shoved the cage open with freezing claws and untangled herself. Straight away she went to Zecha, pulling him from Charo’s grasp, laying his head on her lap.
“Help him,” Charo said, her words thin with despair.
Emmy was forced to lay Zecha’s head in the filth to allow her claws to reach his wound. The stab was deep, the edges ragged. Emmy’s breathing hitched as her medical knowledge laid out the likely outcome before her. It was like Krodge was speaking in her head.
A deep wound, through the stomach. Excess bleeding with filth penetrating from the outside. From the inside, filth from the bowels seeping into the wound. It needed to be cleaned. Even then, the likelihood of survival was low. It was easy to sew the outer wounds closed, but the inner damage was a different story.
Emmy couldn’t breathe. With Charo it had been easy. There had been no damage to the fleshy inside of the body. But Zecha’s stomach... It was different. She was sure of it. It would be difficult.
But it is not impossible, came Krodge’s voice.
In an instant Emmy was back in the kitchen of the apothecary, with a dead body stretched out on the table—an entirely illegal practice, but Krodge felt herself above such archaic laws. She had opened the female, exposing the myriad of organs within. Emmy had only been ten, but she’d watched with fascination, not disgust.
“Study the insides,” Krodge said. “Sometimes you need to get your claws into the inner workings of the body to save it.”
The crone had taken Emmy on a tour of this inside world, smiling in conspiracy, knowing Emmy was so under her control that she’d never tell of these journeys into the unknown. And if Emmy had spoken? No one would have believed the Moon Rogue.
Emmy blinked and stared at the wound with new eyes, scanning it with every measure of expertise and memory she had.
It was deep, but she could save him. She just knew it. If only she had the equipment, a knife, pulled-gut thread.
You don’t need that, a strange voice said.
Emmy stilled, gripping Zecha hard. The voice wasn’t her own, nor was it Krodge’s. It was unknown yet strangely familiar, as if she’d heard it many cycles before.
Lay your hands on him, the voice continued. You’ve done it before. Stop the bleeding. Save him.
Emmy swallowed. She shut her eyes. This was it. She’d lost her mind. A voice in her head, a voice that sounded familiar? It wasn’t real.
Even so, the strange coldness tingled anew in her talons, and she opened her eyes once more. Zecha lay prone, filthy, dying. She might have lost her mind, but she could help save his life.
Trembling, she placed her hands on the wound.
The coldness came in waves, pulsing from somewhere deep inside. It was all for nothing. It was her imagination. It was a fever dream, unreal, foolish. But then, she thought, her eyes never leaving Zecha’s pallid face, what did she have to lose?
She kept her hands on Zecha for some time. Beside her, Charo reached out. The tips of her talons brushed the edge of Emmy’s shoulder. The three stayed like that as confusion and fear swirled around them, hundreds of Metakalan voices crying out their fear. Above them, the sounds of combat continued. Emmy’s coldness abated, replaced by the warmth of love and the hope she had somehow saved him.
After a time, the metallic slice of sword on sword ceased. With it came silence in the hold, a silence that was only broken by the jangle of keys, the slide of a barrel into a mechanism, and the smooth turn of a lock.
Light and sweet air spilled into the hold, and Emmy had to shield her eyes against the brightness. Her eyes focused, and she saw two figures silhouetted against the sky.
“By Ethay and Apago,” a strangely accented voice said. “It stinks in here.”
“What are they carrying?” the second odd voice asked. “Livestock?”
The figures stepped forward. Emmy couldn’t breathe. These were the folk who’d attacked the ship. They had dark skin and dark armor, and bright eyes that shone like jewels. Emmy had seen many of their kind before, coming into Bellim’s port on ships with a two-headed serpent on the prow.
“Althemerians,” she whispered. Her grip on Zecha grew tighter.
“By the gods,” the first Althemerian said, her voice low. She kissed her fist, then laid it on her chest. Her arms jingled; they were covered with many bracelets. “They weren’t transporting livestock.”
Those Metakalans who’d been freed from their cages lunged forward, grabbing for the strangers.
“Thank you!”
“By the goddess, you’ve saved us!”
Beside her, Charo rattled against her cage and grinned. “They’ve come to free us,” she said.
Emmy tried to smile in return, but something Krodge had said not long before came back to her.
There’s an Althemerian custom I’m quite fond of. It’s about owing a debt to those who have helped y
ou.
She glanced at the rising tide of Metakalans, now being held back by more and more Althemerians. Eventually they let the captives scramble onto the deck. Emmy clutched Zecha’s body to her, shielding him from the stampede. With those already freed out of the way, Althemerians—both male and female—came along the length of the hold, striking off the locks of those still enclosed. Not all the cages bore living survivors. That thought spurred Emmy’s tongue into action. “Help!” she cried.
A wiry Althemerian male approached her, wearing a weatherbeaten blue tunic and the heaviness of a life of battle on his face. Two twined serpents were picked out in thread on the chest of his uniform.
“My friend,” Emmy said. “He’s been stabbed. He needs help.”
“Easy,” the Althemerian said, his many bracelets jangling. “Easy now. I’ll get a healer.”
He disappeared from the hold, returning with two others. One was male and wore the same uniform as the first Althemerian. The other was female, a different symbol on a black tunic. It was a strange thing, colored red, a heart within an eye. Many bags hung from her belt, heavy with their contents. She knelt at Zecha’s side and pried his eyelids open, checking for signs of life. She used her left arm, which bore many more bracelets than her right.
“He isn’t dead,” Emmy said. “I know he’s not. Help him!”
The female—a healer—nodded and gestured for the males to lift Zecha between them. He was slung from their hands, prone but no longer bleeding.
“He isn’t dead,” the healer confirmed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The three disappeared up the deck with Zecha, and Emmy went to follow, but a cry from Charo stopped her. Another Althemerian struck the lock from her cage and Charo extricated herself. Straight away she threw herself into Emmy’s arms, wrapping her own around Emmy’s tall, thin body.
“We’re saved,” Charo whispered, “and Zecha will be okay.”
Unable to speak in return, to say everything would be fine, Emmy pulled away and took Charo’s hand. Together they slipped into the flow of freedom, their limbs cracking and loosening after so long in captivity.
