Exhausted and panting for breath, I turned my eyes up to the heavens, to the pale blue morning and newly risen sun. “When I asked for help, Father, I’m pretty sure this is not what I meant.”
The day of my watery sojourn passed between bouts of torturous thirst and merciful unconsciousness. An unrelenting sun beat down, and I felt like a grape shriveling into a raisin. Late in the afternoon, the shouts of foreign voices roused me. I raised my head, but my eyes refused to focus. I ran my dry tongue over my lips and tasted salt on their cracked surface. My legs had gone numb thanks to the cold water, but a nasty sunburn blazed on my forearms. And where in the shadowland is my Thunder Cloak?
“Es una chica!” one higher pitched voice shouted over the others. The foreign words meant nothing to me, but they sounded like salvation. “Un momento! Te ayudaremos, de acuerdo?”
The hulking shadow in front of me solidified into the form of a fishing boat. Thank you, Father. My head plopped back onto my arms, and I waited for the men to haul me on board. With my imminent rescue at hand, I gave into fatigue and let the men work while I dozed.
I woke again when someone shoved a dipper of water to my lips. “Beba, señorita. Beba.” A short, greasy haired sailor with a gold earring and pockmarked skin grinned a snaggletooth smile. I obliged and gulped greedily from my seat on the ship’s deck.
“A little at a time, Madame. You should take it slowly at first.” My head whipped up at the sound of my native language. A slim man with long, wispy hair tied back under a smart little cap crouched beside me. He inclined his head in an informal bow. “It would not do well for you to lose any more water.”
Relying on his experience in such matters, I took his advice and slowly sipped three more dippers of water. The foreign sailors returned to their work, but the man who spoke to me in Inselgrish remained at my side. “Take your time, Madame, but when you feel your throat is up to the task, I would appreciate if you could give me an explanation of how you came to be floating in the middle of the Antellic Ocean?”
“Antellic?” I croaked. “Thought this was... Insel Channel.”
“Oh my. Your story must be a curious one indeed. The mouth of the Insel Channel is over sixty leagues north of here.”
When he first spoke, I had thought he was an Espiritolan native like his shipmates, but with a great command of the Inselgrish language. The more he talked, though, the more I thought he must have been a national of Inselgrau, but far removed from his homeland. I licked my dry lips and squinted at him, studying his leathery skin and the images inscribed on his forearms in faded blue ink. I wondered if should I tell him my name or ask for his help? What was I risking if I gave away my identity?
“S-sixty leagues?” I stopped and cleared my throat. “How far is that?” No matter how far a league was, I had floated a long way from my intended destination. The previous night’s storm must have stirred the currents into a fury.
The man laughed before he answered. “Nearly two hundred miles. Why, we are half-way to Espiritola.”
“Espiritola?”
“Yes, yes. Drink up and then we’ll see about getting you something to eat. You’ll need to keep meat on your bones if you’re to fetch a favorable price when we get there.”
My stomach lurched, and I spilled some of the precious water from the dipper. “F-favorable price?”
“At the slave market, miss.” The gray-headed man turned and glanced toward the back of the ship. “Paulo, Josef, please come see to our young miss’s security. Oh, and find her something to eat.”
They answered in unison. “Sí, Capítan Alemar.”
I rose from my seat to protest, but hours in the water had stolen my strength, and the strong sailors easily subdued me. “Please don’t do this!” I begged as they tied my arms behind my back.
The larger one tossed me over his shoulder and carried me into the depths of the ship’s hold, which the sailors had molded into a makeshift prison, and it stank. My stomach revolted at the reek of unwashed bodies and something else, something sour and oily that didn’t bear consideration.
In the dim light, I saw I would spend my captivity with several other prisoners. Thick wooden rungs composed a collection of interconnected cages. The cramped cages held only girls as far as I could tell, all roughly around my age. Some had light colored hair and skin, some were darker, but one had deep brown skin. Based on illustrations from one of my father’s almanacs, I thought she might have come from the southernmost content of Agridan.
She sat in a cell in the rear of the hold, farthest from the stairway. An intricately twisted and folded scarf covered her head. She wore a simple shirt with wide sleeves and a long, wide skirt in hues of yellow and red that stood out against the dimness.
The sailor locked me into an empty cell and disappeared, but he returned moments later with a knotted bundle containing several hard biscuits and a piece of dried fish. Our captors had also supplied each tiny cage with a pail and a small pile of hay, I’d guessed to use for bedding. I had a guess about what the pail was for, too, but I didn’t care to dwell on it.
The stench of the place had ruined my appetite, so I pocketed the bundle for later.
The Agridani girl slid closer to me in her cage and stared at me unapologetically. Finally, she extended a delicate finger and pointed to herself. “Malita Abiola.” She smiled and it lit up her whole face. She was possibly the loveliest girl I had ever seen.
I imitated her finger pointing and returned her attempt at a greeting. In this situation, I supposed I needed all the friends I could get. “Evie,” I said. “Stormbourne.”
“Evie,” she repeated, and another radiant smile lit her face.
Her charming grin both intrigued and attracted me. In that dark place, on her way to a possibly darker future, she managed to find something to smile about. If I had to suffer this horrible experience, at least I would have the comfort of an interesting companion.
Malita pointed around the room and introduced the other girls—seven in all. She knew all their names and where they originated. I was surprised when she pointed out one slim girl from my own land of Inselgrau. Some girls looked up and smiled shyly when Malita said their name. Others ignored us altogether.
She pointed to herself again. “Malita, Nri, Chagda.”
I assumed she meant to tell me the name of her village and her home country. Nri was a country on the west coast of Agridan. I motioned to myself again and followed her lead. “Evie, Inselgrau.” I hesitated to give my village name but figured none of these girls would care about my identity. “Glennich.”
“Evie, Inselgrau, Glennich,” she repeated.
I nodded to confirm her accuracy, and she smiled again. “Malita, do you know what the pirates are going to do with us?”
Her brows drew down, and she shook her head. She replied in her home language and held out her hands in an apologetic gesture.
She was obviously smart, and had picked up a lot in her time in the ship’s hold, but our mutual vocabulary was clearly inadequate. With enough time, we might have worked out communication with the limited words she knew, supplemented with pantomime and hand gestures, but I lacked the patience for it at that moment. Perhaps I can get something out of the girl from Inselgrau.
“Um, Jenna? Jenna from Inselgrau, right?” I set my attention on the thin blond girl in a cage diagonal to mine. She sat cross-legged on the floor of her cell. Barely in her teen years, judging by the roundness in her cheeks and chin, she looked up at me, and fear brimmed in her wide eyes. Connecting with her would be like trying to befriend a skittish kitten. “Jenna, what village did you say you were from?”
Her lip trembled. “M-Mann.”
I continued in a low, even tone. “Mann? That’s near my village. About twenty miles west, I guess. Have you ever been to Glennich?”
Jenna shook her head, and her gaze fell to her lap. “How did you get here?” I asked.
“They sold me.”
“Sold you? Who?”
&
nbsp; “Mama and Papa. I got four little brothers and sisters and Mama was expecting again with no way to feed them all.”
“Your own parents sold you?”
She shrugged, keeping her eyes gaze pinned to the floor. “I had to work like a slave there, too.”
“Yes, but your work at home did not involve pleasing strange men.” This came from another girl, one with an accent that sounded Gallandic.
“Pleasing men?” I repeated.
The Gallandic girl’s eyes glittered with hardness. “What else do they have us for? To be ladies’ maids?”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“I am only assuming to be sure. It is the result that will fetch these corsairs the highest price.”
“Pirates?” I asked, translating one of the few Gallandic words I knew. The men on this ship lacked the romance of the pirates in the tales Father had told me as a child, but it made sense to think of them as such. I had no better word for privateers operating on the outskirts of the law.
“I will kill myself before I let some strange man put his hands on me,” the Gallandic girl swore.
“I’ll save you the trouble if you don’t shut your trap!” Leering down at us from the ladder leading to the upper levels of the ship, one of the pirates shook his fist in a threatening gesture before drawing away and slamming the hatchway closed. Darkness fell like a heavy curtain, and several girls cried out. Someone began to sob, and judging by the direction of the sound, I guessed it was Jenna. A warm hand caught my shoulder and swept down my arm until it reached my wrist.
“Malita?” I whispered.
“Evie.” She clutched my hand. “Evie no cry?”
“No.” I chuckled, but a hitch in my throat caught it and made it sound like a hiccup. My adventures to this point had helped me develop a thick skin, and I kept my feelings contained. “Malita no cry?”
She laughed quietly so that only a wisp of sound crossed to me. “No. Malita no cry.”
The gentle slap of the waves on the hull of the ship acted as a lullaby, and the ocean’s hypnotic sway overcame my fears and worries. Exhausted from the day’s long ordeal, I drifted to sleep still holding Malita’s hand.
Chapter 12
The shuddering of the ship and the yells of men woke me the next morning. The crew spoke in the musical tones of Espiritola, and I didn’t understand a word, but someone had opened that hatch again, and starlight filtered in. Instead of total blackness, our holding cells took on the varying shades of night. I sat up, listening, watching from the corners of my eyes where I found it easier to make out shapes in the darkness.
Malita’s shadow shifted. Her footsteps swished over the wooden floor as she crouched and shuffled closer.
“Evie?” she whispered. She reached for me, and I grasped her fingers. “We stop.”
“Stop? Where?”
Something heavy scraped overhead and Malita flinched. “‘Spritola.”
“But where are they taking us?”
Malita’s shadow shook its head, obviously not understanding my question, not that it mattered. I doubted she knew the answer anyway.
Several men climbed into our pit with lanterns and ropes and began the process of removing us from our prison. The pirates pointed the first few girls toward the ladder with terse instructions to climb. When my turn came, I fell into line behind them. The ladder brought us to the fresh air of the deck. I gulped deep cleansing breaths, trying to rid my lungs and taste buds of the reek of our prison.
When every girl had gathered on the deck, one sailor separated us and bound us in small groups of two or three, our arms linked together with iron manacles and short, heavy chains. The idea of jumping overboard and swimming for my life occurred to me, but as soon as the metal shackle circled my wrist, the thought disappeared. Cold iron stung my skin, and I maneuvered my shirtsleeve under the shackle to relieve the irritation.
“The first one to make a sound gets a bullet to her head, understand?” The captain who had greeted me so eloquently after pulling me from the ocean now spoke in a low, urgent voice. He issued his warning again in another language, Dreutchish, and one last time in Gallandic. Malita joined my chain gang along with Jenna, and she gave me a quizzical look, not understanding the captain’s instructions. I put my index finger over my mouth and pressed my lips together. Malita, wearing a grave expression, imitated me and nodded.
The sailors escorted us onto a gangway lowered over the side of the ship that stretched to a rickety dock. On land, a large buckboard wagon harnessed with two big horses awaited us. Our captors trundled the seven of us into the wagon bed, and one pirate climbed onto the seat next to the driver. We squeezed close together in the tight space, but the combined body heat chased away the nip of the ocean breeze, so no one complained. Jenna settled next to me. Her body trembled, and I wished I knew the words to comfort her, but they probably didn’t exist.
At least no one wants to kill me right this minute. That’s something, anyway.
My thoughts drifted to Jackie and Gideon. I wondered what had they thought of my disappearance. Would they look for me or had they given me up for shark bait? I mourned the loss of my Thunder Cloak. When I wore it, I felt the presence of my ancestors, and their closeness comforted me. Without it, I had nothing left to tie me to them except memories, and those seemed as fleeting and translucent as the ocean breeze in this land so far from home.
The wagon started with a jerk, and Jenna’s head banged into my shoulder. “Sorry,” she muttered.
“It’s all right.” I smiled in an effort to covey that she had a friend in me if she wanted it, but she turned away, averting her eyes toward the disappearing coastline.
Each girl had her own way of coping it seemed. Some huddled in a tight group with their manacled arms threaded around each other’s waists and shoulders. Others, like Jenna, stared listlessly. Two girls not attached to us leaned close and whispered to each other. I tuned out everyone and turned my gaze to the stars.
Aeolus greeted me—a twinkling asterism forming the vague shape of a man wielding a sword and shield. The constellation had gained its name, according to family legend, from the first Stormbourne, the being who fathered the long lineage of kings who ruled as Lords of Thunder. The same legend said when the Lords of Thunder died their spirits coalesced with the celestial realm and formed new constellations. I didn’t know if I believed it. I had routinely studied the skies after the deaths of my grandfather and father, but I never saw a flicker of unfamiliar nebula. Maybe that legend ran its course when mankind’s beliefs in divinity waned.
My stomach growled, bringing my thoughts back to earth. Malita heard it and giggled. From the folds of her gown, she produced one of the dry, hardtack biscuits the sailing crew had provided the prisoners. Nothing about it appealed to me, but I could no longer bear the hollowness in my belly. I took the offering from Malita and ate it in small pieces to make it last longer.
I was searching my lap for errant crumbs when several far-off shouts rose above the clatter of the wagon and horses. Our driver heard the voices, too. He snapped his whip and urged his horses to run. Behind us, several small lights, possibly lanterns, bounced about as if jostled by galloping horses. The volume of pursuer’s shouts increased as they closed the distance between us, and the shapes of riders solidified into black shadows against the bright night sky. Our driver snarled and cracked the reins over his horses’ backs.
Malita grabbed my arm and tugged. “We go!”
“Yes, we go,” I agreed, thinking she was commenting on the increase in our speed.
Malita shook her head, jabbed a finger at me, at Jenna, and then back to herself. She pointed to the path rolling out behind us. “We go!”
“Go?” I said, starting to understand. A gust of wind gathered the loose strands of my hair and dashed them into my face. I looked up. Clouds had begun to gather and blotted out the brightness of the moon and stars. Malita nodded furiously. She clearly meant for us to make our escape. Excitement
sparked through me and hope buzzed in my veins.
When Jenna realized our intentions, she shook her head. “No, Evie. We can’t.”
“Why not? This might be our only chance.”
“But who are those men following us? Maybe they’ve come to help.”
“No,” hissed the Gallandic girl who had spoken to me earlier on the ship. “I was a governess for an Espiratolan family, and I know the language. I know what the men are saying. They are tax collectors from the port. They only want money and a fat fee. They will be paid off, and then they will disappear.”
“Then why is the driver trying to run away?” I asked.
“He does not want to pay the fee, of course.”
“See, Jenna,” I said. “They’re catching up, and we’ll never get away if they do. We have to go now.”
Jenna shook her head again and crossed her arms over her chest. Instead of cursing her, I smiled, raised my hand, and yanked the chain that connected her to me. Jenna’s arm jerked up against her will. Before she could protest, Malita tugged the chain connected to me. “Looks like you’re outnumbered,” I said.
I rose to a crouch and Malita followed me. We shuffled to the rear of the bouncing wagon, dragging the reluctant Jenna along with us.
“You may not survive the fall,” the Gallandic girl said.
“What was your name again?” I asked, ignoring her warning. The girl had a fiery, determined spirit, and a great command of foreign languages. She’d make a wonderful ally.
“Nathalie. Nathalie Donadieu.”
“Come with us, Nathalie,” I said.
She paused and seem to consider my offer, but her chain-mates put bracing hands on her arms and pulled her away from the end of the wagon.
“Last chance,” I said and turned to look at the road rolling out behind us. The tax assessors had closed some of the distance between us. Still, if we jumped at that moment, we might make our way off the path before they noticed. The sky had clouded over and the darkness was almost absolute. I prayed no one would see us.
Heir of Thunder (Stormbourne Chronicles Book 1) Page 11
