“I think…” licking her lips and clearing her throat, Beata had to work just to whisper, “I think I stabbed someone, when they came for us. Mumma gave me a knife,” she added the last in a mere breath of sound. Mumma had told her to be brave. She didn’t feel at all brave. Just numb, but there was fear under the numbness; she could feel it lurking inside.
“Ah, you’re the one,” replied the stranger with the water. They offered another drink, a wooden cup it seemed now that her lips were a little less dry and her eyes a little less blurry. “I heard one of the steamer passengers cut big Navien from The Lamprey.” A hand patted Beata’s shoulder, lingering to squeeze once. “Good on you, girl. He’s a pig. No, that’s insulting pigs. He’s a slug with legs.”
A tiny huff of unintentional amusement pushed out of Beata in a little burst, surprising her. Wiping at her eyes, the clink of chains trailed along with the heavy weight of manacles at her wrists and ankles. Beata squinted at the person before her, seeing a narrow, somewhat pale face with dark hair in a mane of braids falling to shoulders and down their back. A light-colored hairband of some kind kept the braided hair away from their face, which bore high arched brows and wide-set darkish eyes over a slightly humped nose and a thin-lipped mouth.
“Still got some life in you, yet, hm?” The cup was brought to Beata’s mouth again. “What’s your name, then? How old are you?”
“Beata,” she replied, voice still hoarse, too weak to travel far. Her family name didn’t matter now. She knew her fate as a captive in these parts: slavery. “I’m... I’m fifteen.”
“Beata. I’m Copper. You’re aboard The Kraken, and if you behave, you’ll be treated decent. Captain Nyx isn’t cruel.”
“Copper, report,” a quietly stern female voice said from behind Copper’s crouched form in the wavering light. A tall shape stood in the doorway Beata hadn’t consciously noticed, carrying a smaller version of the piezo-lantern dangling from a hook on the far side of Copper’s braid-covered head.
“She’s awake and seems to know who she is, Cap,” Copper said, giving Beata’s shoulder a light squeeze before rising. The change in shadows from the uneven light in the small room and the captain’s hand-help lamp revealed Copper to have a not too tall, strongly-built body with curves and shapes typical to females, as well as strange-looking shoes that seemed a cross between thick socks and thin shoes with a gap between the big toe and the other toes. Beata focused on those foot-coverings as Copper spoke above her. “Says her name is Beata. Seems she’s the…bee…who stung Navien.”
A distinct thunk on the wooden decking drew Beata’s eyes to more typical thigh-high dark boots. Above that, slightly less dark trousers and a buttoned waistcoat as dark as the boots, but with glints here and there that might have been buttons or metallic embroidery. At the captain’s hips was a wide belt with an ornate buckle which held a sword, a knife, and the butt of what looked like a gun of some kind. Above the “v” of a lighter shirt underneath the waistcoat, the captain’s skin was so dark Beata couldn’t discern a color to it, at all. Blue glints from the lamps outlined the very basic elements of her features: high cheekbones, a slope-bridged nose that ended in a moderate spread above full lips, a proudly rounded chin, and strong jaw. Her eyes looked large, but in the dimness Beata had no idea of their color.
“Copper, you’re not as funny as you think,” Captain Nyx said, but her voice sounded mildly amused, all the same. “Is the poison out of her yet?”
“I think mostly,” Copper replied turning to look at Beata. “She’ll need more water and some food before she’ll be able to do much.”
“See to her, then,” the captain said after a brief nod. She moved closer, her dark features more clear as she stood near the hanging lamp. “Beata,” she said musingly. “Copper’s right, I’m not cruel if I can help it, but I am the final word here on The Kraken. I will be interviewing you, along with the others, two days hence.” She turned toward the doorway, but stopped and tilted her head to give Beata a long, intent look. “Behave yourself, little “bee”, and your life will be much less difficult.”
She strode out without looking back or speaking further to Copper, but that didn’t seem to trouble Copper at all. She crouched down before Beata again and stayed to run the damp cloth along her bare arms and legs, giving her sips of water now and then along the way. The water she dunked the cloth into was in a small tin bucket, and it gave off a slight aroma of something Beata could only term “green” in the way herbs and some grasses smelled when crushed. The drinking water was in a separate, wooden bucket which was a bit larger than the tin bucket.
“Others?” Beata asked, a sharp pain in her chest from the sudden stab of hope. “Maybe my mumma is with them?”
Copper averted her eyes, paying particular attention to the wringing out of the cloth, before finally looking up and shaking her head. “We only bought young ones at the flesh market. Your mumma… Your mother?” Beata nodded, though her eyes were already stinging before Copper went on. “She’d have been too old—even if she had you young—for our purposes. Sorry, little bee.” Copper gave another gentle squeeze of her shoulder in obvious sympathy.
Beata nodded, glad to at least have that instead of derision or indifference, and though her breath hitched, eyes blurring and stinging like acid, it seemed she didn’t have enough water in her to shed any actual tears. She drifted into an exhausted, still perhaps a bit drugged—poisoned?—sleep as Copper dragged damp fingers through Beata’s hair to bring the tangled mess into some kind of order. She didn’t remember any dreams, only nothingness until she woke.
2 – Interview with Captain Nyx
Beata followed along behind five others who’d been captured and sold at the flesh market, all of them wearing rough-woven tunics and trousers with rope belts; most only an approximate fit. All the captives—slaves—were barefoot, but they’d all been given a bucket of water and soap early that morning, along with the generic clothing. Beata had been happier than she’d first realized to be rid of the grubby, torn blood-stained nightdress in which she’d lived for weeks, though she’d only been conscious for a portion of that time. Seeing the shape of some of the others shuffling along with her, she had a distinct feeling that she’d rather have the wobbly knee and nausea that came with the sleep poison.
Copper strode along ahead of their little parade to lead the way to the captain’s cabin, and it was now obvious to Beata where Copper’s name must have come from: Her mane of braids was bright copper-red, nearly orange, and the explosion of freckles across her nose and cheeks were all in nearly the same color—a tad browner in shade, but not by much—as well as those Beata could see on Copper’s shoulders and forearms. Copper wore her usual odd split-toed shoes below leg-hugging trousers; the only thing that had notably changed was her shirt, which had gone from an off-white sleeveless tunic with laces along the sides to this front-laced sleeveless shirt of mottled greens and yellows. She also bore a belt with two curved knives in angled sheaths at her back, one over the back of each hip, and one earlobe held a ring with what looked like a curlicued silver fishhook dangling from it. A row of scars marred the light golden-brown skin of Copper’s left forearm, as though she had been gouged by something with half a dozen claws. As much due to her weakened state and her situation, in general, as to ingrained politeness, Beata hadn’t thought to ask about the marks.
While Copper had gathered the four females together from the small chambers in which they’d been kept below, another crewmember whom Copper introduced as Muir, had come along behind them with two young males. A squat man with a tattooed bald head, Muir looked like he could crush trees with his muscular arms after kicking them over with his equally powerful-looking legs. He wore thin-soled sandals strapped in crisscross fashion up to his ankles, and his trousers, falling just below his shins, were held up by a thick belt with a big knife sheathed on one hip. His stained and much-mended shirt was a faded periwinkle-gray with no sleeves to hide his bulging arms and their assorted tat
toos. Beata only glimpsed one tattoo clearly before they were herded past him toward the captain’s cabin: a sea-creature of some kind with three bulbous eyes and several tentacles writhing and curling downward from the rounded body on Muir’s bicep, wrapping around his arm on the way to where the last curled tentacle tip had been inked into the back of his large hand. She found it fascinating, though a little unsettling in its alienness.
Beata had trouble seeing much of anything for a few minutes after they’d climbed the wooden steps up to the deck of The Kraken, because the sunlight was blinding after so long in the dim bowels of the ship. Even so, through the blur and sting of watering eyes, she’d looked around with mouth fallen open at the seemingly endless blue sky beyond the ship’s bulwarks, and through and above the various canvas swaths of sails and lengths of rope below the enormous oblong of the ship’s gas bag. Fluffy clouds interrupted the vivid blue here and there, and the wind never seemed to cease, snapping and rustling the sails and Beata’s hair, and softly whistling amidst the rigging.
Beata didn’t have any notion of how long she’d been lost in just looking, but suddenly Copper was snapping her fingers before Beata’s face. “Hoi! Eyes front, little bee. You can gawp later.”
Muttering a respectful apology and feeling abruptly fearful, despite Copper’s mostly reasonable treatment of her, Beata clasped her hands before her. The leather cuffs on her wrists shifted, rubbing against the raw skin left from the metal manacles Copper had removed before leaving Beata to wash. The cuffs were still linked by a chain, but the leather was lighter by far than metal and the chain was made of finer links, and not as heavy and painful as the shackles had been. The fetters on her ankles had been removed entirely and had not been replaced with anything. Beata decided to try and appreciate these somewhat better circumstances. The trying wasn’t working very well, but she was trying, all the same.
The captain’s cabin was on the same level as the main deck, the round-topped door bearing a plaque of glossy dark wood with the words “Captain Nyx” painted upon it in golden yellow. Copper gave the clump of bedraggled, frightened, and traumatized youths a stern mind-your-manners sort of look before rapping on the door below the plaque.
“Come ahead,” the captain said from within, voice muffled, but Beata recognized it, all the same.
Copper and Muir escorted the six young slaves into the room and lined them up before a large table partially covered in various books, rolled and unrolled charts, a sextant in a small holder, three evenly spaced piezo lanterns—currently not active—and a ceramic jug with a cork stopper on a long tray with finger-length sides and a thick base. Three wooden steins were nestled in the tray with the jug, taller than mugs and metal-bound at bottom and top, to which was affixed a metal handle. A few other things lay upon the table, but Beata could identify only a few pencils amidst the other mysteries. One of them looked as if it had been regularly gnawed upon near the tip, making Beata think of her lessons. Staring blankly at the pencil, she was strangely unable to remember the face of her mathematics instructor, whose teaching sessions she’d attended with ten others from her village every Monday.
Voices jolted Beata out of her daze, making her blink rapidly for a moment to keep from crying—she wasn’t quite certain why not remembering something should make her want to cry, but there it was.
“Yes, Cap. All accounted for.” Copper was speaking, though Beata couldn’t recall whatever was said beforehand. She stood behind Beata and the five others in their slightly uneven row, and she gave a soft sigh before going on. “The other boy passed in the night. Doc said he’d been bleeding inside. It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d known, because he doesn’t have all he’d’ve needed to fix him—if it could even be done.”
“You and Nan examined them all at the market,” the captain said after a moment, lips slightly pursed before they evened out again. “Doc gave them a once-over as well, right after they were brought aboard. This is not an acceptable result. I’m not pleased, Copper.”
“Sorry, Cap,” Copper replied, chin high despite the apology in her quiet voice.
“I’ll have you, Nan, and Doc in here after the noon watch.” The Captain sat back in her large wooden chair, hands coming off the edge of the table to alight upon the leather-padded armrests. “We’ll discuss the matter then.”
“Aye, Captain Nyx,” Copper said, still subdued, braids bobbing with the quick inclination of her head.
“Names, then.” Captain Nyx’s eyes fell upon each of the young slaves in turn, golden-brown and intent, and Beata took that as an excuse to really take a good look at the woman.
Captain Nyx’s skin was just as dark as it had seemed the first time, when she’d stood in the door to the tiny cabin where Beata had been kept. It was not the very dark brown Beata had seen before on some folk, but almost blue-black, and her full lips were almost as dark, though with a subtle tinge of deepest red barely hidden in the softer flesh. Gleaming white teeth showed intermittently when she spoke, though Beata thought one of the lower ones in front might be missing, or crooked, as the otherwise perfect crescent of teeth deviated in that one spot. A tiny grouping of pale dots rode the curve of Captain Nyx’s right cheekbone, either painted on or tattooed with white or very light-colored ink. Beata was almost certain they were arranged into one of the constellations, but she couldn’t remember which—if she’d ever known it. The captain’s hair was black and trimmed short atop the curve of her head, barely more than a layer of fuzz until the nape of her neck, where she wore three long, narrow braids with small gold beads at the ends. She wore them draped over one shoulder, black and gold against the deep clove of her jacket which was held closed by obsidian-black buttons from just beneath the wide lapels to her waist, where it cut away to either side to reveal a black satin lining.
Copper went down the row of them, starting at the far end on Beata’s left, laying her hand lightly upon each youth’s head as she spoke their name:
“Dara.” A young woman, surely not long out of girlhood, with wildly curly brown hair, eyes of muddy hazel that were closer to brown than green, but only just. Her skin was the buff brown of damp sand.
“Saramay.” Another girl approaching womanhood, with ash blonde hair, brown eyes, and sun-pinkened fair skin.
“Temmin.” An older boy with hair the same shade as Saramay, as well as brown eyes and fair skin. Surely they were sibs, they looked so similar.
“Azri.” A young man, possibly the oldest of them all, with shaggy auburn hair to his shoulders and dark green eyes. His skin was the warm brownish-yellow of parchment and nearly as freckled as Copper’s.
“Beata.” Copper’s hand came to light upon Beata’s head, barely there. She couldn’t help twitching in surprise, despite the fact that Copper had not shown her any deliberate unkindness. The Captain, expressionless, looked at her directly, as if judging her worth—possibly literally—and Beata wondered what she thought of Beata’s black hair pulled back into as best a knot as she could manage without comb or brush, or her nearly black-brown eyes and her skin, not as dark as the captain’s, but darker than any of the others; the deep brown of fertile earth.
“Kailin.” A young woman with straight hair the silver-white of moonlight, eyes so pale blue they nearly blended with the whites and made the small dot of her pupils startlingly black; her skin was the palest of anyone in the room, save for where it had been burnt to pinks and rose shades. There was a fading welt on her cheekbone, the eye on that side a little swollen, and a scab just visible at the corner of her mouth. Mottled bruises showed here and there upon her arms, some still vivid purple, most fading into greens and yellows.
Looking over at her fellow captives as they were identified to the captain, and to each other in the process, Beata could see that she and each of the others were bruised and scraped, their wrists and ankles raw from the manacles used to control them as well as contain them. It was only that the marks seemed to show so much more blatantly on the pale young woman’s skin—Kailin,
her name was, Beata tried to set it and the others in her memory.
Captain Nyx nodded as she studied them all once more, golden-brown eyes sharp, full lips pressed into an almost flat line, and it was a span of several breaths before she spoke, her voice strong and no-nonsense. “Now, let me make things clear. By all the common laws here, I own all of you. I don’t like slavery, I don’t like people being snatched by force and sold like common goods, but it’s going to happen whether I like it or not. Some of my crew were once where you lot are now, and lived to tell the tale, as they say.” She spread her attention amongst them, gaze flicking between them, one after another.
Beata felt the truth of her words more when they were holding each other’s eyes, but she didn’t know whether it was a trick or something true. Listening with all her might, Beata said nothing, waiting for the captain to go on.
“I will not be taking you back to any family you have left, nor will I be freeing you out of the goodness of my heart,” said the captain, lips twisting in dark humor at her own words. “However, once you’ve paid back what I paid for you, whatever you choose to do is up to each of you. For now, I am your master and you will do well to earn your freedom by doing what I ask of you without trouble or complaint. You’ll work on The Kraken once you’ve recovered from what brought you to this position, and I suggest you do your best to learn as much as you can, because every skill you take on makes you more valuable, and will serve you well when you’ve earned your freedom.”
Leaning over, Captain Nyx reached under the table to pull out an earthenware bowl with a cloth over it. Setting the bowl in front of her upon the table, she kept the fingers and thumb of one hand resting against it as she spoke further. “There is a reason we picked young ones like you to buy at the flesh market.”
Kailin, Azri, and Dara all shifted slightly, not quite taking a step back, but showing their uneasy wish to do so in their body language. Saramay and Temmin clasped hands, but did nothing else to show their increased apprehension.
Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors Page 19
