Her dark face taking on a displeased edge, voice a little sharper, Captain Nyx said, “My word on the safety of my ship and my crew: I did not purchase you to warm anyone’s bunk or serve as whores for your keep. In fact, if anyone tries to make you do anything like that, you report it to me, Copper, Muir, Nannuri, or Doc Roban. No one else. On my ship, your private bits are yours, not a part of your servitude. Do you understand?”
Beata nodded, eyes wide at the whole topic, which she wasn’t ignorant of, but which she hadn’t somehow given any thought to...until then. Again, she was a bit grateful for that sleep poison, as it may have kept her from dangers she hadn’t realized she might encounter. The others nodded or murmured an affirmative of some kind.
“That being said,” the captain continued, “part of what we chose you for is to do with...borrowing...your bodies for a time.” Beata felt a little bit of confusion, but a lot of trepidation, and she could tell from the others’ reactions that she wasn’t the only one. Holding up her hand, Captain Nyx shushed them with a sibilant sound. “Now, now, before you work yourselves up, let me explain. First, Copper? Muir? Show them your arms.”
Copper and Muir both stepped around from behind the nervous youths, Copper holding out her left arm and Muir extending his right. Both of them had several of the scars Beata had noticed before. They were in neatish rows along their forearms, obviously long healed.
“We have a trade going with someone...” Captain Nyx spoke quietly, her voice calming instead of authoritative. “It’s strange, but lucrative, and most of The Kraken’s crew have done it in the past.” She then pushed up her right sleeve, showing five similar dark lines on her own forearm. “Including me. So, you see, we’re here before you, with only a few little scars.”
Each of the captives, the slaves bought to serve upon The Kraken, studied those scars curiously. With the proof of survivability before them, some of the first swell of fear had faded.
“You know how an infant must shelter in its mother’s womb for a certain amount of time before it can survive in the world?” Captain Nyx said, sliding her sleeve back into place. “There is a...client of ours, whose young are very small and need to be sheltered for a time in a living host before they can survive. They once had designated hosts, but unfortunately, there are no more of those living. Yet some others can suffice; others like us. Like you.” She pulled the cloth away from the bowl and beckoned the six wary young people closer. “These are, in a manner of speaking, newborns. Perhaps the better term would be larvae, but I don’t know how many of you would know the word.” She lifted a dark brow, glancing at the six before the table expectantly.
Azri cleared his throat and said hesitantly, “I know it. The form after the egg and before the adult form... or something like that?” He seemed to lose what little confidence he had as he spoke, perhaps fearing to seem too clever.
Beata raised one hand, the other rising a little as well, due to the cuffs and chain. “We learned of it in the city school. They had sketches with some insects at different stages, and some larvae can’t survive exposed. Some had to stay in water, some in the ground, or some other kind of protective medium.” She did not want to sound too proud that she’d remembered, but she was—had been—very proud to have had the chance to go to a proper school with proper teachers. It was special to have done so, after all. Many of the people in her village could not even read, let alone possess any knowledge beyond their own small world. She had once had many dreams of a future in the city, maybe doing something important, as her papa was doing.
“Yes, you both seem to have the basic concept.” Captain Nyx’s voice pulled Beata back to the moment at hand, refocusing her on the captain and what she was revealing in the bowl. “These have just hatched from their eggs and will need to be introduced into a host in the next day or so, otherwise they will die.” Captain Nyx lifted a frond of something wet and green, with striations of darker green and turquoise, and Beata thought it might be seaweed. Beneath it, in a little puddle with dense mossy vegetation at its center, were about a dozen small things curled up into pale bluish-green balls. Beata thought initially of tadpoles, or even of the fancy commas in some of the books she’d read, a dot with a curly little tail, and they looked like that more than anything. They had rounded little heads with tiny lacy bits like inside-out gills on either side of them. In the front they had three dark dots in a row, like droplets of deep blue oil. Nothing Beata saw resembled a mouth, or nostrils, for that matter.
“So tiny,” breathed Saramay, sounding somewhere between apprehensive and fascinated. “Smaller than my littlest fingertip.”
Captain Nyx nodded her agreement. “And they need to be protected by living skin.” She beckoned Copper to her, and took the woman’s scarred arm in one hand, touching it with the index finger of the other. “These marks are where we made small cuts to bring the larvae out again,” she explained calmly. “The larvae exude a substance which numbs their host’s skin, so they don’t cause any pain. They survive on tiny sips of their host’s blood, but otherwise lie still while they grow and change.”
“Grow?” squeaked Beata, suddenly finding the captain’s eyes upon her. She added a hurried, “Ma’am?”
Captain Nyx’s lips twitched, not quite into a smile, and then went to neutral again. “Yes, but only a small amount. They go from that size...” she gestured at the bowl and the tiny gently wriggling creatures, “to about this size,” she concluded, her thumb and forefinger showing a measurement just a tiny increment larger at either end than the largest of Copper’s scars. Barely the full length of Beata’s promise finger. “And none of it will cause pain, nor sickness. Except for one condition.”
Each of the six captives were silent, eyes wide, expressions expectant, and Beata was nearly brave enough to ask, “what condition” before the captain continued.
“They cannot abide a host who is not innocent.” Beata was not the only one looking puzzled, so the captain sighed almost silently and explained, “For some reason that I’ve never fully understood, the host must be pure. They must not have shared their bodies with another.”
“You mean we can’t have had sex?” Azri asked querulously, as if Captain Nyx were being too vague.
“Yes.” The captain released Copper’s arm with a small nod of thanks. “If the host is not innocent in body there is a bad reaction and the larvae die. It doesn’t matter if you’re in love, or if you’ve lusted after someone, or have even pleasured yourself, alone, as long as no mating has occurred with another. If this transpires, even the host may fall ill, and sometimes die.”
“The best thing, though,” Copper chimed in with a knowing smile, “is that, beyond that exception, the larvae actually help their host stay healthy.”
“True.” Captain Nyx nodded, gesturing at the bowl with the small creatures again. “While you have the larvae under your skin, you will generally remain in excellent health. Hosts almost never grow ill and, though you will have a greater appetite, you will rarely be troubled by sickness of the stomach or bowel. It’s the trade-off for bearing the larvae, to ensure you remain a good host.”
There was a long few minutes of silence, during which time Captain Nyx reached for a wooden box on the table, sliding it toward herself without yet opening its lid. She seemed to be letting the six of them think a moment, and Beata couldn’t help feeling a little squirmy inside at the thought of something—helpful or not—living under her skin. Stealing glances at the others, she was sure similar thoughts were in their minds, as well. Kailin especially looked rather queasy, Beata thought.
“Now.” Captain Nyx sat up straighter and folded her hands atop the table’s edge. “Not many would undertake this willingly, of course, and I am not going to force any of you to be a host.” Her gaze took them all in again, pausing on each of them for a moment or two along the way. “So, the incentive is that if you agree to host several larvae for only three moons, which is how long they require and about how long it will take us to reach the i
slands where our client awaits them, you will have paid half your price.”
Azri made a gasping sound. “Half? As much as that?” When all eyes turned to him, he gestured briefly with his cuffed hands, fingers spreading. “Half our freedom paid for three moons with...with things in our skin?”
“Must we do it again to pay the other half?” Dara asked, voice accented with the broad vowels of the local folk at the southern coast, where Beata remembered visiting her papa, who’d worked there for a time as an engineer, near one of the larger port cities.
“It can only be done the once,” Copper said matter-of-factly.
“Whatever it is that the larvae exude,” Captain Nyx took up the exposition again, “it prevents the same person hosting ever again. That’s why we must find new hosts every few years.”
“Then we must work off the other half here?” Beata asked tentatively.
“Depends upon your abilities.” The Captain went to the large wooden and brass desk at the far end of the room by the mullioned windows and retrieved a narrow tube-shaped messenger case. “We don’t really need many more full-time hands on The Kraken, but there are other opportunities when we reach the islands. Our client needs workers there.” She waggled the leather-bound case. “I have contracts ready for all of you, because you’ll want proof of your freedom, as well as the agreement to free you after whatever conditions we have settled upon have been met. I try to be fair and honorable in my dealings, but many others are not. Always get agreements in writing.”
Beata breathed out a tiny huff of amusement, but her eyes welled up a little right afterwards, and she found the captain’s gaze upon her. She shook her head, sniffling a bit. “My Greatmum used to say that,” she explained a little waveringly, trying to smile, but not doing all that well at it.
“None of that, little bee,” Copper murmured, going to her and gripping her shoulders, pulling her into a taller stance and squeezing her shoulders. “You’re on your own now. Wallowing in the past is only going to make it harder. Buck up. You’re tougher than you think.” She let go of Beata’s shoulders with one last little shake and glanced at the other five standing to either side of her. “All of you take this advice: Fair or not fair, you’re here and this is how things are. Work to regain your freedom and make good use of it once you do. Nothing worth having comes for free, and there are worse prices to pay than what’s being asked of you.”
A curl of a smile was upon Captain Nyx’s lips when she cleared her throat, but Beata still half-whispered an apology even as Copper inclined her head with a wry, “Sorry, Cap.”
“Good advice, all the same,” the captain said smoothly as she reclaimed her seat at the table. “Time to decide. If you are not virgin, innocent, then speak up now. If you are, then say whether you will be a host.”
Almost all of the captives, in a ragged chorus, chose to be a host.
Kailin, even paler than she had been, straightened her slender shoulders and said in a surprisingly firm voice, “I will be a host, too.”
“Very well, then.” Captain Nyx opened the wooden box and beckoned with graceful dark fingers, “One at a time, step forward.”
One by one, they did.
3 – Getting Sorted
After the larvae had been put in their arms, the six captives had been instructed on how to care for their wounds and their little... passengers...or that’s how Beata tried to think of them—it was less disturbing than “larvae”. When it was all over with, the chained leather cuffs had not been replaced. All six of the new ‘hosts’ were left unfettered, unchained, their only bindings, a light bandage around each of their non-dominant forearms.
Copper and Muir gathered all of them together to head back down below-decks to the mess, which was a room only a little smaller than the captain’s cabin, though filled with several long tables bolted to the floor and walls and benches affixed to the floor on either side. One of the tables would be their common table, the rest of the crew would sit as they pleased, and they were to muster there for their meals going forward; no more food brought to their tiny cabins-cum-holding cells.
Shuffling dazedly over to sit on the benches, Beata and her fellows were each given glazed wooden bowls, eating utensils, and a tin cup by a tall thin man with a startlingly deep voice. His name was Tagur, though he jovially told them “Cookie” was acceptable, too.
Tagur’s thick blond hair was pulled back into a veritable rope of a braid to keep it out of the soup he ladled into the bowls. Copper had explained that each member of the crew were expected to care for their bowls, utensils, and cups on their own. Every mealtime there would be a pot of hot, soapy water and trough with water for rinsing at far end of the long counter between the mess and the galley—where Tagur prepared and cooked the meals, his vividly blue eyes watching to see if his crewmates were enjoying his concoctions.
The stew served that first day was one of the best meals Beata had ever tasted. Tagur came out while the six young people were eating, going around with an earthenware jug to pour a thick red-orange semi-liquid into each newly issued tin cup.
Sniffing hers, Beata made a pleased sound and Tagur winked from beneath a bushy blond eyebrow. It was a fruit mash, pulpy and sweetly tart, and she finished the cup in several big gulps, pausing now and then to chew bits of fruit. She wasn’t the only one who’d polished off their portion quickly, leaving only Saramay and Temmin hesitating, scowling down into their cups suspiciously.
“It’s fruit,” Azri had said from across the table, nodding at them encouragingly. Soon, Saramay first and then Temmin, imbibed the drinks, their cups also quickly emptied.
Tagur chuckled from the direction of the galley, obviously having been watching them, and Beata glanced over to see a genuine, pleased grin on the man’s leathery brown face. He had big horsey teeth, a thin-lipped mouth that seemed to always be on the verge of smiling, and his chuckle was as deep as his speaking voice. Beata felt warmed by it, and she also felt the tiniest little bit of hope amidst the uncertainty and fear that had not left her since she’d awakened.
Once all had finished their meals, Muir called them over to the wash station. Kailin was the only one of them who hadn’t ever helped wash up at home before she’d been stolen away. Though she didn’t protest, she didn’t look particularly happy about doing it. Perhaps she wasn’t feeling well, Beata thought, wondering if some of what she’d taken to be light sunburn might not be the high flush of fever on those pale cheeks and brow.
Divided into males and females again, Copper escorted Beata and the other girls below decks. Copper paused at a locked door, pulled a ring of keys from her pocket and flicked through quickly to find the one she wanted. The heavy wooden door opened to reveal a storeroom. Each girl was given a bedroll and a blanket, then another pair of trousers and a tunic, leaving them each juggling a soft tower of items along with their bowls, utensils, and cups. Dara kept dropping her things and huffing in frustration about it each time, and for some reason Beata found it irresistibly funny, as did Saramay, which just made it harder to keep from giggling. Kailin smiled a little, but remained more subdued than the others.
Copper shushed them good-naturedly, helping Dara get her armload of things in order before locking the storeroom and leading them back to their assigned cabins to drop off their things. She then brought them back into the companionway to explain the tasks they were to learn that day and the schedule of chores that would be assigned to each of them for the next three moons.
Dara was to work in the galley under Tagur’s supervision, Saramay was to assist Doc Roban in the ship’s clinic, Kailin was tasked to learn how to help Jenra the ship’s quartermaster, and Beata—primarily because she was small and hardy—was to work in maintenance under Chief Oskar.
Beata felt a small surge of excitement, despite her situation. Her papa had started as assistant to the Maintenance Chief on the airship Hobb’s Folly, long before Beata had been born. He’d told her of the hardships and adventures of those early days sometimes, i
n lieu of the usual bedtime stories.
Copper took them in a circuit to deliver each girl to where she would be working; Dara was left with Tagur in the mess, and then it was onward to the ship’s clinic.
Doc Roban wasn’t at all what Beata expected; where she’d expected someone old, the doctor was probably near the age of her parents, perhaps the middle of his thirties or thereabouts. Doc Roban had dark brown hair with a few strands of silver coming in at his temples, gray-blue eyes, and light brown skin. Beata noticed he had no neat rows of scars upon either of his forearms, though he had a number of others here and there, and many small mars upon his hands and fingers—it appeared that he’d been burnt, nicked, scraped, and possibly bitten in his time. He wasn’t particularly tall, just about average, and his build seemed in the same middling range, as well.
The doctor’s voice was pleasant enough, and he shared the initial smile he’d shown for Copper with the remaining girls. “Copper. I was wondering when you’d bring me the helper I’d been promised.”
“Doc, this is Saramay,” Copper replied. “She’s hosting, so you’ve got to let her off for her meals regular, no matter how busy you are.”
Waving at Copper with the appearance of impatience, but no true sharpness to his stance or tone, Doc nodded. “Yes, yes, I know. I’m a doctor, woman! Go on, I’ll set her to work and send her back in good time.” Even as he spoke, he beckoned Saramay into the room with him. From the doorway several fixed bunks could be seen, as well as some folding cots racked on the wall above the farthest bunk. Cabinets filled three of the four walls, with worktops below and more cabinets underneath them. Boxes and bins had been stacked on either side of the doorway: clearly recent supplies taken on but not yet stowed. “We’ve a lot to do, Saramay, so pay attention...”
Copper, smiling a little, led Beata and Kailin away. When Kailin started falling behind, Beata turned back to look at her, dark brows raised, but Kailin shook her head and quickened her steps a bit to catch up. She was still pinkish, and Beata kept stealing glances as they went along past closed and open doors, past what she recognized to be weapons lockers and a few wall-mounted devices she didn’t recognize, along with piezo-lanterns on hooks at regular intervals. It was dark below-decks, save for the cabins or common areas on the outer edges that might have portholes or even actual windows, like in the captain’s cabin. It wasn’t long before Beata thought they must be near the middle of the airship, or maybe nearer the aft end, and Copper stopped at a door with a dark wooden plaque which bore the word “Quartermaster” in simple but well-made letters painted bright blue.
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