“The master has sent me to attend to your instruction.” Werren unlocked both cages and opened the doors. “If you attempt another escape, he will kill the mortal and give you to the hull.”
“Give me how?” Sam asked as she stepped out.
“It is an old punishment,” Werren said. “You will be hung by a rope and dragged up and down against the hull until the barnacles strip the flesh from your back.”
“Coburn,” Sam muttered.
“I vote we don’t try to escape,” Chris said. “What instructions are we supposed to get?”
“I will explain,” Werren said, “when we join the other women.” She gestured for them to follow her.
As the raggedly dressed Kyn led them down another tight stairway, Sam quickly told her everything she knew. Chris didn’t have much to add, other than what had happened between her and Jamys, which she kept to herself. If Vander killed them, it wouldn’t matter that she had agreed to be his human wife.
Werren brought them down to a third level, and through a hatch in a bulkhead to the back of the deck.
She’d seen better living space in juvie, Chris decided as she looked around the empty area. All that decorated the wooden-planked walls was water stains and black streaks of tar or mildew; a sour, dank smell rose from the slatted floor, where the gaps showed them the shallow layer of brackish water beneath them. Dozens of women wearing pretty gowns watched them from where they lay or sat in an irregular spider’s web of ropes hung from the upper beams; it took Chris a moment to realize they were crude hammocks.
Several guards came down the stairs, and one called out for the women to line up.
As Chris watched, each woman climbed down and formed a line in front of a guard. The first woman in line stripped out of her gown and shift, and handed it to the guard in exchange for a ragged sack like the one Werren wore. As the women slipped the ugly tunics over their heads, Chris saw how, like Werren’s, they barely covered the women’s naked bodies.
A guard carrying two more bundles of rags walked over to Chris and Sam. “Take off your clothes.”
Sam stepped in front of Chris. “Not happening, pal.” When he reached for the blade on his belt, she punched him in the face, sending him staggering backward until he landed on his ass. When a second guard came barreling at her, she sidestepped his hands and drove her knee into his abdomen. As he doubled over, she grabbed his collar and heaved him over toward the other men. He was unconscious before he hit the slats at their feet.
Chris watched the men shuffle back. “They weren’t expecting a fight.”
“Anyone else want me or my friend to take off our clothes?” Sam called out loud. The guards grabbed the man she had knocked out before they hurried up the stairs. The light from the upper deck vanished as they slammed shut the door. “I didn’t think so.”
Someone struck a match, and a glow appeared around Werren as she brought a candle in an old-fashioned brass holder over to Chris. “We can see in the dark,” she said as she handed the light to her. “You cannot.”
Now Chris could see some of the women climbing into the hammocks and covering themselves with thin blankets. “What is this, like, the punishment section?”
“This is where we live,” Werren said. “The crew calls it the sluts’ quarters.”
“You mean, this is where he keeps you when you’re not working on the casino ship?” Sam, who obviously knew a lot more about the women, demanded. “Down here? All of you?”
“Yes.” Werren nodded to a pretty young brunette, who climbed up the stairs and sat on the step nearest to the door. “But it does not look like this all the time. Only when Dutch or the guards are here.”
A blur of color and light encircled Chris, who found herself standing in the middle of a beautiful garden of flowers. Overhead the sun glowed in a bright blue sky, and an orange butterfly fluttered right by her face. The women, all of whom were wearing gowns even more lovely than those they had removed earlier, reclined on cushioned chaises and armchairs. Some picked up books to read; others worked on needlepoint.
“Holy Toledo.” Chris reached out to touch the curling petals of a tiger lily. “What is this?”
“It’s what she does,” Sam answered for Werren as she inspected their surroundings. “She can produce three-dimensional illusions. Very convincing ones. I speak from personal experience.” She looked at the blonde. “So how long can you keep it up? An hour? Two?”
“It will last as long as I will it.” Werren walked over to a pretty marble fountain, and sat down on its edge.