Teia licked her lips. “He might want peace, too, you know. He could give me up as a gesture of goodwill.”
“Goodwill?” He chuckled, as if it were droll. “Andross Guile is full of will, I grant, but little of it is good.”
The whims of the great crushed the lives of those who labored beneath them. Bringing yourself to their attention was always risky. Teia was doomed.
“Of course, you’re right,” Murder Sharp said. “Logically, that is a possibility. I suppose you’ll have to weigh the odds. In the meantime, I advise you to keep your head down. We’ll give you orders soon. One simple assignment, and you’re free. Pardon, let me amend that. One simple assignment, and one meeting afterward if you do well, for my masters would like to take their own roll of the die at recruiting you.” He walked to the door. “Think carefully of all the costs of acting rashly. You have so much potential, Adrasteia.” He slipped out and closed the door. Her last glimpse of him was of the sigil across the back of his cloak, the silent-winged night hunter, the owl, wings flared, claws extended, nearly invisible, stitched in gray thread on gray fabric.
Teia jumped to her feet and ran to the door, snatching up a dagger on her way from its hook on the wall. She put her hand on the latch to throw it open—stopped.
Seconds drained past. Open the door, Teia. Go after him and stick this dagger straight into his back!
She locked the door. Sat heavily on the bed. The weight of her tiny olive oil vial was like an anchor dragging her down, down. A slave again, after freedom had been this close. It was worse than death. She crawled under the covers and curled into a ball. But she didn’t cry.
Her eyes were leaking, but she didn’t cry. Damn it.
Chapter 11
Rowing. The pain had become either bearable or so familiar that it couldn’t keep his attention.
Ten days after Gunner cored the apple in Gavin’s mouth with a musket ball, the drummers rattled an odd tattoo in response to some order the slaves couldn’t hear. Gavin looked over at his oarmates. He didn’t expect anything from the man next to him, Orholam. The nickname was for his number—Seven—but Gavin had slowly realized the Angari slaves had a darker sense of humor in their naming. Seven radiated kindness, but he almost never said anything, and when he did, it was rarely helpful. That these very qualities were why he’d been named Orholam was a sentiment so profane and disrespectful that the Highest Luxiat and head of Orholam’s worship on earth had laughed for a good ten minutes when he finally understood.
He’d almost recovered from his laughter when Fukkelot had cursed at him, and he finally understood that name, too, sending him into fresh gales of laughter.
The foreman, Strap, had eventually used her own much more obvious namesake to shut him up.
Rowing. The pain could be catalogued, but even the catalogue was tedious. His fellows were more interesting than the chafing, the blisters, the cramps, the knots.
Fukkelot was more helpful than Orholam, and more verbal. Gavin had heard of sailors swearing constantly, but that was usually a figure of speech. Fukkelot wasn’t right in the head somehow, swearing a stream of curses without willing it, day and night.
Now he grinned at Gavin. “Battle,” he said. He grunted. His jaw and neck twitched repeatedly. “They let us know so we use our strength when we need to.” Then he went back to whispering curses, as if it were a relief.
“Do they unchain us?” Gavin asked, rowing, rowing. “You know, in case we sink?” He was joking. Mostly.
“Win or die,” Strap shouted.
“Row to hell!” the slaves shouted in response.
“Scratch the back of Shadow Jack!” she shouted.
“Row to hell!”
“Row right back!” she shouted.
They pulled faster, in tempo with the drums.
“Pull!” she shouted in time with their pulling.
“To hell and back!”
“Pull!”
In less than a minute, they were flying across the waves. The foreman ducked upstairs. She came back. “We’ve closed to a league. Wind’s bad. Twenty minutes, if they never stop running.” She chortled. “Three, Four, Five, if you don’t get that oar fully stowed before the crunch this time, it’s five stripes each.”
“You gotta give us enough warning,” Three complained.
Gavin expected him to get the strap for that, but the foreman was in a good mood.
“Kind of ship is she?” Three asked.
“Abornean galley.”
Murmurs. Bad news. “How loaded?” someone asked.
“Sitting high.”
Curses. If their captain were competent, the chase would all come down to which slaves were in better condition—or could be motivated more. The motivation came by whip, mostly. Sitting high in the water meant it would be faster than usual and that it didn’t have a full cargo to plunder if they did catch her. It was the worst of all worlds for a crew.