Shelter of the Most High

by Connilyn Cossette

  After a brief discussion, in which Akato again questioned Seno’s decision to keep us alive, he lumbered off to join the chaos and Seno directed us to a longboat beached nearby. We clambered aboard to sit on the floor among the giant fish carcasses, bundles of flax that the women of our village had spent weeks preparing, and the casks of wine that had been awaiting a celebration that would never happen. My cousin and I tangled our fingers together, gripping each other in icy, trembling desperation—neither of us able to speak as Seno climbed aboard and used an oar to push off the beach.

  Matere. My mother, with her sun-kissed hair and warm skin and midnight lullabies, was gone. My two little sisters with their frizzy golden braids and my tiny brown-eyed brothers would never grow to marry or have children of their own someday.

  These evil men had stolen everything. Only death and ashes remained.

  Hot anger burned in my body as the boat pushed off the beach, each dip of the oars stirring my fury higher and higher as my mind conjured the grisly images. Had they suffered? Or had the brigands had enough mercy to make quick work of slitting their throats?

  If I’d listened to Prezi and returned earlier instead of heedlessly frolicking in the waves and satiating my ridiculous curiosity in the underwater grotto, my blood would now mingle with theirs as it sank beneath the skin of the island that was my entire world. I had the overwhelming urge to lunge from the boat and swim back now, to greet death alongside my family.

  But for my cousin, I sat still. For my cousin, I kept my eyes trained on the ship looming larger and larger ahead of us as we sliced through the crystal blue water. For my cousin, the only person I had left, I would do anything.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Prezi and I stood together on the deck of the ship, wet-haired and shivering in the salty breeze. As our captor climbed aboard behind us, still carrying that large sack over his shoulder, another of the men sauntered up, appraising our bedraggled state with an off-balance smile that curdled my stomach. He was quite a bit older than Seno, with a gray-stubbled head and his kilt and bare chest stained with blood. The feral gleam in his eyes made it apparent that he’d reveled in the slaughter. “Well now, what do we have here?”

  “Leave them be, Porote.” Seno moved to stand in front of us. “They are mine.”

  Porote’s eyes flared as he took in the larger man’s defensive stance. “Yours? Aren’t we to divide the spoils, Seno?”

  Seno took a step forward, the thump of his sandaled foot on the wood planks vibrating beneath my bare toes. “This is my ship. I decide what spoils are divided and what are not.” He stood very still, and from the shock on Porote’s face I gathered Seno’s expression was fierce. “I expect the rest of the crew to be notified of such things as well.”

  Porote’s troubled gaze flicked to me one more time before he shook his head and walked away, seeming just as confused as Akato as to why Seno would go to the trouble of taking captives from a village where everyone else had been slaughtered.

  Without an explanation for his strange behavior, Seno ordered us through the hatch in the deck and down the ladder into the hold of the ship. I’d rarely seen such vessels as this one, built for long trade across the sea, with sails that billowed like the ever-changing clouds.

  The dark space belowdecks was barely tall enough for Seno to stand upright. He ordered the two of us to sit along the wall behind two large barrels and then wound a length of rope around both our wrists, binding us together.

  “Stay put. This may be my ship, but these men have been a long time away from home. And from the pleasure of women.” He lifted his brow, the one sliced in two by a thick white scar. “You understand my meaning?”

  Molten fear traveled through my extremities.

  He took our silence as understanding. “Good. We won’t be much longer. My men are nearly finished loading the fish.” A sinister smile curled on his lips. “A nice haul this season. My buyer will be pleased.”

  So it was for the tuna my family had been slaughtered? The fish that our village was so skilled at herding into the mattanza nets must be worth much for Seno to direct his ship here.

  “It was one of the things I remembered most about this place, at least until I set foot on the beach. How my father and uncles would prepare those nets for months, and the blood . . . so much blood in the water as they killed the tuna. It used to frighten me as a boy, but I’d been so proud when they finally let me go that I swallowed my disgust at all that gore. . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I don’t understand. . . .” I said, stricken by his confusing tale. “How . . . how would you remember our village?”

  He stared at me, the light from the hatch highlighting only one half of his face. “You don’t know me, do you?”

  “How could I—?”

  “I am Seneturo.”

  With a gasp, Prezi went stiff, and my jaw gaped as Seno lifted his finger and touched the white scar that sliced his eyebrow in half.

  I did that.

  “I did that,” my mouth repeated. “I cut you.”

  “Yes, you did.” A sardonic smile ticked his cheek. “And I thank you for the bit of ferocity it adds to my appearance. Most assume it was some wicked blade that caused the scar and not the sharp edge of a shell during a diving game.”

  There had been so much blood that day, I’d thought Seneturo might die with the way the wisps of red had curled through the water and how it streamed down over his eyelid. I remembered wondering why he didn’t cry out even though the gouge looked so painful.

  With profound confusion cluttering my thoughts, I took in the sight of my childhood friend melded with the man who’d just slaughtered our village. His home. My family.

  “How can this be?” Prezi trembled as she leaned against me.

  Seno lifted his palms and I noticed another thick and ragged scar slashed across his hand. One certainly not made by a little girl roughhousing in the water with her friends. “You were there that day. You saw what they did, how they offered the ten of us boys like sacrifices. Traded like goats by our own people, by your father.” His lip curled, as if the words tasted of gall.

  A chain of memories from eight years ago floated to the surface. A group of young boys being led out of the village. Seneturo, only twelve at the time, his boyish shoulders straight as he was loaded onto a boat similar to this one. The trembling of my mother’s hand as she held mine and the fury in her eyes.

  “So this is vengeance?” I asked.

  “Perhaps.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Or perhaps I simply remembered the mattanza and had an eager buyer lined up.”

  “But why . . . ?”

  “Why did I save the two of you?” He looked away, his voice soft. “Your mother.”

  He paused. “She pleaded with your father not to allow us to be traded to the pirates, even though my own parents said nothing. She was the only one to stand up to him. I will never forget her face as she accused him of cowardice for not fighting back. And knowing him, I am sure she paid the price for her rebellion.”

  His knowing gaze held mine. He spoke the truth. I’d not been surprised by the bruises on my mother’s face, the cut in her lip, and the way her arm hung limp at her side the morning after Seneturo had been traded away, but now I knew why those wounds had been inflicted. I’d endured my own fair share of bruises at my father’s hand and learned from a young age to find escape in the sea whenever he came around.

  “When I saw you girls on that beach, just like when we were children . . . I couldn’t . . .” His jaw twitched as if he were grinding his teeth. “She and your siblings were dead before I could get to them. I had planned on sparing them, for her sake. But now there is only the two of you.”

  Prezi wept openly, and an echoing sob shuddered in my chest, demanding to be let free, but I clamped my mouth shut, determined to be strong enough for the both of us.

  Seno dropped the bag on the floor, the clatter of metal echoing in the cargo hold. “Your coward of a father
was hiding in one of the caves up above the village,” he said. “He must have run off as soon as our ship hit the beach. Little did he know that I knew exactly where he kept his stash. I explored every one of those caves as a child and discovered it long ago.” He nudged the bag of spoils with his foot, and his dark eyes flared wide with satisfaction as he leaned in close to me. “I paid him back for every moment of degradation I suffered at the hands of the men who bought me that day.” His whisper was rough and frightening. “And I took my time until he begged and cried like the dog he was.”

  Although I was unable to summon any grief for the man I’d called Father, Seno’s ruthlessness terrified me, and I blinked against the burn of tears as I considered our utter vulnerability. “What will you do with us?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” His tone was curt as he stood and brushed a hand over his shaven head. “There’s nothing to do now but take you with us.”

  “You could let us go,” I ventured, my plea rushing out. “We’ll run and hide, find another village that might take us in.”

  “No. Akato and Porote have already seen you. I cannot afford to show leniency. One glimpse of my underbelly and the two of them would feed me to the sharks. I won’t lose my ship.” He stood and walked to the ladder that led to freedom. “For your sakes—for your mother’s sake—I wish Akato had never spied your tunics lying on the shore.”

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  In blackness, Prezi and I clung to each other, mourning together in silence. There was nothing to say as the ship bobbed in the bloodied harbor, no words to soothe the persistent ache as the men above us shouted orders and raised the anchor stones, and nothing that could erase the agony as we sailed away from everything we’d ever known.

  At the first port we anchored in the next day, Seno stood guard over us while his men unloaded all the tuna my village had died for. After ensuring that we had food and water, his eyes stayed fixed on his men and his jaw remained set until they clambered up the ladder without so much as glancing our way. Each time rations were divided among the sailors, the process was repeated. Seno’s determination to protect us in spite of the way he’d ordered the destruction of our village baffled me.

  On the third night of black silence, he descended into the hold alone, accompanied by lewd encouragement from the men above. He returned a threat of violence should any of the lechers attempt to follow him, making me consider just how insufficient the leather hinges on the latch would be, were they determined to disobey Seno’s orders.

  After retrieving some stale bread, a small jug of watery barley beer, and dried fish for us to eat, he placed an oil lamp on the ground between us and lay on the floor, his hands behind his head, saying nothing. Prezi turned away and pretended to sleep. Although confused by his presence and still terrified of him, I welcomed the silence and instead listened to the now-familiar sounds of wood, water, and metal as the ship cut through the sea.

  Without preamble, Seno began to tell the story of his first days at sea. He’d been enslaved on a ship much like this one by ruthless marauders who beat him daily, refused him food often, and took pleasure in pillaging vessels and terrorizing villages all around the Great Sea.

  As he grew older, Seno learned the ways of the pirates who’d tortured him as a child, learned to fight and steal and outwit. After a few years, he was allowed to earn his freedom, and because of the lessons he’d learned watching other pirates, he had saved his portion of the spoils instead of whoring and drinking them away.

  He’d purchased this ship only a year ago and spent the last few months working to establish his authority over these men, authority I suspected may have been damaged by his actions back at the village when both Akato and Porote had challenged him for saving us.

  Our presence gave Seno the opportunity to unload his stories on captive ears. Some of them were fascinating, some horrifying, and some made me desperate for a swim in the sea to wash myself clean of the details. It was evident that nearly a decade of piracy had twisted the innocent boy into someone who barely resembled the Seneturo I had known. He’d survived through any means necessary and seemed to regret none of the lives he’d ended in doing so. I wondered what my own choices might have been if forced into the same situation. Perhaps two days ago my answer would have been different, but now there was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my cousin.

  When he finished his tale, Seno sat up and put his elbows on his knees. Picking up the nearly empty beer jug in his hands, he turned his head toward me, a new expression lighting his face. “Do you remember the day you challenged me to drink a mug of seawater?”

  Startled by the abrupt question, I nodded, even as the memory caused the corners of my lips to twitch. “You gagged and heaved all over the sand.”

  “But you would not let me collect the prize until I drank it all.”

  “Of course not. That would be unfair.”

  He shook his head. “You always were a bossy one.”

  As Prezi reminded me frequently.

  “You remember what the prize was, don’t you? When I finally got that entire mug of awful water down?”

  I did, but I would not speak it out loud. “You have to let me kiss you, Sofi.”

  I pressed my lips together and his eyes followed the action. He remembered it too. Even though it was only a quick and awkward brush of childish lips, Seneturo was the only boy outside my family I’d ever allowed to kiss me. I’d told Prezi that night that I would marry him when I was old enough.

  We both stayed quiet, lost in our own memory of that day—the day before the pirates came and took Seneturo away.

  He glanced at Prezi, as if ensuring that she truly was sleeping instead of pretending this time. “It wasn’t only your mother’s kindness that saved you the other day.” His voice dipped low. “It was that the last innocent moment of my life was there on that beach with you.”

  “Seneturo is still inside you,” I whispered. “It’s not too late.”

  He sat up, cursed, and heaved the clay jar at the hull. It shattered, splattering the remains of the beer down the wall. Prezi startled but did not open her eyes. Shrinking back, I stared at him, my breath coming in short spurts.

  He leaned down, his face nearly as close as it had been the day he’d kissed me, his mouth curled into an ugly snarl. He smelled of sea and wind and bitterness. “Heed my words, Sofea. Trust no one. Especially not me.”

  It had been seven days since Seno had come down into the hold for more than a few moments. Each time he’d barely spoken to us but ensured we had food and water before ascending the ladder. And tonight he had not come at all. For hours we’d listened to the sounds of revel above us: drunken shouting, scuffling, even music from some sort of stringed instrument paired with heavy-footed dancing. Perhaps Seno had overindulged and was sleeping off drink somewhere, having forgotten the tied-up, hungry girls down below. Stomach protesting and eyes weary from peering into blackness, I leaned my head back against the wall and attempted to sleep.

  The soft, rhythmic sway of the vessel told me that we were anchored. I longed for the sun, for the sweet caress of the sea on my skin, for the murmur of the waters upon the pebbled shore of my beach, and for my family. The hatch opened and the now-familiar shadow of Seno descended into our prison. My stomach snarled in response.

  “Are we in a port?” I asked.

  “We’re off the coast of Tyre. There’s a fire festival tonight, so we are anchored until tomorrow morning.”

  He knelt down in front of us and placed his oil lamp on the ground. “It’s time for you to go.” He slipped a knife from his belt and worked at the ropes he’d bound us with.

  “Go? But how?”

  “You’ll have to swim.”

  “Swim? Why?”

  “My men are sleeping off their celebration. It’s your only chance to get off the boat.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought you planned to—”

  “Plans have changed. Akato and Porote are suspicious.
Get up.” His gruff tone was laden with the smell of wine.

  “Where will we go?”

  “That’s not my concern.”

  My mouth gaped at him. “Seneturo—”

  He towered over me, speaking as if to a child, the weak light from his oil lamp casting eerie shadows on his face. “My name is Seno.”

  Prezi pressed closer to my side, her fingers gripping mine, and I had little doubt my expression matched her terrified one.

  Seno’s lips pressed together in a tight line, and I was not sure if it was regret or anger in their shape. “I will help you get into the water. But this is the last and only thing I can do for you. I won’t lose my ship.” He spun around and climbed out of the hold, assuming we would follow.

  “What will we do?” Prezi’s voice warbled.

  “We swim,” I said. “He’s giving us a chance. We have to take it.”

  My legs shook as I walked to the ladder, wobbly from the lack of movement for the last eleven days and thrumming with a mixture of fear and cautious hope. With a deep breath, I climbed up the wooden rungs, wholly unsure what I would see when I emerged on deck. The cool night air hit my face, causing me to drag in a fresh salt-laden mouthful that burned my lungs. Delicious.

  As my eyes adjusted to the world outside our black prison, a half-moon lit the deck with a subtle glow. Men lay along the edges of the boat, deep into drink-laden slumber. It seemed only Seno was awake to keep watch tonight. Many points of light flickered on the far horizon, evidence of the fire festival taking place in Tyre.

  Prezi emerged from the hatch, the miserly moonlight highlighting panic across her features. She immediately searched out my hand, and I squeezed her fingers, hoping to infuse us both with a measure of courage.