Megan stared at her. Three years. Then she turned her face to the wall and lay still, thinking it couldn't take very long to die if she never moved again.
Katrana insisted that she get up, that she eat. F'trovanemi she saw through the porthole; the fortress rock guarding F'talezon. The Rock was slick with cold and blowing rain, fortifications like a gate, shutting home away from her. She crawled back into the blankets, feeling burned inside.
As much as she didn't want to, she healed, being young, and over the next few days she found out one important thing that all her books hadn't mentioned. There was little room aboard a ship, no privacy and more importantly no place to hide. He always knew where she was and most of the crew, aside from the most casual of words, ignored her as the Brezhani worked her way down the river, whether out of shame or just indifference, she didn't know.
Some, like Katrana and Piatr were as nice as they could be. Some laughed and called her Captain's Toy. She stopped looking after herself, hoping he'd be disgusted. Instead he called her a slut and beat her. She found herself wishing he'd hit too hard, that she wouldn't wake up again. It was too much. Her family was dead. Marte had sold her. She couldn't make herself believe that Rilla would miss her.
She was sitting in the rope-well again, the most private place on the ship, listlessly staring at the water, her hands idly pulling at her greasy hair. If I die, he'll win. Everyone who hates poor will win. Papa and Mama will have died with no one to remember them and the City won't care. If I die, they'll all win. But it would be so nice not to care.
Katrana slid down beside her and started whittling at a stick she carried. "It'd be easier if you cried when he wanted tears, Meg."
"I won't cry for him. Not for him, not for anybody." Katrana tugged thoughtfully at her braids with her knife hand, studying the piece of wood in her hand, hair bells chiming.
"You could pretend," she said and spat into the water. "You got anyone to get back for? Anyone, even friends?" Pale yellow slivers of wood curled away from her knife to drift down into the brown water.
Megan nodded reluctantly, then shrugged. "My cousin, I suppose. She's still with… her mother." Dark Lord be damned if I ever acknowledge her as my kin again.
"Ah. Kin still to live for. You don't know how much she needs you."
"She probably doesn't." Megan pulled another strand of hair out and dropped it in the river.
"Ach, did she need you before?"
Megan lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "I suppose."
"Then you can't just abandon her, can you? You aren't slough-kin, as far as I can see."
Megan hardly looked up. Katrana gestured with the knife. "You know how to use these a bit, hmm?" At Megan's nod, she smiled. "As a healer I've stitched people up often enough. I could give you a few pointers how to slice them, as long as he doesn't find out. Piatr'd show you a trick or two if you asked nicely, and the quarter-master, Zaftra, is a teacher in knives—and manrauq, once you manifest." Megan nodded, head still hanging.' Hey!" The girl looked up, startled. "And if you ever decide to cry, let me know. I'll lend you my shoulder." Katrana's stick snapped and she tossed it into the river, where the pieces bobbed beside the ship, drifting toward shore.
Cheboks was a small wooden town with a chalk cliff behind. The Lion of Cheboks, turf cut away from the chalk, showed for miles down river. The festival to clean the image was just beginning when they docked, and Megan saw the spring green just misting the ground, turning winter grey and brown into something alive again—just when she felt dead.
"I call thee forth!" The first mate, Hanald the Thane, a bandage around his shoulder, bellowed from the poop. "Listen to the wise judgment of our captain, owner of this ship. Zhena, able crew, did rashly raise her hand against a deck officer, for no just cause!"
Standing with the crew on the deck, Megan could feel the anger glowing among the Zak. Sarngeld couldn't quite get along on the river without hiring women, much as he disliked it, Arkans thinking that women were both stupid and lazy.
The first mate had wanted Zhena in his bed. Although he reminded her of the glut of able crewfolk on the river and that if she didn't sleep with him she could lose her place, she told him to suck sheep. Then he'd tried to force her, physically, and she'd stuck her knife in him.
"Captain calls judgment!" Hanald bellowed smugly. "Twenty lashes and revocation of her status!" They'd strung her up and stripped her, but she still spat on the deck by his root.
"What?" The voice came from on deck. "That's…" The voice was lost in an angry growl. If her status was revoked then she was landed; no one would hire her on without her papers. The other deck officers stood by, armed.
Sarngeld stood to one side, arms crossed, his long Arkan sword at his belt. "Silence! Silence, you dogs!" He stepped forward. "Who spoke? I'll have him on shore so fast he won't have time to spit! Be silent and watch justice!" He waited until they stopped muttering and stepped back, signing with this head to Thoman, the bosun, who acted as K'gebar. At the first stroke, everyone went silent. Megan felt something tingle behind her eyes and all along her skin. She shook her head, thinking for a minute that she'd seen a blue lake shimmer where the crowd stood.
In the midst of daylight it was hard to see, but light glowed over the Zak in the crowd and Thoman, a naZak, suddenly flung the whip away screaming that it had bitten him.
"STOP IT! Cease or I'll burn her as a witch!" Sarngeld shouted. "She'll burn and I'll drop anyone else I think is a witch in the river, weighted with rocks." The tense feeling of manrauq in the air dissolved into ordinary hate as he stood glowering down at his crew. The naZak crew shifted nervously in amongst the Zak, but most didn't move away from them, united for once. The bosun gingerly picked up the whip again.
"We can't stop it," someone near Megan whispered. "Not now."
Maybe later. The idea of being alive and present when Sarngeld finally pushed the crew too far, gave Megan a toe-hold on life again. She went away thinking of how she might help that day along.
She borrowed a comb from Kat and started washing again. She made friends with Piatr and his net-mate Reghina—at least cool friends, afraid to open up to anyone. She started hiding what she though behind a smooth, expressionless face. Sarngeld was an older man and didn't want her more than perhaps twice in a Hand, often less.
Late one night, Katrana jerked awake in the dark. "Who's there?" There was no answer but a sniffle and a muffled sob as if someone stifled the sound with the bedclothes. "Meg?"
Megan clambered up and lay with her head on Katrana's shoulder. The healer gathered her in close, pulling up the covers over both of them and Megan cried, finally starting to heal inside. She cried until her head was aching and sore and she fell asleep cuddled between the healer and the bulkhead of the ship that whispered and hissed to itself as the current pulled them further south.
Aenir'sford, on the split island, was full of half-timbered houses and noisy Aenir. The metal dragons arcing over the harbor mouth, were a wonder of the world, eight hundred paces high, five hundred long.
"Megan?" Piatr called her away from the rail where she watched the jolly boat take Sarngeld into the city, away from her.
"Yes?" She was being very careful of how she spoke now. The more the captain called her a whore and a slut, the more care she took with her language, even the Arkan.
"Watch," Piatr grinned, and started juggling a potato, a belaying pin, and a boot—all three at once. She watched intently, glad he was being so nice. "Smile, child," he called, and she drew back.
"I'm not a child anymore, no matter how young I am," she said. He caught the things he was juggling and watched her walk away.
The Zingas Brezhani chased the summer, warmer and warmer the further south they went. Rand was a city of islands, with bridges and cliffs. The fringes of dragons carved on every roof had bulging eyes and coiled red-painted tongues that spat rain; so different from the DragonLord’s symbol. The people watched with their blank-faced, polite superiority in stiff, e
mbroidered silks. That was where Megan clambered out of the worst of the dark and started fighting back. He wanted her docile, ignorant, helpless.
"Zaftra?" Megan came over to where the quartermaster and the cabin-kid were peeling tubers. The old man looked up, nodded at her. "I'd help," she said, "but he's ordered anything sharp out of my—"
"I know. Thank you for offering." He was a withered wisp of a man, bald with age, liver spots showing on his head, but his eyes were bright and lively. "Can I help you with something?"
Megan sat down on an upturned bucket. "You can. The more important question, I think, is 'May you help me.'" He tilted his head at her.
"Come help me sift through the meal, then," he said. "Sonduk, keep on till these are done."
"Yessir." The youth bent his head over the job.
Megan followed the quartermaster to the bow where he measured out the meal from one of the barrels, and then to the tiny galley. "Look at this mess," Zaftra exclaimed disgustedly as he shoveled meal into the sieve. "Beetles, moths…" He snorted. "Rats and mice, despite the cat."
"Katrana said that you might be able to help me." Megan concentrated on sifting for a minute. "I know how to do some of the stuff Piatr does… like the tumbling. I learned that playing cniffta—that and juggling knives— and a friend of mine in the guard was teaching me things."
"In the City Guard?"
"Only a squire." Megan had thought about that, trying to get a letter to Serkai, but wasn’t allowed even that. She inserted a finger under the slave collar to ease its chaffing, links clicking.
"Ah, was all he said, as he poured the sifted meal into the measure.
"Anyway, I didn't try too hard at that because I didn't think I'd need it much. I've changed my mind."
"And want help."
"I don't have anything else to do that I like—I haven't manifested yet—and it’ll keep me from brooding over him."
"A sensible course." He added water to the bowl. "Of course, you realize that I haven't taught anyone in years, much less on his ship, and if he catches me teaching you I'll be worse off than poor Zhena?"
Megan lifted her chin a little. "Yes. That's why you can say no, as long as you say it to my face." She put her hands flat on the table. "I know more about ships and shipping than he does. I was River Guild—still am because my Gospozhyn never released me. He's going to choke on—" she hesitated "—a crew… some time when he gets too greedy and I want to know enough to fight him, to be there at least when he dies."
She felt as cold as when she cut up Svaslasfyav. If you don't help me, I'll help myself, somehow. Zaftra narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the batter he was mixing, then reached one hand and touched her between the eyes with his fingertips; she jerked back startled, then held still. He got the distracted look on his face and Megan thought she saw a flicker of color in his eyes. When he dropped his hand he had pensive sort of look on his face and concentrated on adding the soured dough to the mix, then looked at her from under thin grey eyebrows.
"Yes, I'll teach you."
Out on the sea, in sight of the Pirate Islands. The sea was like the rolling grass of the steppe, but deep as thought and blue-indigo, waves rubbing against each other like crowds in a city, going this way and that, all at the same time. She spent hours staring at the sea, getting to know her; could float like a chip, forever timeless.
It was so timeless she almost missed her birthday. "Megan," Piatr said as he paused swabbing the deck. "Before he calls you down to his cabin, come up to the galley tonight."
"Why?"
"New Year."
"Already?" She shook herself. Of course I haven't been counting days. I was waiting for it to get cold. "Okay."
When she came, the other Zak were in the bow where they were partly shielded from the rest of the crew by the bales of cotton stowed midships. When the moon rose and Shamballah shone bright in the sky they stood together, looking north to where the bright star hung low on the horizon.
Though it was in summer heat and the damp in the air was thick, when the highest power witch spoke it was like a breath of cold and silence; every Zak alive was sharing this night in enclaves all up and down the river, around the shores of the Mitvald Sea, wherever they'd been scattered from the river basin.
"One such night was when the world died. We were out in the snow, and on the horizon, the Great Phoenix reached its beak out of the world and then even the snow burned."
The other Zak answered in a whisper, "We live."
"Once the Dark Lord decreed that all should starve, saying we were an evil empire and a million deaths were nothing to him."
"We still live."
"Though the world died…"
"We live." The Zak raised their hands and light bloomed on their palms, mostly shades of red, but with one yellow glow. Megan felt the shiver before the light appeared and the cool blue undertones were like the taste of ice. She reached for the hands of the people beside her and they shared their light with her, accepting her. They were her family. She wasn't the captain's toy, but a Zak, Megan, herself.
I'm alive. I will live. I will. She smiled in the glow of light. Rilla, I'm going to come home.
They were docked at the third of the Aavrit cities, under the soaring limestone blocks of Nuogameshgir, the smells of dust and desert rolling offshore, camels and people in the heat that sucked at the damp of the sea; dry as Marte's heart. Megan had felt strange all day, bloated, and had cramps as if she'd eaten too much fruit.
When she felt a trickle between her legs, she went straight to Katrana.
"I'm bleeding," she said.
"Has he been hard on you again?" Katrana asked resignedly. Megan shook her head.
"He hasn't touched me in a couple of weeks," she explained. The healer raised an eyebrow.
"How old are you?"
"A bit over thirteen." Then Megan understood. "It's my cycle bleeding, isn't it?"
Katrana nodded and gave her a couple of sponges to use. "I'm glad I don't have to explain." She reached and touched Megan formally on the top of the head, then the chin, then hugged her. "You're a woman now. Welcome. I wish it could be better."
"It will get better, once he's d—" Megan closed her mouth. Katrana nodded.
"I won't say anything. I'm not that particular about him anyway." For you that means you can't stand his guts. Sometimes Kat, you're too easy on people.
That night she was crouched, watching a dice game, when Sarngeld called her, waving from where he stood by the mast. The dicers paused, watching. Mateus, able crew apprenticed to Kat, had just picked up the leather cup.
"It's my bleeding time," she said quietly, in properly submissive lower-to-upper caste Arkan. She watched the spasm of disgust cross his face.
"I didn't think you were that old." He headed for the gangplank. "Don't come near me till you're done."
"No, I won't." And when his back was turned, she smiled. Tachka, one of the deck crew, reached over and pushed gently at her shoulder, a supporting touch. He was a young sailor, just out of Guildschool.
"Roll! Up!" Zaftra's voice was a snap. Megan finished the move, came up to one knee with her hand holding the practice knife over her head, extended. "Hold it there. Don't move." Both of them were stripped to the waist in the dry heat, partly shaded by the city wall.
She held the pose, sweat trickling down her face and neck, tickling itches rolling down her chest and back and into her eyes, straining to hear his steps on the deck behind her. "We only have a little time when all the deck officers are off this ship. Use it. Treasure it. If we're caught, I'm landed and you're flogged. If you don't listen, you are wasting precious time. Up!" She sprang up into the first position, eyes calm, breathing already controlled. "Sparring, with me. Face!"
She spun, aware of the barrels and boxes to her right, just behind, the rail to her left. Zaftra held a long, thin rod in his hand and stood with one foot slightly advanced. "You'll usually be facing someone else with longer weapons. It's time you learned to
deal with them." He let her stand a moment longer. "Stevan, call it."
The crewmember, sitting cross-legged on a hogshead, watching, grinned. "Ready!" he called, but instead of "Iya!" the second call, he said, "Begin!"
Zaftra lunged forward, Megan spun aside, the strike missing. She couldn't get close to him; he chased her all around the small open patch of deck, touching her here, there, but only light touches as she was moving away. He's playing with me. In a real fight, I'd be dead. The thought slowed her a fraction; he caught her a solid tap on her knife arm. "Wound!" Stevan called. "Drop it!"
She did, caught the practice knife with the other hand and instead of running, turned sideways, stepped in, and slashed at the wrist of his sword hand. "Wound!" cried Stevan, startled. Zaftra dropped the sword and Megan pinned the "sword" to the deck with her foot.
"Hold." Zaftra nodded. "Good." His head and chest gleamed with sweat. "You did well, but you didn't finish me when you had the advantage."
Megan stepped back. "Yes, master." Why am I so slow?
"They're coming back!" The call was relayed from forward and Zaftra jerked his head at Megan.
"Go sluice down."
She put the practice knife down by his shirt and trotted forward to drop a bucket over the side, feeling the heat glowing on her face and chest. Why can't I learn faster? All I had to do was one more move and I could have finished it.
The cool water made her feel better and she rubbed a scrap of toweling over her arms and chest. Well, last time he chased me through the stowed cargo and I beat him there. That had been in the dark of the hold, with no lights, only sounds to guide them, and her small size against his knowledge of how the hold was laid out. That was fun. She trotted back toward the ropewell to be out of Sarngeld's sight as much as possible, clambered down, resting her feet on the breast-fast that held them broadside to the wharf, luxuriating in all the space available with the rope payed out. She leaned her head back against the wood, listening to the conversations of the off-duty officers in their quarters just through the thin wall.
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