by K Hanson
“Thank you for your testimony, Commander. May I ask what became of the Storm Raven itself?”
“Of course, sir. It has been impounded in the Imperial surplus naval yard.”
“Excellent. Captain Nereyda, do you have anything to say in your defense?”
“Not especially,” she said. “But I think it’s interesting that you only seem to care when someone attacks your nobles and rich people. What about what they do to steal from most of the people living here? Or how the Empire abuses slaves taken from their homes? At least I go after people who have enough that they can afford to lose something.”
“You are getting very close to slandering the Empire, Captain.”
“So what? Am I hurting your feelings?”
The judge ignored her. “I think we know what the verdict is. Any objections from my fellow judges?” As he turned left and right, each of his companions shook his head. “Very well. Captain Nereyda and the crew of the Storm Raven are found guilty on all counts. They are hereby sentenced to twenty years in the iron mines. That is unless Commander Erhan has an alternative recommendation.”
“Most of the crew should go to the mines. However, I would like to draft Captain Nereyda onto my ship. We’ll be heading into the Shattered Sea soon, and I need bodies to man her. It’ll also be beneficial to separate her from her crew, so she doesn’t inspire them to cause any trouble.”
“I’ll pass, thanks,” said Nereyda.
He fixed her with a steely glare. “It’s not up to you, pirate. If the judge agrees, you’ll be coming with me.”
The head judge spoke, “Commander Erhan is right. The pirate captain should be separated from her crew. She shall be conscripted into the service of the commander for his next expedition. She shall remain in the commander’s service for as long as he requires her. If someday he no longer needs her, her sentence will be reevaluated at that time. That is the final decision of this court.” The judge banged his gavel. “Commander, you may escort Nereyda to wherever you wish to keep her. Guards, please escort the rest of these pirates to the holding cells for the next shipment to the mines.”
Erhan walked over to Nereyda with two guards on his flanks. Each of them grabbed one of her arms. “You’ll be staying near me until my ship is ready to sail into the Shattered Sea.”
“Am I your pet now?”
“Something like that.” He waved over another guard. “Run ahead and make sure the room across from my chambers is prepared for our newest guest.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man before darting out of the courtroom.
“Come with me,” Erhan ordered Nereyda and her escorts.
The guards shoved her toward the exit. As they were almost out of the room, Nereyda turned around to shout to her crew, “I’ll find you. I’ll come back, I swear it.”
Erhan laughed. “You really think that you’re going to come back and get them out of the mines? You can’t even rob a merchant ship without walking into a trap.”
She drew herself up and changed her walk into a saunter. “You must have caught us on a bad day. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“Your bravado doesn’t fool me. Even if you could get them out of the mines, you’re assuming that you’ll survive our trip to the Shattered Sea.”
“Aren’t you worried about getting killed yourself? Or does your blind loyalty run so deep that you’ll throw your life away on a worthless tour?”
“What we do on the Shattered Sea is important. It keeps the northern part of the Empire safe from marauders, much like yourself. And, if I die, I have a healthy pension that will go to my family. The Empire rewards loyalty well, just as it judges transgressions harshly.”
They wound their way through the halls of the palace until they reached a set of double doors that sat opposite a small door in the hallway.
Erhan opened the single door, which led into a small bedroom, attached to a washroom. “This is your room until we get ready to set sail. You are not to leave this room under any circumstances.”
“How long will it be until we go?”
“A week or so, probably. I still have to get the ship outfitted and supplied, along with requisitioning the rest of the slaves I’ll need to man her.” He turned to her escorts. “Lock her up.”
They pushed her into the room and shut the door behind her. A click followed as they locked it.
Nereyda looked around the space. It was pretty bare. Aside from the bed, a dresser stood in the corner with a candle on top. A thin window at the top of the wall opposite the door let daylight into the room. Testing the bed with her hand, it felt like a decent straw-stuffed mattress. She walked into the washroom, which actually looked pretty luxurious, at least compared to what she usually saw in Freyport. It featured a toilet that connected to the palace’s sewage system. A wash basin and a small bathtub each had a faucet. She tested the one attached to the wash basin and found that it actually worked. A simple tapestry decorated one of the walls.
She figured that they had stowed her in some sort of guest room. Since she wasn’t likely to see anything this fancy for a long time, possibly ever again, she turned on the faucet for the bathtub. As it filled, she undressed, freeing herself from the clothes she had worn for the past several days. Slipping into the warm water, she closed her eyes and tried to enjoy her last bit of luxury.
CHAPTER NINE
For the first day or two, Nereyda enjoyed the relatively luxurious quarters she had been given. However, without the freedom to leave, boredom soon crept in. Her only contact with other people happened when a guard brought food into her room. Whenever she tried to make conversation, the guard ignored her.
She did her best to keep herself occupied. As she tired of not having anything to do, she kept seeing Jovan’s face as his life left his body. Despite what anyone else said, it was her fault he had been killed. Plus, she had gotten her entire crew sent to the mines.
With guilt eating at her, Nereyda explored her chambers to see if she could find another way out. Sneaking past the guard outside her door wasn’t realistic, and fighting him would just draw more guards. She tried to climb up to the window in her bedroom, but it was too high on the wall. Even if she could get to it, the window was too narrow for her to fit through.
Nereyda walked around the walls of her rooms, looking for any cracks. She knelt by the wash basin and the toilet to check if she could move part of the floor. She even crawled under the bed to see if it concealed any options. She didn’t find anything useful, just a family of dust bunnies.
After dinner that night, she decided to see if she could use the fork they had given her as a throwing weapon. The tines were dull and the weight not at all balanced, but it was the best she had. She wouldn’t have much time to practice before the guard came and took it away with her empty plate.
Nereyda picked a corner were several stones of the wall met for her target and began tossing the fork at it. Throwing the utensil felt awkward in her hand. She managed to hit all of the stones around the spot, but not quite hitting her mark. Her efforts did, however, bend the tongs of the fork to strange angles.
She heard a knock on the door. Knowing that it was the guard coming to collect her plate, she set her fork on it and stepped back as he entered. “What happened to your fork?” he asked as he reached for the plate.
“The meat’s tough.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Must be to do all of that.”
Nereyda just shrugged.
The guard grabbed the plate and fork and walked out of the room, taking Nereyda’s only form of entertainment for the time being.
In the morning, she resumed her target practice after breakfast. She tossed her fork at the wall, continuing to strike the stones near her target.
After a few attempts, she adjusted her grip and threw it again. The fork zoomed through the air and finally struck her goal, the tongs wedging into the line between the stones. Nereyda walked up to pull the fork from the wall. When she pulled it free, small pieces o
f mortar fell out of the crack. Curious, she stuck the fork back into the wall and worked the tongs around. As she moved the fork, more mortar crumbled out of the wall.
Knock knock.
With a sigh, Nereyda stepped back from the wall and put her fork on her plate. This time, the guard didn’t comment on the state of her fork before he left.
Nereyda wanted to see if she could scrape more mortar out of the wall and maybe even loosen the stones, but it would take forever if she could only do it with the utensils they gave her for meals. She looked around the room to find anything that could fit into the narrow gap between the stones. She couldn’t immediately see any options. For some reason, they didn’t want to leave a pirate with anything long and sharp.
When she walked by the bathtub in the washroom, her eyes landed on the small piece in the drain that could be used to plug it. Nereyda did not really know how it worked but figured it had to be long enough to reach into the drain. She bent over to grab the top portion of the plug and pulled on it. It stubbornly held onto whatever attached it inside the drain. With a strong yank, Nereyda pulled it free with a metallic twang as whatever held it in place broke.
A rod the length of her hand extended from the plug, with a jagged and twisted end where she had broken it free. It would do for scraping the mortar away from the walls.
Rather than return to chipping the section of wall in her bedroom where she had made her discovery, she lifted up the tapestry in the washroom to expose the wall behind it. She picked a gap between a couple of stones and worked the rod into space. Working it back and forth, she scraped pieces of mortar out from the wall. As she worked further into the gap, the chunks became larger. Nereyda scraped the rod around the perimeter of one stone, removing as much mortar as she could. When she had almost worked around the stone, she felt it start to move. She worked faster, excited that she might be able to dig her way out of her room. As she worked on the last bit of mortar, she used her other hand to pull on the stone.
At last, it came free of the wall.
She looked into the gap where the stone had been and saw only darkness. Either she had found some sort of passage or just a gap between walls. Whatever it was, Nereyda figured it was worth working her way through more of the wall. She spent the rest of the day working stones free of the wall. By late afternoon, she had created an opening large enough for her to crawl into the space behind the wall.
Before she went exploring, she needed to deal with the stones that she had removed. She imagined that a pile of stone blocks would raise the eyebrows of any guard who walked into her chambers. With few options, she put some of the stones in the bathtub and the rest under her bed. They wouldn’t be hard to find if the guards knew to look for them, but at least they would escape casual notice.
By the time she had hidden the stones, the dimming light from outside told her that dinner would arrive any minute. Her adventure into the wall would have to wait until after she had eaten and the guard had taken her plate away. When her food arrived, her thoughts about what could be on the other side of the wall occupied her too much to eat more than a few bites. She wrapped some of the food in a napkin and tucked it into the dresser to save for later. I’ll have time to eat after I go exploring.
As soon as the guard had left with her plate, Nereyda grabbed her candle and almost ran across the room to the gap that she had created. She extended her hand into the gap to see what the light revealed. It appeared just deep enough for her to fit and it stretched in both directions behind the wall. Ducking her head, she stepped into the space. She had to stand sideways to move, and the only light came from her candle. Above her, wooden supports connected the wall to the ceiling. It seemed as if it wasn’t a secret corridor and instead was just a gap in the construction. To her left, the passage stopped not far from where she stood. Nereyda turned to her right and pressed into the darkness.
She crept forward, one hand holding her candle and the other against the wall. After a short distance, she reached an intersection. She could no longer go forward, only to her left or right. Looking to her right, she couldn’t see much beyond the short reach of her candle glow. To her left, Nereyda saw a faint light a short distance away.
Curious, she turned in that direction and moved closer to see where the light came from. As she approached, the murmur of voices came through the air. She couldn’t quite make them out yet. After another few steps, Nereyda saw that the light came from some sort of grate or vent. She walked toward it and took care to hide the light from her candle. The way the holes were arranged prevented her from seeing much, but she could tell that two people were talking.
“What can I do to convince you to come with me?” said the voice of Erhan.
Nereyda kept still to listen on the conversation.
“Tell me why I should go to the Shattered Sea,” said a gruff, unfamiliar voice. “That’s a trip for deserters and criminals.”
“True, but how many of them can read a map or plot a course?”
“Not sure, but you should at least be able to find an officer young, eager, and stupid enough to take the job.”
“If it makes a difference,” said Erhan, “Wulf has volunteered to be quartermaster.”
The stranger laughed. “Wulf? Of course, he has, the idiot.”
“You do not need to decide tonight, but at least think it over. You're the best navigator I know. In the meantime, I brought some wine. Let’s share a drink to old times, then I’ll come back tomorrow to see if I can change your mind.”
“Aye, I can do that. Pass it here, and I’ll get some glasses.”
Nereyda’s candle dwindled, and she needed light to get back to her room. She slid away from the grate and made her way back. So, Erhan still doesn’t have a navigator. Very interesting. Maybe I can mess with them tomorrow night to stop this trip. Then they’ll just send me with my crew.
Her candle had almost completely burned by the time she returned to her room. With the last flicker of light, she dug out a new candle from the stash in the dresser and lit it. She grabbed the food she had saved and sat on her bed to eat and contemplate what she could do to sabotage the meeting between Erhan and the potential navigator.
She started by chewing on her piece of bread. I could break into the room and kill them both during their meeting. Except the guards would probably hear it. Nereyda started to tear into the chicken from her meal. It tasted surprisingly good, though it had also been a while since she had eaten fresh meat. I could sneak in and kill the navigator in his sleep. Except that would just make Erhan suspicious and, besides, killing someone who can’t fight back isn’t any fun. She had almost finished her chicken when an idea struck her. She wrapped up a piece of meat and kept it in her napkin. It wouldn’t be any use to go back into the wall yet, so she settled in for the night
After she had eaten her breakfast the next morning, Nereyda grabbed her candle and the wrapped piece of meat. She slid into the wall passage and made her way back to the grate. Through the small holes, she saw the shadow of the navigator moving around his room. She’d have to wait and hope that he left at some point. With nothing better to do, she managed to sit down, though she had to pull her legs toward her to fit in the tight space. She blew out her candle, then set it and the wrapped piece of chicken on the ground. With only shadows and sound, Nereyda could not make out much of what the navigator was doing. As long as she knew when he left, that’s all that mattered.
With nothing to do until the navigator left, Jovan returned to haunt her thoughts. He paid the price for my mistakes. From his warehouse to getting captured, then killed, I caused all of it. Maybe Brynja is right, and I am too impulsive. I need to get her out, so she doesn’t pay with her life, too.
Finally, long after Nereyda’s legs had gone numb and the meat in her napkin had begun to smell, the man left his room. She pressed against the grate, and it slid forward before falling to the ground with a clatter. Nereyda remained in the wall passage for a moment to make sure that nobody cam
e to investigate the sound. When she felt sure that it was safe, she crawled out of the wall. While she stretched her legs to wake them up, she looked around the room. The navigator’s chambers were a similar size as hers, though more furnished. In the center, a table stood with a couple of chairs. A wine bottle sat on top of the table.
Nereyda uncorked the bottle, then unwrapped the chicken. She wrinkled her nose at the nearly day-old meat as she dropped it into the bottle. Replacing the cork, she took the used napkin and crawled back into the wall. By fitting her fingers into the holes in the grate, she pulled it shut behind her. She wished that she could simply stay and wait to watch for the navigator to return, but she knew that her supper would arrive before Erhan came, so she went back to her room.
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After dinner, Nereyda returned to the grate to watch for Erhan to show up.
While one part of her hoped that her scheme with the chicken would make the navigator sick, another part looked forward to the possibility of sailing again soon.
Even if she was going to technically be a prisoner, at least she’d be on a ship in the open sea. The scent of the fresh air, the breeze on her face, and the spray of the ocean would make her feel at least somewhat at home. Though, she regretted that she had to leave her crew behind. She imagined that going to sea without them would feel like going home to an empty house. They were her family. Getting to ride the waves while they rotted in the mines made her feel like she was abandoning them. For their sake, she’d have to find a chance to escape and get them out, whatever the cost.
She waited quite some time before a knock came from the door. The navigator walked over and pulled it open. “Ah, you’re here. Come on in.”
“Yes,” said the voice of Erhan. “ Have you thought about what we talked about?”
“I have. I went for a walk today to clear my head and, despite every instinct fighting me, I’ve decided to come along. I owe you, and it’ll be good to sail with you and Wulf once again.”