Heroic Hearts

THE DARK SHIP by Anne Bishop

Last night I dreamed about the dark ship.

People say it’s bad luck to be on the water when the full moon rises, because that’s when the dark ship goes hunting, its tattered black sails catching a fast wind that touches no other ship. People say it is crewed by monstrous beings that capture hardworking fishermen and honest sailors, and its captain drinks the captives’ blood before giving the bodies to his crew, who devour the flesh and suck the marrow from the bones.

People say that if your vessel is suddenly becalmed and a fog rolls in without warning, look to the horizon, and if you see those black sails silhouetted against the moon, it is better to die by your own hand than to wait for the monsters to find you. Because they will find you. They always find you.

I lived in Pyetra, a small fishing village on the coast of the Mediterran Sea. According to the grandmothers, it had been a prosperous village, and while the buildings near the water had been built out of the gray stone that had given Pyetra its name, the homes of the more affluent residents had been painted in soft pastels—yellow, rose, green, blue—so that, from the water, the village had looked like a bouquet of flowers set against the hills.

Then the Humans First and Last movement declared war on the terra indigene, and the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations was torn apart by the Others’ fury and power over the world. Instead of an alliance, nations were separated by veins of wild country, and anything human who stumbled into that land never came out.

Small villages like mine were untouched for the most part because the men who fished in the Mediterran or sailed that water to carry goods from one city to another—or sailed beyond our waters to trade—knew that the sea belonged to the terra indigene, and crews that were careful, and respectful, never saw the lethal terror that watched them but let them pass, and those were the men who returned home.

In a world torn apart by war, the vulnerable often fell victim to predators who waited for such opportunities to crack people’s sense of right and wrong, using fear as a hammer.

In the end, it wasn’t the Others who ruined Pyetra. It was a man called Captain Starr.

I sense things about ships and the sea. I can’t see the future like those prophet girls we’d heard about, but when I walk along the shore and watch the fishing boats heading out for the day, sometimes I know which boats will have a good catch and which ones will come back with an empty hold. Sometimes I can tell when the sea will be unforgiving and it’s better not to stray too far from the harbor. I don’t tell anyone what I know, except one or two of the canny old grandfathers, and even with them, I am careful. I was a child when it happened, but I remember the last woman in our village who had a feeling about the weather and the sea. She was publicly beaten to death for “ill wishing” because she had warned a captain of a storm on a day when the sea was calm and the sky was clear, and he ignored her. When the storm appeared like screaming fury, she was blamed for the loss of that ship and crew.

I sense things about ships and the sea. It was my misfortune that I had never been able to sense danger to myself.

I woke up before dawn on the morning that was the beginning of the end. Too restless to go back to sleep and feeling a need I couldn’t explain, even to myself, I dressed in my oldest shirt and skirt, put on my half boots, slipped a small folding knife into my skirt pocket, and went down to the water—down to the stretch of sandy beach protected by walls of rock that jutted into the sea. That beach had been turned into a baited trap that Captain Starr’s men had set for whatever might leave the water and come ashore. Or for whatever—whoever—might be desperate enough to risk the trap to claim whatever bounty might be found.

That morning I found one of the feral ponies, his front feet caught in the tangles of net. He had a barrel body and chubby legs, but it was his coloring that made me shiver and yet, at the same time, conjured fanciful thoughts. His body was the midnight blue of the sea in the darkest hours of the night, and his mane and tail looked like surf and moonlight.

He was just a feral pony, but I could imagine him being one of the beautiful, deadly steeds that raced over the Mediterran Sea, harbingers of the dark ship’s appearance.

I scolded myself as I made my way carefully down the path through the rocks to that stretch of beach. Wasting time imagining things could get both of us killed.

I paused when I reached the last rock and my feet touched sand. I’d have to step into the open in order to reach the pony, and I had a feeling there wasn’t much time before Starr’s men arrived with knives and clubs. If they found me here . . .

Hilda had been caught trying to free one of the village orphans who begged on the streets and was too hungry to resist the bait. The boy had tried to grab the thick piece of bread smeared with butter and honey—a barely remembered treat from the days before Captain Starr and his crew dropped anchor off our shore and became both terror and law for our village. The child was human, was known to us, had once had a family who lived in Pyetra. None of that had mattered. No one but the captain or his first mate decided the fate of anything caught in the trap, and to free something . . .

Captain Starr made some of us stand on the beach and watch as his men clubbed the boy to death. He made us watch . . .

Hilda wasn’t dead after Starr’s men finished with her, but she was too broken to save herself when the tide came back in. We watched and listened as she drowned. Then we were allowed to return to our homes or businesses, mute accessories to murder because no one had dared speak out against that cruelty or had taken one step to save Hilda or the boy.

So I knew the risks when I approached the trap. Being here was foolish. Trying to save one feral pony wasn’t worth my life. And yet, watching a sea eagle circle above the net before heading out to sea, I knew something bad would happen to our village if the pony died.

The wind shifted. The pony snorted, having caught my scent.

“Easy,” I said quietly as I scurried toward him. “Easy. I’m here to help you.”

The pony neighed and tried to rear, but its efforts to get free tangled its front feet even more.

“Shh!” Now I was sweating. If any of the men heard the pony, they would hurry down to the beach. “If you don’t keep quiet, we’ll both be clubbed to death!”

He quieted and stood still, allowing me to approach. I took out my folding knife and worked as quickly as I could to cut just enough of the net to free his feet—and tried not to startle and cut myself every time the pony lipped my hair and snuffled to breathe in my scent.

“There.” I pushed the net away from his feet before reaching up and pressing a hand to his chest. “Back up. Back.”

He backed away from the trap, but he didn’t turn and run while I smoothed the sand and arranged the net so that it wouldn’t look like someone had messed with it. There would be footprints in the sand—the pony’s and mine—but there was nothing I could do about that. The men would know from the size of the print that an adult male hadn’t been walking this way, but unless someone saw me, they wouldn’t know I had been on this part of the beach.

“Go home now,” I said. “Go home.”

I ran back to the narrow path in the rocks. I had to get home before Mara noticed I was missing and told my father, who would use his belt on me. I had to get home and wash up and make myself as presentable as possible. But not too presentable.

I used to be pretty. I’m not pretty anymore. Father took care of that. He claimed it was for my own good, but afterward not even his friends believed that.

I ran—and the pony ran with me.

I stopped. He stopped.

“Listen to me.”

He pricked his ears.

“You have to go home. If the men see you, they will kill you for the meat, for your hide. You need to go home so that you can stay free.” I paused, then added under my breath, “One of us should be free.”

He looked at me for a long time, and I could have sworn that something like sympathy filled his dark eyes.

He turned and galloped to the water’s edge, running in the surf. A large wave rolled onto the beach, rolled right over him. I stared at the spot, expecting to see him struggling with a broken leg or something just as bad, but when the wave receded, the pony was gone. Just gone. And so were my footprints.

As I turned to climb the path up to the road, I saw a man standing on the nearest rock wall, watching me. He was tall and lean, dressed all in black, and he had black hair and olive skin. More than that I couldn’t tell. If he was one of Captain Starr’s men . . .

Keeping my face averted, I climbed the path as fast as I could, grabbing the rocks for balance and taking some skin off my palms in my haste. If I could get back to the dockside tavern my father owned, maybe I could get inside and disappear before the man had time to figure out who I was.

Panting, I dared look back when I reached the road.

No man stood on the rock wall. All I saw was smoke drifting toward the sea.

When I was younger, the old grandfathers who hung around the docks and came to the tavern for their midday food and drink would tell me stories about the terra indigene, the earth natives who ruled so much of the world and viewed humans much the same way we viewed fish or deer. They told me about islands in the Mediterran—dangerous, secret places where the Others lived and where the dark ship lay anchored when its captain and crew weren’t hunting human prey.

In some stories, the ship would appear out of the fog, a marauder that sank the ships of honest merchants who ferried a variety of goods among the Cel-Romano nations. In other stories, the ship was crewed by men the sea had never released. But when the moon was full, beings wearing the skins of those men would come ashore for a reckoning, and woe to those who had somehow escaped the justice of the living.

I heard birds overhead and jerked out of my musing. What was wrong with me? I had to get away from here!

I ran home and slipped up to my attic room unseen. I washed up and plaited my hair, but I didn’t wash up enough to smell clean, and I didn’t plait my hair to look that neat. I didn’t want the men who came to drink in the tavern to see anything pleasing enough to make up for what my father had done to my face after a young man, who was in Pyetra to sell the olive oil produced by his family, wanted to marry me and take me back to his family’s villa, depriving my father and his wife Mara of unpaid labor.

I used to be pretty before my father took a knife to one side of my face, before his fist damaged the sight in one eye.

I never saw the young man again. For a long time, I hoped he would come back and take me away, despite the damage to my face. But he never returned. Once I stopped feeling bitter about that, I wondered if something had happened to him and he couldn’t return.

My father had wielded the knife, but it says something about my stepmother that the only gift she ever gave me after the bandages were removed was a gilt-edged mirror that my father hung over my dresser.

This is what you are now. As if I could ever forget while I was trapped within these walls, waiting on tables and cleaning up blood and puke after the men had their fun. But when I walked along the shore or stood on one of the rock walls and looked out to sea, I could dream of freedom. I could dream of being someone else, living somewhere else.

I turned toward the bedroom door to go downstairs when I heard a sound at my open window, which reminded me to close it, despite how the heat would build in the attic during the day.

A seashell lay on the windowsill. A perfect, undamaged shell that looked like a white fan with a pearly peach interior.

A raven perched on the neighboring roof, watching me. I don’t know how long we stared at each other before it flew away, but I had a feeling the bird was connected to the pony and to the man I had seen on the rock wall.

As I went about my work that day, I thought about the raven, and the gift of a perfect seashell. I thought about a midnight blue pony with a mane and tail the color of surf and moonlight. I thought about the man who had disappeared like smoke. And I wondered if the dark ship would appear in Pyetra’s harbor.

But it wasn’t the dark ship and its monstrous crew that docked in Pyetra the next day.

It was Captain Starr.

His name was Jonathan Brogan, but no one who wanted to keep their tongue called him anything but Captain Starr. A big, barrel-chested man with thick, wheat-colored hair, a round face, and big square teeth that you couldn’t help but notice since he laughed and smiled a lot. But his blue eyes were cold as a shark’s, and what made him smile was often someone else’s pain.

Before the war, he’d been a bully with a ship, a thug who strong-armed weaker men into paying protection money if they didn’t want their merchant ships to mysteriously disappear or their fishing boats to be found adrift with the hold empty and no sign of the captain and crew. Now he was Pyetra’s protector against the Others, Pyetra’s hero who could murder a village girl for trying to free an orphan from a baited trap. Anything he or his men wanted, they took in exchange for escorting merchant ships past islands that Starr claimed were inhabited by beings that wanted nothing to do with Cel-Romano except when they came ashore to kill and destroy.

They say he was in a fight when he was young, receiving a terrible blow on the forehead that dented his skull in the shape of a star—a mark still visible and distinctive. They whispered that, perhaps, the damage had gone deeper than his skull and that was what made him such a savage adversary.

Whatever the reason, everyone in Pyetra lived in fear from the moment his sails were sighted to the moment his ship sailed away, its hold carrying precious fuel for the engine that allowed him to maneuver even when there was no wind for the sails, as well as the best foods, ales, and wines from our shops.

That afternoon he walked into my father’s tavern—and everyone fell silent. Captain Starr’s crew ate and drank here, but Starr and his first mate stayed at an inn far enough from the docks that the rooms didn’t stink of fish, and fancy enough that the captain dressed like a gentleman when he met with the village leaders to discuss payments and accommodations.

Captain Starr sat down at a table Mara hurriedly wiped clean and smiled that toothy smile. “Enzo, my good man. A round of drinks for everyone, and your best ale and whiskey for me and my mate.”

My father poured the drinks and brought them to the table. No one rushed to the bar to receive their free drink. I hid in the hallway that provided access to the storeroom and the door to the alley, overwhelmed by the feeling that something was going to happen.

Captain Starr sampled the ale and gave a nod of approval. My father relaxed. Everyone else in the tavern was smarter and waited to find out what Starr wanted before they believed they would be allowed to leave unharmed.

“I left two men here to keep an eye on the docks and the fishing boats and to take note of returning merchant ships,” Starr said. “And to keep an eye on the baited trap since our enemies often come in by the sea. My men are nowhere to be found, and my first mate tells me the trap’s net has been cut in a way that suggests someone freed whatever had been caught. Anyone here know anything about that?” He looked at my father. “Enzo?”

My father shook his head. “I’ve not been down to the water in days. Neither has my wife. Been too busy with running this place and putting up the supplies that came in the other day.”

“What about that daughter of yours?” Starr still sounded friendly, but everyone knew there was nothing friendly about the question or what would happen if he didn’t like the answer.

I eased back a little more. A couple of old grandfathers, sitting at the back table, saw me, then pointedly looked away—and said nothing.

“She must be about,” my father said, “although she barely does enough work to deserve the food she eats.”

“Find out where she was this morning,” Starr said. “I don’t think she fully appreciates that a daughter should be obedient in all things.”

In other words, when he found me, my father would tie my hands to a spike he’d driven into the wall and beat me until I couldn’t stand.

The tavern door opened and something, some change in the air or in the room’s silence made me peer around the corner. The man I’d seen on the rock wall that morning walked up to the bar, set a gold coin on the wood, and said, “Whiskey.”

The paper money that had been used in Cel-Romano was almost worthless now. Currency in a place like Pyetra was gold or silver or chits of credit that were traded among the residents, becoming a currency exclusive to the village.

After a glance at Starr, my father filled a glass to the brim with whiskey, took the gold coin, and, grudgingly, put two silver coins on the bar as change.

The man pocketed the coins and took a sip of whiskey.

“You’re not a villager,” Starr said, his blue eyes bright with malice—and suspicion.

“No, I’m not,” the man agreed. He had a slight accent, like nothing I’d heard before.

“First time in Pyetra?” Starr asked.

“It is.”

“Going to be here long?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What’s your name?”

“Captain Crow.”

Starr’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see an unfamiliar ship moored at the docks or anchored in the harbor. Where is your ship, and what’s your business here?”

Crow took another sip of whiskey. “What business is it of yours?”

“I look out for the people in this village. Their protector, you might say. So I’ll ask again: Where is your ship, and what’s your business?”

“My ship is nearby. As for my business . . .” Crow looked Starr right in the eyes, something no other man would do. “I hunt predators.”

Starr’s first mate snorted. “Like sharks?”

Crow continued to stare at Starr. “Something less honorable.”

Everyone in the tavern held their breath. To call Starr dishonorable was courting death, especially for a man alone. He’d be lucky to get back to his ship without being knifed in an alley.

“There’s no fuel for an unregistered ship,” Starr said. “Fuel is strictly rationed since the war.”

“My ship doesn’t require anything but the wind,” Crow replied.

A sailing ship without an engine? Fishing vessels relied on engines, but most had been refitted with sails to help the fuel last. And merchant ships ran before the wind with full sails except when coming into or leaving the harbor and docks. A sailing ship without an engine had to be ancient!

I shivered as a thought erased every other, like the incoming tide erases footprints on a beach.

An ancient ship—or an unnatural one.

“If you’re here for supplies, spend your coin and be out of Pyetra by sundown,” Starr snarled. “And don’t come back.”

Crow took another sip of whiskey, the level in the glass barely changed. He stepped away from the bar, then stopped. “I go where I please.”

“Really? I’ve never heard of you.”

“But I’ve heard of you, Captain Starr.” Crow smiled a tight-lipped smile. “You should be careful about the cargo you carry when you’re in Tethys’s domain. The salt of tears has a different taste than salt water.”

Who was Tethys? I waited for someone to ask the question. No one did.

I glanced at the old grandfathers, saw the way their hands shook.

They knew. And they feared this Tethys more than they feared Starr.

Crow left the tavern. Starr and his first mate walked out a minute later.

Starr and his men searched the docks, the warehouses, the shops, and the taverns, but no one had seen the mysterious man who claimed to be a ship’s captain. No one reported sighting an unfamiliar ship near Pyetra.

But that night, when I finally went up to bed, I found Captain Crow sitting on my windowsill.

I stared at him, shocked, before I considered what kind of work Mara would have me doing in the alley behind the tavern if someone spotted him and told her a man had been in my room.

“Get away from there,” I whispered fiercely. “You’ll be seen!”

He stood, stepped to the side, then leaned against the wall. “Better?”

He sounded amused, and that amusement turned my fear into fury. If Mara came upstairs now . . . Worse, if my father came upstairs to deliver the beating Starr had implied I deserved . . .

“How did you get up here?”

“The window was open.”

“It wasn’t.” I was sure I had closed it.

“Open a crack,” he amended. “It was enough. Why did you free the pony?”

“I don’t know you.” Couldn’t trust him is what I meant. “Is Crow your real name?”

“It is when I captain the ship.”

“And when you’re not captaining the ship?”

“My name is Corvo Sanguinati.”

Sanguinati. Blood drinker. One of the terra indigene.

It seemed there was some truth in the stories about the dark ship.

“What do you want from me?”

He regarded me calmly. “I want to know why you freed the pony.”

“It was caught in the net. Starr’s men would have killed it.”

“They would have killed you too if they’d seen you.” He paused. “ ‘One of us should be free.’ That’s what you said.”

He’d heard that?

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Vedette. But everyone calls me Dett.” I smiled bitterly. “Mara always says I owe her and my father for letting me live. If she’d been able to have a child of her own, she would have dragged me down to the sea on a moonless night and drowned me years ago.”

“If you were free, what would you do? Where would you go?” Corvo asked.

I shrugged and attempted a sassy answer. “I would stow away on a dark ship that was headed anywhere but here.”

“Dangerous to be a stowaway on any ship. Especially dangerous to stow away on that one. But paying for your passage? That might be possible.”

No, it wasn’t. I had no money and nothing to barter except my body, and I doubted Corvo Sanguinati would accept as payment what most other men would take—as long as they could turn one side of my face to the wall while they lifted my skirt.

Corvo rubbed his chin. “How did you know the pony would be on the beach?”

We were back to the pony?

I hesitated. Lying was the safe thing to do, but I had a feeling that Corvo was in my room for a reason, and it wasn’t to hide from Captain Starr. If I lied to him now I would never find out why he had come to see me.

“Sometimes I sense things about ships and the sea. I had a feeling I needed to go down to the beach this morning.”

He nodded. “I wondered if you were an Intuit. I was surprised to see one of your kind living in a place like this instead of among your own.”

“My kind?” People like me had a name besides ill-wisher?

No one would talk about my mother, and the few things that had been said were vague, but I’d had the impression that she hadn’t been a local girl. Had she come here on a visit and stayed because she fell in love with my father? Or had she been forced into that marriage? I would never know about her, but learning there was a place where people like me were accepted was a gift—and a goal.

Corvo studied me. “The world gave humans the land that surrounded the Mediterran Sea as their territory, but the islands within the Mediterran have always belonged to the terra indigene. Intuits escaping persecution from other kinds of humans were allowed to settle on those islands, as long as they didn’t fight with or interfere with us. They farm and fish—and teach us human skills.”

“Like sailing a ship?” I asked.

“Like sailing a ship,” he agreed.

He came to some decision. Pushing away from the wall, he reached into a pocket and pulled out two silver coins. Not looking at me, he placed the coins on the windowsill and rested one finger on top of them.

“This will buy one transaction with the terra indigene,” he said. “You may ask any of us for one thing—including passage on a dark ship heading for an Intuit village.”

My head spun with the enormity of what he offered. “But how can I contact you? The telephones don’t work much beyond the neighboring villages anymore.”

Another casualty of the war with the terra indigene. Humans no longer had quick communication over longer distances because telephone lines had been severed and couldn’t be repaired in the veins of wild country that now broke apart the Alliance of Nations. Every attempt to restore the lines had ended in piles of human corpses. We were reduced to communicating as our grandparents had done, with letters sent overland or by ship.

“Set the coins where they can be seen and speak your intention clearly. Someone will hear you and relay the message.”

How? I asked a different question. “Who is Tethys?”

Corvo smiled, showing a hint of fang. “She is an Elemental. She is the voice and heart and fury of the Mediterran Sea.”

So the Elementals were real.

“Why would you help me?”

“You were willing to help someone who was different from yourself. I felt I should return the favor.”

One moment he stood there, looking at me. The next moment, a column of smoke filled the same space before it flowed out the window and Corvo, in his other form, disappeared into the night.

The next morning, men checking the baited trap found Captain Starr’s missing men. Both had a round mark on their chests bigger than a man’s hand—and holes that looked like they had been made by circles of curved teeth latching into flesh while something else had scraped the flesh away to reach the hearts and all that rich blood.

The men’s legs had chunks of flesh ripped away, and those bite marks indicated that a large shark had fed on the bodies after death. Maybe after death.

The shark bites disturbed the men who downed rough whiskey before going to work, but the round marks in the dead men’s chests terrified all the men whose work brought them into contact with the sea.

As I served drinks and cleared tables, I listened to the grandfathers whisper about giant sea lampreys that were as long as a man is tall—lampreys that had a taste for warm-blooded prey. Human prey. And I heard another word whispered that day to explain a creature that shouldn’t exist: Others.

Captain Starr’s ship set sail a few days later with its hold full of provisions, along with the goods he had wrung from the village’s merchants that he would sell for his own profit.

The morning after that, I ran errands for Mara, who claimed to be feeling poorly. I seldom had a chance to visit the shops on the main street, and almost never by myself. Mara didn’t like to deprive herself of the enjoyment in seeing people flinch when they looked at my face.

Corvo hadn’t flinched. I liked him for that.

That morning, I crossed paths with Lucy, who had been my friend before my father used his fist and a knife. We used to walk on the beach and talk about our hopes and dreams. I wasn’t allowed to take those walks after my face healed because Mara decided that Lucy had given me ideas and that was why I’d thought I could get married and work anywhere but the tavern after she and my father had gone through the trouble of raising me.

Lucy came up beside me as I perused a cart of used books, standing where she could see the undamaged side of my face. She said nothing, just picked up a book and examined it, as if I were a stranger. As if I meant nothing at all and never had.

Then she said in a low voice, “Be careful, Dett. I heard things while Captain Starr was staying at the inn.”

Lucy’s family owned the inn that catered to ships’ captains and well-to-do merchants.

“What things?” I pretended interest in a book that gave me a reason to turn slightly in her direction.

“That some captains are looking for a different kind of cargo these days,” Lucy replied. “Apparently there are men in other parts of Cel-Romano who want to buy unspoiled goods.” She returned the first book to the cart and picked up another. “Starr asked my father if I was unspoiled goods. He asked if you were. And he wasn’t just asking about girls.”

My stomach rolled.

“There are cities around the Mediterran that are filled with supplies and hard-to-find goods that can be had just for the asking, but . . . things . . . are hunting in those cities now, so most people who go in to find the goods don’t get out alive,” Lucy said.

“Nimble orphan boys might be able to get in and out. A couple of times anyway.”

She nodded. “That’s a possibility. But girls like us . . .” She shuddered.

It wasn’t likely that Captain Starr was acting as a marriage broker.

“I’ll buy this one so no one thinks to say anything about me standing here so long.” Lucy held up the book. “I hope I like it.”

She went into the shop to purchase the book. I hurried away and finished the errands for Mara.

That night I sat at the open window clutching the silver coins. Fear of what might happen the next time Captain Starr’s ship was spotted on the horizon filled me, leaving room for nothing else. I tried to convince myself that, at worst, it wasn’t any different than Mara wanting to sell me for an alley hump, but it was different. What I couldn’t sense was how it was different or why it felt dangerous.

I looked at the coins in my hand. One transaction with the terra indigene. One chance.

What did I truly want? To get away from Pyetra? Oh, yes, I wanted that. But what about Lucy? What about the orphans the villagers would justify selling to Starr as cargo?

As I sat at my window, the wind brought the smell of the sea—and I had a feeling that it wasn’t yet time to ask for the thing I wanted.

A week after Captain Starr’s ship left Pyetra, other merchant vessels docked at the wharf or dropped anchor in the harbor. As the crews from those ships came ashore, so did the stories.

The dark ship had been sighted several times. Given that some of the ships had been sailing to Pyetra from the eastern side of the Mediterran while others had sailed from the west, I wondered if there was more than one dark ship. It seemed likely, but I was interested in only one.

Stories spoken quietly, fearfully, of spotting another ship that was suddenly engulfed in an unnatural fog. Seeing the flames as the ship burned. Hearing the screams of the men.

Or seeing a ship sail out of a bank of fog that dissipated in minutes. Finding what was left of the bodies of the crew—some drained of blood, some torn apart by a shark, and some with that queer round hole in their chests that looked similar to the mark a lamprey left on fish but so much bigger and so much worse when that mark was left on a man.

Or a wave rising out of nowhere, topping a ship’s masts before the ship rolled, broke apart, and sank.

Or a whirlpool appearing in front of a ship, pulling it down—and men swearing they saw a giant steed galloping round and round the edge of the whirlpool until it, and the whirlpool, vanished.

They whispered about their own ships suddenly becalmed, leaving them helpless as a dark ship, its black sails full with an unnatural wind, caught up to them, drew up alongside—and then sailed past. And how the wind that had disappeared when the dark ship appeared on the horizon suddenly filled the sails again, allowing them to reach the next port.

Stories spoken quietly, fearfully, by men who’d had to sail past slaughter—and who wondered what cargo had provoked that kind of rage.

We found out what kind of cargo when Captain Starr returned to Pyetra.

I’d barely had an hour’s sleep when Mara shook me awake.

“Get up,” she said in a fierce whisper. “Get dressed and come downstairs. And be quick about it.”

“But . . .”

“Be quick or you’ll have nothing but your nighty.”

The thought of wearing nothing but my nighty and being downstairs with men who had been to sea for a few weeks was enough to wake me up. My fingers shook as I pulled on my underwear and buttoned my shirt and skirt, put on my socks and half boots. I’d made a little pouch from a scrap of cloth in order to hide the silver coins and keep them with me—and hidden from Mara. I pinned the pouch to the back of the skirt’s pocket, then slipped my folding knife into the pocket.

As I reached for the shawl I’d folded over the back of my chair, the door opened again.

“You won’t need that.” Mara grabbed my arm and dragged me down the stairs with such haste we came close to falling.

As she pulled me into the tavern’s main room, I saw Captain Starr—and I knew.

“No.” I tried to pull away from Mara. “No!”

A rag was stuffed in my mouth and secured with another piece of cloth. My hands were bound with rope.

Starr stared at my face and smiled. “I have a client who will pay well to have you for his new wife.” He looked at my father. “You’ll receive your portion of the sale price, as agreed.”

Two of Starr’s men dragged me out of the tavern and down to the dock and his ship. They pulled me up a gangplank. I fought them until they dunked my head in a barrel of water and held me down. When one of them pulled my head out of the water, the other said, “If you keep fighting, we’ll hold you down longer next time.”

Still struggling to breathe, I didn’t resist when they hauled me to the ship’s secure hold and left me there, bound and gagged.

But not alone.

There were younger girls, barely more than children, and some of the orphan boys who begged on the streets. None of them were tied up, but there were bruises on their faces, reason enough for them to huddle together now, silent and afraid.

I don’t know how long it took them to load their living cargo. No adolescent boys, but several of the village girls who were old enough to be “wives” in a place where there was a shortage of expendable women.

It was still dark when men escorted Lucy into the hold, bound and gagged as I was. She sat next to me, shivering.

Soon after that, I felt the change in the ship’s movement and knew Starr had given the order to cast off.

Unspoiled goods being taken to an unknown destination and a mean existence. Most of us wouldn’t survive long after arriving at that destination, and those of us who did survive wouldn’t want to.

We had one chance—if I could get free.

I’d started pulling on the gag when one of the boys looked at me and said, “Wait.”

I might have resented the sharp command if I hadn’t seen him watching the stairs down to the hold. Was he someone like me, who had feelings about things?

I slumped and waited, doing my best to look defeated, which wasn’t hard.

A minute later, two men came down the stairs. One dropped a burlap sack on the floor; the other set down a small barrel and a tin cup.

“That’s all there is until you’re traded,” the first one said. “Make it last.”

They went up the stairs and secured the door.

The boy waited another minute, watching the stairs. Then he scurried over to Lucy and undid her gag.

“Dett too,” Lucy said.

He hesitated, then did what she asked.

“One of Starr’s men saw you giving us food,” the boy told Lucy. “That’s why he took you.” He looked at the ropes binding our hands.

“I have a folding knife in my skirt pocket,” I said.

I didn’t feel his hand, but a moment later he held the knife. He freed Lucy first, then me. Folding the knife, he gave it back—and gave me an odd look, which made me wonder if he’d felt the coins.

Lucy rubbed her wrists while another boy, who looked to be the twin of the first, opened the sack and checked the barrel.

“Some food here,” he reported. “Not much if it’s meant for all of us. The barrel is half-full of water.”

“We won’t be here that long,” I said, unbuttoning my skirt in order to reach the safety pin and little pouch. Retrieving the pouch, I held it tight.

“Dett . . .” Lucy began.

“We’re going to escape.”

“How?”

I opened the pouch and showed her the two silver coins. “These will pay for one transaction with the terra indigene. The Others will help us get away from Starr and his men.”

For a moment it seemed like nobody breathed.

“How?” Lucy asked again.

“You—all of you—need to get to the longboat, get it down to the water. Get into the boat and lower it down or cut the lines so it falls into the sea. It won’t capsize. You’ll be all right. And you’ll be rescued quick enough.” That much I sensed.

Lucy stared at me. “You mean we’ll be rescued quick enough.”

“Yes, of course,” I lied, “but I need to set up the distraction that will make it possible for you to get away. Then I’ll join you.” I looked at the hold stairs and sighed. “But you have to get up on deck, and we’re locked in.”

The second boy smiled, fiddled with a seam in his trousers, and held up a thin piece of metal. “I can pick a lock.”

We reviewed the plan and waited. Restless and bored, the children ate most of the food and water while we waited. While I waited. Then . . .

Orders shouted in anger. Responses shouted in fear.

I had a feeling the dark ship had appeared on the horizon and was bearing down on Starr’s ship. If the stories had any truth, soon the fog would roll in, hopefully shrouding the deck enough to hide Lucy’s and the children’s movements as they made their way to the longboat.

The fog would roll in. The ship with its black sails and Sanguinati captain would attack. And the diversion I was about to purchase would ensure freedom for some of us.

I held out my folding knife to the boy who had freed Lucy and me. “It’s time.”

As soon as the last child slipped out of the hold, I placed the two silver coins in the palm of my hand and held it out. “Corvo Sanguinati said these coins would buy one transaction with the terra indigene. I want to make that transaction now—with Fire.”

I wasn’t sure how this worked. If it took too long for the message to reach the Elemental I’d requested, then Lucy and the children would be caught and this would be for nothing.

One moment I was alone. The next . . .

The female who appeared in front of me would never be mistaken for human, with her long red hair tipped in yellow and blue. She looked around, then looked at me.

“There are children making their way to the longboat to escape from these very bad men,” I said. “We need a distraction, something the men will have to pay attention to instead of the children.”

She studied me. “What do you want me to do?”

I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Burn this ship. Set the sails on fire and fill the cargo holds. This ship has weapons and supplies that will explode if touched by fire.”

“You will not reach the small boat and escape.”

“I know.” But neither would Captain Starr. I’d make sure of that much.

I took a step forward, set the coins on the floor between us, then stepped back.

Fire pressed her hand against a wooden crate. The wood smoked. Then it began to burn.

She looked at me and said, “Run.”

I scrambled out of the hold just as the sails burst into flames, as the masts ignited.

I hadn’t paid attention to the location of the longboat. I hoped one of the boys had and could lead the rest to safety.

Fog blinded me. Smoke choked me. I felt a bitter satisfaction at hearing men shouting, scrambling.

The sea calmed. The wind died. Flames consumed the ship.

I reached the railing and clung to it, uncertain what to do. Then I looked toward the stern—and saw Starr and his first mate rushing toward the longboat that the boys were trying to lower into the sea.

I ran toward them, consumed by anger for Starr and men like him.

“No!” I shouted. “The captain goes down with his ship!”

Starr turned toward me. I grabbed his arm and held on, doing everything I could to stop him from getting into that longboat.

I heard the first mate cry out, glimpsed hands made of fire grabbing the longboat’s ropes, burning through them. I heard the children scream as the longboat fell. Heard the splash.

Arms appeared out of two columns of smoke, grabbed the first mate, and threw him overboard.

“You bitch!” Starr roared. His free hand closed around my throat and squeezed.

That was when Fire reached the powder room—and the ship exploded.

I remember flying through the air, surrounded by debris. I remember something grabbing my arms and slowing my plunge into the sea, gently dropping me feet first away from the worst of the debris. I remember seeing the longboat moving swiftly, buoyed by water in the shape of a midnight blue steed with a mane the color of surf.

I remember one of Starr’s men swimming toward me—and something large and sinuous swimming past. I remember the nightmarish sight of a round mouth full of curved teeth before the creature latched on to the man’s chest.

The last thing I remember was hands closing around my arms again and Corvo Sanguinati saying, “You idiotic female. How did your species survive long enough to become such a nuisance?”

When I came to I was wrapped in a blanket and tucked into a bunk in . . .

“Captain’s quarters,” a voice said. “Captain Crow isn’t pleased with you right now, but he insisted on you staying here while you recover.”

I focused on the voice, on the face. A pleasant face that held kindness and humor.

“I’m Alano, ship’s medic. Including myself, there are only four humans in the crew, and I take care of stitching them up if someone gets careless.” He paused. “We don’t usually get careless. And we’re not usually reckless. You, however, have more than made up for that and have been the subject of great discussion, with the Others speculating about whether this is typical female behavior in humans or if it’s just you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Alano’s eyebrows rose. “You blew up a ship. Well, you paid Fire to blow up a ship, but it amounts to the same thing.”

“Doesn’t,” I said.

“It does,” Corvo Sanguinati said.

I hadn’t heard him come in, but I saw the humor wash out of Alano’s face to be replaced with caution.

“Captain,” Alano began, “she needs—”

“To answer a question,” Corvo finished. “Why?”

We’d had this conversation before. Funny thing was, my answer was the same.

“You must have known you wouldn’t have time to get off that ship, that burning ship,” Corvo said. “If we hadn’t been pursuing Starr’s ship when you called on Fire, you would have died.”

“Whether Starr reached port and sold us on or I burned the ship, I didn’t expect to survive. At least this way, Lucy and the children will have a chance at a new life, a better life. Besides, I sense things about ships and the sea. I had a feeling you were nearby.”

Corvo stared at me. So did Alano.

Then the Sanguinati turned to the medic. “Don’t let her die.”

When Corvo left the cabin, Alano said, “You won’t die. You just need some rest.”

As I drifted back to sleep, it occurred to me that Alano, like Corvo, had looked at the ruined side of my face and hadn’t flinched.

The following day I was allowed to join Lucy and the children on deck. The girls were subdued; the boys excited. After all, we were on board the dark ship and headed for its home port.

In whispers, Lucy told me about the crew. There was a Hawk, an Eagle, an Owl, a Raven, a Shark, several Sanguinati, the four Intuits—and two males who could take a human form well enough to have arms and legs and perform tasks around the ship. They looked sinuous, especially when they moved, and the disturbing shape of their faces made me think of round mouths full of curved teeth. All Lucy had been told about them was that they were Elders and their form was ancient.

I didn’t want to know more.

Alano and the other Intuit men expressed some concern about the children fitting in. All the towns on the islands in the Mediterran were inhabited by Intuits and Others, and I and the twin boys were the only ones with at least some Intuit blood. But word had traveled to those western islands, and by the time the dark ship dropped anchor and we were rowed ashore, there were families from several towns waiting at the docks to take in the children and give them new homes.

Once I was safely ashore, Corvo wished me well and said he was going home to spend time with his family. I wondered if that was his way of discouraging me from having any foolish romantic notions about him, but Alano confirmed that Captain Crow had a wife and children, and that the Sanguinati part of town was a protected, and private, place.

Lucy found work at an inn near the water and found love with Niklaus, one of the Intuit men who sailed with Corvo.

I went inland for a while and worked for a family who grew olives—and learned I was meant for water, not land. So I returned to the sea towns and learned to sail, and I studied to be a medic, and on the day Alano didn’t return with the dark ship, having chosen a different kind of life on another island, I applied for the position—and was welcomed by Captain Crow.

I sense things about ships and the sea. That had value to a captain who hunted human predators. My face was valuable too, when human leaders were required to come aboard to receive a warning. They looked at the ruined side of my face, and they looked at the table, which contained a silent warning to anyone who thought they could buy and sell humans and transport their cargo through the Others’ domain.

The candleholders that were evenly spaced the length of the table were made of human skulls, some yellowed and old and some quite new. All had come from men who had escaped human justice.

I especially liked the skull that had a star-shaped indentation in its forehead.