Chapter Five
Juno’s port emerged from the morning haze. Behind it the city climbed, buildings stacked against each other in uneven rows, stone and timber.
I had never seen so many people in one place. They moved along the docks, small as insects from this distance, loading and unloading, calling to one another across the water. Ships of every size crowded the harbor, some battered and dark, some freshly painted, all their sails towering to the sky.
“Is that Juno?” Jina pressed closer to the edge as if she could reach land faster.
“I suppose so,” I said.
“Then why are we turning away.” Minha frowned.
I peered up the deck to ask that question. Kit turning the wheel as Resse barked an order, Brando by her side. The rest of the crew around them.
“We’re not stopping,” Minha said.
She was right. The bow swung wide and the port fell behind us as the ship turned hard to the right, cutting away from the harbor toward a dark opening carved into the face of a rocky structure that jutted out of the water like a fist.
I hadn’t seen it from the other side. It had looked like nothing more than cliff and shadow, but as we drew closer the opening yawned wider, tall enough to swallow the masts whole.
The sails shifted again, going slack as the crew moved fast above us, pulling lines, adjusting, easing the ship slower. The open sky narrowed to a strip, then to a sliver, and then the rock closed over us and we sailed inside.
Cool air brushed my skin, and I shivered, not just from the breeze but from the sheer scale of the structure. Water dripped somewhere in the distance. Every sound we made from our footsteps came back to us off the walls.
The cavern stretched in every direction, its ceiling lost in darkness, the walls lined with ships berthed side by side like sleeping giants. Torches burned at intervals along the walls, their light trembling on the surface of the black water below.
Jina pressed against my arm. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.”
“I believe this is where they sell us.” Minha scowled.
Resse stood at the gangplank, arm crossed, as if she had always been there. I hadn’t heard her come down from the upper deck. “Don’t just stand there, girls. Let’s get going.”
“You heard the boss,” Brando scoffed. “Get moving.”
“This way.” Kit gestured for us to follow, leading us off the ship, Resse behind us.
We crossed the gangplank and stepped onto a pebbled path, curving around the corner.
Small stones shifting underfoot, the same as the cavern floor I had walked my entire life.
The similarity turned my stomach. When the passage opened into a vast space that swallowed the sound of the harbor behind us, I stopped walking.
Below a wide ditch, women stood on a makeshift platform. Not raised to be seen but lowered, as if to make them smaller, and unable to escape. Above the ditch, men lined the edge, peering down with the same detached assessment Agusto had given the pearl pile at the end of each day.
My stomach turned to stone.
Ten women. Some stared at the ground. Some whimpered, the sound swallowed by the ditch.
Sold. The word landed differently now that I could see what it meant.
I studied ones doing the buying. They were not what I expected, not a uniform type, not soldiers or nobles or any single kind of man.
An older one in fine cloth stood beside a younger one in a fisherman’s coat.
One wore a mask of dark leather that covered everything above his mouth.
Another had pulled his hood so far forward his face was lost.
There was even a woman among them, well-dressed, her expression as businesslike as any of the men beside her. Whatever I had imagined of the world outside the cavern, I had not imagined such cruelty came in every shape, every age, and some of them didn’t even bother to hide their identity.
“Go. We’re late.” Resse pushed me forward.
I wanted to shove her off the edge. Watch her fall into that ditch and see how she liked looking up at someone who had already decided her worth. But we were outnumbered, unarmed, and in a place I didn’t know with no exit I’d mapped.
Rage without a plan was useless.
I descended the uneven step into the ditch and stood next to a woman with grime against her pale skin. Up close she was petite, her shoulders barely the width of my forearm. Either she looked young for her age, or she was a child.
How old was she?
Resse stayed off to the side, watching with the mild interest of someone who had done this many times before. Brando hadn’t come down from the ship. Kit lingered at the top. His eyes found Jina before he turned to find his place.
“Can you demand we get sold together?” Jina murmured beside me, her hand trembling on my arm.
The thought hadn’t fully formed until she said it. I had assumed we would stay together. I’d not prepared for separation.
At the far end of the ditch, a middle-aged man positioned himself behind the first woman, one hand resting on her shoulder as if she belonged to him.
“Bid for this one,” the conductor said. “She’s from Thornwood Kingdom. Her skills are cooking, chopping wood, identifying herbs, and anything you please.”
Silence. Then—
“Five coins,” someone called from above.
The woman stared at her feet. She didn’t flinch. She had already gone somewhere else behind her eyes, somewhere the bidding couldn’t reach.
The conductor’s gaze swept the crowd above. “Anyone bid six?”
“Seven.”
“Seven. Do I hear eight?”
The first bidder hissed, “Eight.”
His opponent raised a hand. “Nine.”
“Nine.” The conductor’s eyes lit up with greed. “Going once—”
“Ten.”
A hush fell over the pit. The voice came from somewhere to the left.
He stood apart from the others, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword—tall, broad through the shoulders, clad in a long dark coat that fell past his knees, gold buttons down the front, a hat on his head.
His hair was pushed back from his face, shoulder-length and wind-tossed, giving way to hard lines and features that would have been worth a second look under different circumstances.
The conductor straightened. “Ten coins. Going once… Going twice.” A pause. “Sold.”
The conductor’s assistant pulled the woman from the line and escorted her up the slope without a word. She didn’t object. She simply obeyed. The assistant returned down the slope, coins exchanged, transaction complete.
I expected the man in the dark coat to leave. He didn’t. He intended to buy more. How many of us did he want?
He remained where he stood, one hand still loose on his sword hilt, eyes moving down the line with the same unhurried calm. His eyes were steady, assessing. They swept the pit and landed on me. Not on the woman they were bidding for, but on me.
My pulse shifted off rhythm, then steadied. I didn’t understand why.
I held his gaze long enough to make sure he understood what he saw—not fear, not resignation, not the compliance of the women who had stopped fighting. I let the disgust show, the way I had once held the queen’s stare in the throne room. Then I looked away. My choice, not his.
“Sold!” The conductor raised a fist in the air.
How I wished I could send that fist to his face.
When the conductor placed a hand on Minha’s shoulder, she shoved it off without looking at him.
When he tried again, she leaned close and said something that made the color rise in his neck.
Whatever she threatened, the buyers chuckled.
That led to a bidding war which became intense for her.
She sold for twenty coins to the fisherman.
“Wait.” I stepped forward. “The three of us are together.”
“Is that so?” The conductor grinned like I had done him a favor. “Forty for her and the smaller one.”
“Her name is Jina,” I said through gritted teeth.
He dismissed me and started the bidding.
The fisherman dragged Minha away. She glanced back, clenching her teeth, then her eyes found mine with a message. I’ll find you.
The last thing I saw was her chin up, refusing to go down as anything less than herself. Then she was out of my sight.
It took seconds to process I might never see her again. The space she had always filled—every day, every meal, every night curled together on the cavern floor—would be empty now.
“Wait. Please.” My throat tightened. “We’ve never been apart.”
The desperation in my voice was unfamiliar. I had never begged before. Not once in twenty-five years. Not for myself. But this was Minha, my sister, my family.
My hand moved toward the dagger but stopped when Jina’s fingers closed around my wrist. Not here, her mouth moved. We both knew I would be punished or killed on the spot. I let my hand fall.
“They’re Seaborn.” Resse stepped forward from the shadows. She let the word sit a moment before she said it again. “Seaborn. Bidding starts at fifty.”
Voices murmured around us and I couldn’t catch the words.
What did Seaborn mean anyway? Brando had used it like an insult, tossing it at us the way Agusto tossed defective pearls into the metal bucket.
But Resse had said it differently, letting it sit in the air before she said it again, and the buyers had responded. The bidding had climbed.
Whatever the word meant, it was worth something to these people. I didn’t yet understand, but I would. For now, the only thing I cared about was staying with Jina.
Please. If the sea goddess was listening, if she existed at all, let her hear this one prayer.
Keep us together. She hadn’t saved my family from the cavern.
She hadn’t stopped Agusto’s whip or the king’s cruelty or any of it.
But perhaps she could do this one small thing. Perhaps that wasn’t too much to ask.
“I’ll take these two,” the older one in fine cloth said.
“Fifty-one coins,” the woman called.
“Sixty-five,” the fisherman hissed.
“Seventy.” The man in the dark coat smirked at the older one in fine cloth.
He wasn’t buying. He was running the price up for sport, that much was clear from the lazy way he raised his hand, like the whole thing amused him. The arrogance on his face made me want to shove him into the ditch.
I found the bidding war darkly amusing too. We had spent our whole lives worth nothing—no names, no history, no value beyond the pearls we pried open with aching fingers. And now, because of one word, the price kept climbing.
Seaborn. Whatever it meant, it had just made us the most expensive people in the room.
“Seventy-five.” The older man’s voice grew louder. “And I’ll add pearls.”
The conductor let the silence stretch as his gaze swept at the buyers and raised a fist.
“Seventy-five… going once… twice…” He brought his hand down. “Sold!”
I exhaled. So did Kit, who hadn’t moved from his spot at the top of the steps. His eyes were on Jina the entire ceremony.
At least we would be together. Perhaps I could offer the owner my pearls, buy us enough goodwill to search for Minha. I had to believe in hope. The alternative was unbearable.
Nam’s stories about the gods had felt like comfort, a tale you held on to when the dark was long. If a goddess of the sea existed somewhere below the ocean, I supposed I owed her a favor. I’d never prayed before. But Jina and I were sold together. So perhaps it worked.
I turned and found Resse’s eyes. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You were supposed to save us. That’s what Mac paid you for.”
Resse held my gaze without flinching. “I did save you. You’re breathing, aren’t you?”
“But Minha—”
“Gets a roof and a meal.” She smoothed her coat. “Same as you.”
I hissed through my teeth. “How about I get you an owner and see how you fare?”
Color rose in her neck. She turned away before it reached her face.
The assistant grabbed my arm. I had no choice but to walk beside him up the slope, the crowd thinning around us. The man in the dark coat hadn’t left.
He stood where he’d been the entire time, apart from the others, watching me. Not with the hungry assessment the fisherman had worn, not with the calculation of the older buyer, but for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint.
What is your fascination with me? Perhaps I intrigued him because I was Seaborn. Perhaps it was something else. Either way, those steady eyes gave nothing away, and somehow that unsettled me more than anything else that had happened in that ditch.
Up close he looked devastatingly handsome—hard chiseled features, blue eyes I could get lost in, that black coat, that oversized ridiculous hat shaped like a black crescent moon, its brim curled up on three sides. A pirate indeed.