Chapter Six
The man in fine cloth led us up the slope and out of the cavern, Jina’s hand locked in mine. Two of his men fell in behind us, close enough that running wasn’t an option worth attempting. Besides, where would we go?
The daylight hit hard after the cavern’s dark. I blinked, the salt air sharp in my lungs.
The ship was bigger than Resse’s, the sails black with a white skull that caught the wind and billowed. Even the crew outnumbered Resse’s by triple. The men watched us board. Some with hungry eyes, others with disinterest.
We stood on the deck while the ship moved out of the hidden harbor and back into open water. The wind came at us, cold and strong, cutting through our clothes. Jina pressed against my side and neither of us spoke.
As Juno shrank behind us, I wondered how Minha fared with her handler. Whether she had already used her dagger or had found a makeshift weapon. Knowing Minha, she hadn’t waited long.
My buyer came to us when the coast disappeared. Up close, the lines on his forehead were more apparent than from the ditch, and the bags under his eyes made him look like he hadn’t slept in days.
“You will address me as Captain Russo.” He flicked a hand toward a lanky man about our age, then rested his hand on his round belly.
“This is Ranis.” He jerked his chin to the lanky young man, dark-skinned, with brown curly hair and striking green eyes.
He didn’t look like a fighter—soft around the edges, more boy than man—but steady in the way he stood made me think he’d survived because of his wits.
“He will direct your duties. Any question, you can go to him.”
“Thank you.” I dipped just enough to be polite.
So far, the interaction with Russo had been civil. Perhaps I could bargain with him, offer extra labor, or pearls, to convince him to find Minha and bring her here.
“Is it true you know how to open shells?” Russo clasped his hands behind his back and stood without effort as the ship rolled.
Jina and I stumbled, grabbing for the railing.
“We’ve done it our whole lives. We were…” I stopped before I said more.
I couldn’t tell him we’d been prisoners to the Jeju king. He would ask how we’d escaped, and I couldn’t risk anything I said leading back to Nam or Mac.
“Then you’ll have no trouble. Get to work.”
Ranis took us down to the lower deck and into a room that smelled of brine and damp wood.
He dumped a bucket of oysters across the table and stepped back.
Seeing the oysters made me miss my family even more.
I didn’t know why Nam went out of her way to get us out of the cavern, but there had to be a reason.
Jina and I sat and got to work. The rhythm came back—find the hinge, press, twist, reach inside. Our hands moved without thinking while Ranis hovered near the door, watching.
After hours, the pile of discarded shells towered over the small cluster of pearls we had managed to find. About twenty. Nothing like the yield from the cavern on even a slow day.
“Are these oysters sick?” Jina wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist.
I turned one over in my palm. The shells were different—smaller, thinner, the surface dull where the cavern oysters had always been ridged and heavy. I had only ever worked the thick plump ones from home.
“Hurry, mates.” Ranis threw a hand toward the unopened pile. “Find more.”
His accent came clipped and foreign to my ear, nothing like Russo’s flat drawl. I wondered what part of this world had shaped a voice like his.
“I can’t make the pearls appear.” I tossed an empty shell toward the discard pile on the floor, carefully short of where he stood. “There’s nothing in them.”
Ranis didn’t snap back. He just exhaled and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching us work with an expression that looked more tired than cruel. On Resse’s ship, Brando would have already made it personal.
Ranis reminded me of Kit—young, innocent, who doesn’t want to be at sea.
I pried open another shell and kept my voice casual. “How long have you been on this ship?”
“Three years.”
“You don’t seem old enough for three years at sea.”
His lips twitched, not quite a smile but close enough. “I’m eighteen. My parents owed the captain a debt they couldn’t pay.” He shrugged and sighed, accepting his fate. “So here I am.”
“Russo took you instead of waiting for coins?”
“Russo takes what he decides is fair.” He said it without any bitterness in his tone, but his green eyes told a different story. “That’s how he operates.”
I turned another shell over in my hands. “He doesn’t seem like the most frightening man I’ve encountered.”
Ranis arched an eyebrow. “He’s wanted in all seven kingdoms in the seven seas.”
“What do you mean by seven seas?” Jina blinked up at him.
He gave her a sidelong glance, the way you look at someone when you can’t tell if they’re teasing. “You don’t know the seven seas?”
“We didn’t get out much,” I said.
He studied us for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder to the door, then back to us.
“Each kingdom borders its own water. The Green Sea belongs to King Aldric in Thornwood. The kingdom of Jeju borders the Golden Sea. The Blue Sea belongs to the ice kingdom of Varen in the north. The Red Sea borders Solara in the east, desert country with hot winds. The Purple Sea belongs to Caelum, the oldest kingdom, they say the gods walked there once. The Yellow Sea is shallow and warm, borders the merchant kingdom of Auris, richest trade routes in the world.”
I counted with my fingers. “And the seventh?”
“The Black Sea.” His voice dropped. “Nobody sails there willingly. Some say it belongs to the gods, or what’s left of them.
It once belonged to the Seelie people, but they migrated to Caelum when they conquered the land.
Now it belongs to Eldenmoor, what’s left of their old territory, ruled by the queen’s brother. ”
The shell in my hand felt suddenly heavier. “Gods? Do you believe?”
“I’m from the Blue Sea. We pray to all the gods when we say grace at the table. Do you?”
I didn’t know how to answer. But surprisingly Jina did.
“I’m from the Yellow Sea.” The lie left her mouth easily, her eyes wide and innocent as ever. I was seeing a different side of Jina. “We believe what we see. Over time, the people have forgotten the gods.”
Ranis nodded. “What about you?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Jina had made it look effortless and I had about half a second to match her.
“I—we…” I swallowed. “Jina and I are sisters. We come from the same sea.”
Ranis looked at me for a beat longer than he’d looked at Jina, surprise turning over behind his green eyes. Then he let it go.
I tossed a shell into a pile. Empty again. “Is there a particular god you pray too?”
Ranis was quiet for a moment, his eyes set on the pearls.
“Caelum folk pray to all of them, but we reckon we’ve got our favorites.
” His eyes met mine. “Some might pray to Junio, God of time. Mine is Eules. God of wind. Sailors pray to him before a long voyage.” He glanced at the ceiling as if the sky was there.
“You learn fast that you’re very small and the sea is very large.
Praying to a deity and knowing they are looking after you gives you hope you’ll survive another voyage or a monster. ”
“Monsters?” Jina dropped her shell on the floor, the clank sharp in the small room. She didn’t bother to pick it up.
Ranis shifted against the wall. “You think pirates are the most dangerous thing in these waters?” He paused to let the words sink. “Creatures that rise from the deep when the water beats against the hull like a fist and the waves climb higher than the sails.”
When I narrowed my eyes at him, his eyes widened.
“I’ve seen one. Most of the crew has. Russo lost many men to one off the coast of Solara, Red Sea, not even a year ago.”
“What do you do when one appears?” I asked.
“Pray to Eules.” He shifted a fallen shell with his boot. “Row faster. And ride the wave and hold on to your dear life.”
The room went quiet except for the sound of the creak of the hull and the water moving the ship. I thought of the dark beneath the surface. The fire along my neck. The air filling my lungs where there should have been none.
Was it some instinct warning me? Perhaps my blue blood recognized what lived down there?
I shook the thought away. Ridiculous. I had breathed underwater once and now I was imagining sea monsters. Until I saw one with my own eyes, Ranis was simply a gifted storyteller with too much time at sea.
I picked up a runaway pearl that had rolled almost off the edge when the ship banked hard to the left.
Jina and I grabbed the table to keep steady, knuckles white, shells scattering.
Ranis dropped into a low stance, feet wide, perfectly balanced, as natural as breathing.
Three years on this ship had made the sea part of him.
“What about the goddess of the sea?” Jina asked when we settled.
Something in his expression shifted, almost reverent. “Yeri. She’s the oldest. Before the kingdoms, before the seven seas had names.” He rubbed his chin, his gaze distant. “People stopped praying to her long ago.”
“Are they afraid of her?” Jina chimed in.
“Let’s just say no king or queen has ever been able to control her. And they fear what they can’t control.” He kicked several shells away from him. “You should get back to work.”
I didn’t understand why a deity had to be controlled. In Nam’s stories the gods simply were vast and ancient and unbothered by what royalty wanted. The idea of them trying to suppress a goddess struck me as either very brave or very stupid.
I dismissed the thought. Politics. War. Power. All of it was new to me, a world I had no map for yet. I had enough to worry about without unraveling the ambitions of monarchs I had never met.
“Were the pirates afraid of Yeri?” Jina yawned.
Footsteps pounded on the deck above us. Captain Russo’s voice cut through the wood, sharp and commanding, boots shuffling fast in every direction.
Ranis straightened, his easy manner gone in an instant. His eyes moved to the pearl pile on the table, maybe forty small ones. Then to the mountains of empty shells beside my foot.
“The captain will not be happy.” He glanced to the doorway, then back to us.
I tossed up my hands, hissing, “We’re doing the best we can.”
He gripped his hair, his face pulled tight with what looked like panic. “If you don’t produce, the captain—”
“The captain what?” I set down my shell.
He lowered his voice. “Just find more. Please. Hurry.”
When footsteps sounded closer, Ranis whimpered. The captain appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He glanced at the pearls, then at us.
“That’s it?”
“The shells are poor quality,” I said. “There’s not much—”
His hand came down across the table, scattering shells across the floor. Smoke hissed from his knuckles. Jina flinched back, her shoulders scrunched. I didn’t move.
“You’re Seaborn.” His voice dropped low, the kind of quiet that was worse than shouting. “You should be able to pull pearls from empty water. Why aren’t you producing?”
“I don’t know what Seaborn means.” I imagined drawing my dagger, the one he didn’t know I had, and finding the soft place beneath his jaw the way I had always found the hinge of a shell. Quick. Certain. No wasted motion. “No one has told us what it means.”
The captain looked at me for a long moment. Rage moved behind his eyes. Frustration? Calculation? Murder? He stepped forward and hit my face hard enough that my vision went white at the edges. Jina cried out. I caught the table from tipping over, teeth clenched and straightened.
I will not go down.
My jaw throbbed, heat radiating up through my cheekbone. My vision swam again then steadied. My hand moved to my dagger but I caught myself. Not yet. Not here. Not with Jina beside me and no way out.
I swallowed my pride, my dignity, and said nothing. Because that was what he expected from me. I would give him just enough to appear compliant. But if he tested me, if he attempted to hurt Jina, he would find out I was not afraid of dying.
“Seaborn.” He said it like that word disgusted him, like a lesson I should have already learned. “Figure it out.” He turned to Ranis. “Take them below. No dinner.” He pointed at me. “Before we reach land tomorrow, you will give me the count I want, or I’ll throw you overboard.”
Ranis shook his head, at us or at his captain, I didn’t know.
He guided us to a small room and apologized before turning the key to lock. Not even a candle. Just darkness and the pungent bite of urine. Perhaps no light was a good thing. Some things were better left unseen.
Jina found my hand in the dark. We leaned against the wall, slid down together, and tucked our knees to our chests. She pressed her head against my shoulder and sobbed softly.
She dabbed at her eyes. “Are you all right, Sis?”
My jaw throbbed, but I was alive. “I’m fine.” My voice came out flatter than I had intended.
She squeezed my hand. She didn’t believe me, neither did I.
I pulled her close and closed my eyes while the ship swayed.
Seaborn. Resse had used it to raise our price.
The man above us expected it to mean something more than the ability to open shells.
You should be able to pull pearls from empty water.
An exaggeration, surely. Nobody could create miracles. Could they?
I thought of the first contact with the ocean when we were tossed off the cliff again. The fire along my neck. The air that had filled my lungs where there was no air. What did it all mean? Did that mean I was a Seaborn?
Too tired to think, I pressed my back against the cold wall and waited for morning.