“Back already?”
“She lied, that’s why they threw her back. She’s not a captain like she said she was. That’s why she got dumped back here with us.”
Seren said nothing as long as the guards were around. They should have deposited her and left, but one of them went to a nearby box and began pulling out a red and white sheet.
“Red around the head, the throat, and waist. White as a base garment.” All the fabrics were thrown at her, and they left, giving her a bit of privacy, even if there were other people in the room.
“There’s got to be a reason for these colors,” she said to herself, studying the fabric and wondering what it represented. The good thing was that the fabric was clean. Nothing to show that the person wearing it would be hurt or wounded... Then again, it was very basic, so if the sacrifices were murdered, it would be easy enough to fashion another one or three.
“You just got here and they’re already taking you?”
She turned to see that the shy prisoner was talking to her again.
“Yes.” Seren put on the fabric and pulled her arms in, wriggling to remove her actual clothing while remaining under the sheet. If she’d been back home on the island, she would have just changed, but not knowing who was watching her made her a lot more cautious.
“Normally they take those who have been here the longest.”
“I made a deal to help stop this.” She smiled at them. “So, that means I need to, um... Well, go as the next sacrifice.”
“Wait, what do you mean you ‘made a deal’?”
The two of them turned to the other person, the same one who had said they weren’t going to help Seren.
“If we’re going to talk, it would be better to know the names of the people I’m talking to.”
They rolled their eyes. “Sacrifices don’t have names. Just flesh.”
“Well, this sacrifice is named Serri.”
“Dekru the Hopeful,” said the first person she’d been talking with.
“That’s cool. You have a title.” Seren turned back to them. “What are you hopeful about? And I use she/her, what about you?”
“He/Him.”
“Seff-Diz, he/him.”
“And I meant exactly what I said. They explained about the sacrifice, and I’m going to see if I can get the islands to stop doing it. I don’t think the people on this ship actually want to be kidnappers.”
“Didn’t stop them, did it?” Seff-Diz spat on the floor. “Still went ahead, plucking people from their homes and families and jobs and throwing them away for fun and profit.”
Seren shook her head. “Looking around the ship, I don’t think there’s much profit in what they're doing. And certainly not any fun.”
“Even better!” Seff-Diz laughed. “They’ve destroyed our lives for nothing!”
“That’s not—”
“It’s better to ignore him,” Dekru said quietly, not meeting Seff-Diz’s eyes. “I know what you meant when you said that. You’re pointing out that it might be easier to get them to stop since they’re not gaining a lot with this trade route.”
“And they have a lot more to lose, that’s right.” She smiled at him. “And people who have more to lose are the ones you can bend to your will.”
A slight sigh followed her father’s words as they slipped from her lips, but she couldn’t take them back. That was exactly how she felt about the situation, and if she could turn things around and stop this, then that would be for the better.
“Now that you know I’m the next one out, do you have any information you want to give me?”
“We always arrive in the dark, so you’re not going to be able to see anything.” There was a pause. “Unless you can see in the dark?”
“Nope, regular human with no magic.”
Seff-Diez laughed. “No magic, no abilities, and you think you’re going to free us? Great. Perfect. We’ll be on ships back home in no time at all.”
“People don’t have to have magic to do good things,” she said, clenching her fists. Yet another one of her parents’ sayings; when was she going to be out from under their shadow? When would she be able to do something, anything, without thinking of them or having them influence her?!
“Just... Do good,” she said, forcing the words out and turning back to the rest of the things she needed to wear. The head, throat, and waist. Did those places hold any significance? The color red was probably for blood, or at least for the idea of blood. Hopefully not to hide it. She wrapped the one around her waist first, then covered her head and secured that with the neck one. “If I’m changing into these now, though, how close are we to the sacrificial site?”
“Next few hours.” Seff-Diez shrugged and laid back against the wall. “I guess thanks for taking my spot.”
Seren wanted to kick him for being a jerk, but she kept control over her feelings.
“Next few hours...Wait, do either of you know the name of the place we’re heading?”
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“Little to the left of Shark’s Cove, maybe?”
Seren whooped with excitement and pumped a fist in the air. Both Seff-Diez and Dekru the Hopeful shrank away from her.
“What’s your problem? You like the idea of dying?”
“No, not at all, but this is awesome! My crew’s already going to be there. We were heading to the city anyhow.”
“Why?” asked Dekru, shaking his head. A few greasy curls slipped out from under the blanket. “The only people that go there are people looking to get stronger.”
“Which is why we wanted it, of course.” She didn’t mention that it held the added benefit of not having her parents there. “The three of us are crew, but we need to join the guild as well, and we thought it was a big enough city that they would have a guild sign up place.”
“You mean a branch. Yeah, they do.” Seff-Diez snorted. “Good luck on staying alive long enough to sign up.”
“I believe in my crew, and I know they’ll be able to help us.”
“If they knew where you were. Which they don’t, unless you're threaded?” At her head shake, Seff-Diez snorted again. “Yeah. You’re dead. Thanks.”
“Thanks for being such an unhelpful cow pie about this!” Seren snapped back. It went against all of her father’s “training” to insult the person you wanted helping you. “Okay, the situation sucks, I get it. None of us wanted to be here, we were all taken, and what’s coming for us eventually isn’t good at all. Which means it’s time to get rid of the attitude and actually contribute to this, because if nothing changes, then I’ve just bought you a few more days of being a misery guts, and you’re still going to die!”
She finished her lecture, breathing heavily, both hands gripping the bars leading to Seff-Diez’s cage, and ready to rip them out so she could wring his neck and force him to see sense.
“...fuck you.” Came a soft reply. Seff-Diez turned his back to her completely and took a few steps, so he was farther away. Seren was about to chastise him again, but was interrupted by a knocking on the door, and then the door opening.
“Sounds like you’re done,” the guard said, looking at her and then the cell. “Come on. We need you outside.”
“But we still have a few hours?” Seren was already heading toward him, but if they weren’t there yet, then why did she need to be outside now?
“Until landing,” the guard replied. “And you need to be at the point of the ship until we touch ground.”
“Joy,” muttered Seren under her breath. The clothes she was in now were nowhere as warm as what she’d been captured, and thanks to being on the Picotree Drop she knew the wind was going to go straight through her. “Are you trying to freeze me or kill me?”
“Neither. And if you die, we’ll take him instead.” They nodded to Seff-Diez, and part of her wanted to pretend to be weak, to force him to worry about this, but... She thought about him knowing he was about to die, just waiting to be grabbed.
He was probably already worried. And angry that he’d been taken, that it hadn’t been someone else. Guilty that he’d be thinking that. Seren tried to place herself in his shoes. When she was upset, she would yell, cry, and want to throw things at people, which was what he was doing now, as much as he could.
Which wasn’t much, she acknowledged. If she hit one of the guards, they’d hurt him. If she injured another sacrifice, they’d probably hurt him, too.
“Seff-Diez,” she called out, even as the guard’s hand landed on her shoulder to take her way. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to die.”
Her words changed nothing as the door slammed, and they spun her to face the correct direction. This time, instead of going straight up, they went down the left corridor, passed several rooms and went up another hallway, and emerged much closer to the front of the ship than where she’d stood with the captains and their steering wheel.
And this section wasn’t as...friendly look as the previous place had been. There were little flecks of paint left on the wood, but there were also a lot of chips
Here there was little paint on the wood, and it looked as if this section had hit something abrasive. Hard. Many times.
“I’m supposed to stay out here for hours?” she asked, her voice a little ending in a squeak.
“Yeah.” They prodded her forward, and she saw that there was a narrow cut going up the prow. “Keep moving, there’s a space just for you up there.”
She kept walking, squeezing into a narrow space until finally it became a seat.
“There are straps there,” the guard called out. “You’ll want to loop them around your waist, legs, and arms.”
“You want me to take part in my own death?”
“From what I hear, you volunteered, so that’s on you.”
Seren wanted to point out how that differed from this, but it didn’t matter. Besides, her flesh was already pebbling from the cold and she was going to need all her energy to deal with this.
Sitting gingerly in the saddle seat—and who the hell put a seat on a ship’s prow?—she slipped her feet into cords of rope below, tugged the middle one over her head so it settled around her waist, and grabbed two handles near the top.
“Where are we going?” She suddenly thought to ask, shouting over her shoulder so the guard could hear her.
“Through a passageway called Hell’s Teeth.”
She saw them move out of sight, and even when she twisted all the way to the side, there was no sign of them.
“Great,” she muttered, sinking a little in the seat. Maybe the wind wouldn’t be so bad if she could huddle behind the prow? “I guess I should look at my surroundings?”
That was really the only thing she could do at the moment. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath—one that started her coughing thanks to the icy sharpness of the wind—she froze all her muscles in fear of slipping out of the seat and plunging to her death.
Finally, when she could breathe without hacking up a lung, she opened her eyes. This section wasn’t filled with trees like the edges of her home island had been, with its warmth. The sun was slipping down, so it was naturally going to be colder, and moving faster than a human could normally run wasn’t helping.
“Okay, it’s going to be cold, but it will not be as cold as father’s stories about the old country.” Seren rubbed the sides of her arms, alternating between them and the tops of her legs. When she realized the only thing she was doing was rubbing her skin enough to hurt, she stopped.
“Water, water, and more water.” The ocean was under them, and for a few seconds she considered slipping off into the waves so she could swim to land, but the ship wasn’t that close to the surface, and the white water she could see with the dying sun wasn’t anything she wanted to swim in. “Not to mention the sharks.”
Her parents had taught her never to go swimming if anyone was bleeding, and to stay out of the water whenever the sun was kissing the waves. She’d promised, and then one day she’d slipped on a seashell and continued to swim, thinking that it was just a scratch.
She winced at the memory. Her dad had waded into the shallows, bellowing and trying to distract the pink shark hunting for food while her father had picked her up and carried her to land. That was also the day that they’d taken the boat out, bled a fish over water, and she’d seen exactly how...messily...sharks ate.
“Okay, so staying on the ship,” she reaffirmed to herself, trying to scrub the images out of her brain. “That’s fine. That was the main plan anyway, staying in one spot.”
What she saw in the dimming light wasn’t anything that gave her a good feeling, though. This area might be shallow enough to warm up well during the day, but at night she’d turn blue with cold. Yet another reason not to go swimming.
“Great.” Seren let out a long-suffering sigh. “I guess my first goal is going to be to survive the night.”