"Wow, their beds sure are nice!" Mailyn enthused. She hopped onto the large mattress and eased back with a sigh.

"How come they get a window and a bunch of glowglobes?" I asked, tapping one of the wall-mounted hemispheres.

"'Cause they're rich," Aldo said - and, really, what more needed to be said?

Being unsupervised meant that, while only about half of the ship was available to us, there often wasn't anybody around to make sure we didn't go into the other half. I think we snuck into every first-class cabin more than once and made off with a few kilos of floral-smelling toiletries, a frilly handkerchief for Mailyn, some silver hair pins for me, and about one and a half octavos in unsecured pocket-change for Aldo. In the big forward cabin, we found a locked chest that probably had a lot more than pocket change in it, but none of us was foolish enough to try to steal from it. As Aldo pointed out, pocket change and hankies were fine, but we'd get in serious trouble if somebody noticed a small fortune in cash was missing:

"I'm willing to eat a whipping if I get caught with my hands in the candy jar, but I ain't getting tossed overboard. A fortune ain't worth a red tollo if you can't use it."

Most often, we just crept in, poked around, and left without taking anything. We did get caught trying to sneak into the first mate's cabin on account of it being occupied at the time. Aldo noted that the lock hadn't been magicked like most of the other officers' bunks, and I pounded on the door at least three times with no response. All of us were interested to see what an officer's bunk looked like, so Aldo picked the lock and we crept in, only to find that the first mate had shacked up with one of the comelier third class passengers, and they were not asleep. After pulling on his knickers, the mate chased us out and beat Aldo hard enough to give him a swollen lip and a few bruises, albeit not very bad ones. Then the woman screamed at him to leave us alone - I guess she hadn't realized that Aldo picked the lock - and the first mate knew better than to aggravate his lady love, so Mailyn and I got off with a dirty look and a warning.

The next day, somebody on the Auspicio got into real trouble - and thankfully it wasn't us. One of the crew found a pair of stowaways… I'm not entirely sure where on the ship they'd been hiding, but wherever it was they hadn't been doing it well enough. The pair - a boy and a girl - were older than us, but not by much. Eleven or twelve would be my guess. After they got caught, the same first mate who let us three off with a few slaps and a warning rang the alarum bell on the deck until everybody aboard who wasn't in the chattel hold had assembled to witness the trial.

"Does anybody here hold a rank higher than a captain on his own ship?" the mate bellowed, and nobody on the ship could claim a higher status (that is above captain - on his or her own ship, a captain is considered the highest possible seniority for their rank).

With nobody claiming higher authority, Captain Chirar, the captain of the Auspicio, strutted up to the fore of the quarterdeck. He was a burly Gionian with a chestnut-brown officer's wig that did little to hide his baldness. He scowled down from the high railing, his left eye milky gray and likely blind, his left hand scarred but bunched into a powerful fist. When several sailors carried an ornate wooden chair to the fore, he sank into it like a high priest after benediction.

"Who brings charges against these two?"

"I do, sir," the first mate announced in his gravelly voice. "Fifteen minutes prior to this trial, Sailing Chief Arpetto and Bosun Garvanaux observed two suspicious individuals outside the tar room. When called to identify themselves, they took flight and were cornered in the dry hold, where they turned violent in their attempt to escape and injured Sailor First Class Rovenne when they hurled a cannister of berry preserves at his head. They were apprehended without further incident. When questioned regarding their boarding information, they were unable to provide either boarding passes or a name matching one on the passenger manifest. We, the officers of the ship, seek prosecution for these two under charges of stowing without payment and assault of a sailor with intent to injure."

"I see," Captain Chirar grumbled. "And you attest, under your honor as an officer, that this testimony is accurate and true?"

"I do, sir," the first mate said.

"We do," the petty officers repeated.

"And you, sailor? Do you attest by your sailor's oath that this is the boy who attacked you?"

"Aye, sir," a sailor clutching a compress to his head added.

"And is there any other aboard my ship who can offer testimony to either condemn or exculpate the accused?" The captain's good eye scanned the assembled passengers and crew - perhaps a hundred twenty people in all. There, amid the gentle creaking of the ship and the whipping hiss of the ocean breeze, nobody uttered a sound in those kids' defense. I'm imagine that, if a first class passenger claimed to recognize the pair as wayward relatives, pled for clemency on their behalf, and offered to pay their full passage, the captain might have accepted that and ordered a few lashes in punishment for the assault. Based on the chests and strongboxes in each first class cabin, most of the wealthy passengers easily could have afforded it, but not one of them cared to. In my opinion, that was a mistake - even if you aren't a bleeding heart, having a mischievous soul in your eternal debt pays dividends if you know how to use them.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Chirar nodded and turned to the stowaways, each shackled to an iron ring on the deck. The boy stood defiant, black hair blowing in the wind, while the girl wept into the crook of her elbow, shoulders heaving. The captain scowled at the pair. "And now that you two have heard the charges levied against you and the testimony brought to bear, what is your defense?"

"We didn't mean nothing by it, sir!" the girl bawled.

The boy prostrated himself insofar as he could. "Do what you want with me, but I beg you, let her go your lordship! It was me what threw the tin at the sailor."

Chirar nodded, his one pale eye glinting like silver in the early afternoon sunlight. "We Gionians have a long and hallowed tradition of punishment for stowaways… which is to point them toward the nearest land and cast them overboard with naught but the clothes on their back and a wooden plank. This amounts to a death sentence - there's no land for over twenty leagues, no more than barren, deserted islands even at that distance, and mantis sharks prowl these waters." He shot the stowaways a meaningful look, giving them a minute to consider how miserable their fate was. "But captains are given latitude in their sentencing, and I am a merciful man. I don't want the lives of children on my conscience, and so, in the name of Prince Karlo, I find you, boy, guilty of illegal trespass of a naval vessel and minor assault of a sailor and sentence you to five years' indenture for your crime. For you, miss, I sentence three years' indenture, due to lesser guilt in the assault. That is my verdict. However, if you still wish to go overboard, I shall respect that decision. What say you?"

"I… I'll take the indenture, sir," the girl said in a small voice. The boy nodded mutely.

"Very well. Who here can claim that justice hasn't been observed?" The captain looked out over the crowd, his milky blind eye seeming to dare anybody into objecting to his ruling. After a long minute of bated silence, he nodded. "This court is adjourned. Mister Barzono, if you will?"

"Yes sir," the first mate said. He rung the alarum bell twice to signal the trial's end and motioned toward a pair of sailors, who knew how to proceed. The pair of stowaways were unshackled from the deck and, still in chains, led away to the chattel hold below.

And that, my friends, is how stowaways are dealt with on Gionian slave ships - if you haven't paid for a ticket, you become part of the cargo.

An hour and change later, we watched as the pair was hauled into the hold after being branded and processed - each prisoner was branded on the right cheek and the back left shoulder with a mark noting their crime, date of conviction, and duration of indenture, a series of coded dots implanted in magical ink. Only a trained mage could erase or manipulate the mark, such as to remove it when the term of indenture was complete or to add time for violation of the indenture contract. Being the only trained mage on the ship, Awis'le had no doubt done theirs. Thirty minutes later, and business on the ship was back to regular, as if two young people hadn't just had their lives signed away for a paroxysm of foolishness.

"I want to see where they went," I said.

Aldo gawped at me. "What? Why?"

"I want to see what it's like. I reckon most of my family - maybe all of them - got marked just like those kids and marched down into the belly of a ship just like them and shipped off to Turia like just them." I wiped away a tear and looked away in the hopes that the other two hadn't noticed me crying at the thought. "I want to see what it was like for them. I'm… can we just see?"

"Course we can see," Mailyn stated. "Right, Aldo?"

"Uh, that's right… why are you looking at me?"

"We need you to pick the lock." I handed him one of my silver hairpins.

We couldn't go into the chattel hold with the prisoners, of course, and neither did we remotely want to. However, the area right above it was secured behind a single locked door, seemingly no more secure than most of the other doors on the ship. As usual, Mailyn and I kept lookout while Aldo tried his hand at the lock. We waited in the dark passageway for at least ten minutes, the stench of sweat surrounding us, every creak or thump making me flinch for fear that somebody had snuck up without my notice and deduced that I was up to no good. When somebody actually tapped on my shoulder, I yelped and jumped so high I banged my head on a support beam.

I grimaced, rubbing my head. "Ow! Aldo!"

He grinned sheepishly. "Sorry 'bout that. But, uh… I got a little problem. You been watching plenty of times when I picked a lock, right?"

"I guess…"

Aldo nodded sagely. "Well… this one's a twofer - can't do it myself. Alls I need is for you to hold one of the pins after I stick it in, and I'll do the rest. Okay?"

I nodded with more confidence than I felt. "Let's do it."

Aldo crouched over, fiddling for about thirty seconds until part of the lock audibly clicked. He motioned for me to hold the pin he'd been manipulating and keep it very still, which I did. Then he helped himself to another silver pin from my hair and began fiddling further back in the lock until there was a second click and the little latch on the door handle popped up. We'd just extracted the hairpins from the lock when Mailyn came rushing in from out of the darkness, panic written on her face.

"Sorry… somebody's in the hallway!" she whispered. "Reckon they're coming this way!"

"I reckon we should play dumb and-" Aldo started, but I slipped right past him and into the overhold room. "Guess we're going in."