“I’m surprised you remember me! You’d have been a young girl when I lived in Griffonwatch, not too much older than your daughter there.” The corsair lord grinned broadly. “I suppose I’m not entirely forgotten in Hulburg.”
That was true enough, Mirya thought. There were few adults in Hulburg unfamiliar with Kamoth’s story. Fifteen years ago, he’d come out of Hillsfar to woo and win the harmach’s younger sister, widowed for several years. But almost as soon as he’d settled into the Hulmaster family home, he’d been caught out in some dark plot against the harmach and was driven into exile. From time to time Hulburgans gathered around a warm fire might wonder aloud what had ever become of Kamoth. It seemed Mirya had stumbled upon the answer.
“You’re a pirate now?” she managed to ask.
“So I’m called, but I prefer corsair. It has a better sound to it.”
“What do you mean to do with Selsha and me?”
“Sell you, of course. After all, you’re a fine-looking woman.” Kamoth allowed himself a hungry grin. His good humor didn’t reach his eyes, which remained as cold and dark as the eyes of a serpent. “Of course, you’d fetch a better price if you were five years younger, but I suppose you’ll do.”
“If it’s gold you’re after, there’s no need to sell my daughter and me into slavery,” Mirya said evenly. “I’m not rich, but I’ve some means and property. My daughter and I ought to fetch a fair ransom, more than we’d earn you in a slave market. You’d do better by the deal, and so would we.”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Ah, so you think to bargain with me? Well, now, I must say I admire your backbone, Mistress Erstenwold. Not many women in your situation could look me in the eye and make such an offer. Were it up to me, I might take you up on it. But I’m afraid it’s not entirely in my hands. You were sent aboard Kraken Queen to keep you out of trouble, and my allies in Hulburg expect me to take you a long, long way from home before I set you ashore again.”
“Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll arrange to pay more.”
“A reckless offer, Mistress Erstenwold, since you’ve no idea what they might have offered me,” Kamoth said. He shook his head. “As it so happens, we’re bound for a port where your means and property are useless to me. Your value as a slave, however, travels with you.”
Mirya pressed her lips together to keep from snapping in frustration. She willed herself to calm and then said, “Then I don’t suppose I understand what it is you want from me.”
“Why, I am simply seeing to the comforts of my guests-and taking stock of the value of my property,” Kamoth answered. He let his eyes travel down Mirya’s body and then back up again. Then he set his hand on her shoulder. For a moment Mirya feared he meant to strip her on the spot, but he simply turned her to one side, continuing his appraisal of her. “Thirty years or so?” he said in a low voice. “Hmm, a few years younger would be better. But you’re not a bad-looking woman at all, Mistress Erstenwold. Why, I must say I might have designs upon you myself. Yes, I might.”
Something in the way the pirate captain studied her body and spoke sent a shiver of pure terror through Mirya. It was simply unendurable-cold and almost reptilian. She was property at best, perhaps some manner of plaything, and his show of courtesy was intended for his own amusement, not her comfort. He stared silently at her with a bemused smile on his face, his attention drifting in his own thoughts, and then he shook himself. “We’ll have to see about that later, I think. No reason to hurry! We’re almost at the Black Isle, and I’ve some things to do.”
He leaned to one side to look at Selsha, who crouched in the narrow bunk staring back at him, the blanket clutched to her chest. He winked once at the girl-it was all Mirya could do to keep from screaming-and then turned away and let himself out again without another look at either of the Erstenwolds. Mirya heard the key turn in the lock and rapid footsteps receding down the passage outside the door.
“Dear Lady,” Mirya breathed. Then she allowed herself to slump against the wall, hugging her arms to her torso to hold in her fear. Suddenly she was not at all sure that either she or Selsha would survive their captivity long enough for Geran to find them.
“What’s to become of us, Mama?” Selsha asked in a thin voice.
“I don’t know, my darling. But I think he means to keep us as his prisoners for a little longer.” She mustered a confident smile for Selsha and sat down beside her. “As long as we’re together, I’ll look after you.”
Selsha nodded. Then she sat up and looked around. “I think we’re going down now.”
Down? Mirya wondered. Sure enough, her sense of balance was telling her that the ship’s motion had changed again. The cant of the deck was different, and she thought she felt the air growing warmer. “Where in the world are they taking us?” she murmured.
She went to the porthole again and tried to make out something, anything, of their surroundings, but it was dark outside now. Even if the glass had been clear and clean, she suspected she wouldn’t have seen much. Frowning in puzzlement, Mirya picked up the tray by the door and went back to the bunk to sit by Selsha. They ate together. Selsha said that she was not hungry, but Mirya insisted that she eat something; there was no telling where they were bound at this point, and who knew when they might see their next meal?
After an hour or more of sharply descending, the ship finally bumped and slid against some sort of pier or wharf. Mirya could hear the taut mooring hawsers creaking as they arrested the ship’s motion, and the footsteps of the crewmen as they hurried back and forth across the deck. For a long time nothing else happened, and she began to wonder if the tiny cabin was to be their prison cell as well. But then she heard several heavy footsteps approaching outside her door again, and the jangle of keys on an iron ring.
The lock turned, and several of the pirate crewmen stepped into the room. They were dirty, dangerous-looking men in frayed breeches and worn-out tunics, and they leered at her shamelessly. “Come along, you,” one of the men said. “Make any trouble for us, and you’ll regret it.”
“Mama!” Selsha screeched.
“Be calm, Selsha!” Mirya answered as steadily as she could.
She remained docile as two of the pirates stepped forward to seize her by the arms. “Now you’re a pretty thing,” one of the pirates said. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear. His breath stank. “What’s your name, love?”
Mirya turned her face away and refused to reply. The pirate snorted. “As you wish, then, but soon enough you’ll wish you had a friend or two here.” He and his companion dragged her out of the cabin and down the passageway to a ladder leading up to the deck. A third man brought Selsha, who sobbed in fear but managed to stay on her feet and keep up with Mirya despite her terror.
Bright lanterns illuminated the ship’s decks. It was dark outside, but Mirya caught a glimpse of a starry sky outside the warm, yellow halo of light cocooning the pirate ship. The air was cool and damp, with a strange, sickly sweet odor like rotting flowers hanging thickly in the air. The jagged silhouettes of treetops moved softly against the background of stars overhead. There’s no land nearby Hulburg with trees such as that, she thought. They must have passed down the River Lis to some port on the Sea of Fallen Stars, but where? Turmish or Akanul, perhaps? Chessenta? Or even farther?
The pirates hustled her across a wooden wharf to an iron-barred gate at the foot of a stone tower and then swept her inside before she could make out anything more of their surroundings. They descended through wide, low hallways made of a series of intersecting vaults. Each barrel vault was divided from the main passage by a row of iron bars and could evidently serve as storage space or a prison cell as the pirates needed. Most of the vaults were full of supplies and cargo, the same sort of clutter of barrels and crates that filled the Erstenwold storehouses back in Hulburg. Others held richer loot-clay amphoras of olive oil and wine, fine carpets, large bolts of good cloth, arms and armor. Clearly the stone keep, wherever it was, held the plunder of dozens of prizes taken by the Black Moon pirates.