The pirate grabbed the fabric at my chest before I could think to run, yanking me toward him in a motion that snapped my head backward. I dug my heels into the dusty ground. The merchant woman scurried away to safety, revealing Captain Kriska, leaning into me from the side.
“Hello,malá ryba,” he said jovially, as though I was an old friend he hadn’t expected to see. “A Rivean market is one of the worst places to find a pickpocket. Doesn’t your husband know better than to leave pretty things unattended?”
A snarl erupted from my throat, my knee aimed at Demyan’s crotch, but someone blocked it. Suddenly, there were more. Five, seven, nine of them. They surrounded me on all sides, impeding my view like walls—shrinking walls—blocking the sun and wind, leaving me in a cold, dark cabin. My palms slick and clammy, I forced away the sudden impending cold, the ice that crusted in my lungs, robbing them of movement. Demyan’s fingers dug into my chest through my loose pirate shirt, and I reached for his throat. Water leapt at my touch through his skin, swelling at his trachea, strangling him from the inside.
His face purpled almost instantly, but rather than shove me away, he grappled for my own neck as a swarm of arms reached in to pry my fingers away from him. The span of his hands wrapped around my collar, squeezing hard enough to blast stars across my vision, the marketplace flashing white. My breath became trapped under his vice. My heart pumped in my ears, angry at the obstruction of its own path.
Under his thumb, I felt my jugular vein cave.
My knees gave out. My fingers suddenly refused to move, my arms limp as they dropped from his shoulders and hung from my frame. Air, I could live without for a short span of time.
Blood circulation, I could not.
I blinked into the sky, though white was all I saw. White was all I heard. All I tasted, all I felt. White, white, white. It built and bloomed. So loud. So quiet. Sodark.
Like death in a single burst of nothing. I waited for the color white to eat me alive.
Then, the hands binding me suddenly lifted. My breath shot from my throat in rageful spurts, sending me sideways as I coughed air out and in. The mass of bodies surrounding mine bounded away. Shouts came from overhead, echoes in my ears. Sound crashed into me like a forceful tide, engulfing me from all dizzying directions as I blinked away the fog.
Beside me, Kye fumed on his knees, teeth bared, hands tied behind his back. A single Rivean guard dragged him to his feet, but more loomed around us, their words too mangled in my ears to understand. I gasped for clean oxygen, pushing myself onto my hip, glancing wildly around.
One pirate lay lifeless in the dirt, his eye socket hollow where a knife had stabbed him through his skull. Another sagged beside him, gazing in horror at the blade jutting from between his ribs, sunk to the hilt. He opened his mouth, and blood spurted from his lips. Then he fell forward and didn’t move.
Kriska and Demyan were nowhere to be found.
“Kye—” I choked, forcing myself upright on shaking knees as the guards pulled him away. The heels of his boots churned into the dust as he jostled for a final glance at me from over his shoulder. But the guards squeezed in around him, blocking him from my view.
“Captain Cenek will hang him by morning for that,” the merchant woman said behind me, pity in her voice as she watched them lead Kye out of the market square.
I took a small step, but strength hadn’t yet returned to my legs. “Where are they taking him?” I rasped.
She clicked her tongue. “Pevnost Mrtveho Muža. The Deadman’s House.”
17
Maren
Sero and Kolibri’s reins in my hand, I stood under the half-dead trees, staring atPevnost Mrtveho Muža.
The Deadman’s House.
I supposed it was fitting that the largest port in Rivea would also harbor the largest prison. It loomed ahead under unassuming clouds, a mountain of cold, gray stone built to the sky. Guards roamed its curtain walls like a flock of blood-red crows, shifting direction as though their movement lay caught between collective consciousness and chaos. I counted them—twenty at any given moment, along with the stationary men roosted high along the walls, watching the grounds from their perches.
And somewhere inside, Kye.
My nails bit into my palms. Ideas tumbled through my head, each one more desperate than the last. The sea market had been rampant with shield weed. I didn’t trust my siren’s song to allow me access through the minds of men. And though my knees had stopped wobbling, I still hadn’t regained the strength I’d lostwhile recovering from the bends—if I had, I was sure I could have suffocated Demyan.
I’d have to use other skills instead.
I glanced down at myself. My new gray dress flared smoothly from my hips in rough homespun fabric, long sleeves laced to my wrists. Under it sat my new chemise, longer than the one I’d been wearing these past few weeks. Thicker, too. Sewn for the cold wind, twine tied the left and right halves of the chemise over my chest.
I chewed my lip. Then stripped the gray dress off my back. My stockings came off next, followed by the pins in my hair, waves tumbling around my shoulders. Then the twine of my chemise, leaving my dress open over my stomach and breasts.
I tapped my foot in thought, nerves firing in my gut as I plucked my corset from the ground. On it went, as tight as I could manage, until I was certain I’d never been more ample and narrow in the same moment. I pulled Kye’s sword from its sheath, using it as a mirror and pinching color into my cheeks. Then sucked my lips under my teeth, feeling them plump as they grew raw with abuse. With a quick flourish, the fur pelt settled over my shoulders, hiding the welts at my neck.
Kolibri’s ears flared back as I rode her down the hill toward the stone fortress, irritated at the sight of the guards outside as they grew closer. For the sake of trying, I hummed as I approached, watching their eyes for any hint of dilation, though there was none to be found. I halted her and Sero outside the doors and slid from her back, handing the reins of both horses to the nearest man without giving him a second glance.
A drop of water slid from my fingertip, probably summoned by the sudden anxiety unraveling like thread from a spool inside my chest. I carefully flicked it away, commanding myself to concentrate. One of them, I could incapacitate with water calling. Six of them…
