Kof approached the fire opposite me and crouched down in that peculiar way orcs do. Their powerful muscles can hold that stance for hours without cramping up. “What happened, then?” he asked. “You lost your taste for water?”
I blinked in surprise. “Once the sea is on your tongue, the taste never fades. I left because I had no choice.”
I cast my mind back to my last port of call—and the memory still stung. I’d actually been disappointed shore leave was so brief and was dragging my feet toward the gangplank. But when the bosun barred my way back onto the ship, telling me my pledge had been sold, it wasn’t just a slap in the face.
It was as if I’d been gutted.
I glimpsed the captain as I turned away from the ship. Of course I spotted him. I knew the set of his broad shoulders and the shape of his wind-ruffled cowlick.
I knew every inch of him.
As he did me.
“The captain of my ship sold my pledge,” I told Kof. “I’d become…inconvenient. He’d suffered a spoiled shipment, an ill wind, and an unexpected repair.”
“And he thought you were a witch.”
I laughed bitterly. “Not at all. He was in debt.” And the surest way out was to marry the daughter of a wealthy merchant. I wouldn’t have given him any trouble about it—after all, it wasn’t as if she’d sail with us. What did I care where he bedded down in port? But he had it in his mind that I would blackmail him. To threaten to tell the merchant about him and me, and ruin the whole deal.
“Bad enough he’d sold my pledge. But to make sure I couldn’t retaliate and damage his reputation in the ports, he sold it to a group of wanderers heading far inland.”
He hadn’t cared that they were orcs.
After some thought, Kof said, “I’ve never heard of this pledge of yours.”
“It’s a contract. A guarantee that I’ll stay with the ship long enough to be of actual use, and not just hop off at the next promising port.”
“So you’re not a slave. They just treat you as one.” Kof seemed disturbed. “Loyalty can’t be bought and sold with coin. Why did you honor it?”
I’d spent plenty a long night in a larkwood box chewing on that question myself. Reputation? Honor? Or, more likely, my own inflated sense of self-importance.
Or maybe I’d just been blindsided. Because I’d thought I’d meant as much to the captain as he’d meant to me.
I’d thought I was special.
Kof said, “Maybe your captain had the right to sell this pledge of yours, and maybe what he did was recognized by yourmaritime authority. But you’re hardly on a ship now. If you don’t want to travel with the Lost Clan, why don’t you just…leave?”
“I’ve considered it.” Once, I had, anyhow. But it was as if Pilgrim could read my mind.
If you even think about skipping out on me, little pink weasel, remember this. I can smell you. Everything you’ve worn. Everything you’ve touched. Everywhere you’ve walked. And I can move a hell of a lot quicker than you, too. Maybe you’d manage a few hours of freedom. But eventually, I’d catch up with you.
There’s nowhere you could run that I wouldn’t find you.
I cleared my throat awkwardly. “I’ll never be free until Pilgrim is dead.”
I must’ve been expecting Kof to scoff at such a bold statement, but instead he merely nodded. And maybe his easy acceptance was proof enough that I was right. He said, “I know the sort. But this pledge of yours—if it can be bought, it can be sold. I have some silver stashed away—”
“You don’t get it. Pilgrim wouldn’t let me go at any price. It’s not about the money. He just wanted to…breakme.”
Kof’s remaining eye searched me up and down. “You don’t look broken to me. But you do look cold.”
Although I stood as close to the fire as I could bear, only the front of me gathered any of its warmth. Kof’s gaze lingered on me, and for an instant, I felt like a herring trapped in a net. I shivered, only partly from the cold. He nodded, as if to himself, and said, “You need to get out of those wet clothes.”
He was right, of course. Lingering in wet clothing would be the surest way to freeze. I told myself he was watching me out of concern…while I wondered if he liked what he saw.
As I began to peel off my sodden breeches, my fingers fumbled with the laces. Kof’s gaze never left mine, and I felt a flutter in my chest. I was turned on, despite myself. It was ridiculous, given our situation, but there was something about the way he looked at me, like that one eye of his could see right through to my very soul.
Just as I was about to slip off my tunic, I caught Kof’s nostrils flaring. My heart skipped a beat. He could smell my arousal. I knew it. I’d seen it before, in the way Pilgrim’s eyes would light up when he scented my fear.
