Page 9 of The Goddess’s Thief

One by one, a group of children began to slip out past the young man, slinking around the edges of the beach. Not one of them made a sound, and when I turned my head toward them, they froze like rabbits hiding from a predator. The young man slid down, sitting cross-legged beside the door, an expression of longing on his face as he stared at the sea, not the others.

I kept my face turned to the shell full of yam roots on the fire, stirring it with a stick but taking in all the details I could of the silent group. Counting the young guard, there were ten of them. One was a baby that looked about a year old, and the others were between the ages of three and fifteen, at best guess. They were all skinny, only the two youngest having any kind of roundness to their features.

Most of them had black hair and dark eyes that reminded me of my selkie mate, Kellin. Only two had reddish-blonde hair. One of those was tall, a girl standing nearly six feet and carrying a dark-haired baby, but with a three or four-year-old who looked like a younger sister peeking out from behind her. All the children wore expressions of distrust and desperation.

“Dal?” the small red-haired child whispered to Mirrim when her older sister came close enough.

“Food?” Mirrim repeated in Mirrenese for my benefit. “No, this is medicine for Rielle.”

A tiny whimper came from one of the other children, and I murmured, “I can get food, if you’d like.”

Mirrim sighed. “From where? Our garden is picked clean.”

It was a fair question. Normally, the ground would have something I could harvest that could be cooked. Clover, dandelions, and spring onions grew practically all over the world in the springtime. In the fall, gourds and nuts were easy for even a child to find. Acorns could be leached of their tannins and ground into a nutty flour. In summer like it was, there should be plenty of food to gather.

Outside the fence, the vegetation had been sparser than on most islands, but still abundant enough for habitation. I’d even seen some fruit trees beside the guards’ barracks, and fields in the distance as we descended from the ridge.

But inside the iron fence, the ground was burned clear of growth, and the forest was a good twenty feet away from the fence line. I looked up at the guardhouse above. On this narrow sliver of the beach, the longhouse blocked the line of sight from above. At the fence, they would be able to see us.

“If you get too close to the fence, Tally will have to call the guards down,” Mirrim said quietly, glancing at the seated young man. “He’s fourteen, but in training to serve.”

“He still lives with the children?”

“Until he’s fifteen. If he shows signs of being an Alpha, they’ll take him out before his first rut.”

A chill ran through me. “What happens during the rut?” An Alpha let loose around women and children during that time could do a lot of damage. I’d seen the effects of unchecked ruts more than once.

“They’re taken away from the others and chained for the week. If they survive, the masters of the Alldyns Vug will decide where he’ll serve. He could be a breeding Alpha. Or they might take his nose and keep him at the maw.”

I stirred the yam roots with a stick, staring out at the sea again. There was definitely something out there, a dark rounded shape bobbing on the waves in the distance. After a moment, I realized it was only a large piece of driftwood. “What if he’s a Beta?”

“A few of the older Betas are priests, but most are expendable guards. Sometimes they’re fed to the maw. Sometimes they’re trained to do the feeding.”

Her matter-of-fact tone made my stomach roil. I handed the stick to her and stood. “Will I be allowed to go into the water?”

“Yes. I would keep your clothing on.”

I snorted. I absolutely would. I glanced over my shoulder to where Adiah was standing very close to the narrow-shouldered Alpha. “Is he on our side?”

She shrugged. “Frol is… Frol. Adi will ask him to bring us some extra rations. He will if he can.” One of the children groaned; a few were picking at the ground, hunting for bugs or sand fleas, maybe.

Adiah walked down the fence line, Frol following on the other side until they were hidden by shadows. Only then did the women’s longhouse door open. A few of the women slipped out to the beach, two of them going to the dark-haired children and holding them close for a moment. One took the baby from the tall girl and nursed her. Conversations were whispered and rushed, and all the tears that fell were silent. Then, as quickly as they’d come, the women all returned to the longhouse.

“What was that?”

“The mothers and children are not allowed out here at the same time,” Mirrim said. “Except for a reward, when one of the Omegas agrees to...” Her eyes dropped, and I understood.

For a long moment, I did the breathing exercises Alexios had taught me, counting as I inhaled and exhaled. They didn’t help, but picturing the sharp stone in my hand plunging into an Alpha’s groin on each number did. Once I’d stabbed two dozen, I announced, “I’m not the best at fishing, but let’s see if I can find something.”

Palming the obsidian shard, I took my cloak off and walked into the shallow wave. The iron bars that had been sunk into a ledge of submerged lava on this side were solid, but where the waves hit on the back side, they were slightly thinner from erosion. I grabbed one and tugged. Solid.

The water was cold, but I preferred it to the heated sludge on the other side of the island. The frothy waves were almost impossible to see through, though I felt a minnow dart past my leg as I walked along the iron fence. Another minnow, then a whole small school, flashed through the submerged bars and out again. They kept doing that, going in and out, almost in a pattern.

“We need a net,” I said out loud, then sighed and waded back to shore. The children scattered like scared pigeons as I grabbed my cloak. “Ha! A net, or a piece of cloth with a bunch of holes. I oughta thank the nosy no-noses for helping provide the fishing equipment.”

I heard the older girl repeat, “Nosy no-nose,” to the toddler, and the trio of children made a soft, shushing sound that was the kind of laugh you made when it wasn’t safe to be heard.

I called over my shoulder, not much louder than they’d been. “Anybody want to help me net some fish?”