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“I thought a person could buy their way onto the Humility,” I said.
Gretchen scoffed. “It’s a pretty steep price. Just your freedom.”
“And yet, you’re here. Playing card games and dancing. Is it so bad?”
“A cage is a cage,” Loretta said. “But he does feed us well, and he provides us with anything we could want or need.”
“I thought he was . . . I don’t know . . . your friend?”
“Dominic Castillion has no friends,” Werner said. “Just his soldiers and us.”
“It might be different if he ever came down among us.” Gretchen laid down her first card, a serpent bent in the shape of a figure eight. “I’ve heard he used to love to play as a very young man, but he took too many risks and lost half his father’s fortune, and the old man beat him near to death. So he vowed never to make such a mistake again, and devotes himself to virtue and moderation. But he does still seem very interested in it. He often sits up there, on the promenade, just watching.”
Loretta grumbled at Gretchen’s play and laid down another card, a serpent in the shape of a square. “Losing already,” she said. “On the first play.”
“What do you play for?” I asked. “I was just wondering how a man so obsessed with virtue would allow gambling on his ship.”
“Ah,” Werner said lightly. “But we don’t gamble for money. We play for the sake of playing. We win for the sake of winning.”
“That’s a lie,” Loretta said. “We trade what we have to trade.”
“Usually a favor,” Gretchen said.
“Or a secret,” Werner added.
“It’s always more fun on clear days,” Gretchen said, moving cards around in her hand. “On the white days, everything is so much more subdued.”
“White days?” I asked, looking up at the arched skylight. “You mean the fog? Does it happen often?”
“Not often, but enough.” Werner played his first card, a snake in the shape of a spiral. “We used to have to stay in our beds on white days. We complained too much, so he eventually let us come back to the gallery and play as long as we keep quiet. No music, low voices . . .”
“But why?” I asked.
Loretta shrugged. “On white days, he goes up to the bridge alone and stays there for hours. No one is supposed to bother him. When the fog clears, he reappears and everything goes back to normal. As normal as all of this”—she motioned to the opulent surroundings—“can be.”
Gretchen played another card: a snake in the shape of a circle. “Look at that,” she said. “I win again.”
“Secret or favor?” Loretta asked.
“Favor,” Gretchen replied. “From both of you.”
Werner began gathering the cards up again. “Do you want us to deal you in?” he asked me.
“No, thank you,” I said. “I think I might use this . . . white day, as you call it . . . to do a little bit of exploring.”
They exchanged glances. “Just make sure you stay far away from the bridge until the fog is gone,” Loretta said, shivering. “Trust me.”
* * *
Castillion’s fearsome forces, the ones who had overtaken half of Achleva in a few short months, were mostly kept on his other ships. Despite its cargo of hostages, the Humility’s defenses were spare, its soldiers few. And with the heavy fog hiding my movements, I made it belowdecks unaccosted and unquestioned.
The Humility’s plans, still rolled up and stashed away in my drawers at the Quiet Canary, were not as accurate in rendering the vessel as I had hoped; still, I was able to recall enough of the ship’s layout to orient myself and reframe my once-abstract objectives within the now-tangible reality. This was no longer a hypothetical revenge scenario I could use as a distraction from my sorrow and as an outlet for my anger. This was about survival now.
I did not have time to be one of Castillion’s hostages. I did not have time to dress up and act for him, to allow him to affect the role of kind and generous host. As I made my way deeper into the belly of his beautiful boat, I realized that his ship was a metaphor for him: once you cracked the pleasant veneer, the inside was all black coals and fire and suffocating darkness.
I’d gotten on this boat for the sole purpose of stabilizing Onal. With that accomplished, it was time to go about getting us off it.
The quietness of the white world above did not carry into the darkness of the decks below, but the sheer magnitude of sound—each cacophonous noise layered over the next—became its own kind of silence. The workers went about their business without speaking; indeed, it would have been of no use to try.
