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Dmitri grunted. “So I’m important, but not that important.”
“The captain is needed on deck,” I said as noncommittally as possible.
Again, Dmitri made a scoffing noise. “Tame wolves,” he growled. “They all think they’re more important than the rest of us. We’re the ones shouldering the weight of the world, though. We’re the only thing standing between the Old Realm and all of the pretty new kingdoms Magnus and his like think they’re starting.”
He spoke with utter derision, but my ears pricked at what he was saying.
“They’re thinking of the future,” I said. “Magnus wants to create lives for us all. He wants people to be happy and prosperous, for us to thrive and have enough to eat and to build something.”
Dmitri made a sound of disgust. “There is no future,” he said, staring at his plate as he finished every morsel. I was half convinced he would eat the pheasant bone as well. “We’re all teetering on the verge of death. Give it a couple of years, and the entire world will be dead.”
“Why do you think that?” I asked, both horrified and saddened by the bleakness of his outlook.
Dmitri looked at me as if I were stupid. “Look around you, pup,” he said. “There isn’t enough food to feed everyone. There aren’t enough people left to hunt or gather orfarm.” He spoke the last word as if it were a sin. “The Old Realm is in ruins, and the kingdoms beyond that aren’t much better off. The war and the plague decimated what is left of society. There is no one, nothing. There is no future.”
I kept my mouth shut, even though I knew what he was saying couldn’t possibly be right. I had to listen as if Dmitri were being serious, though. He believed the things he was saying, I was sure. And why shouldn’t he? All he’d seen for the last few years was death and starvation
All he’d seen for years was death and starvation. The thought hit me a second time. Dmitri didn’t know. He didn’t know how the Wolf River Kingdom was thriving. He hadn’t seen the buildings and the people, the farms and the orchards. I doubted he had ever been to Good Port either. He hadn’t seen the massive trading ships and the vessels that came from far across the seas.
If Dmitri didn’t know, then the wolves of the eastern forest didn’t know. The ones Ludvig and I had tried to tell hadn’t believed us. It was madness for them to live in denial, but they had no reason to even try to believe that the world they lived in was vastly different than what they believed it to be.
“I’m finished,” Dmitri said, throwing the empty plate with the pheasant bone into my lap. It was a miracle I caught it without the bone flying down the hallway. “Go find the captain and get him to free me, pup. And fetch me water and soap for a bath.”
I pushed against the wall and stood. Dmitri threw the empty mug at me as well, and I managed to catch it too.
Without another word, I strode over to the stairs and climbed up to the deck. The others had finished their supper, Gennadi, Avenel, and a few other members of the crew were helping to clean up, and Magnus, Olympus, and the Sons who were present had fallen into some sort of conversation.
I noticed briefly as I took the empty plate and mug to the table that was being cleaned up that Ox and Katrina had gathered near one side of the boat with a young woman I didn’t know. The woman held a baby, and for some reason, she kept looking at Sebald.
“You missed all the drama,” Jace informed me in a teasing voice as I passed behind his chair. “Sebald not only found himself a pup in Hedeon, he managed to snag a woman and a baby as well.”
I blinked hard and whipped to stare at Sebald. Sebald shook his head, a flush painting his cheeks, and said, “It’s a long story. Premila is an old friend of mine. From before. I’m responsible for her now.”
I had a hundred questions, but I wouldn’t have known where to start. So I just nodded and walked on to Captain Andreas. Avenel rushed to take my plate and cup just as I reached the man.
“Dmitri would like to be released,” I said, phrasing Dmitri’s demands politely. “And he would like water and soap for a bath.”
Captain Andreas nodded. “I’ll be down in a moment. In the meantime, you can take one of the buckets from the river water we collected earlier. You still have some of that soap we brought you earlier?”
I nodded, touched that the captain and not one of my friends had been responsible for my bath. “Thank you.”
Captain Andreas nodded and patted my shoulder, then nodded to a line of buckets against the ship’s railing.
I felt like I was moving through some sort of dream as I grabbed one of the buckets and hauled it to the cabin stairs. I’d been born a nobleman in Dunsk. I’d been raised with servants to cater to my ever need. I’d dressed in the finest clothing, eaten the richest food, and been educated at a palace school.
Now, here I was, hauling river water so that the man who owned me could bathe.
I tried to puzzle out how that made me feel, but the best I could come up with was that at least I had something to do. Hauling water and being fucked were simple, concrete things that I could do without worrying too much about all the ways I could fuck up, even if they made me feel like a worm in the process.
“What took you so long, pup?” Dmitri demanded, a hint of teasing in his eyes, as I came down the stairs into the hallway with the water.
I ignored his words and the way they’d been delivered. He was just trying to fluster me.
“The captain is on his way down to undo your shackles,” I said. I nodded to the doorway where he stood. “I can put this in your room, though, and fetch the soap and washcloth from my room.”
“Oh, no,” Dmitri said, attempting to cross his arms, but being stopped by the shackles. He gestured behind him and said, “This room is broken. I’m sleeping in your bed from now on.”
I sucked in a breath, then held it. Should I have expected any less? Probably not.
