Dexter’s patronizing smile faded. “What happens to them, if they don’t go on the block?”
The man shrugged. “Most are a lost cause, I admit,” he said honestly. “Criminals without the strength to battle in the arenas. Some are sick, others old and feeble. Mostly they rot in their cells until one death comes.”
Dexter rose slowly. Biting back his rage he said, “Yes, show me to them.”
Happy to get the difficult man away from angering the other bidders, he gladly led Dexter and his crew through the barred door and down a flight of stairs. Once down there they passed through another guard room that had three doors opening from different walls, each leading to a bank of cells.
“You want this bank of cells here,” the smarmy man told them, indicating a door that one of the guards in the lower room moved to open.
The smell that emerged when the door opened made Rosh scowl and cover his nose. Bekka’s eyes widened and her face paled. Dexter coughed and turned to look at the man.
“Their fates are sealed, why waste the money?” he asked in a tone that indicated he truly did not understand the need for such a thing.
“You’ll know why when a plague festers down here,” Rosh growled.
Dexter said nothing. His jaw clenched and his fists balled. He nodded with his head towards the opening and the man in turn gestured for them to go ahead. “See if there’s anything you like. There’s no other way out and we possess the keys.”
Dexter walked forward into the dark passage. Rosh followed behind him, though not without leveling a threatening glare at their guide. Bekka followed as well, though the squeamish look upon her face told that it was a matter of extreme willpower that allowed her to endure the stench.
They made it all the way to the end of the hall, counting seven cells to each side, before they turned and came back. One man alone still lived, so far as they could tell. He looked up at them morosely and they realized it was no man, but a woman. Her face was bruised and cut, with dried blood upon it. She clutched one hand to her stomach, the fingers swollen, blackened, and broken so badly that they would never be set straight again. Much of her hand, in fact, was swollen and discolored.
“I’m no whore!” She spat at them as they stopped to stare at her.
“Not with a face like that,” Rosh said dryly.
Dexter ignored him and instead knelt down next to the bars. “What’s your name?” he asked her softly.
Her eyes widened and her split lips parted. She was missing a few teeth as well, he saw. “Wuh….Willa,” she said, her anger shaken by his question.
“Willa, what’s wrong with you,” Dexter asked her. “I don’t mean why are you here, but what of your hand? And how else are you injured?”
Her eyes narrowed and some of her defiance returned. “I’m no whore!” She said again, using her good hand to help her drag herself across the floor closer to the cell door.
Dexter shook his head. “That’s good, I’m not for wanting a whore.”
She stared at him suspiciously, stopping her painful slide. “My hand’s busted up,” she admitted at last. “Something’s busted in my hip too.”
“Have you any skills? Any talent? Can you work wood or tend to injuries? Have you ever been on a ship?”
She looked away and then back, a glimmer of moisture reflecting in the distant torchlight. Angrily she said, “Leave me here to rot if I can’t slave for you? I can’t do a damned thing with my hand busted like this, and it won’t be healing right neither!”
Dexter shook his head and sighed, then he regretted it as it caused him to draw a full breath. “Willa, I mean to get you out of here no matter what you can do. And I mean to do what I can to get you healed, rested, and fed. I just want to know if you will be able and willing to serve on my ship.”
“You got one of those fancy skyships?” she asked, not believing a word he said.
Dexter nodded, assuming the Voidhawk was what she called a ‘skyship’.
She laughed. “Going to set me and some others up on it to drive it right into something, I bet. I heard what you bastards do! You load them full of oil and such, then ram them into whoever you’re fighting! I’d rather die here, pig!”
Dexter recoiled, surprised at both her enmity and the act she described. To take a ship and waste it in such a matter was as taboo a thing to him as he could imagine.
“Never that, I promise!” He assured her. “I’m the Captain of the Voidhawk. This is my helmswoman and my Arms Master. We lost a good man recently and we’re needing some more help on the deck… The Void is a big place to be running a skeleton crew.”
“The…Void?” she asked, confused by the term.
“Aye, up there,” he said, pointing and glancing towards the ceiling.
“Ain’t no airship you got then, is it?” she asked.
“It sails in the air,” Dexter told her. “But when we’re done here, we’ll go further, to another port in the void, perhaps another planet.”
She leaned forward, grimacing as she did so, and looked down the hall. “I’ll do anything you want…um, Captain. Take me with you and I’m yours.”
“Thought you weren’t no whore?” Rosh asked pointedly.
She glanced sharply at him.
“Anything he wants… sounds like whoring to me,” Rosh offered as an explanation.
Dexter held up his hand to stall both of them. “I don’t need nor want a whore,” Dexter said. He ignored the funny noise Rosh made from behind him and pressed on. “Willa, these dirthuggers won’t offer much for help, do you think you can be moved so that we can get you to my ship?”
She nodded, biting her lip resolutely. “I’ll make it.”
“Alright,” Dexter said before rising to his feet and turning towards the opening.
“Bring the keys!” He yelled down the hallway.
A few minutes later a guard, the same one that had opened the door for them, came down to meet them. He held a cloth over his nose with one hand and the keys in the other. He looked at the injured woman and chuckled, then stuck the key in the lock and twisted it. Seeing no reason to stick around, he turned and hurried back out of the fetid passage.
“Help her up, Rosh,” Dexter said, pushing the door open on squealing hinges.
Rosh made a face but stepped in and reached down to gently help Willa to her feet. She grimaced and gasped a few times, even screaming quickly before she bit it off when her ruined hand was jostled.
Rosh held his head back, trying not to gag. When he gained control of himself he said, “Cap, that hand’s got to go. Stinks like rot.”
“We’ll see when we get her back,” Dexter said, seeing it better himself and agreeing with the man. “Can you handle her?”
Rosh nodded. “My sword weighs more than her,” he exaggerated.
Within a half dozen steps Rosh was forced to sweep Willa up completely and carry here in his arms. Each step made caused her to nearly buckle in pain. A dripping noise brought their attention to below them, where red drops were appearing on the dirt floor beneath them.
“You’re bleeding,” Bekka said, speaking for the first time as her concern overweighed her disgust of the environment. She rushed forward to try and see where else she was injured.
Willa bit her lip and fought through the pain. “It’ll stop, it always does.”
“This happens a lot?” Bekka asked.
Willa nodded, then swooned as the motion nearly caused her to black out.
Bekka gently pulled at the torn rags she used as a skirt and gasped when she saw the damage that had been done to her. She laid them back down then turned to Dexter. “The guards,” Bekka said, making it an accusation and a statement all at once.
Dexter looked at her curiously for a moment, then realization dawned on him. He turned to look down the hallway then headed down it, moving quickly. In the guardroom he looked at the three guards present, plus the clerk that had led them downstairs. He looked at them all, trying to figure out which one, or ones, had violated Willa.
“Gonna miss her,” a thick necked guard said with a cackle when Rosh emerged from the doorway.
