“Then one day we anchored, and the crew came down and Yin with them and another man I had not seen before. His beard and eyebrows were a sliver-gray, the trim of his clothes gold, his hat and coat layers of orange and red, and he wore shiny new boots of burgundy leather with bright brass buckles. Their raised heels clacked on the floor as he and Yin approached me and unclasped my fetters. Even the stranger’s fingers were covered in colored jewels. Only his eyes were dark—hard as stone—he stared into my very bones and smiled.
“That day I saw the sun for the first time in months as it set over the mountains of Gautama. I cried, and the crew laughed and led me ashore where a feast had been prepared in a tavern on the docks. I didn’t know what a damn of it was, but I cried again when they sat me at table and gave me a knife. That night, we ate and drank until we were sick as dogs.
“When morning came, Yin brought me back to the oars, yet when I tried to take my place, I felt the flog on my back for the first time in ages. ‘Kyoken!’ the taskmaster grunted. I turned in shock to see him shaking his head. His eyes were crescents and his jowls grinning. He handed me the leather and left for the upper deck. I had become Slave Driver Kyoken, the mad dog. The flog was my badge of office. The oars, my domain. The slaves, my charge.
“But things changed under the mad dog’s law. I had watched too many strong and defiant men bled to ribbons because of reliance on the flog. It was a waste, and besides, the leather was a precious gift I’d earned with my blood. They did not deserve it. No—my method was song and spirit. The chattel and I shared a common enough tongue that it did not take long before the oars plunged to the rhythm of songs promising freedom and bliss. Our speeds measured half again what they were under Yin.
“Months more passed. It had been at least a year since the raid on Umlomo, and we were plundering the western coasts once more. Everyone I’d ever known had been killed or sold by then, and their ghosts visited me one night a storm had tossed us off course. They were vague and angry shades, their remains lost to the sea or buried in foreign lands. ‘Your soul will be forgotten,’ they sang, ‘a story never told. The traitor’s bones are forever cold in sands beneath the ocean.’
“I awoke shivering despite the warm wash dripping from the hatch. For a moment I feared I’d overslept, but the slaves were still snoring, and there were too few boots battering the upper deck. Then I recognized it—the iron scent—a second baptism. I climbed from my hammock and up the rungs and pressed my ear against the hatch to hear, but I felt instead. A body lay atop the trap, heavy and bleeding through the wood and into my hair till the knots were damp and I was certain the stamping had moved safely away.
“It was a raid. We had drifted too far north into Messaii territory where our kind fell prey to Pareo’s privateers. I wish I’d known that back then—it was the first time I’d seen men with skin that pale, and I pissed myself believing they were wraiths come back for vengeance. A scream from the captain’s cabin cured me shortly after I arrived on deck. One raider was already dead, the other four howling at the head at Yin’s feet. His fat cheeks were grinning, his moustaches quivering in delight as the moon reflected bright on the length of his great sabre. And he wasn’t alone. There was the Vagabond—a sharp jawed man, all angles and long, unkept hair; the ornery Gold Jacket—aptly named; and the captain himself, missing his hat, his mane and beard a blaze of silver, standing naked save for his boots and greatcoat. I would have laughed if it wasn’t so amazing.
“The remaining Messaii died waving their little sabres like toys against the Gautamans’ greater steel. Two of them skewered, another hacked to pieces, and the last cleaved in half for turning his back on taskmaster Yin. ‘Kyoken,’ smiled the former slave driver, then he tossed me one of the dead men’s swords. I’d need it. More privateers were boarding, but so too were our men emerging from the hull.
“The fight went through the night until the light of dawn showed us head to foot in a ruddy brown. By then, all I wanted was to lie in my hammock, yet the day’s work had just begun. There was the deck that needed cleaning, and torn sails to mend, and a whole ship to loot and scuttle. Needless to say, the slaves didn’t get much oaring done. It was night again when we were finally finished, and I on my way to sleep when Yin called me to the cabin.
“Captain Fenghuang was seated upright on his feather mattress, dressed just the opposite as the previous night in a white linen shirt, bright orange trousers, and his gold trimmed hat half-hiding the stains in his hair. He had a sword in his lap and a look in his eye that terrified as he gestured for me to take a seat on the stool set across from him. I sat, and he said some
