“Are you trying to jump overboard and ride your dead guard like a sled?” the captain asks, making some of the pirates behind him chuckle.
He holds up his arms and turns full circle, displaying the desolate land all around. “Hate to break it to you, but we’re in the middle of the Barrens, you stupid cunt. You’re not going anywhere.”
My body shakes, my ribbons strain. But I don’t give up. I don’t give in.
The captain steps closer, testing my boundaries, pecking at me, looking for an opening.
In a snap decision, I wrap the remaining two ribbons around Sail, leaving me defenseless to the captain’s advances. All of this will be pointless if I don’t.
The last two ribbons give me the extra strength I need.
Captain Fane lunges for me, but he’s too late, because I’ve hauled Sail’s body up and over the side. The second I do, my ribbons unwind from his body, passing him over to gravity’s clutches, and he falls.
Falls, falls, falls, landing right in a pile of pillowed snow far below.
I lean over, watching, chest heaving, dropping icicle tears into the rain as our ship slides past.
A blink, and Captain Fane is there, snatching my ribbons in a vise-like grip. He crushes them together in his fist, yanking them tight against my spine, my back arching painfully.
“You foolish bitch. All that fuss, and you failed. Couldn’t even manage to make the jump.”
He yanks me away from the railing and starts to drag me away, but he’s wrong. I wasn’t trying to escape. I never intended to jump. I couldn’t survive the fall anyway, and they’d only catch me if I managed to somehow make it.
No, I accomplished exactly what I meant to. I got Sail away from here. Away from these pirates, off this ship.
His place of rest might be a mound of snow in the middle of the Barrens, but it’s better than the alternative. I couldn’t let him stay strung up for a second longer.
I get pulled harshly, quickly across the deck, toward the captain’s quarters, toward that punishment his eyes promised.
“You can’t disrespect his body anymore,” I say boldly. Bright side. It’s the only bright side I have right now to cling to, as bleak and grim as it is.
Captain Fane’s grip tightens on my ribbons in anger at my words. They’re tired, wet, and wilted, crushed in his hold and sapped of strength, same as me.
“Fine,” he says against my neck as he leads me on. “Then I suppose I’ll just disrespect yours.”
Chapter Thirty
If my poor ribbons weren’t crumpled and stuffed in Captain Fane’s fists like wet parchment, if they weren’t so exhausted and waterlogged, I might be able to rip them from his grasp and defend myself. I might be able to fight back.
Unfortunately, his hold is firm, pulling so harshly that my muscles and skin burn with every movement. If he pulls any harder, it feels as if he’ll rip them clean from my back, like yanking off a finger or plucking out an eye.
I try and fail to get them to rip out of his hands, but they’re too smashed, too wet, too tired. I’ve expended all my pitiful strength on getting Sail’s body off this cursed ship.
But at least I managed it.
I make myself a promise right here and now though. If I somehow make it through this, if the Red Raids don’t ruin me completely, I won’t allow myself to be stagnant anymore. I won’t allow myself to be so weak and inept.
I should’ve known better, after my childhood, after all the things I’ve been through. I should’ve known better than to become so complacent or languid.
If I could go back, I’d shake myself. I became like Coin, that solid gold bird forever resting on his roost. I clipped my own wings, I stayed listless on my perch.
So if I make it through this, if I live, I vow to myself that I won’t let it happen again. I won’t sit idly by and keep letting men crush me in their fists.
With the scar at my throat as a stark reminder, I firm up, crystallizing into a hardened rock of resolve. The healed line tingles, and my mind shifts to Digby. Did the Red Raids kill the scout who saw their movement? Did Digby and the others unwittingly follow the scout right into death?
I don’t know, and I don’t dare ask. Partly because if Digby and the others are still out there safe, I don’t want to tip the captain off. But another reason, a darker reason, is that I can’t bear to be told that the pirates killed them. Not yet. I can’t face that just yet.
For now, my mind needs for Digby to be out there, living and breathing. Maybe he’ll find Sail, in that grave of flurried snow, and lay some sort of tribute at his burial, one to stay with him in this desolate place while his spirit moves on to the great After.
It’s a nice thought, anyway.
His hold still rough, Captain Fane finishes dragging me to the back of the ship. I get hauled up a short five steps from the main deck, to the higher captain’s quarters. The wall is plain, save for a red slash marked down the door, a short eave jutting off the gable above.
My face is shoved against the closed door, my cheek pressed into the white weathered wood, splinters threatening to splice through my skin.
He holds me there with his forearm crushing my back, one fist still holding my satiny strands like a leash on a dog. With his other hand, he fishes into his pocket and pulls out a key, shoving it into the lock of the door.
I start struggling, though my efforts are weary. But I know for a fact that I don’t want to go inside. The moment I cross that threshold, things
