I’m not a slave. Not anymore. And I won’t be made a victim. I won’t sit and let it happen, even if by moving I die. “I’m being blackmailed,” Teia said.

“What’d they get you for?”

She was so startled by his total lack of surprise that she simply said, “Theft.”

“How?”

“I’ve been trained as a pickpocket for years. It wasn’t really my choice, you understand? My master? With my paryl vision, I can see where coins and scroll cases and the like are hidden. Half the time, I’ve been stealing from trainers who worked for Aglaia Crassos—who I just learned was my real mistress all along. But I just figured out today that they were smarter than I’d given them credit for.”

“Uh-hmm.” Commander Ironfist’s face was as placid as a lake at dawn. He gave no indication of what he was thinking. She was afraid some monster might burst from placidity though, so she sped up.

“They bet I’d get into the Blackguard, and they knew that once I was free, they wouldn’t have any hold on me, so everything I’ve been stealing has been stuff that is recognizable. They’ve probably got it all stowed somewhere in a place that they can tie to me.”

“So that’s how you knew how to disguise yourself at Ruic Head,” Ironfist said. “How good are you?”

“At lifting things?” Teia asked. She hadn’t thought this would be his first question. “Better than I am at fighting.” Not that she liked the fact.

“What would you say if I told you I work for Aglaia Crassos, too?” he asked.

Her heart dropped. She looked at the door for an escape. The commander calmly stepped between her and it.

“No,” she whispered. Begged. “No, please.”

There was no way she could make it. No way she could fight off Commander Ironfist if he wanted to stop her anyway. It was madness to even think to oppose him.

But what was her other option? To just give up?

Her only hope was paryl, and even that was a thin hope. During the battle at Ruic Head, she’d done something with paryl that made everyone within sight think they were being burned to a crisp, but it had actually done nothing. If she could remember exactly how she’d done that, maybe it would be enough.

“Relax,” Ironfist said. “I don’t. I’m just surprised that it didn’t occur to you. Usually those being blackmailed become paranoid.”

A breath whooshed out of her. “Sir, I’m so deep in my own problems that I can’t even imagine how bad my life would be if she’d gotten to you.”

“Can you describe the items to me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In writing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do so. I’ll take care of it. If.”

“Sir?”

“If this is all of it. You understand?”

All of it? Confessing to stealing trinkets was one thing, but what about Teia’s own brush with murder? Would they believe her? What was more plausible: that Teia had botched a theft and panicked and stabbed a man, or that she had crossed some cabal of invisible assassins?

Even if they believed her, somehow Master Sharp would find out. She would wake to find him in her room again. And he would know. The thought turned her knees to jelly.

“Is this all of it?” Commander Ironfist asked.

“Yes, sir,” Teia said.

“Then let’s go talk to the White.”

Talk to the White?! Oh, no. No no no. Even the best liars could have a bad day. Teia couldn’t afford for that to be today.

Chapter 22

Time was measured out with such perfect regularity that time lost meaning. Gavin’s every day had a similar rhythm. Pull. Twist. Push. Twist. Pull. Up, down, life circumscribed in ovals of work and rest and transition from one to the other. Scrape off the inefficient edges of every moment. Breathe in, breathe out, try to make the motion of the one to the other as painless as possible. Wake, sleep, and spend no time in between. Up before dawn, eating gruel, more gruel at lunch, sometimes with a slice of fruit to fend off scurvy, beans most nights, meat when they’d been particularly good. The ship stopped at a port only once a week, though they stopped at other times, too, for freshwater and for the sailors to have a chance to hunt. But most days were a blur, the round of pumping blood, or of the whip striking, falling, being raised, hesitating in the air for one instant, striking again.

Up before dawn, eating gruel. A chance at the waste bucket. Then rowing. Gruel, then a chance at the wash bucket.

The tempo ate leagues, a perfect balance between speed and exertion. If some emergency came upon them—or if they were to be an emergency that came upon someone else—the slaves needed to have the push to escape doom or to bring it. But that didn’t mean they rowed slowly, not with this crew, not with this captain, not with this accursed overseer Leonus.

It was measured, and it was the same when they hit bad weather, the light Angari ship bobbing like a cork on top of the waves, vomit and water washing past the slaves’ hardened feet. As the weather grew so bad that other ships stayed in port, wintering, they never slowed. These men had shot the Everdark Gates. A storm was a frivolity to them; they had only contempt for it.

Gavin could hear the drums in his sleep. His breath as he lay under his bench came in the same intervals it did when rowing. His hands healed, formed new calluses, ripped open, bled again, fresh agony every morning.

Leonus was a fool, but the slaves knew their business, and not even his mismanagement could impede them much.

Up before dawn, eating gruel, the other slaves rubbing liniment into aching knees and backs and hands, staving off the day when they were no more use on an oar. Leonus strangled one man whose oarmates finally called him out after a spat. He hadn’t been pulling his weight in weeks, maybe months. One word, and he was murdered in front of their eyes. A warning to the rest of them, Gavin supposed. Gavin gathered that the usual way was to whip the offender to make sure he wasn’t faking, and drop him off at the next stop, and sell him for a pittance to some other crew desperate enough to take on an old, broken slave. Other slaves became beggars, some few lucky ones taken in to the luxiats’ houses of mercy.

Gavin didn’t know how long it had been since he’d been taken. He didn’t know where they were. They’d seized five ships, and doubled back, hunting or letting Mongalt Shales catch up, any number of times. They could be off the coast of Paria or Ilyta or Atash for all Gavin knew. His beard had grown out. His hair, like all the other slaves’, had been shaved short with a razor so it wouldn’t catch on things. A pirate haircut was no thing of beauty, but these Angari were at least miraculously free of lice. Clean people. Considered themselves advanced.

One night, after a particularly good week when they’d seized two rich galleys, Gunner was rewarding the slaves. Double measures of strongwine and letting slaves come up on deck at night, albeit chained, and in small groups.

Gavin was chained to Orholam. They sat on deck, the strongwine keeping them warm. They had it so rarely that on an empty stomach, it had quite a kick.

Idly, Gavin stared at the stars, trying to figure where they were from the constellations. Off the Ruthgari coast, perhaps?

“Do you know why they call me Orholam?” the old man asked.