Wetherington, Leeward Islands, Fleet Territory

  Mid-Dry Season, Year 17

  You learn a couple things when you’re a wharf rat. If you put a knife to my throat, I’d say there were three- no, five rules that’d keep you alive, and I guess I’d rank them like this: You don’t mess with a Seaman. You always respect the top dog. You only rely on yourself. You keep your head down, and mouth shut. And do whatever it takes to stay alive.

  I’ve been alive...damn, this is why Auntie Helena kept harping on about studying numbers. Quick count on my fingers, up to my toes- seventeen years, I’ve been alive seventeen years and I’ve been an orphan dog of the streets for about sixteen of them. Long enough that these lessons were hard-earned, beaten into me by serious turns of life and more than a few angry drunks. That was why my current predicament was so damn infuriating, and why the three whimpering sacks of shit in the alleyway had just had a spirited conversation with my knuckles.

  See, I didn’t know what happened to my parents. And frankly? I didn’t give a shit. I had bigger problems, practical problems, like “what am I gonna eat today?” and “what am I gonna eat tomorrow?” and “how do I keep that pighead De Meer from shitting in my soup pot?”

  Metaphorically. If he pinched off a loaf in my soup for real, then governors or not, he’d be mysteriously turning up in the well within a week.

  What the hell was I so pissed about-? Right, these numbskulls.

  I gave one of them a kick in the ribs, the man curling protectively around the spot. “Please, Johannes, we didn’t- we didn’t mean anything by it,” he groaned.

  “Then you should have kept your mouth shut and not said anything,” I growled.

  Yeah, I didn’t really care about my parents or where they went. But it left me with problems most of my days were spent trying to solve. For at least another year, Auntie Helena was aggressively generous in her offer of three-square-and-a-bed at the local orphanage. It wasn’t exactly great food and the bed was more sheet than mattress, but it covered rule 5. Despite how often she threatened to beat me like a rug with her freakishly strong old lady arms, her disapproval didn’t stretch far enough to stop me from establishing a reasonably solid name for myself as the best enforcer in the city for...y’know, less than legal exchanges.

  I needed some way to earn a living for myself, after all.

  My other rules I took care of myself: I stayed quiet; I did my work far from the damn orphanage; I very explicitly didn’t say shit to anybody or look too hard at anything while I worked. I even kept my head down until I made myself top dog and now, when I’d managed to get a foot out and had a shot of making some real money with the real crimelords - uh, that is, merchants, legitimate merchants - I find out these punks from my last job were blabbing about me. To the Fleet, of all things!

  “Can’t believe I vouched for you shits,” I muttered, looking behind me to see if anyone was checking on us, but finding the narrow alley clear. It wasn’t an accident: people in Wetherington learned not to look in on men in dark alleys at an early age for the risk of never looking back out, but I didn’t really want to leave it up to chance. It just took one enterprising youngster with an eye for turned backs and a sharp dinner implement to leave all three of us face-down in a ditch.

  “They just-” One of them coughed, flinching when I looked at him. “They...just wanted to know what you looked like.”

  “Oh, just that?” I squat down. “Just what I looked like? Just figuring out how to identify me in a crowd?” I reached out and slapped him on the cheek, the guy flinching dramatically like he expected a proper punch. “Think, Marcos, think! You really believe they’re asking what I look like to commission a damn statue in my honour?”

  “Look, man, we’re sorry,” his friend pleaded. He was always the smart one - which was how I remembered who he was. The other two were Stupid and Dense, respectively. “We really didn’t expect it to be a problem. Just...what do we do to square it?”

  I looked at him for a moment, thinking to myself. “How many trites you got in your purse?”

  * * *

  Alright, I had a reasonable amount of coins stockpiled and the three stooges gave me a little boost of free trites on top. My current plan was to get back to the orphanage, grab my stash there, head across town to raid my other stashes, then try and get a ride across the island with one of the merchant wagons. Wetherington was a medium-sized town that took up most of the island it was sitting on, with about an armpit’s worth of forest left out there. I’d never left the place before - with what money - but if the Fleet was taking an interest, I might have to make for a port, burn some of my trites to bribe a captain, and risk a sea crossing. With any luck, the last time I’d see this pisspot city would be in the next few hours and I’d start a new life somewhere else.

  Step one: sneak back inside. Normally I did this at night, trying not to make any noise and risk waking up Auntie Helena (or worse, one of the little kids and their infinite questions), but it worked just as well in the early afternoon. Being taller than the usual man, and a little more physical, came in handy too. The building was a rundown old affair, the colour of old weatherworn wood and spotty layers of protective pitch. It had a manor style front door, which I avoided, and three levels of dorms made from whatever-the-hell-they-used-to-be with the walls all knocked out between them. Including the bathrooms.

  Fit a whole extra bunk over the chamberpots.

  I reached up to the edge of a side window, sliding it up in the frame then hauling myself into the orphanage with practiced ease. I tucked into a roll as I passed over the windowsill, landing in a skulking crouch on the first landing of the stairs, then drifted to the second floor proper. Now I just needed to get into the dorms unseen-

  “Yes, this is his bed,” Auntie Helena’s said, voice drifting through the open bedroom door. “I don’t mean to question you, especially after we came to an agreement, but…you’re sure on the amount?”

  “Helena,” a gruff voice I didn’t recognize responded. “The Fleet doesn’t haggle. Frankly, the Fleet doesn’t do this. This is purely a favour from me to you.”

  Shit shit shit shit shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. She sold me out? Auntie Helena, the kind old soul who took everybody in? The one who fed me, and gave me a place to sleep? The one who told me to be careful, and not to beat people up for a living? The one who looked at me like I was a bad influence everytime I came back from a job with bloodstains on- okay, no, this made sense.

  Shit. How do I even-?

  There was a gusty feeling at my back, like the start of the evening breeze drifting out to sea.

  “Oh, aren’t you the kid we’re looking for?” a woman asked from behind me.

  “Goddamn it,” I said, looking over my shoulder to find a midnight-haired woman staring at me with a raised eyebrow. She stood out - well, she stood out because she was pretty. Not a lot of people in this pisspot town with skin as smooth and clear and bronze as hers, especially without the layer of sunburn. But she also stood out because of her clothes.

  She was dressed in the uniform of a Seaman: a close-fitting jumpsuit tucked in at her waist and belted with a bronze buckle, and a blue jacket that covered her shoulders and stopped just below her breasts. On top of that, her hair was braided into a bun with dark green strips of seaweed woven into it. If the uniform wasn’t enough of a sign, that definitely was. No sane person played with the Scab like that. Depths, how did she get so close behind me?

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  “Nice, kid. Real nice,” she said, sounding mildly annoyed. Which is how I realized I was still staring at her chest. I stood up and looked down at her - which wasn’t unusual, but did kind of…make the whole ‘Seaman’ thing feel less impressive - to find her looking at me curiously, leaning forward slightly. I resisted the urge to cover my hair, already knowing she was looking at my Scab. “Seas, your hair’s scuttled…Damn, is that coral?” She shook her head with a whistle, which didn’t feel like it was out of appreciation.

  “Guess there’s something to this case after all.” She reached out to grab me and I skirted back, out of her reach. Shit, alright, time to make a break for it- but she kept up like I hadn’t moved, her fingers snagging me by the collar without even a breath of strain. She just…crossed three steps between us in the exact same stance like it was nothing. I didn’t even see how. “I’ve got him out here!”

  “Hey, don’t- let go!” I yelled, grabbing her wrist and twisting, but her arm was like a stone pillar. “What the hell? I didn’t do anything!” I yelled, twisting my hips to the side, trying to drag her off my feet and toss her- but she stood stock still, her grip growing a little tighter, trapping me half-turned with my back to her.

  Footsteps marched out from the bedroom, heavy and plodding on the cheap wood floors of the orphanage. A brown thick-necked bull of a man glared down at me from beneath a plumed bicorne, a forward-pointing hat casting a dark shadow onto his face and highlighting a stormy gaze that pinned me to the ground. I could feel the wind from them, a gale roaring down the hallway, pushing me back, back towards the stairs and it was all I could do to hold on. The arm stuck at my neck was like a tree in a hurricane, the only thing keeping me grounded, from being blown away as the racing winds screamed questions I didn’t have answers to, unrelenting until-

  “Yeah,” the man said, turning to Auntie Helena and taking the storm with him. “No mistaking it. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, ma’am. The Fleet will handle this matter from here.”

  Auntie Helena- no, Helena, the old bony witch, stood beside him in the hallway and smiled up at him, huffing. She was just the same as I’d seen her this morning, down to the worn grey dress and knobbly stony ridges around her finger joints, although about to be a fistful of trites richer. I missed whatever she said back to him, because the man gestured at us and the woman holding me hoisted me off the ground and onto her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The two vanished from my sight as the woman hauled me down the stairs, but the heavy jingling of coins changing hands was unmistakable.

  “Can’t believe I got fuckin’ rumbled like this,” I muttered, somewhere between surprise, amusement, and anger. “Old lady played the long game on me.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about, kid,” the woman said, giving me a sudden spank that made me jump, as she hauled me back down the stairs. “But you’re in with us, now. ‘Don’t try to run’ and all that. You’ve already pissed off the Lieutenant though, so...I guess run if you want. Probably won’t be more pissed.”

  “Hey, lady,” I said. “What are they giving you? I’ll double it- damn, I’ll triple it if you help me outta this.”

  She snorted. “Kid, that’s…” She shook her head. “Alright, for future reference, don’t try to bribe a Seaman. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today, or you’d really be in the shit.”

  “Hey, hey, it’s not a bribe,” I said, trying to convince her as we stepped out into the main street, and doing my best to be convincing when all I could see was the back of her calves. People drifted away from us in a ripple like she was a stone thrown in a pond, half of them staring at her with wide eyes and the other half stealing hopeful glances at her back. “It’s a-” She hurled me off her shoulder and I hit something hard and woody-sounding with my back. I threw my weight into it, rolling backwards over my shoulder into a feral crouch with my hands beneath me. “Hey, watch it!”

  I glanced around, finding myself in the back of an open-backed wagon with benches along the sides, the horses hitched to it not even twitching in response to us. It was parked on the stone-cobbled side road the old shithouse of an orphanage was built on, nestled in the shade of the buildings on the opposite side of the road. I could see a crowd of people that had clearly been inspecting it before we came out standing a few arms’ lengths away, blocking any possible path I could take out of this damn wagon, and giving polite greetings to the woman as she stepped into the back of the vehicle.

  “Uh huh,” she said, climbing in and taking a seat.

  I cleared my throat, pushing myself to stand in the back, gesturing broadly with my hands like I’d seen the holy men try and do for their grift. Damn it, I hated having to rely on this but she was so damn strong, I couldn’t take her in a fight. Probably couldn’t outrun her either, not that I had a place to run to.

  This is why you don’t mess with Seamen, depths. I had to get her on my side fast, before the other guy came back. “As I was saying, it’s not a bribe.” She gave me an amused look, throwing one arm over the side of the cart. “It’s a...gift, from me to a prospective friend. A friend who could really help me out right now if-”

  “Sit down, boy,” the man’s voice rumbled, as he strode down the front steps of the orphanage and towards the cart.

  Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff-!

  His voice carried across the road like thunder and I dropped my hands as a few of the kids in the orphanage popped up by the window excitedly. I dropped my hands and looked at him, irritated as my last decent chance to get away crumbled to dust. “Why should I?”

  “If you want to fall and break your jaw, I suppose you’re free to do so,” he replied, climbing into the back of the cart with us. “I imagine it would be an unpleasant experience being on that end of it, but you’d likely be healed before any further punishments are administered.” He turned to look at the woman. “Why isn’t he tied up?”

  “He’s just some kid,” the woman shrugged, earning a flat look from the man. “...ugh, seriously? You’ve been such a slave driver since they put you in charge of the squad.”

  “It’ll be our heads if he gets away before the Lieutenant has it out with him,” the man replied, closing his eyes as the female Seaman made her way over to me, uncoiling a length of rope from hands I swore were just empty, and - in complete defiance of my struggle to keep my arms away - grabbed both of my hands in a single move. It didn’t take her a half-dozen seconds before I was bound from the wrist to the elbow, my arms almost immobilized in front of me.

  I narrowed my eyes at the man in the hat, crouching down, losing my balance because of my depths-tied hands, and just slumped against the benches on one side instead. Wasn’t like it’d make my day any shittier at this point either way to ask questions. “What the hell did I do to piss you guys off?”

  “Well, Yohannes-”

  “Johannes,” I interrupted him.

  “What?” He looked at me in confusion.

  “It’s JO-HAN-NUHS.”

  “That’s not how you say that.”

  “Kiss my ass, it’s my name,” I shrugged.

  The man looked away grumpily, having seen my point. “You broke the law,” the man grunted.

  “What? You don’t have any proof,” I said. I paused, frowning. “Wait, since when does the Fleet care about that?”

  “Not Mortal Law,” the man clarified, turning to look at me with one thick finger jabbing at my face. “Maritime Law. No Seaman can use their comparative advantage to abuse mortals in the way you have, no matter how small their gains are.”

  I blinked, holding my hands up. “Whoa there, guy, you’ve got the wrong man. I’m not a Seaman. I’m a petty thug, with a side interest in theft and smuggling. I’m not a-”

  “Give it up, kid,” the woman said, shaking her head with a dry laugh. “You don’t get that strong by accident. Early stage Ordinary Seaman-rank, clear as day. And the way we’ve heard, you’ve been beating up mortals and taking their coins for months.”

  “No, wait, that’s-”

  “It’s immaterial,” the man said, thumping the side of the cart and sending us trundling forward. The horses were apparently well trained enough to know how to get...wherever the hell we were going without anything more than that. “You can tell the Lieutenant whatever story you like. He’ll handle it from there.”

  I frowned at that, gritting my teeth as I tried to digest this new wrinkle. I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with this...Lieutenant. In my experience, people in charge of things were implacable bastards and the fact that I was apparently being taken in for some kind of heinous crime against ‘mortals’ seemed like the kind of thing they’d hold against me.