Ship of Magic

“Couldn't we just burn the tattoo off?” Torg asked callously. His eyes devoured Wintrow's face, looking for some kind of fear. Wintrow refused to show any. Torg would never dare to let it go so far. This was but the same kind of mockery and taunting the man always indulged in. If Wintrow gave any sign of being upset by it, Torg would only indulge in more of it. He let his eyes wander past Torg as if he were no longer interested in him or his words.

“Burning off a slave tattoo is illegal,” the keeper pronounced ponderously. “A person with a burn scar to the left of his nose is assumed to be an escaped and dangerous slave. He'd be brought right back here, if he were caught. And tattooed again with the Satrap's sign.”

Torg shook his head woefully, but his grin was evil. “Such a shame, to mark such a sweet little face as that, eh? Well,” he turned abruptly aside from him. With a jerk of his head, he indicated the slaves he had not yet inspected. “Shall we continue?”

The keeper frowned. “Do you want me to send for a runner? To take word of this boy to his father?”

“No, no, don't trouble yourself. I'll see his father hears of his whereabouts. He's not going to be pleased with the boy. Now, what about this woman? Has she any special skill or training?” His voice caressed the last two words, making it a cruel joke on the elderly hag who crouched before them.

Wintrow stood trembling in his pen. The anger he felt inside him threatened to burst him wide open. Torg would leave him here, in cold and filth, for as long as he could. But he'd tell his father, and then come down here with him to witness their confrontation. With a sudden cold sinking of his heart, Wintrow considered how vast his father's anger would be. He'd feel humiliated as well. Kyle Haven did not like to be humiliated. He'd find ways of expressing that to his son. Wintrow leaned against the wall of his pen miserably. He should have just waited and endured. It was less than a year now to his fifteenth birthday. When it came, he would declare himself a man independent of his father's will, and just step off the ship wherever it was. This foolish attempt at running away was only going to make the months stretch longer. Why hadn't he waited? Slowly he sank down to sit in the straw in the corner of his pen. He closed his eyes to sleep. Sleeping was far better than considering his father's anger to come.

“Get out,” Kennit repeated in a low growl. Etta stood where she was, her face pale, her mouth firm. One hand held a basin of water, the other was draped in bandaging.

“I thought a fresh bandage might be more comfortable,” she dared to say. “That one is stiff with dry blood and-”

“Get out!” he roared. She whirled, sloshing water over the rim of the basin and fled. The door of his cabin thudded shut behind her.

He had been awake and clear-headed since early morning, but those were the first words he had spoken to anyone. He had spent most of that time staring at the wall, unable to grasp that his luck had forsaken him. How could this have happened to him? How was it possible for Captain Kennit to suffer this? Well. It was time. Time to see what the bitch had done to him, time to take command again. Time. He braced his fists deep in his bedding and hauled himself upright to a sitting position. When his injured leg dragged against the bedding, the pain was such that he felt ill. A new sweat broke out on him, plastering his stinking nightshirt to his back once more. Time. He grabbed the bedclothes and tore them aside. He looked down at the leg she had ruined.

It was gone.

His nightshirt had been carefully folded and pinned back from it. There were his legs, swarthy and hairy as ever. But the one just stopped short, snubbed off in a dirty brownish wad of bandaging right below his knee. It couldn't be. He reached toward it, but could not touch it. Instead, stupidly, he put his hand on the empty linen where the rest of his leg should have been. As if the fault might have been with his eyes.

He keened, then drew a breath and held it. He would not make another sound. Not one sound. He tried to remember how it had come to this. Why had he ever brought the crazy bitch aboard, why had they been attacking slaveships in the first place? Merchant ships, that was where the money was. And they didn't have a herd of serpents trailing after them, ready to grab a man's leg. This was their fault, Sorcor's and Etta's. But for them, he'd still be a whole man.