“Huck!” my father barks.
I snap out of the memory, shake my head. Hobbs is snickering while Cain looks at me under a furrowed brow. Father’s lips are unreadable beneath his thick salt-and-pepper beard. “Wha—what?” I stammer.
“Lieutenant Hobbs asked you a question,” my father says.
I glance at Hobbs, who looks smug, his hands on his hips. “Aye?” I say. Catching myself, I add, “Lieutenant.”
“Have you been practicing your sword work?” he asks.
Not the question I expected. For a moment I let the warmth of pride fill my heart, because I have. Been practicing, that is. Every spare moment I’ve been practicing with the wooden blade my father gave me when I turned seven. Fighting the other young boys on the ship, parrying with masts, battling heavy bags of potatoes and rice. Swinging and swinging my practice sword until it’s become a part of me, an extension of my arm and hand.
I stick my chest out and say, “Aye.”
“Show us,” Hobbs says, a gleam in his dark brown eyes.
I look at him sideways, wondering what he’s up to, but not wanting to disappoint my father yet again, I start to pull my wooden sword from where it hangs loosely from my belt.
“No,” Hobbs says. “Not with that. With this.” He reaches down and picks up a sword, shorter than his, but shiny and sharp and real. And the hilt…
—it has the Admiral’s markings on it, a woman, beautiful and shapely, her hair long and falling in front of her shoulders to cover her naked breasts. And beneath: the skin of her stomach gives way to a long tail with scaly fins, like a fish. A merwoman. Identical to the figurehead at the bow of the ship. The ship’s namesake. The Merman’s Daughter.
The sword is my birthright, the sword I will wear until my father dies and I inherit his long blade. With a slight bow, Hobbs holds it in front of him reverently, offering it to me. Through his long blonde bangs, which hang over his eyes, I see him wink at me as I take it.
Something’s up. Hobbs never winks.
In my grasp, the sword seems to gain weight and I almost drop it, awkwardly bringing my offhand up to balance it. I hear Hobbs snort, but I ignore him, because this is my time, my day.
My right.
Slowly, I raise the sword to eye level, watching in awe as it seems to catch every ray of red sunlight, sending them shooting in all directions.
My right. My sword.
“Why don’t you give it a try?” Hobbs says, and I sense something in his voice—a challenge.
“Hobbs,” Cain says sharply, sounding sterner than I’ve ever heard him.
“Uhh, aye,” I say, looking between them, wondering why Hobbs looks so mischievous and Cain so angry.
I move a safe distance away, raise my sword to attack position, my feet planted firmly as I’ve been taught. I start to swing, but stop when Hobbs laughs. “I mean against a real opponent,” he says.
I look back, my prideful chest deflating. “Sir?” I say. I can’t possibly fight him. He’s a man, and I’m….not, regardless of my age and who my father is.
I can feel a crowd gathering, their boots shuffling on the deck. I whirl around, taking them in, the eyes—so many eyes—staring, waiting, watching. To see what I’ll do. A test. This is exactly the kind of thing my father would do.
My chance—
To prove myself—
To him.
Maybe my last chance. My mother’s face, open-mouthed and screaming. Pleading and pleading.
I grit my teeth, shake my head, nod firmly at Hobbs. Raise my sword with two hands in his direction.
He laughs, deep and loud. “Me? You thought you were going to fight me? Please, kid, don’t insult me. You’ll fight someone closer to your own size.” At the same time as I feel angry heat swallow my neck—because he called me kid on the day I become a man—I breathe out a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps I have a chance after all.
I look around, seeing a couple of the guys I practice with, Jobe and Ben, looking almost as scared as I feel, afraid they’re about to be asked into the circle with me to prove their manhood in front of an audience. “Who?” I say, my voice quivering around the single word.
“We don’t want to give you more than you can handle for your first real fight,” Hobbs says, walking a lazy circle around me. Meaning…what?
“You’ll fight one of the bilge rats,” he says, the edge of his lip turning up.
“What?” I say, more sharply than I intended. What the hell is going on? “But I can’t possibly…”
“You can and you will,” my father interjects. “Remember what I taught you, Son.”
I frown, remembering his lessons well. The bilge rats are nothing more than swine, less than human, here to serve us and be trodden under our feet. Nary better than animals, they are. When I asked him where the bilge come from, he said, “From nowhere,” like they just popped out of the ground or were fished from the ocean or dropped from the sky. He wouldn’t say any more than that and I knew better than to ask.
I nod. If this is what I must do to become a man, I’ll do it.
“Bring him in!” Hobbs hollers and I sense movement on the port side of the ship. The crowd parts and a skinny, brown boy stumbles toward me, being half-dragged by a strong man I recognize as one of the oarsmen. The bilge rat’s eyes are wide and scared, darting around him, like at any moment someone might hit him. I’ve seen the boy before but have never spoken to him. Usually he’s on his knees, scrubbing the decks, his head hanging in defeat and resignation.
Less than human.
The big oarsman shoves him forward and he trips, nearly falls into me, but I catch his arm firmly, hold him up. He stares at the sword in my other hand, his jaw tight. For a moment I look at him—really look at him—like I never have before. For this one time, he’s not just an animal, not just an object to be ignored, like my father always taught me. He looks so human, his skin browner than mine, aye, but not so different than me after all.
He jerks away from my grip and a piece of his dirty, tattered shirt comes away in my fist. I stare at it for a moment and then let it drop to my feet. Hobbs hands the boy an old sword, even shorter than mine and blunt and rusty around the edges. Unblinking, the boy takes it, swallowing a heavy wad of spittle that slides down his throat in a visible lump.
How can I fight someone like him?
I have to.
But how? He’s so weak-looking, so scared…
I have no choice.
“Fight,” Hobbs says, backing away, smiling bigger than ever.
I raise my sword, which has fallen loosely to my side. The bilge rat continues looking at his rusty blade, as if it’s a snake, but then suddenly grips it tightly, his brown knuckles turning white. He lifts his chin and our eyes meet, and I see…
—hurt
—and anger
—and fear, too, but not as much as before.
His mouth opens and he screams, right at me, a cry of war.
I take a step back just before he charges, cheers rising up around me like sails on a summer wind.
Chapter Two
Sadie
The wind rushes over me and around me and through me, blasting my dark hair against my back, flattening my black robe against my chest.
I lengthen my strides, the dark skin of my legs flashing from beneath my robe with each step. Muscles tight, heartbeat heavy, mind alive, I race across the storm country plains, determined to surprise my mother with the speed of my arrival back at the camp.
Lonely dark-trunked leafless trees force me to change my direction from time to time, their bare scraggly branches creaking and swaying in the wind like dancing skeletons.
I can already see the circle of tents in the distance, smoke wafting in lazy curls from their midst, evidence of the morning cook fires. Although I left when it was still black out, the sky is mixed now, streaked with shards of red slicing between the ever-present dark clouds.
With the camp in sight, I call on every bit of strength I have left, what I’ve been saving for my final sprint. I go faster and faster and faster still, unable to stop a smile from bending my lips.