The man looked near death.
The stranger sat, head lolling, oblivious. Three feet away, and Tym could barely touch him. They were both shackled at the ankles to a bench in the hold of a sea skimmer. The craft was at anchor now, but Tym guessed they would be underway again soon, judging from the dull thumps and muffled howls of the crew coming from somewhere above.
The light was not good—the slavers were not wasting much kerosene on prisoners—but Tym could see that her neighbor was a light-skinned man in his thirties. He had wavy blondish hair, matted with dried blood around a cruel gash above his right temple. She had seen this light skin many times—Fungus People, they were called by the Rafers—but this man clearly was paler than pale, quite sick. On the rare occasions that his eyes opened they were yellow and vacant.
What was most remarkable about him was the bit of skin-painting she could see curling up out of his shirt and over his shoulder. The Fungus People, as far as she knew, were not capable of much artistry, and certainly nothing like this. It was Rafer design. It was Rafer coloring. Skin paintings were for the telling of great deeds—but why would one be needled into the chest of a Fungus Person?
There was a divider panel between them, supporting their metal water cups in brackets on either side. The divider made it even more difficult to reach the sick one, although she could manage sometimes to put his cup to his lips. His tongue would respond instinctively, sweeping sluggishly from side to side, but most of the liquid would dribble down his chest.
His trousers were a mess, as he lacked the wherewithal to lift the bench seat and relieve himself in the trough running underneath. Four times a day, the trough ran awash with sea water, sloshing the human waste out the back of the skimmer. A cause for celebration. Up and down the hold in the dimness, those captives still feeling rambunctious would cheer the refreshing flood. Otherwise, there were long periods of painful silence, or moans, or a jabber of mixed languages—Rafer and unidentifiable tongues—as the perplexed and disoriented got the sad news from their more worldy fellow prisoners.
Far up at the aft hatch, the twin bolts clanked open and the door threw back, spilling a blinding glare onto the first dozen red-leggers. An unmistakable silhouette stomped through the oval of light: lean, bushy in the face, like the devil's scarecrow. Bark.
It was not feed time, which prompted a nervous murmur along the corridor. Unscheduled visits never ended well.
Bark marched at a determined pace, knowing his duty. When he stopped, Tym supposed that the first mate had come for the sick one. He hung his lantern on a hook screwed into the opposite wall, then placed his hand gently against the cheek of the dying man. But that was all. He turned quickly to Tym, and his eyes were sad.
He carried a set of leg irons in the same hand with a knobbed truncheon—obviously neither of them needed for an unconcious man. He mumbled something low, in that tongue of the Fungus People, and then he clapped a shackle around each of Tym's legs and let the chain between them clatter to the floor. Then he drew a key ring from his trousers and unlocked the fixed manacles that held her to the bench.
Tym uttered one of the few English phrases she knew, picked up from the Jesus People: "Oh, gawd. . .."
Bark responded in his gargly language. Seeing that she did not understand, he waved a large calloused hand back toward the open hatch. Tym obeyed, sensing death somehow. As if confirming her fear, the chain between her feet scraped morbidly up the floorboards.
Her fellow red-leggers tasted the fear. Moans fore and aft filled the hold. She passed down the row of shadowy faces, and some of them she knew—fellow island-hoppers taken in the same raid.
Ahead, someone was singing in Rafer—gawd, a dirge?—in a high crackly voice. Not all of the lyrics were intelligible, partly because of her damaged hearing, but as she neared she heard her own name in the piercing song:
"Tym, Tym, you must come to me,
I will slip you a weapon
To push into the belly of your murderer."
Well, Tym thought to herself, that makes a lousy verse. But Bark won't know that, will he? As she passed another divider panel, she found the crevassed face of old Crin-Claw, the huntress. So—they have taken even the best of our fighters, Tym thought, and she felt sadder still. There seemed to be little left of civilization, less and less reason not to die.
Tym let herself stumble over the leg iron chain and fell into the lap of the aging woman. Crin-Claw's hands were quick. She pressed into Tym's right palm a metal object, which wedged between the heel of her thumb and the base of her middle finger.
Bark was on her immediately, yanking her up by the armpit and shoving her ahead. Tym glanced down at the object the huntress had passed to her: half of a broken tosser disk. Ach. Useless as a throwing weapon. It did have four of its tines intact, however, one of them digging into her finger and drawing a droplet of blood. Fine, at least she would be less likely to drop it—but let's hope there's none of the Gila poison left on it. Maybe she should just bury the disk into Bark's chest now and let the bangerbrook begin.
Tym stole a look over her shoulder and decided against it—Bark's truncheon was aloft now, perhaps his suspicion aroused by that fake trip. Behind the first mate, Tym saw Crin-Claw's face—the quivering lips, the sunken mouth, fade into the blackness.
Bark shouted, impatient, and Tym stepped through the hatch into the eye-searing white.
The young captain, the one they call Little Tom, had left her alone in the master's cabin. He had waved his hands about, saying something about Bark, and then disappeared out the door.
The cabin was a stunning example of the functionless preoccupations of the Fungus People—gleaming brass, polished wood and porcelain everywhere. A fitting abode for a young skimmer rat like Little Tom, a vain pig-poker who apparently razored his beard away daily as he must have seen mainlanders do. Clearly it could not be because he was a swimmer—such a pathetic physique.
The portholes were open, allowing a brisk breeze into the room—it was rough weather out—but there remained the unmistakable scent of burned ganja. The red-eyed young captain must be half gullybonkers, she thought. I wonder if they've raided our ganja fields as well as our people.
Tym glanced again at the piece of tosser disk in her right hand and decided to leave it there. She would make quick work of Little Tom, run above and hit the water before any of the skimmer rats could react. The drop of blood at the base of her finger had grown to a tiny trickle now. The pain meant nothing, but the blood might give her away prematurely.
She stepped toward the basin, and the leg iron chain rattled across the new floor. Ach. How would that affect her swimming? She could swim with many times the weight, that would not be a problem, but she could part her ankles no more than two feet—not enough for a proper frog kick.
The water jug was a perfect white sphere with a bottle stem on top, affixed to the wall by a teeter hinge. When she reached for it, the floorboards at the door squeaked. She dropped her right hand to her side, crying "Oh, gawd," and hoped that he hadn't seen the tosser disk cupped there.
Little Tom laughed and swaggered in, eyes painful-looking, shirtless, drawstring trousers. He yanked the jug off its hinge and stared at her up and down—cutoff pants, T-shirt, the swimmer's chop-cut hair. It was the way a man looked at a woman when his thinking was sexual.
Tym felt a sickness growing in her chest. She stumbled backward until she fell into the captain's bunk, and she started again, afraid she might have dotted the sheets with blood. Tym had to cup her hand now, trying to keep the disk out of his sight, as a tiny pool of warm liquid gathered there.
Little Tom was speaking again, in gentle tones, if the Fungus People's tongue can be thought of as gentle. He held the jug out to her, and Tym took it cautiously in her left hand. She splashed water onto the puddle of blood building around the tosser disk, and she threw the mixture at her mouth and swallowed. She splashed again and again, hoping any blood dribbling down was diluted sufficiently not to alarm him, hoping he would step closer—perhaps just two paces.
Tym pictured herself thrusting the metal shard into his throat before he had a chance to cry out. Between splashes of water, she sucked in deep breaths, feeding her body extra oxygen for a long underwater swim. Any moment now. . ..
But Little Tom backed away, and Tym sighed—her first chance gone. The entire ship was groaning now with the stress of filling sails. Now would be the best time for the kill and escape, she told herself, with the crew above at its most distracted. Ach.
Little Tom pulled the cabin doors closed, then produced a key from his trousers and threw the bolt to lock them. The captain hop-skipped boyishly by her—too quickly for the slash—and fell back onto his bunk, legs dangling over the side.
Then came an abrupt movement that shocked Tym, even though she was nauseatingly aware of his intentions: Little Tom rolled his knees up to his chest and whisked off his pants in one fluttering motion. The stoned young shipmaster laid back lazily, staring into space, confidently waving her to him—he seemed to have done this before. His pale legs were parted, swinging easily along the side of the bunk. His penis was rising like a new mushroom.
Tym wondered if these people were always so artless with their sex. She breathed deeply three times and went to him.