Page 5 of Burned Alive to Be His
A slow, cruel smile spreads across my face. Perhaps the sea has delivered a gift after all. Not a savior.
A piece of treasure.
And I am the one who will claim it.
3
JUDITH
For three days, I am a rat in the belly of a beast. I stay hidden in my cramped hollow behind the ale barrels, the darkness a suffocating blanket. Thirst is the first torment, a dry, rasping thing that scrapes my throat raw. I lick condensation from the cool wood of the barrels, the taste foul but wet. Hunger is a dull, familiar ache, a companion I have known my entire life. I gnaw on a sliver of wood until my gums bleed, just to have something in my mouth. The ship groans and creaks around me, a constant symphony of an unhappy vessel, and the stench of bilge water, fish, and damp rot is so thick I feel I could drown in it.
On the fourth day, the thirst becomes a fire I cannot ignore. I know the risks. I know the cost of discovery. But a slow death in the dark is no different from a quick one in the light. I wait until the sounds from the deck above are muted, the rhythm of the waves a steady, lulling rock. I slip from my hiding place, my bare feet making no sound on the grimy planks.
The hold is a labyrinth of crates and barrels, shadows clinging to everything. A single enchanted lantern, its light a sickly yellow, sways from a central beam, casting long, dancing shadows that writhe like living things. I see it near the ladderleading to the upper decks: a large cask of fresh water, a dipper hanging from its side.
My heart drums against my ribs. It is so close. I move like a ghost, my body low to the ground, using the stacks of cargo for cover. Every creak of the ship’s timbers is a shout in the silence. I reach the cask, my hands trembling as I lift the wooden dipper. The water is cool and clean, a miracle on my tongue. I drink slowly, forcing myself not to gulp, not to betray my desperation.
“Well, well. What do we have here?”
The voice, thick with the guttural accent of a Zagfer laborer, slices through the quiet. I freeze, the dipper halfway to my lips. Two figures detach themselves from the shadows near the ladder. They are big, burly elves of the laborer caste, their faces smudged with grime, their eyes holding a mean, hungry look.
I drop the dipper. It clatters on the deck, the sound an explosion in the stillness. I back away, my hand instinctively moving to the hem of my tunic, to the small, sharp comfort of my blade.
“A little rat,” the first one says, a slow, unpleasant smile spreading across his face. “Thought you could steal a free ride, did you? And our water?”
“Stowaways get one of two things,” the second one adds, stepping forward to block my only escape route back into the maze of barrels. “The whip, or the sea. And the captain ain’t fond of wasting food on a whip-beating for a worthless human.”
My mind races, calculating angles, searching for an escape. There is none. They are too big, too strong. The ladder is behind them.
“She’s a pretty little thing, though,” the first one says, his eyes roaming over my filthy tunic, my tangled hair. “For a human. Might be we could have some fun with her before we toss her over. A little payment for the water she drank.”
A cold, familiar dread washes over me. I have seen this look before, in the eyes of guards and masters in Vhoig. It is the look of a predator sizing up its prey. I draw my blade. The shard of metal is pitifully small in my hand, but it is all I have.
“Stay back,” I whisper, my voice a dry rasp.
They both laugh, a harsh, ugly sound. “Look at that,” the second one scoffs. “The rat has teeth.”
He lunges. I am not a fighter. I am a survivor. I don’t try to meet his attack. I drop, scuttling to the side, and slash upwards with my blade. The metal connects with his forearm, slicing through his tunic and the skin beneath. It’s not a deep cut, but it’s a surprise. He roars in pain and rage, stumbling back, clutching his arm.
His shock gives me an opening. I scramble away, back toward the darkness of the hold, but the first one is faster. He grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks me back. Pain explodes in my scalp. He throws me to the deck, my head cracking against the hard wood. The world swims, black spots dancing in my vision.
He stands over me, his face a twisted mask of fury. “You’ll pay for that, you little bitch.”
He raises his foot to stomp, and in that moment, the ship lurches with impossible violence. It is not the rock of a wave. It is a cataclysmic heave, as if a giant hand has seized the vessel from below and shaken it like a toy.
We are all thrown from our feet. Barrels and crates slide across the deck, crashing into the hull with the sound of splintering wood. The enchanted lantern shatters, plunging the hold into absolute darkness. I hear the men shouting in fear and confusion, their curses lost in a deafening roar that comes from outside the ship. It’s the sound of the world being torn apart.
The deck tilts to a sickening angle. I slide through the filth and spilled water, my body slamming into a stack of crates. Above, I hear the splintering crack of the main mast, a sound likethe breaking of a god’s bones. The screams from the deck are cut short, swallowed by the howl of a wind that does not sound like any wind I have ever heard.
This is not a storm. It is a monster.
The hull beneath me groans, a deep, agonized sound, and then rips open with a shriek of tortured wood. Water, black and impossibly cold, floods the hold. It surges around me, pulling me under, its current a powerful, irresistible force. I am tossed and tumbled in the chaos, my lungs burning for air. My head hits something hard, and the world dissolves into a silent, crushing blackness.
I wake to the sensation of fire. Not the heat of a kitchen, but the searing, blistering fire of a relentless sun on my skin. My throat is a desert, my lips cracked and bleeding. I am lying on something that shifts beneath me, and the world is a dizzying expanse of grey, churning water and a sky the color of a bruise.
I am clinging to a large, splintered piece of the ship’s hull. My body is a symphony of pain. Every muscle aches, every breath is a labor. I hoist myself up, my vision swimming. The sea stretches to the horizon in every direction. There is no sign of the ship, no sign of any other survivors. Only the endless, indifferent water.
Days blur into a nightmare of thirst and sun. The sun is a merciless tyrant, beating down on me, cooking my skin. The nights are a different kind of hell, the cold seeping into my bones, the darkness absolute and filled with the whispers of the deep. I lick rain from the wood when it comes, a meager, desperate act. I see shapes in the water, dark and vast, that move with an unsettling purpose. I do not know what they are, and I do not want to.
