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Chapter 7

In October, Geist stopped postponing the inevitable and struck a slave ship.

Nola and I were locked in our quarters, barred from the outside so we couldn't sabotage the raid. Geist told the crew it was so I could protect the kittens in case someone came across Nola and the twins during the attack, but I'm pretty sure the crew knew that was bullshit. They'd seen Nola in action. Nobody would think she needed protection, babies or no. So, they'd talk, but it wasn't like I could do anything about it without actively participating in slave-trading. I wouldn't stoop that low. I couldn't.

We listened as ballistae erupted and steel clashed against steel, bellows of rage and terror and death and victory seeping through the wood of our cabin to infect our ears. When it was over, Geist unbarred our door and stepped in, never looking either of us in the eye. "It's done," she said. "We're stopping over in Fort Hellsmouth to drop off the... the cargo. I'd appreciate if you stayed above-decks until then."

She might not have been able to meet her children's gaze, but I could meet hers. "Get out of our room," I growled.

Geist looked like she was going to reprimand me for taking a tone with her, but I guess she didn't feel like another fight. She slammed the door shut, and silence invaded the space. I sat back down next to Nola on the bed and huddled against her miserably. She leaned her head against mine, and we listened to the sounds of weeping and fear drifting up from the cargo hold.

* * *

"We're leaving," I said.

I'd been thinking about it since the moment Geist left our cabin. I'd put it off for too long, even after we'd docked on the piers of Fort Hellsmouth. I guess I harbored some stupid hope that I could bring our mother around, but looking at the tall, imposing iron and stone walls of Hellsmouth broke that hope. It was a structure that looked perfectly suited to its purpose: murdering the shit out of any opposing force stupid enough to try and break itself against the thirty-foot reinforced walls. Nola held our kittens close and watched a procession of miserable Anthros--all Herbivores--slouch in a steady, practiced pace down the dock and into the massive, dull iron gates of the fortress. I swallowed bile and turned away, unable to look at it anymore.

Now it had been almost a week since leaving Hellsmouth Harbor, and I'd put it off for too long. Geist refused to act like a decent Anthropus for once in her miserable fucking life, and I wasn't going to wait around anymore for something that would never happen. Rika and my kits were waiting for me out there in the world, and besides, Nola and the twins weren't safe here, not with this psycho at the helm.

I don't think Geist heard me at first. She stared out over the cloudy horizon, hands resting easily on the wheel. Below us, the crew bustled about the deck of the Sea Fang, hard at work. I waited a few seconds, but when she didn't respond, I repeated myself. "Drop us off at the Isle of Dreams and we'll be out of your hair."

Again, she didn't respond, but this time I knew she'd heard me because she sighed and turned to face me, eyes puffy and red. She hadn't slept well, clearly. She barked, "Itsuo!" and within moments the Simian had clambered down from the rigging and dropped himself easily at her side. She stepped away from the wheel and the first mate took over without needing to be asked. He didn't look at me; I wondered if he'd heard what I said to my mother. I doubted it--the rigging went well over thirty feet above our heads--but you never know. Itsuo had so many talents, maybe super-hearing was among them. I realized I hadn't seen anyone else on the Fang use a Gift, my mother included. I wondered if Nola and I were the only ones. It was a strange feeling after spending a year surrounded by other Gifted.

"Cabin," she snapped, and I reluctantly followed her down off the helm and into the wide doorway underneath leading to her quarters.

As soon as I closed the door behind me, she turned on me. "No," she said flatly.

I clenched my jaw. "You can't keep us. We're not your prisoners."

She crossed her arms and shrugged, face still her usual mask of disdain. "Aren't you? Where are you going to go? Hm? You gonna swim from here? We're in the middle of the Kastigan Sea. It's easily six days to land. By ship."

I clenched my fists hard enough that the plates in my M-steel paw creaked. "You have to stop for supplies sooner or later. I'll fight through every fucking Anthro on this ship if I have to. You're not keeping us here."

Geist snorted, but I could see her veneer cracking a little bit, a sliver of anger dripping through. Anger, and... fear? Yes. Definitely fear. "We just restocked at Hellsmouth. We can make that stretch for almost two months out here, if we ration the rum well enough."

I narrowed my eyes at her. She couldn't possibly think that would dissuade me, could she? "I spent fifteen years living in a prison. I can wait two months. There's no way you can stretch it out to three."

"Oh, I will," she growled. "I'll stretch it out as long as I fucking need to. I'll knock your sorry ass unconscious and bind you in the bilges when we go to port. I'll put a gun to your sister's fucking head. I don't care. You are not getting off this ship."

"Why??" I roared. "Why would you do this to your own fucking kids? Wasn't it enough that you left us to grow up in a slave pen? When will you stop torturing us?"

Her lip quivered, but her resolution returned almost immediately. "You can call it torture if you want. I'm doing my best to keep you safe. You're not safe out there. Not from him."

"He's not the one I'm afraid of!" I yelled. "We're taking the gig. Nollie and I are getting the fuck off this ship right now. We'll walk to the Isle of Dreams, I don't care."

"You'll do no such thing," Geist drawled.

I felt my teeth creak as loud as the metal in my paw, my jaw clenched so hard. "Just try and stop me." I turned, threw open the door, and stormed out and around the aft deck, to the door into my quarters with Nola.

I threw open that door too. "Nola!" I snapped. "Get the kittens. We're leaving." She looked up, startled, from her seat at the writing desk, her alchemical tools splayed out before her and a hefty leather book open on her lap. She hesitated, and I added, "Now." Kiba woke and immediately began crying, her brother quickly joining in. I ignored the din and stormed away, leaving the door open as I moved toward the hatch to the cargo bay.

Annabelle stood in front of the hatch with my mother. She looked deeply uncomfortable. "Get out of the way, Watson," I snarled at her.

"Belle," Geist said coldly, "please restrain the bosun."

I hated the words as soon as they came out of my mouth, but I was _not_going to let anyone stand in the way of me rescuing my family. "I don't want to hurt you, Annabelle," I snarled, "but if you don't move, I'll do to you what I did to Thrasher and I won't even break a sweat."

Annabelle was big. Not Thrasher big, but she was a hair over six feet tall and a whole lot of muscle. Equia weren't known to be small, after all. Arthur had been almost twice my size when I was thirteen, and he hadn't been more than a year or two older than me. But with the Sight, size didn't matter so much. Besides, I wasn't a _great_fighter, but I'd been trained by someone who was, and even without my Gift--which, if what Mom had told me was right, I was now very hesitant to use--I felt like I could hold my own. With it, I was practically unstoppable.

Or, I would have been if I wasn't suddenly being choked to death by my metal arm.

I felt it move, felt the vague nerve sensations that accompanied even the slightest movement of my M-steel arm. Something about alchemically-powered nodes in the spike that went into the scar of my old wound doing something with the nerve endings there. They'd been badly damaged when the huge rock spike went through my arm falling into the Maw, and I vaguely recalled Mender Agnes mentioning that if they hadn't been so damaged, I'd have more sensitivity in the arm, which made no freaking sense to me but alchemy never did. Anyway, I felt it now, felt like I was commanding my own paw to wrap around my throat and choke the life out of me, but no matter how I struggled to tell it to stop, it wouldn't listen.

I'm ashamed to say it, but I panicked. All the fight left me when my own arm tried to murder me. If you're going to understand just how badly what Belle did hurt me, you have to understand that a little less than three years ago, I lost a part of myself that I knew on a fundamental level I would never get back. After I woke up, even after I'd finished my dizzying array of agonizing injections that made my blood burn, even after I could stand on my own two feet again without collapsing under the weight of my own body from how weak I was, even after all that, I wasn't cured. Because my right arm had been so badly ripped apart that it had to be surgically removed halfway up my bicep. And even now, a year after it had been replaced with the marvel of alchemical and structural engineering that I wore as easy as breathing most days, even now I felt ghostly reverberations of the agony of my wound, felt my fingers cramp even though there were no fingers anymore, not really. Twice I woke up sweating in a fever and realized I'd left my metal arm attached for too long and I had an infection. Frankly, I'm lucky Geist kept some medical supplies on board that had managed to break the fever both times. It had never happened at the Spike because we had regular checkups with Mender Agnes. There was no Mender on the ship, just a small supply of alchemical unguents and antiplague serums.

What I'm saying is that even nearly three years later, sometimes I felt pain from an arm that wasn't there anymore. The vague sensations the metal arm granted me helped, which was why I tended to just leave it on even though I was supposed to take it off regularly and clean the site where the spike inserted itself. Hells, it stank too, which Nollie had pointed out more than once. But even those vague sensations were enough to make me feel, sometimes, like I was whole again. Like I hadn't lost a part of myself that I'd never get back.

Annabelle took that away in an instant when she used a Gift to attack me with my own arm.

Some distant, analytical part of my brain watched with detached interest, noting it must be some form of kinesis. Maybe she could control metal, maybe she could move any inanimate object. Who knew? The rest of my brain was simply screaming manically for air as my vision tunneled. I beat feebly with my left paw against my right, but nothing was prying those fingers away from my throat. M-steel is used for climbing equipment because it has such a rough, bumpy surface. Makes for improved grip. My throat was less than thrilled about that fact.

I couldn't even concentrate enough to use my Sight, not that I particularly wanted to. If I was going to die right now, I'd die with my remaining memories intact. Fuck Belle, and fuck Mom too. They could take a lot from me--and they just had--but they weren't taking that.

The world went dark, and little explosions of light burst in front of my eyes before they, too, faded to nothingness.