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Chapter 8

True to her word, I spent the night in the bilges. She didn't bother tying me up--she knew she had me. I huddled against the slime-slicked wall of the bilges, cowering on the narrow steps just above the water line, with my ears pressed against the locked hatch above me. No light crept into that low, cramped space, so all I had for company was the faint, muffled thuds of footsteps far above, the dull lapping of fetid water against the inner hull, the slow rocking of the ship across the ocean waves, and the rancid odor of piss and shit that wafted up from the bilge water.

I stared at my M-steel paw in the darkness. I couldn't see it, but I knew where it was. I glared at it, sob-less tears streaming through my cheek fur, willing it to commit ritual suicide to restore its lost honor. My own arm had betrayed me at Annabelle's command, and I'd been powerless to stop her. I wanted to scream.

So, I screamed.

Fuck it, who was going to stop me? Who was going to care?

I screamed and I punched the hatch, and I punched the walls, but I did it all with my flesh-and-bone paw, ripping the flesh under the thin fur, pouring blood down my fingers. I swore I'd never use this metal death-trap again, so long as I lived. I had thought it a godsend, an escape from the horrid, crippling wound I'd suffered, but now I realized it only made me more vulnerable, not less. It was a gilded cage. And it had been made that way by my own fucking mother.

At some point, I heard the sounds of smashing wood, and realized with horror that I knew exactly what it was: Geist was destroying the captain's gig. From the sounds of it, there would be nothing left but kindling. We had no way off the ship now.

Right then, I wanted to kill her. Not that angry BS we tell ourselves when someone does something that cheeses us, that we don't mean--we just say it to vent frustration. I had said it before, without ever meaning it. I'd killed, but I hated it. The guilt always made me nauseous, no matter how necessary it had been, or how much of an accident. This wasn't that.

For one dark, horrible moment, I pictured my metal paw clamping over Geist's throat, hearing the vertebrae pop, the sick squelch as they separated and her neck turned into a floppy tube of meat, and I felt elated. I felt good. I wanted it, so fucking bad I could taste it. I knew it would be the death of me--Annabelle was fiercely loyal to the captain, and even though she'd seemed like she didn't want to hurt me, she hadn't hesitated to do so; she'd turn my arm on me again without a moment's thought, doing to me in an instant what I wanted to do to my mother--but I didn't care. Gods, I wanted to murder my own mother.

After about four hours of inhaling shit-water fumes in perfect darkness, I felt significantly less angry and significantly more miserable. I did start sobbing, then. Wailing, even. I didn't care who heard me. Every fucking turn, life just kept shitting on me. Growing up in a prison, then being given the best mate I could ever ask for, then lose her and my arm in one fell swoop, only to have her back for one beautiful shining moment, then have her leave me in the hands of a monster who pretended to be my mother, then slowly lose every fucking memory I ever had because of this gods-cursed "Gift." And all the while, my sister sat by my side, taking it stoically, like it was nothing. How did she do that? How was she not a blubbering mess in the bilges? How was she so much fucking stronger than me? It wasn't fucking fair. Gods forgive me, but for about an hour of my life, I hated Nola too. I hated my children. I hated Geist, and Annabelle, and Rika. I hated the kits I'd never met. I hated my psychotic father for making my mother as psychotic as he was and us having to suffer for it. I hated the gods. I fucking hated everyone.

By the time I passed out, I was curled into a ball, weeping quietly and begging every one of them in turn for forgiveness, until I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

When I woke, it was to a mountain of light stabbing me in the eyeballs as Geist pried open the bilge hatch. She stared at me with dead eyes. "You done?" she asked.

What could I say? I just nodded feebly.

Belle escorted me to my cabin with Nola. Geist locked the door from the outside. I stared with miserable, bloodshot eyes at my beloved sister, whose name I'd so cruelly cursed in the maddening dark, and I wept again. She sat in the bed, Valerian on one breast, and sighed. "Come sit," she said. It was an offer, but it had enough command in it that I didn't even think to disobey. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my metal arm. "Geist told me what happened," she murmured.

I didn't respond. I pulled the tab hidden under the shoulder plate of my metal arm, releasing it from me with a small hiss of sucking pressure. The smell of sweat-damp fur immediately hit my nose and made it twitch. I tossed the arm across the room in disgust. It hit the far wall with a dull thud. Almost immediately, a small jolt of pain shot through the arm that was no longer there.

The sound startled Kiba, who mewled fitfully in her crib-crate. On cue, her twin brother also bawled fitfully in solidarity, nipple popping out of his tiny maw and leaking breast milk onto his fur. I glanced sheepishly at Nola, but she didn't chastise me. She just gave me a reproachful glance and scooped Kibainto her arm across from her brother and began bouncing them gently.

I moved over to the wash bucket on the other side of the room, grabbing up the sponge floating on top of the dirty water, and sponged off the fur around my severed arm. The longer I wore the prosthesis, the worse the stink of sweat and dead skin soaked itself into the fur. It took almost half an hour of bathing the site before it ceased smelling so pungently, then another half hour to sponge bathe the rest of me. Nola watched with a reserved, bemused expression as she re-attached Val to her breast, then did the same with his sister.

I stared at her, and our little ones. Not so little anymore, though. They'd grown immensely in the four months since they'd been born. Yet the lean, corded muscles of Nola's arms bore their additional weight without complaint. Gods, she was even more fit than I was. How was that even possible? She spent all her time cooped up in our room! Did I have anything on her?

I stared down at my feet as I washed my neck and armpits. Did... did I_want_ anything on her? Did I need to be better than Nola? Why? I was used to being small and weak and stupid. What good would come of proving myself less one of those things compared to Nollie? The bilges had made me sullen, I supposed. There was no reason to take it out on her. I recalled the searing hate I'd briefly felt for her down there, and my face burned with shame.

"Leon?"

I looked up at my sister's voice, and realized I'd been sitting and staring at my sponge for easily tenminutes without actually washing anything. Nola looked anxious, wan. I saw, to my shame, that she was terrified, and once again I'd ignored what she was going through. I was trapped on a ship, but Nola and the kittens were more or less trapped in this room. She looked afraid, and infinitely more tired than me. I dropped the sponge in the bucket and stood on legs that threatened to buckle at the knees, carefully makingmy way over to her. I still felt unbalanced without the prosthesis, which made me hate the fucking thing even more.

I reached out my paw and stroked her hair. She kept it in a loose braid as it slowly grew down the length of her back, nut brown strands that didn't quite match our mother's once it grew out long enough. My own reached almost to my shoulder blades, held back by a ratty yellow strip of cloth tying it into a ponytail. It was a duller shade of brown now, closer to Geist's, and currently matted, clumped, and oily. Nola's was brushed, cleaned, and braided into multiplelong, intricate cords. It was the first thing besides my arm and scar that genuinely marked us as not being identical. It had remained hidden from us when we lived in the Pit, but now it spilled out behind her, all the way down to her back even when braided, and set another barrier between her and me. Everyone was slipping away from me, inch by inch. I wanted to scream.

But Nola didn't get to scream, so I wouldn't either. I wouldn't until after she'd had a chance to do so. It was her turn.

"Yeah," I whispered, running my fingers down her cheek fur. "I'm here. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She gave me another reproachful look, but leaned into my paw anyway. "I don't want you to be sorry, brother. I want you to get us off this ship. I'm scared. I can't carry our kittens and protect them at the same time. I need you to do something."

I hung my head. "Do what? I can't fight her. My own body is my enemy, now."

"Bro," she said with a rueful smile, "sometimes you are spectacularly stupid."

"Thanks," I said defensively, "super helpful."

She sighed and detached Val from her nipple, handing him over to me. He mumbled a tired complaint, and I put him over my right shoulder. Holding him up and patting his back with the same paw was not an easy task--I was pretty proud of myself for having mastered it. I glanced down to see Nola doing the same with Kiba, though the little kitten squirmed irritably on her mother's shoulder. Nola didn't bother fixing her blouse, which I appreciated. Her milk-dripping nipples looked puffy and inviting, but I forced myself to look up at her face. Now was not the time to let myself get distracted.

She had one eyebrow raised as she wrestled Kiba down and patted her back to burp her. "Stop being so thin-furred. I just mean that fighting isn't the only way off the ship. You keep fixating on one route to things, and if that doesn't work, you shut down. Refuse to look at other avenues. I know you can think of something, you always do once you get out of your own head and start looking."

I looked down at the floorboards of our cabin, permanently damp from the sea, and tried to think of what I could do that didn't involve violence. I supposed, if I was being honest, I wasn't trying very hard. The bilges might have broken me, and besides, a frighteningly large part of me still wanted to hurt Geist for what she was doing to my family. At least I didn't want to kill her anymore.

Mostly.

"What can we do?" I asked miserably, taking the now-unconscious Valerian over to the bed and cradling him in the crook of my arm. I plopped down as gently as I could, wobbling a little bit as I almost lost my balance. You really don't realize how much balance you derive from your arms until one of them is gone. "We can't sneak off. Even if we could keep the twins quiet somehow, and our insane mother hadn't_smashed the_ damn gig to pieces, Geist said we're almost a week from shore in either direction--and that's with a sail. Rowing would probably be twice as long. We'd need supplies, and we don't have them, and I can't get them without two arms. And having two arms makes me a liability now, thanks to that Equus bitch." I jerked my head at the door.

Nola glanced at the doorway, just beyond which Annabelle doubtless still stood guard and could probably hear us. Fuck her. Let her hear. Let her know exactly how I felt about her. She had no fucking idea what she'd done to me, but I wanted to make sure she knew it before we got off this boat. I wanted to scar her the way she'd scarred me. Who knew? Maybe I'd get the chance.

Nola turned back to me and shrugged. "So find another way. You're not stupid, so stop acting like you are."

I glared at her briefly before turning away to lie back on our itchy, uncomfortable straw mattress and rest Val on my nub instead of my good arm. At least I didn't have to worry about that arm falling asleep. And anyway, what the fuck did Nola expect me to do, exactly? What magic spell did she think I could conjure to whisk us away from here? It wasn't stupidity, there just wasn't anything we could do. I glanced over to see her standing before the bed, our wriggling daughter finally asleep on her shoulder. "Scoot over, bro."

I thought for sure she was going to tease me further, but I reluctantly slid Val and me over so there was room for her. She rested Kiba on my chest and curled up against me, licking my neck fur. I knew she was doing it as a means of consolation, but damned if it didn't feel really good.

"We'll figure something out," she whispered between licks. "We've survived so much. We'll survive this."

"I don't want to survive," I said, biting back tears. "For once in our shitty lives, I don't want to survive. I want to just be able to live. Not worry about falling into the Maw, or escaping a deadly experiment, or fighting to the death with Carcharadons. Just... live. Have a hut on the beach, gather coconuts or something for food, maybe have a little garden. Watch our kittens play in the sand and not be looking over our shoulder for the Warden, or our mother, or our father. Just... live."

Nola turned my head to face her. "We will," she whispered fiercely. "You and me, and Rika, and all our little ones. We'll be a real family, with a real home. We're gonna get off this ship, and together we'll fight every fucking Anthropus that gets in our way until we reach Rika, and we'll make a home together." She licked my lips, sending a shiver down my spine and stirring my loins. "I love you. I have faith in you, even if you don't."

I pressed my lips to hers and wrapped my good arm underneath her to hold her close. I didn't know why she had so much damn faith in me, but she was a lot smarter than me, and if she thought I could do it, then by the gods, I fucking could.

* * *

My moment came months later. November came and went, the one-year anniversary of our boarding the Sea Fang sailingpast us uneventfully. December drifted into January, and storms became more and more commonplace as the wet season around the equator bore down on us in full swing.

We were confined to quarters the whole time, with only brief respites to walk the deck with the twins once a day for fresh air. (How very fucking generous of our mother.) In that time, Nollie and I had little else to do but spend time with the twins, and occasionally fuck--though the misery of our situation made our libidos somewhat less potent than usual. By unspoken agreement, I pulled out of her every time we managed to gather the energy for sex. Neither of us wanted to bring more kittens into the world right now, feeling as hopeless as we were. Nola's initial confidence in me seemed to have burned itself out. At least she had the decency not to hate me for it. Wouldn't have blamed her, but it definitely would have made my own mental condition deteriorate. Who knew? Maybe I'd end up as psychotic as our mother.

By the second week of January, I finally found the will to act. Our kittens were crawling, sitting up of their own volition only to topple over after a few moments of triumph. I watched their steady growth and knew that we didn't have much time before they were going to be big enough to be a liability during an escape, yet still too small to do anything about it. I finally decided that if we were going to flee, I needed more information. My argument with Geist had been eating at me--as much as I hated our mother, I just couldn't believe her argument that slave-stealing was safer. Surely, they had _someone_going after pirates in the Autocracy, even if it was just pirates in general and not specifically ones that stole slaves. Something else was going on that she hadn't told me. I needed to figure out what.

That meant breaking into her cabin and snooping around, but there were two problems with this. First, when she wasn't in her cabin, it was broad daylight. Second, when she was in her cabin, well--she was in her cabin. So when was I supposed to break in and snoop? I needed cover to get in there, and I needed her to not be present.

As the week came to a close, the opportunity presented itself. A storm hit, more powerful than the last few, enough that everyone but the captain, first mate, and a couple riggers were confined below-decks to ride it out after battening down. I decided not to take my metal arm with me, and not out of sheer obstinance. I had no idea exactly how Annabelle's Gift worked--could she sense metal the same way she could manipulate it? I had a distinct impression that might be true. I couldn't fathom being able to so deftly control metal without being able to sense it with more than just sight. If that was the case, that would make my arm a beacon to her that would give me up right away. So, the arm stayed put. At least I didn't carry any other metal on me.

About an hour into the storm, I checked my cabin door. Unlocked. I supposed that was in case we capsized. Geist was willing to let us die in captivity, just not by drowning. How sweet. I cracked open the door, bracing myself against the jamb with my shoulder against the rolling of the ship on the hefty storm waves, and peered into the sleeting rain. Lightning exploded overhead, briefly igniting the world in daylight, and revealing that no one was currently guarding our door. More important things to do, I supposed.

I glanced at Nola, who looked miserable and afraid, but nodded to me slowly from where she sat on the bed holding our wailing kittens. They were decidedly not fans of storms. I cringed a little, feeling guilty leaving them while they were so scared, but we needed this more than they needed comfort. I hated myself as I slipped out of our cabin into the torrential rain, latching the door shut behind me.

Navigating the deck of a bucking ship in the midst of a storm is hard enough when you have two arms and all your balance. As the ship tilted dangerously port-ward and slammed me into the side of the poop deck, I realized it might actually be impossible for me. And as if to add insult to injury, my phantom pains were going ballistic in the cold and the wet.

Lightning cracked, and I looked up just in time to see three figures rushing along the deck of the ship. One was Annabelle--ever since Ivan had died in the Carcharadon attack and Thrasher had died by my paw, she was the largest member of the crew and thus easily identifiable. Another wound his way along the rigging with lithe ease--that had to be the Lontramar, "Twist" Macron. With the chest binder, you wouldn't even know he was trans. The only truly feminine feature he still carried was his curvaceous ass, which I'd caught myself staring at more than once. Yet I didn't find myself particularly attracted to him--mostly he just made me miss Tanya. I never thought I'd make friends with a Lontramar after growing up with Van, but she'd changed my mind. I thought about her, and Patrice, and Arthur, and all the others who were back at the Pit, and wondered if they'd escaped yet. With the chaos after Korrix's departure, there was a damn good chance, especially with Rika leading the charge.

My momentary lapse of attention was my undoing. A massive wave towered over the port side, easily ten feet in the air, and crashed down on the Fang. The ship tilted drunkenly to starboard, the rail almost kissing the ocean, and gravity shut off for me. I felt myself in a state of freefall as lightning cracked again, blasting the air with noise and light. The dark, violent, churning waves came up to meet me, and in the absence of the lightning strike, darkness prevailed as I fell once more to certain death.