Chapter 6

Avery started awake as someone unlocked the cell with a squeal and a bang, and he blinked up to see a large mutant flanked by two of the whip-wielders. Avery’s group had been left in the cell for over a week, by his reckoning—it was hard to be sure down here, unable to see the passage of sunlight—and he was numbed by inactivity and weak with hunger; they’d been fed, but sparingly, and not well.

“Come on, you wretches,” the mutant said. “Get up. We've somewhere to be.”

Avery complied, slowly, joints creaking, and helped Layanna to her feet, as well. They’d suspected they would be called for since the ship stopped moving hours ago. It must have reached a port of some kind. Here whatever it is the pirates intended to do with the group would surely be done.

The jailers opened the cell and bound the prisoners’ hands behind their backs, then shoved them out into the hall and up several ladders until they reached the main deck. The sun shone brightly overhead, lancing at Avery’s eyes and overwhelming him with its sheer brightness. After so long in the dark, the light, intense and painful, nearly made him pass out. He closed his eyes and would have put his hands over them had his hands been available. Janx cursed and Hildra made gasping sounds.

Stomping noises approached, and Avery knew it was Segrul with his shored-up clam-leg. “Well well,” came the pirate admiral's gargling voice, “what have we here? Four fine-lookin’ moles, ain’t they, lads?”

Chuckling. Avery heard sounds—clanging, talking, waves breaking, gulls calling, ships creaking, the stirring and activity of a great number of people. All he could see was flashing brightness so intense he doubled over and dry-heaved onto the deck.

“Whattaya want us for?” came Janx’s voice.

“Oh, it ain’t me that wants you, Janx-m'-boy. Come, let’s get this farce over with. The Great One ain’t to be kept waiting.”

Rough hands propelled Avery forward, and he was aware by the sounds of the others being handled similarly. Nearby came the hiss and briny stench of venom whips. The pirates—it was hard to say how many, but perhaps ten—ushered the group down a boarding ramp and onto what must be a dock, whose loose boards rattled and drummed under Avery’s feet. The sounds of activity grew louder, some passing near and around him.

“Where are we?” he said as they were forced along. “What port?”

“Why, you have the distinct honor of steppin’ foot on Colu, heart of the Mago Islands," Segrul said.

“Mago,” Janx said. “Great.”

“What?” Avery said. “What is it?” He’d only dimly heard of the chain.

“Some pre-human race has been livin’ here forever. No one here but them for hundreds of years, worshippers of the deep ones. Dangerous bastards. They’ve been left alone a long time.”

“Things change,” Segrul said. “They’re our allies now. More than allies. We all serve the same Masters, but the Magons’ve been at it for a lot longer than we have. They’re higher in Their service and counsels.”

Avery stumbled on a loose board, nearly went spilling off, but someone grabbed him and shoved him along. The burning pain in his eyes was starting to ebb, at least a bit. Around him water lapped against hulls and posts, and he wondered if the air was filtered by purifiers; for Hildra’s and Janx’s sake, he hoped so. The two hadn’t been given environment suits. None of them had.

“Where's Sheridan?"

Someone cuffed him on the head, leaving a slimy wetness, and Avery closed his mouth. “I’ve answered all the questions I’m gonna answer outta you,” came Segrul's voice. After a minute, he said, sounding somehow justified, “You chose the wrong course, didn’t you, Janx?” When the whaler didn’t reply, Segrul added, “I would’ve wished otherwise for you, old friend. I never resented your leavin’, you know.”

“No? I remember it different.”

“What, that bounty on your head? That was nothing. That was just for the sake of appearances, so’s not to encourage other captains to mutiny. If I’d really wanted you dead the bounty would’ve been much higher.”

“It kept me hoppin’ for years.”

Segrul laughed. “I hoped so! Many a night I raised a glass of stolen champagne and toasted the thought of you fleeing one step ahead of my knives. I imagined you always on the go, looking over your shoulder everywhere you went, never able to settle down, and I had many a good chuckle over it. I always said if my knives ever did bring your head back to me I’d have it alchemically preserved, then mount it in me bedroom.”

“That how you get your kicks now? Starin’ at people’s heads?”

“I didn’t tell you what I’d do to it there, did I? That nose hole of yours—”

Janx let out an inarticulate growling sound, and Segrul laughed. Avery was glad when the pirate ceased his chatter and they stepped off the docks and onto solid land. He tried to pause for a moment as his body adjusted, unused to the lack of rolling and pitching—the docks had only been a shaky prelude—but the pirates pushed him forward and he was obliged to keep moving. Sounds of activity surrounded him. He tried to open his eyes, then winced at the bright light and closed them again. Soon. In another few minutes he’d be able to see.

The pirates marched them down what seemed by the sounds to be a wide avenue. The smells of hundreds of people reached Avery, body odor from normal men and women, yes, but also the distinctive aroma of fish-men, the coppery smell of lobster-folk, the slightly painful sting in the nostrils from the waft of a jellyfish-person. Avery smelled the salty tang of the sea laced with ozone, fish frying somewhere, feces (likely from an open pit), refuse, and various spices from what might be a market.

He opened his eyes—experimentally, then, soon, continuously—and blinked at the strange landscape he walked through. The disorganized sprawl of Colu lay all around him, and sheltering the settlement on three sides were jagged, rocky mountains blocking out half the sky. One mountain behind the others smoked. The buildings of the town were composed of rock, mud, scrap lumber and sheets of metal—mostly things brought to the island by ship. It was easy to see why: the native Magons had almost completely denuded the island. Rocky pinnacles towered over a rocky beach framed by rolling mounds of rock and overhung by rocky shelves. No trees anywhere. Not even a shrub or patch of grass. Whatever the Magons had built with the wood they’d harvested years ago (assuming there ever had been wood) hadn’t lasted through the centuries they’d lived here, and when they had opened their arms to outsiders and allowed the pirates to establish a town where no navy or outside power would interfere with them, the outsiders had had to bring the town with them.

They had. Ramshackle bars and tattoo parlors and whorehouses, motels and trading posts and questionable eateries stretched in every direction, some even climbing the rocky foothills the town—city, Avery realized—butted up against. Smoke rose from countless chimneys and cook fires and the vents of drug labs. Avery was certain of this last, as several buildings he passed stank of universally illegal chemicals.

And everywhere there were mutants. Fish-women and seaslug-men, a fat man like a centipede shrimp, a posing prostitute lasciviously sticking out an anemone tongue. A strange creature passed before Segrul’s line of pirates, halting it briefly, and Avery realized the creature was a man who had mutated into something like a giant crab, complete with a shell as high as Avery’s waist, forced to propel himself along the ground in awkward stops and starts. Pirates, never one to waste an opportunity or fail to torment someone who couldn’t fight back, had scrawled lewd pictures and words into his shell, and one of his legs had been broken off. The crab-man finally hop-scuttled out of the way, and Segrul’s party moved forward, Segrul whacking the creature with his cane and cursing him as he went.

Not all the people in the town were infected. When Avery asked Janx about it, the big man said, “Pirates just capture the goods, Doc. They still need someone to sell ‘em to.” He nodded at a group of finely dressed men and women, and their bodyguards, as they picked their way down a narrow, twisting street. There were other buyers all over, some singly but most in groups, typically guarded. They were all too aware they would make good hostages, and their families could likely afford to pay the ransom. It was for these men—and women, too—that the air purifiers must have been installed around the city. And there must be some, as the visitors did not wear environment suits.

“Awfully risky just for the chance at some discount textiles,” Avery said.

“Oh, some merchants’ll do anything to get the leg up on the competition, Doc,” Janx said. “But that ain’t the only reason they come here.”

“Why else?”

Janx hiked his chin at something, and Avery turned to see a crowd gathered before a stage in a wide plaza. On the stage, a leering pirate showcased an obviously captive young woman. A leash trailed from a collar around her neck, and the pirate clenched it in one iridescent-scaled fist. He had already removed most of her clothing, and vivid bruises showed on her breasts and torso. Her expression was faraway.

“Slaves,” Avery realized dully. “They sell slaves.”

“Aye, and not just for sex, either.”

Janx indicated something to Avery’s right, and the doctor turned to see a pit carved out of the rock. A ring of shouting pirates had gathered around it, and down below two frantic-looking men, one armed with a hammer, another with a knife, swung and stabbed at each other, sweat flying from their filthy hair. Two corpses littered the pit already, flies buzzing about them. A swell of revulsion rose in Avery.

“Gladiators,” he said.

“Yep. And they’ll be others, too. Slaves for labor, slaves for sums. What else do you do with a captured clerk? Slavery ain’t illegal everywhere, an’ it can be hidden other places. I’ve seen places like this before, or near enough, many a time. They spring up like mushrooms on desert islands, ‘least till some navy or other gets wind of ‘em. Then anther springs up somewhere else. This looks a bit more settled than most. Guess the Magons really are shelterin’ Segrul’s lot.”

“The different branches of the R’loth faith uniting,” Avery said. “Charming.”

He glanced back to the pit. The man with the hammer swung a devastating blow, shattering the skull of the knife-man and spraying blood over them both. The knife-man flailed for a moment, scoring some minor wounds on his opponent, but these were just reflex gestures, and after a moment he sagged to the ground, the man with the hammer descending with him. Tears glistened in the victor’s eyes. He bent over and retched, right next to the dead man, as the crowd above cheered or booed depending on who had won or lost money.

On the auction block, the leering pirate was leading the young woman down, jerking her leash as he descended the rickety stairs. A man from the crowd, well-dressed and important-looking, stepped out and accepted the chain.

“It’s awful,” Avery said.

“Aye.”

Avery started to ask Janx a question, then thought better of it. There were some things he didn’t want to know.

Janx seemed to sense it. He sighed. “Ya wanna know if I did any o’ this, back in my piratin’ days."

Avery hesitated, then nodded. I hope I don’t regret this.