Page 11 of Shiver Me Satyr

“Aye, aye, Captain!” calls my master of swords. “Come on, Flint!”

The brightness on Hybris’s face makes my skin crawl. My treacherous crew gave him a nickname. It doesn’t take a genius to realize the kitchen fire endeared him to them and made him human. Well, if he thinks he’s joining this crew, he’s got another thing coming. The last thing I need is to capture one of his father’s boats with him still aboard. Hell has no fury like a man tricked by a woman. Whether by sword, fire, or the briny deep, Hybris must die in three days.

6

Hybris

We’ve dueled for hours. Sweat drips off me in buckets. My singed shirt lies in a puddle of bilge sludge, and I don’t have the puff to care. The leather tie to my tail is floating somewhere, too, so my hair stands out around my horns like a holly bush. Greenhorn hasn’t broken a sweat. His dry shirt billows around him in a mockery. I’ve never worked so hard, and he stands there smirking like he’s having the time of his life.

“Why is it so hot down here? With the constant recycling of bilge water, you would think the bottom of the hull would be cold. Is this hell? Did my parents finally make good on their promise to damn me to hell for my behavior?”

“Such drama,” Greenhorn says with a click. His tongue flicks between the wide gap in his smile as he makes the annoying noise. “It’s humidity. You know, water sitting in the air because there’s no breeze.”

“If it’s water sitting in the air that I can’t see, why isn’t it sticking to you as it does to me?”

“My parents originated in Guinea, and I was raised on a Caribbean island,” he says, waving his sword at me. “My blood runs hotter and thinner than yours because I’m built for heat—or at least that’s what I tell the tavern girls. Some of them sweat through the sheets.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him those girls are fireships with bube or pox driving up their fevers. This boat would have fewer problems and less need for oregano oil if someone introduced them to sheep intestine socks for their sugar sticks or taught them simple identification of a fireship. My own crotch burns with remembered pain—thanks to Mrs. Patrice.

“Well, I learned to fence in the Antarctic,” I lie, despite my mind yelling at me to quit. “We stood on piles of snow taller than the mizzenmast, without clothes. You had to defeat your opponent quickly or the frost would claim your dangly bits.”

“Really? Is that why your cock’s so short? It was longer until you fought on snow mountains like a pudding-headed idiot? I’d forfeit the fight and put on my trousers. There’s a limit to what I’ll sacrifice for something as stupid as my pride.”

I see red. My slashes go from a concerted effort to wildly swinging my arms at him. I whip the sword horizontally, vertically, and in diagonal slashes. He parleys each one without moving his feet. Bastard keeps his right hand behind his back and a smirk on his lips. His expression kicks my ire to volcanic levels, so my free hand swings to punch it from his lips. When I rock my left hoof back to kick him in the shin, I slide in the slime and land on my back with a splash.

“You’re not as bad as I suspected. You’re scrappy, like an alley cat or guard dog. I like it,” he says evenly, as if we’re lounging in hammocks.

“If I’m not bad, why aren’t you fighting back?” The only fighting—aside from my wild hacking—is the fight to get air into my lungs. I pant between words, and they still come out in growls and snorts. My hooves skim and slip as I right myself. There’s something slimy and wiggling in my hair, but my pride keeps me from digging for it.

A bad start. That’s all. I had a bad start. I shouldn’t have bounced around him and worn myself out. Satyr hoofbeats are supposed to instill fear in humans…maybe Greenhorn isn’t human, and that’s the problem.

“I’m meeting you strike-for-strike,” he says, leaning to the left so our wooden swords clap together.

“Without moving,” I grouse. He shrugs and gives me a luminous smile that makes me want to bash his teeth in. When I stab forward, he grabs my elbow and uses it to throw me face-first into the bilge slime.

“Better? I’m used to sparring with Betts, and she threatens to use my nutmegs as earrings if I throw her into the sludge. At first, I found her threats cute, but she caught on quickly. I started sleeping with one eye open.” As he laughs at his own joke, I study his blunt teeth. They’re gleaming white but not a fang in the bunch. His dreadlocks don’t hide horns either—just a bald spot blooming on his crown.

“Can I ask you an impertinent question?” I ask while picking myself up. My worthless sword is abandoned in a puddle. There’s a dead fish stuck to my chest and a clump of seaweed hanging from my waistband. I’ll never be clean.

“Can I stop you?” He lowers his sword, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Guess not, but if it’s too personal—”

“I didn’t know clothes until I met Branko and Magda. My life had no use for them. There’s nothing too personal in my worldview.”

Okay,I’ll come back to that one. Not only did Greenhorn meet Branko and Magda in the flesh, but in thebufftoo.

“What are you? I mean…most of theOthersare easy to identify. Like how my horns give away my satyr nature—”

“I thought your relentless pursuit of what’s under a woman’s skirt gave away your satyr nature,” he says with another toothy smile. “I’m human. No magic, special skills, horns, claws, or thirst for blood.”

“Then how the dickens did you end up on a pirate ship?” The question flies out of my mouth before I can take it back. The answer is as plain as his brown skin. He’s one of Betts’s—no, Magda’s—rescued slaves. “I’m so sorry, Greenhorn. Please excuse me. I didn’t mean to ask.”

“I was about to tell you to ask me arse that dumb question,” he says with a chuckle that says he won’t skin me alive for bringing up a painful part of his past. “The answer isn’t so simple. My mother was pregnant with me when our slaver’s vessel crashed near Aruba. She was dragged from the wreckage by the island’s queen herself—Eze’s mother. I had a happy childhood running wild as they built homes and defenses.”

“Sounds like paradise,” I murmur. “Why leave?”

“Sow my wild oats,” he says with a lewd hip thrust. “With a mother, a queen, and a Hoodoo witch who seemed to know where I was at all times, I couldn’t breathe. I wanted adventure. When my mother passed in battle and Magda became the next queen, I saw an opening to ship out and took it.”

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