Page 6 of The Withering Dawn
Then he turned and strode up the steps, leaving me alone again.
Henry poked one last hole in my shoulder with his needle and pulled the thread taut, tying the last stitch on my wound. It was always worse when the slug didn’t go all the way through. The way he had to dig it out of me felt like he was tearing my muscle to bits, but he managed and I managed not to break my teeth on the belt I had clenched between them.
“Good as new,” he said, slapping my shoulder just to make me hiss a curse at him.
I took a swig of watered-down rum from a bottle, internally complaining how little the drink burned the way I liked. Merchants never stocked good rum unless they were trading it and we were working our way through a batch from months ago. It was all we had.
I rolled my shoulder to test my mobility before putting on a fresh, cotton shirt. Cathal walked up with a mug of broth and looked at me, bushy brows raised.
“Finished, are ye?”
“Course I am,” Henry said. “I’m quick and efficient. I’m irreplaceable.Remember that.”
Henry was a proper doctor before joining my crew. He had an affair with the wrong woman and when the husband found out, his life was upturned. A string of events led him to my ship where he’d been running from high society ever since.
“How is the prisoner, then?” Henry asked. “Since you didn’t allow me to finish my observations.”
I knew he was curious. He had a fascination with medical conditions he couldn’t solve and a starving siren certainly fell into the category of things he wanted to dissect.
“Quiet,” Cathal said. “Drank up all the broth in one go, though. I said I’d bring her more.”
“Shame you could not bring that beast from the other ship aboard,” Henry said. “I would have loved to study it. There are rumors flying about talking of monsters in the water in these parts. I can hardly believe you saw one since I didn’t see it with my own eyes.”
“It was the woman or the rotting corpse of a sea-demon,” I said. “I chose the woman. Before I knew what she was, of course.”
Henry leaned in, cupping a hand around his ear as if trying to listen to something. “Heart’s too good,” he said with a sigh. “That’s your problem.”
I rolled my eyes at him and grabbed the cup from Cathal’s hand. “I’ll take her more. I need you and Henry to go to Olly. If he wakes, it will be hell.”
“Aye,” Henry said. “It’ll take more than a few stitches for that one.”
Cathal and Henry both headed below where Oliver was resting, his mangled leg a mess of torn flesh. Everyone knew what we had to do next. The leg had to go. We were all just getting our heads on right before we did it. Especially myself and a select few who had known Oliver when we were all much different people. Boys. Desperate, lost boys.
Oliver was a good man. Stupid, sometimes, but he was the youngest of us. He always raided a ship with a smile on his face, completely oblivious to the risks, but this time the risks gave him aharsh reminder that a life on the sea was not the mindless adventure some imagined it was.
I followed my men down and headed into the galley where a pot of soup was sitting on the wooden counter with slices of stale bread. I poured some of the broth into a second cup for myself, taking a piece of bread between my teeth as I headed to the hold.
When I ventured down toward the cell, there she was. The woman was curled against the wall with the blanket Cathal had given her. Were it not for the maturity of her eyes, I’d have thought she was a young girl simply because starvation had taken any womanly curves from her.
I placed my cup on a small wooden barrel and bit into the bread before laying the rest of it atop my mug.
“I am captain Nazario. Comfortable?” I asked as I approached the cell.
Not that I was supposed to care. Despite that, a part of me did. No matter what she was, she did pull me from the water and the few good people in my life had taught me to be gracious. I didn’t want to die an ungrateful man.
I crouched in front of the cell and reached through the bars, placing the other cup on the floor. Her gaze followed my every movement, but she didn’t move. She surely took the bone broth from Cathal when he was down there, but now she seemed unwilling to leave the very back of the cell to take it from me.
“Why did you not kill me or leave me for dead?” I asked outright, fully aware she couldn’t speak.
There were pirates. There were merchants. Then there were hunters, the kind that killed sirens and took their heads and the kind that took their tongues and sold them to buyers who had a sick fetish for the man-eating beasts. The tongues were sold to nobles with equally sick tastes as a delicacy that I would never understand.
I was in the business of relieving ships of their precious cargo. That was it. I’d never traded or sold anyone, be it human or otherwise. Had I killed men? Yes. Many. But I could not even dream of stealingsomeone’s freedom. But she was a siren. A monster, most believed. Her wellbeing should have been the least of my worries.
Rourk, one of my other men, had already suggested selling her at the next port. That didn’t sit well with me, but I was trying to convince myself she wasn’t human so it should not have mattered. Sirens destroyed ships and devoured men when it pleased them. The cruelty they were shown in return was justified. Or so people said.
“I know you cannot talk,” I said, standing up. “Even if you could, would you use your voice on me?”
She looked at me with those big, emerald eyes and then slowly, subtly shook her head.
