Chapter 1
Kaneko
The cabin was small but clean. That was the first thing that struck me when they shoved me inside and slammed the door. It wasn’t filthy, didn’t reek of piss and rot and death. It was just . . . clean.
A narrow bunk with actual blankets.
A small table bolted to the floor.
A porthole that let in a sliver of gray light.
I stood there, swaying with the motion of the ship, trying to understand. The chains on my wrists and ankles had been removed, leaving angry lines where iron had bit into flesh.
I glanced about.
Strewn across the bed were clean clothes. The dull-colored fabric of thekimonoreminded me of workers outside Tooi’s fields. It was simple but honest.
Clean cabin? Clean clothes?
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t howwakotreated slaves. It wasn’t how they treated anyone who didn’t bear their brand. Hells, from what I’d seen, they barely treated their own this well.
Why?
In one stride, I stood before the bunk, shoved thekimonoaside, and carefully sat, half expecting everything to vanish in a puff of smoke. The blankets were coarse but real, the mattress thin but present. I ran my fingers over the fabric, my mind spinning with confusion.
Below me, somewhere deep in the belly of the ship, I could hear them.
The others.
The ones who weren’t given cabins.
I heard muffled sobbing, the rattle of chains, the creak of bodies pressed too close together in the stinking dark of the hold.
That’s where I should’ve been. That’s where slaves belonged.
So why was I here?
The door rattled, and I jerked upright, my heart hammering as it swung open.
A pirate stepped inside, gold bangles jangling around his wrists, the sun glinting off a loop in his left ear. He was young, maybe a few years older than me, with a pockmarked face and eyes that wouldn’t meet mine—I doubted would ever meet anyone’s gaze. I caught hatred in the eye that tracked me, flickering in the brief glance he threw my way before looking down. In his hands, he held a tray, which he set on the table without so much as a word.
I stared, mystified, as though Amaterasu herself had descended from the heavens and now stood before me.
Rice?
And not the hard, half-cooked gruel I’d expected, but actual steamed rice, white and fluffy, still radiating heat. And grilledfish, glistening with oil and seasoning, perched on a bed of pickled vegetables, bright and fresh. Beside the plate was a bowl of soup with savory steam curling into the air.
Hot food? Fresh food?
It was the kind of meal one served guests, not prisoners.
“What—” I started, but the sailor was already turning to leave.
“Eat,” he muttered, his tone something dark. Resentment, maybe. Or disgust.
“Wait—”
He paused at the door, still not looking at me.
