Page 9 of Daughter of the Dark Sea

Hell’s Pit was exactly as it sounded.

Mould was growing, multiplying, and creeping up the festering, black-stained walls of the pit. A stench of acrid damp, along with the hideous odour of waste from the two prisoners shackled to the walls, permeated the air. Almighty Thanos, they reeked.

Blake had tossed them into the smallest cell, their legs bent up to their chests to add to their discomfort. They only had the tattered scraps from the sails of the wasted Demon Sea Siren for blankets, and a small, dented cup of water to share between them. It remained untouched at their bare feet.

The bars of their cell were thick, black iron, and offered no reprieve on their aching, hunched backs. In fact, the entire pit was black, with no light penetrating it, blinding their senses, making them unsure how long they’d been caged in Hell.

Kora perched on a small wooden stool in the walkway between the two rows of cells. A large, candle-lit iron lantern illuminated beside her on a rounded, rickety wooden table splattered with old, dried blood. It cast a daunting red hue in the pit, shadowing the prisoners. A ladder ascending to the secured, light-proof hatch lingered at the end of the walkway.

Heavy, robust shackles clamped their ankles together. Connected to impenetrable chains leading to bolts in the hull walls, reinforced with Talmon-grade steel. She lightly fingered her dual-sabre blades delicately placed on the table.

Kora drew a deep breath before speaking, the memory of their previous pirate hunts rising from the individual cells surrounding her. She remembered every single one . . . and they all had begged for their lives.

Unlike these two.

“You boys lost some weight since I last saw you.”

A harsh, cold, and indifferent persona consumed her, the mask for her role as captain sliding over her face. No matter how long she tried to put this off, she eventually had to come down here and question the prisoners—and hoped that was all she had to do.

Blake had unsuccessfully pried any information from them, and they’d sailed past the scorching coast of Scarlet Bay half a day ago. Time was running out. Stormkeep Fortress was less than a few days away. A few more days of freedom.

Stony silence greeted Kora.

The pirates blinked rapidly, adjusting to the small light from the lantern. Their white shirts and navy pants were filthy, their bare feet wallowing in puddles of urine. She wrinkled her nose at the disgusting smell. The males had lost a lot of weight, in fact too much weight from a few days of starvation. Matching brown eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, were lined by gaunt cheeks and ringed with shadows. She shifted the lantern, squinting into the darkness, devouring their features.

“Separate them,”

she ordered.

Blake’s dark, brooding presence emerged from the shadows of the opposite cells, and the prisoners’ eyes widened simultaneously, suddenly clutching at each other in despair.

“No!”

they screamed over and over.

“Don’t come near us!”

Their voices were hoarse from dehydration and silence.

As Blake unlocked the cell, with two of his favoured guards hovering close behind, the pirates kicked back violently, clasping at each other’s thin frames.

“Put one in the cells near the hold. They can’t see or speak to each other.”

Kora casually sat back as the guards unshackled the closest prisoner, dragging him towards the hold adjacent to the ladder. His wide, grog-blossomed face twisted; rotten teeth surrounded by ginger stubble gnashing at their hands. He screamed and clawed, spitting curses at Kora, Blake, and her crew until his voice was a faint echo from the brig, eventually silenced with the creak of iron bars. Blake melted back into the shadows behind her with a menacing stare at the remaining pirate.

“How did ye know we were brethren?”

His raspy voice set Kora’s teeth on edge.

“Not just brothers,”

Kora leaned forward. “Twins.”

The pirate mirrored her, leaning on his knees in curiosity, narrowing his soil-brown eyes. His features were sharp and angular. A chiselled jaw lined with a short, thick, ginger beard. Matching long hair was slicked back with sweat and dirt, and matted into thick locks, adorned with wooden charms.

“You both have a tattoo on your arm in the native language, meaning twin.”

Kora motioned to the smattering of ink on his left forearm. A singular letter from the old Devanian language glared against the red welts on his wrist.

“You speak Devanian?”

he asked in the native tongue in which he was expertly fluent. Kora waved him off, pretending not to understand.

“Let’s not get sidetracked,”

she replied, in the common language.

Blake simmered with intensity, and she was sure he was brooding over his inability to notice they were brothers—identical ones at that. Although . . . his torture techniques took place in the darkness, where he thrived most. So, she’d let him off this time.

“We arrive at Stormkeep Fortress in three days,”

she announced. The pirate scoffed and sat back, half his body hidden in the shadows of the pit.

“It’d be in your best interest to answer our questions before we make port.”

The pirate blankly stared, his mouth a tight grim line, his right hand lightly tracing the twin tattoo.

“Have you been in contact with Galen?”

Silence continued.

They stared each other down for several minutes in deafening quiet. The stench of him made her eyes water, and his body was black and blue, peppered with lance burns. Signs Blake had attempted torturous tactics to force him to sing. Kora grinded her teeth in irritation.

After a few more moments of infuriating silence, she retrieved a circular cloth-bound shape on the table and unwrapped it carefully. The pirate’s attention was drawn to it instantly, and he expressed ravenous desperation as Kora revealed an enticing red apple.

She plucked one of her precious daggers, and began slicing pieces off, popping them into her mouth slowly. She savoured every bite, and the pirate swallowed audibly.

“Well, we can assume you’ve been in contact with them,”

she murmured between bites.

“We saw the treasure payment. The more important question is how.”

“And why,”

Blake added from the shadows.

The scent of the sweet juices from the apple wafted into the air and the prisoner lunged forward, his hands gripping the bars of the cell so tightly his knuckles turned deathly white. Kora cut another slice and placed it into her mouth with a satisfying, loud moan.

Yet . . . silence persisted.

“Let’s make a deal.”

She hovered the half-eaten apple out of the pirate’s reach.

“A piece of food for every truthful answer.”

She gestured beside her, and the pirate drooled at the second apple and small loaf of bread also present on the table, a whimper escaping his lips.

“And me brethren?”

he asked quietly.

“If he accepts the same deal, he will eat.”

Kora placed her hand on her chest in a silent oath.

“We don’t know much.”

His eyes nervously darted from her to the food. She sliced her dagger down the apple once again and offered the piece of fruit.

“Tell us what you can.”

He snatched the apple slice from her calloused fingers, shoving it into his mouth and chewing sloppily. She prepared another slice as he groaned, his hands immediately returning to clutch at the bars.

“We joined the crew late,”

he spoke rapidly.

“Cannon already had the booty from Galen.”

Kora dropped another piece of apple into his filthy hands and reached for the loaf of bread.

“All I know is, we were goin’ to an important meetin’ at Peril Cove. From the north. Cannon said we was to grab somethin’ special there. Next thin’ I knew, all the pirate lords showed up.”

“The pirate lords?”

She froze cutting the loaf of bread.

“What do you mean the pirate lords were there?”

A sly smile broke on the pirate’s face.

“The four ships.”

“There were five . . .”

she whispered.

“They always brin’ a spare. A diversion.”

“Shit,”

Blake cursed from the darkness.

“Cannon is—was—a pirate lord?”

The pirate nodded solemnly.

“He didn’t put up much of a good fight,”

Kora scoffed, remembering the countless poorly aimed cannons from his vessel.

“Who’s to say he was fightin’?”

the pirate countered.

Kora frowned, and she opened her mouth to speak but the pirate grasped for the bread in her hands.

“Ye swore!”

She chucked a small piece at him, and he scrambled for it hysterically before it landed in a puddle of piss.

“You’ve still not explained the connections to Galen,”

Blake pushed, emerging from the dark gloom, his arms crossed.

“We saw the ships retreat into the Mist. No one goes into it, not even scum like you.”

He cast a cautious glance towards Kora. If those ships were truly the pirate lords, the situation was more dire than they’d thought—and they’d killed one of them. It was grounds for another war.

“Aye, I don’t know how Cannon got the booty from Galen.”

His lips smacked from eating, and Kora exhaled to quash her rising nausea.

“But there were rumours on the Demon. They say the Mist was made. By a man.”

Blake let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

“That’s ridiculous, a man can’t make mist—especially one that can kill you.”

“Tis what I heard. A man made the Mist, and he can control it. Who goes in,”

he motioned with his hands, weaving them into the shadows.

“And who goes out.”

He withdrew his hand from the darkness and flexed his palm open once again, demanding his payment of food. Blake whipped out his hand, preventing Kora from passing over another piece of bread. She glared at him.

“That’s a lie. Magic doesn’t exist,”

Blake’s voice frosted.

The pirate ignored Blake, his stare meeting Kora’s, and his tone turned serious and eloquent as he spoke in the Devanian language.

“You know it does.”

Her heart stopped.

“Stop that,”

Blake snapped.

“No one speaks that gibberish anymore.”

Kora flinched internally but kept her face neutral. It was a beautiful language, and their world still used a few of the words when convenient. Blake frequently called her his asterya, but it was one of the few words she pretended to understand.

“It used to exist,”

he said to Blake.

“Ye should learn ye history, lad.”

The talisman nestled between her breasts warmed and she rubbed her chest, willing her heart to settle back into its normal rhythm.

“Liar! He just wants the food, Kor—Captain,”

Blake corrected himself, but it didn’t go unnoticed. Kora had pinned him down to chastise him about referring to her as Kora—not Captain—in front of their crew a few days ago. She handed the pirate his final piece of bread and stepped away, mulling the information over.

“Complete bullshit!”

Blake slammed his hand against the cell, his face furious.

“I hope your brother is smarter than you are, or at least a better liar.”

He stormed off into the darkness towards the other cells.

Before she left, Kora paused and glanced over her shoulder at the pirate.

“What’s your name?”

she asked in Devanian.

The pirate smiled devilishly.

“Jack Flint.”

A guard rounded the corner from the hull passage, his face grim and hardened. A foul odour wafted from him, and she gagged at the stench of the other Flint twin’s excrement coating the guard’s legs. Gross.

“You can keep the lantern,”

she said, and he nodded with gratitude for the extra illumination. A small reprieve for being in the pit.

Kora climbed the ladder, her skin tingling from the talisman, as if it’d awoken after that conversation. Daylight blinded her after the bleak black of Hell’s Pit, and she hunted for a sparring partner, leaving secrets buried in the shadows of the cells.