Page 8

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 the buff too.

“What are you? I mean…most of the Others are 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.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I mumble because I don’t know how to digest his story.

What must it be like to be loved and treasured by your mother?

! Eze and Greenhorn’s mothers built an island community to hide their boys from danger.

Mine sneered at me while I was still rocked in a cradle.

My wet nurse barely tolerated feeding me.

Mother loved to taunt me with stories of the nurse’s crying when my father forced her to earn her keep.

“Mother died defending the island and the people she loved. I’m sure she’s still watching over me, but now with less control,” he says with a wink.

“So besides you and your fellow islanders, everyone else is an Other on the boat, right?” I want to ask about Betts directly, but I can’t give away that I’m fishing for information on our captain without sounding insubordinate.

“Not Chub and his original hearties from Queen Anne’s Revenge ,” Greenhorn says, rubbing his chin.

“Most of those guys stayed on the island, but Teeth and Branko were as human as I. Well, Branko had this ability to jump up two stories without a running start, but that’s a pretty stupid power if you ask me. ”

I switch my tactics since Greenhorn seems chatty. “Did Branko and Magda like Betts? How did the transfer of power go?”

“Magda never met Betts—thank the good lord. Betts’s lack of humor combined with Magda’s bloodlust would kill us all.”

“I’ve read several of Magda’s journals,” I say as I offer him my most guarded secret. Despite his young face, he’s been on the boat long enough to know why Betts is in a perpetually bad mood. “Magda’s writings make her seem nice—”

I can’t finish the sentence because he bends over with a belly laugh that I swear shakes the entire boat.

“Magda, nice? She once drained a guy in a public dance hall. Gobshite grabbed her arse on the dancefloor and laughed when she thought Branko did it. We had to flee the island to avoid the authorities burning her as a witch. I grew up with a witch as a second mother—Magda was a she-devil—more evil than a witch could ever be.”

“Do you miss home?”

“Yeah,” he says with a wistful quality to his voice as if his mind is back on the island.

“When an illness sweeps across the boat and we’re shitting through our teeth, I miss Chevelle.

You never suffer long with a Hoodoo witch in your extended family.

And the older I get, the more I want to settle down and have a family.

Chasing skirts and bedding strumpets was thrilling years ago, but now I’m tired.

I understand what Chub tried to teach me in the beginning.

A plump set of dairy to rest your head on without worrying about them robbing you blind is worth all the three-penny-uprights and chorus girls on the planet. ”

“He’s just a dairy chaser—”

“It’s not about her curves. She’s home—a wife, not an island.

I’ve talked to Betts at length about it when we’re on night watch at the helm.

Being married and having that person to walk beside you through life is what makes life worth living.

I fear my lady love is on the island, and I left her behind for adventure… and pox.”

“Betts is lonely? Was she married?”

“Her story isn’t mine to tell,” he snaps. “And I’d become a better fighter before you ask her about it. She’s not as warm and open as her sister, Sabs.”

“She has a sister?”

“Many twins,” he says, picking up his shortsword and handing me mine. I guess our chat is about to end. “Her family is all over the ocean.”

I don’t have the time to ask what he means because his sword pokes me in the gut. My top half doubles over with a wheeze. Greenhorn clubs the back of my head with the butt of his sword, sending me into the muck. I sit up, sputtering and spitting boat filth.

“I give! I give! Just don’t make me drink more of that. I may die,” I wail.

“Never turn your back on your opponent. Never use more energy than your opponent. Never assume your opponent isn’t about to kill you,” he says as he counts on his fingers. “And most of all—”

“Don’t let your guard down!” My interruption is enough to steal his focus.

I grab his knees and rock backward. My weight rolls to throw my head to the floor, and this time, I don’t mind a face full of bilge slime.

Greenhorn’s curses fill the hull before he falls with a deafening splash.

His sword floats away, so I use my sneak attack to climb onto his back.

As his long arms flail and grab at me, I get situated on his lower back to keep him from flipping over and throttling me.

“You’ve got the enemy pinned and unarmed, what do you do now?”

I freeze. I thought we would share a laugh and call it a night.

He’d brag about my getting over on him while we share terrible hardtack, praying nobody chips a tooth.

Never in my plan would he ask me what comes next as if the fight’s not over.

I’m dumbfounded. The roar of the bilge pumps and the sloshing of the slime is his answer.

I have no idea. A real fighter who trained in Antarctica would have an answer.

“Listen, I—”

Greenhorn arches backward and grabs my shoulders with both hands.

I’m flipped arse over head and slammed onto my back.

Stars blink in my vision through the haze of sludge.

My hair dances around my face as if mocking me.

Better face him before he thinks he drowned me.

I sit up and hug my knees to calm my quivering stomach.

One more gulp of dirty water, and I’ll shite through my teeth.

“Tomorrow’s bath day, so I couldn’t resist,” Greenhorn says with an obnoxious chuckle. “Are you too tired, or can we go another round? This is fun.”

“Fun? Fun? You’ve had sex, right? Sex is fun. This is torture—”

“No, this is torture!” He grabs me by the ears and pushes my face into the slime. His laughter fuels my ire as he holds me under the filthy water. This is one lesson I’ll never forget.