When the jeering crew brought out the rope for Ciarlo, he held out his arms, hands clasped together. Submission but not surrender. With the bright sun and cool breeze on his face, Ciarlo took a deep breath. The air smelled clean, salty, and rejuvenating. He did not give them the satisfaction of showing fear or begging for mercy. He said nothing, but his head was filled with silent prayers to Aiden.
The Moray’s first mate offered a large, wicked-looking fishhook used for catching grouper or tuna. Its barbed point had been filed sharp. Captain Belluc put on a cruel performance to amuse his crew. “Stick it through his palms and wrists, so we can drag him behind the boat like a fish.”
Ciarlo didn’t know how long his flesh would hold before the sharp metal ripped through his tendons and bones. He closed his eyes, ready to endure the crippling pain of the hook.
“Stop this!” bellowed a big man with shaggy black hair; a passenger, not a crewman. He had a gap between his front teeth, and he looked strange and exotic even for a Uraban. His expression was as dark as his weathered skin. “What crime has the man committed to deserve this punishment?”
The galley captain was offended by the interruption. “I wouldn’t expect a Nunghal to understand. He believes in Aiden. That’s crime enough.” Ciarlo didn’t know what a Nunghal was.
The large stranger stepped closer to Captain Belluc, intimidating him. “You said that was the reason he became a galley slave in the first place.”
The captain shrugged. “He has been preaching to the other oarsmen, corrupting their souls.”
The big stranger regarded Belluc with consternation. “You’ll kill him if you use that hook and keelhaul him.”
“He deserves to die.”
Ciarlo spoke up with enough conviction that everyone heard him. “Thank you for your intervention, sir, but you can say nothing to stop the captain. He has made up his mind to inflict pain on another human being.”
“I can report his behavior to my good friend, Soldan-Shah Omra,” Asaddan said.
Belluc’s eyes narrowed. “You are welcome to tell him whatever you like. The soldan-shah hates Aidenists.”
With an abrupt move, the Nunghal man grabbed the fishhook from the first mate’s hands and flung it over the Moray’s side. The wicked-looking hook spun in the air, glinting golden, then vanished into the waves.
The surprised crewmembers grumbled, wanting their captain to retaliate, but Asaddan broadened his shoulders and looked threatening. “Keelhaul the man if you must, but don’t cripple or kill him. Where would you find a replacement oarsman out here?”
“I could always put you on the oars,” Belluc snapped.
“You are welcome to try, Captain.”
The captain did not choose to try.
Ciarlo still held his arms out, waiting, and the first mate wrapped the rope around his wrists, adding several coils, then pulled the rope through. Ciarlo would have liked to grasp the symbolic Fishhook of Sapier between his palms for comfort, but he no longer had his pendant. He clung to the knowledge that he was the only devout Aidenist in the whole expanse of Middlesea from horizon to horizon. No matter how far away He was, Ondun would see him and show mercy.
The galley captain didn’t give him an opportunity to pray; the sailors simply threw him off the galley’s stern. Ciarlo plunged into the water. He kicked his feet to try to keep up, but the taut rope nearly wrenched his arms out of their sockets. Spray filled his face, and he couldn’t breathe. He choked, coughed. The oarmaster struck up a rapid beat so that the Moray moved at increased speed.
Over the stern rail, Belluc called down to him, “Don’t you wish you’d stayed at home in Tierra by your little kirk?”
Ciarlo could barely think as he struggled to remain afloat, but this torture would never convince him to abandon his faith. With the rope burning his wrists and his joints in agony, he steeled himself by thinking of what Sapier himself had endured during his tribulations. He thought also of the agonies of Prester-Marshall Baine and his followers, all impaled on fishhooks because they had tried to rebuild Ishalem.
A commotion occurred on the deck of the Moray, crewmembers shouting and pointing. Ciarlo turned his head, saw a flash of jagged fin, a gleam of emerald scales as a sea serpent arced out of the water and then dove again. Dangling at the end of the rope, pulled along in the wake of the slave galley, Ciarlo was like bait on a fisherman’s line.
The laughing men above seemed to be making wagers. Ciarlo was sure he would find himself in the belly of the serpent soon enough, and they would haul in the bloody end of the rope. But the Nunghal man was roaring now. “Pull him up—pull him up!”
Finally, the men hoisted Ciarlo out of the water. The pain in his shoulders was excruciating as he dangled there, dripping; his clothes weighed him down. Looking down to see the serpent’s wedge-shaped head rising up, jaws wide open, he cried out. The men dragged him over the stern rail only inches ahead of the serpent.
Sprawled on the deck, he coughed and vomited water. Now that he was safe, the pain was so great that Ciarlo felt ready to die. Behind the Moray, the sea serpent drifted away.
“Let him rest for the day.” Belluc sounded surly and dissatisfied. “Then put him back in chains at the oars tomorrow.”
Asaddan watched the cruelty of the Urecari sailors with angry disgust. For days on their voyage, he had observed the devout Aidenist down in the stinking, stifling hold, heard the poor man tell stories with fervor, and listened to the heart of what he believed.
After witnessing the atrocities at Ishalem, he had not thought he could change his mind. He had seen evil Aidenist warships intent on setting the city ablaze. He had seen the line of rotting Uraban heads dumped along the great wall, victims of Aidenist hatred.
Which was the true reflection of Aiden’s teachings? Asaddan didn’t know. Maybe evil had two sides.
And after watching the behavior of these Urecari, he couldn’t see that they were any better. He recalled that Istar, First Wife of Soldan-Shah Omra, had been taken from a Tierran fishing village. He knew that Urecari raiders had burned her town, killed her people, and dragged her away against her will. When Saan had told him his mother’s story during their time in the Nunghal lands, the boy had colored the events with his own upbringing. Asaddan suspected that Istar might tell a different version of the story.
Ciarlo’s courage affected him greatly. The Aidenist preacher steadfastly maintained that he meant no harm, that he simply wanted to spread the word. Admiring such devotion, Asaddan decided to listen with greater attention.