Page 1 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

Chapter One

I jabbed the metal pick into the soft place beneath the guard’s jaw.

His pick. The one tucked into his belt beside the whip. I’d done it a thousand times in my head while he paced the length of the tables, oyster shells piled high, cold water dripping down to the pebbled ground.

“Faster!” the guard clad in a mud-brown uniform hissed as he passed me by, small stones shifting underfoot.

The word went in one ear and out the other. I’d become numbed to his sharp tone and so had fifty women working in silence. Some my age, twenty-five, a handful older, and one as young as sixteen.

My fingers found the lip of a bumpy shell as I shifted from one foot to the other, my legs aching from standing countless hours. I pressed at the hinge and twisted harder. It opened with a wet, reluctant pop. I reached inside, feeling for the round object nestled in all that soft gooey flesh.

Pearl or empty?

Empty. Damn it!

I tossed the empty shell onto the pile by my feet. Good pearls went into the basket lined with clean cloth. Defective ones into the metal bucket.

I reached for the next one on the table. The smell of them hit the back of my throat, salt and rot, thick enough to taste. I had breathed it in every day of my life, so deep into my lungs that if you cut me open, the sea would pour out.

Cold air pushed through the cracks in the rocky walls, carrying the sound of waves crashing. I had seen the sea once but never been in the water. I doubted I’d ever be free to venture on my own.

The rhythm of the thump and crack of shells dropping filled the cavern, over and over. This was all I knew. This was all I did. Day in and day out.

Six guards approached at the far end of the cavern’s mouth, where the sunlight beamed by the metal gate. Beyond the gate, the compound led to more guards and the ocean. At least that was what we were told.

There was no escape for us. No life beyond this hellhole. A pull in my gut told me outside, just beyond the rock, the ocean waited—patient and enormous and full of secrets—waiting to unfold.

I had to believe life existed beyond this cavern for us. That one day, someone would come for us, though I had no idea who. Not one soul out there knew we existed.

My hands found the next shell.

Jina, the girl to my right, soft-spoken, with pale skin and kind, hazel eyes like mine, knocked her knee against my leg as she cleared her throat, her dark hair cascading to hide her face.

A warning.

I followed her gaze. Captain Agusto, with a sneer plastered on his face, marched toward us. He stopped behind me. Heat and sweat radiated off him, the smell of someone who’d been working under the sun all day. I dared not look at him and kept my hands moving. I’d gotten used to his eyes on me, but he’d never watched me this long.

Minha said once that I had delicate features, which made me laugh. Nothing about this place had ever made me feel delicate. I was tall for someone who had never eaten enough, hazel-eyed, sharp-cheeked, brunette hair reaching my shoulder blades.

Whatever I looked like, it had never mattered here. We were all the same. Nameless. Hands that opened shells.

The distraction came at a good time when I fished out small, imperfect pearls, and I held one up to the sunlight streaming through the crack from the rocky ceiling like a thin ribbon. Stunning as it caught the light. Pinks were rare, and so were twins and triploids.

“Don’t waste time looking, girl.” He yanked it from my fingertips and tossed it inside a metal bucket on the table.

It landed with a soft clink against the pile.

He assumed I would steal it. He was right. I lowered myself, pretending to be afraid he might hit me, and slipped the one and two others into the rolled waist of my pants. Our pants were loose. We folded them up at the waist to walk without tripping, which made them useful for more than one thing.

“We need more,” Agusto barked, making his way along the assembly line.

The young guard in training picked up an oyster that had fallen off the table and yelped, dropping it. He wasn’t the first guard to react like it burned him. Why could we touch them and they couldn’t? Was it the gender thing, or were they different from us?

“Idiot!” Agusto smacked his head.

“I was trying to—”

Agusto shut him up with a snarl. “Mac, stay three feet from me, boy.”