Page 2 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

Mac shoved his fingers through his hair and retreated. Up close he was average height, average build, with the kind of face that disappeared in a crowd. The only thing that stood out were his eyes. Too young for the uniform he wore. Too uncertain for the sword at his hip.

Nam, the woman who was a mother figure to the left of me, exhaled. Her dark hair, threaded through with silver, caught the sunlight from the ceiling cracks as she turned her head away from the guard.

Agusto rushed to her. “Woman, you mind your business.”

The guard called us girl, or you. None of us had names. I gave her one anyway—Nam. I’d tried names for myself too. Minyoung. Song. Wren. None of them fit. They all felt like someone else’s. So when Jina started calling me Sis, I let it stay. It wasn’t a name exactly. But it was mine and someone who loved me said it.

They could take our labor, our pearls, our freedom. But they could never take what we gave each other.

Nam’s back curved from decades of hunching over shells, her hands so calloused they had gone bumpy and thick. Her fingers, once the quickest in the cavern, had begun to stiffen in the cold.

The guard looked at her pile, then mine, and back at hers.

“Work faster, old woman.”

Nam ignored him and reached for another shell.

“Say, yes sir.”

She kept silent and continued.

The whip came from Agusto’s belt so fast I almost didn’t see it. The crack of it against Nam’s back split the air like a branch breaking, loud enough everyone flinched, even the other guards.

Nam didn’t gasp, not a cry, not even a quickening of breath. She stilled for a second, then she reached for another shell, and everyone kept working as if nothing had happened. We had all broken long ago, but we learned to tolerate the violence and keep going.

“Did you hear me, woman?”

When the whip hissed back for a second blow, I did something I had never done before. I threw myself against her back, using myself as her shield.

“Stop.” The word came out of me raw and strange. This quiet rage had been buried a long time and clawed its way up. I wasn’t afraid of punishment. Not today. “Please. She won’t be able to work.”

It was the only excuse that might make him back off. Our ability to open the oysters was the only thing keeping us alive.

Touch her again and I’ll make you wish you never had.

The thought surprised me. I had spent a lifetime learning to be small, swallowing my anger without complaint. But not today. That whip rising a second time made me forget every lesson Agusto had taught me about staying down. My self-worth finally cracked open and so had something fiercer. The part of me that would not watch my sisters suffer.

The guard’s eyes went wide, veins rising across his face, his nostrils flared.

Then the whip came down, slicing across my back, burning a line of fire. My vision blurred white at the edges. I bit down, jaw clenching, and swallowed the scream and locked it at the back of my throat.

Not for him. He didn’t deserve the satisfaction.

At the far end of the table, Minha flinched, jaw tightening, the only outward sign any of them gave.

This wasn’t my first hit, but no matter, they all hurt the same. I would never let this place fracture me. But I feared, the longer I stayed, I might eventually one day.

Jina whimpered, her head lowered, counting in a barely audible tone.

The guard lowered, his hot breath against my ear, smelling of foul boot leather. My stomach churned, nausea rising in my throat.

“Next time. I’ll toss you into the ocean. See if you can swim.”

We all knew what that meant. No one came back from the water.

Asshole. I’ll pay you back one day.

I knew exactly how. The soft place beneath his jaw. I had mapped it a thousand times while he paced these tables. One day I would stop imagining it and just do it.