The Song of Wrath by Sarah Raughley

Author:Sarah Raughley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2023-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

14

DIANA AND LA DAPHNéE TRAVELED together to the Morocco coastline. It took several more hours to reach the two ships at a standoff with the fearsome Ataegina, a tiny but formidable merchant ship perched defiantly on the other side of a long sandbar. Whoever controlled the ship now sent up emissaries to let them aboard for the “negotiations.”

“Jinn,” Iris told him quietly as they marched aboard the Ataegina, prodded along by the points of rifles in the hands of Slessor’s men. “You don’t have to come with me.”

Boots clomped along the wooden plank. “Don’t be stupid. He wanted both of us.”

Iris squirmed uncomfortably, looking up at the black sails flapping ominously in the evening sky. “Oh, that’s why you’re coming, then. Of course, your hands are tied. Not like you’d come for me when you want me gone.”

Jinn gave her an incredulous look. “What?”

“Well, you already abandoned me before, so who knows if I can count on you now?”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“Shut up,” an officer hissed behind them, jabbing Iris and Jinn with his gun.

Iris wasn’t sure what she was expecting aboard the ship. No one was on deck except a pile of dead bodies obscured by several sailors who guarded the corpses. Iris shivered. The men were armed with guns and knives. Slessor’s men didn’t dare try them. They didn’t want to be added to the pile.

The sounds of drinking and shouting grew louder as they descended belowdecks. After she climbed down the ladder, chickens scurried past Iris’s feet, causing her to start. They went through the main hatch. Then they were let into large, dark quarters below by two dirty, angry-looking men with broken teeth.

Shouting. Cheers. Dice thrown on the rickety wooden floor. Chickens pecking at each other as drunken men leered, laughed, and circled them. An unseemly sight.

Over in the corner of the room by the broomstick were five navy men tied together with socks in their mouths. Their bloodshot eyes rounded at the sight of the newcomers, but they didn’t dare make a move. This ship’s sailors spoke Portuguese and English mostly. Some French. Many wore the recognizable sailor suits, with white hats and long blue handkerchiefs tied around their necks. Iris spotted a few dark newsboy caps and gray turtlenecks. And yet, however they were dressed, quite a large number of them had the same emptied-out expression, like they’d been through hell and back. Iris wondered whether they’d rather escape.

“Welcome!” said a sailor tall enough that his newsboy cap hit the low ceiling lamp when he took it off to bow. “Ah, I see you’ve come with some guests! But what about what our captain here has ordered?”

“Safe passage to England!”

“Yeah, tell those ships to get out of our captain’s goddamn way!”

Diana’s men pushed Jinn and Iris forward and immediately backed away. What exactly were these buffoons expecting? That they would incinerate these men right here, grab their fellow officers, and run? For navy men they had very poor planning skills. But their pale faces told Iris that fear had done all the planning for them.

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