Genuflection (part I)

The bell rings for the first muster since the Triton set sail, and though the pristine white sweep of Srin Aledo's harbour is still crisp against the desperately blue sky, it may as well be in a different sea for how out of reach it is to you.

Not that it was a comfortable place, you think, stomach swooping with dread as you line up among the rest of your watch—all in the same red coats, collars turned out the same particular way and loose breeches tucked with regulation pleats into their mid-calf boots—but for all the cruelties dispensed there, you must have been an asset to someone. The farther the mainland dwindles in the distance, the less anyone here is interested in what the navy brass repurposed you for. The crew knows precisely who you are, and they have intentions for you all of their own.

The commanding officer appears on deck. You snap to attention as the order is belted out, one fist to your chest, the other in the small of your back. A model sailor, indistinguishable from your peers.

Survival manoeuvres.

Sweat gathers on the nape of your neck and dampens your fresh-cropped hair.

First Master Rodin is a small man in attitude if not in stature. His coat is the blue of the Imperial Navy proper, and he quite clearly regards this commission to the privateers as vastly below him, not to mention an egregious slight by the Admiralty. From eavesdropping on scuttlebutt, you've gathered that the crew are just as enthused to sail under him. Rodin is known to have his sights trained on more esteemed ranks, and will assert his authority with pettiness and spite to hasten his way there.

It's something you understand, often finding it necessary when you were carving out your place in Xeheia's cutthroat ranks. But you are no longer a pirate, and Rodin never was.

The bell rings once more. Waves clap against the Triton's indifferent hull. Rodin begins his inspection, pacing slowly down the line of crewmen with heavy footfalls, regular like an execution drum. The air stretches with tension so sharp a man could cut himself on it; even the sailors Rodin passes without remark seem to feel its keenness lingering at their throats.

You stare dead ahead, your gaze fixed fiercely on the horizon and your breath measured.

Rodin stops his pacing directly before you.

"Seaman Melançon," he says. "Your boots are scuffed." You know that they are not.

They're third-hand, or fourth, and when you were issued them the leather was brittle and broken and scarred. You sympathised with them immediately even if your displeasure at having to wear such ugly things knew no bounds, and so you set about restoring them to the best of your ability with what you had available. Tallow gathered from a lantern candle, ash from the kitchen hearth, liniment intended for your own back, and one last remnant of your old life sacrificed in the silk cravat you used to buff them to a shine.

Most difficult was weathering the bruised convulsions in your chest when the meditative nature of the process allowed your mind to wander, and you found yourself remembering a different pair of hands at work on the leather, the bright glance of a gold ring.

You clench your back teeth. No, your boots are not scuffed.

You also know that if you look at them it will be considered gainsaying a superior officer, and whatever punishment is about to be meted will be doubled or worse. You maintain your focus on the horizon. Fish scale clouds ripple the sky. Weather's turning.

"Aye, sir. Sorry, sir."

"You certainly are. You're the sorriest asshole here, Melançon, and it's been some time since I've had the displeasure of setting my eyes on a mangy pack of sorry assholes such as this crew." A hint of the lowdocks has escaped into Rodin's manicured accent. "For your slovenliness, five lashes."

A silent ripple runs through the crew; surprise and disconcert at how disproportionate the punishment as they glance surreptitiously at their own boots, but not a small amount of glee either. Your stomach constricts into a hard, painful knot. After months of scrubbing blood and clear fluid from stiff bedsheets, your back has only just begun to truly heal. It's deliberate sabotage. Being whipped open again will make it a gruelling task to fulfil your duties and prove yourself if not an asset to the crew, then at least an able hand.

The threat of being deemed unfit for the most menial of service—you!—sends blood thundering furiously to your ears and throat, deafening you until you manage to swallow down this sea of bitterness.

"Approach the mast, Seaman Melançon," Rodin says.

"Aye, sir."

Breaking formation also breaks your fixed gaze on the horizon. Your surroundings rush in on you with crisp clarity. Red sailcloth casting sanguine shadows. Shining deck boards wet with spray. The ghoulish stares of your crewmates as you step up to the mast, past Rodin with a smile stretching his contemptible face. His greased back hair brushes his collar, as his rank affords him the privilege of lax grooming. You want to curl your lip, to remark, but this would be a very poor time to forget your own station.

"Coat off," Rodin says.

You remove it, fold it, place it to one side, straighten up to stand to stiff-backed attention.

A midshipman appears at Rodin's elbow and lays a cloth bag in his hands with undue reverence. Rodin tugs out the contents and lets the wind catch the bag, leaving the midshipman to chase it across the deck before it's blown asea. The lash is a single length of braided leather. Less fearsome than a cat, but no less capable of splitting skin. Rodin repeatedly feeds it through his hand, winding it over his knuckles as though handling a snake.

"Shirt off," he says to you.

You hesitate, but only for an instant. You are not permitted the luxury of a decision here, and so you unlace the neck of your shirt and pull it off over your head in a single motion. The sun stabs at newly-healed skin as you bare your ruined back.

A mutter rises among the spectating crew. While exposing the scars on your chest may have been intended as further humiliation, or an indictment of the fold's customs, they pale in comparison to the ones that twist over your shoulders and gnarl down your spine, that pull in tight whorls over your back.

The mark of your former allegiance is made no less threatening by its absence. It serves to remind everyone present exactly what kind of man you are.

Were.

"Boots off," Rodin orders.

This is out of the ordinary as far as you recall, but you've read so many documents on expected protocol and procedure since assigned, and encountered both the reasonable and the ridiculous in equal measure, that you would be hard pressed to say so with confidence. You bend a knee and remove them.

"Bring them to me."

You do. Rodin regards them as though you have presented him with a dead rat.

"I'm going to give you a choice." Rodin regards you yourself much the same way, though he squares his shoulders unconsciously, chest straining the brass buttons of his waistcoat as he draws himself up taller. You're unfazed, having been loomed over by better men than he. "Attend these boots with mouth and tongue until they are cleaned to my satisfaction. Or you may take the flogging."

Even if your pride had given you any choice, you know which will glean you a sliver of respect and which will get you kicked around like a bag of ballast for the rest of your short career. Without a word you turn and brace yourself against the mast (don't think about how it's wide like a sturdy body). Your fingers curl into the parrel beads, your attention narrowed on them as they press uncomfortably into your palm (don't compare them to other beads you've touched).

The waves that slap the Triton's hull slacken and calm, as if the sea itself doesn't know what to say. Or as if it wants you to hear the song of displaced air, to know the lash is coming the instant before it strikes.

The crack echoes. Your back ignites in a cascade of pain that's as wide and open as the ocean, fresh tender skin set alight as the braided leather bites into it. They say that scar tissue has no sensation, a claim you will hotly contest. You catch a groan in your throat and choke it down before it can betray you.

"One."

This is endurable. Everything that doesn't kill you is.

On the second strike, the tip of the lash flicks around your torso and stings against your ribs.

Warmth trickles down your belly; drops of blood stain your worn stocking.

This will simply take resolve.

"Two."

Rodin does not administer the third lash right away. You know this sadist's impulse well, to allow the pain to develop and bloom. Unfortunately you have less of a taste for masochism—at least the physical kind—but perhaps it would be worse to find yourself getting off on this, so you decide to be thankful for the fact. You cling to that thankfulness as the lash whips across your flesh again, sharp as lightning.

"Three." Rodin sounds irritated. Perhaps because you have yet to make a sound.

The fourth comes in quick succession, catching you unawares and driving the breath out of you, boiling your anger to the very brink of your control. You bite the inside of your cheek, curse these dogs silently but with fervour—and it's in the Fury's name you curse them, it's in her name you wish upon every bluecoat the worst deaths you've ever dealt, the bloodiest ones, the slowest ones, the ones where you made them hold slippery hot coils of their own insides while they expired.

In your wrath you reach for magic that isn't there, and the lack of it unhinges you momentarily, sickens you soul-deep. Your fingers curl in the parrel beads, rough wood of the mast threatening to dig splinters under your fingernails. The pain is bad, the anger worse—but the grief, the grief. The grief is intolerable.

"Four."

One day you will feed Rodin his own teeth. This you swear. Moisture rolls down your back; a stinging pink froth patters to the deck. The taste of blood and salt is thick in your mouth and this rabid urge to kill them all is yours and yours alone. It seems that even purged of Xeheia's influence, you remain a monster. One that is fully and banally human—and yet still the mysterious reviled other, undeserving of a scrap of mercy.

Your knees sag and you cling to the stout mast with tenacity. You will not think it. You will not think it. You spent too long in those trembling, delirious healing days thinking it, carving up your emotions in a way only you know how, flaying them as bloody and raw as the bondbreaker did your back.

And yet here you are, thinking it.

Gabriel shouldering you up, big arm around your waist and a rude remark to cover his concern, buoying you with his brash companionship, his immovable loyalty.

Well, you'd moved it. Now he'd be first in line to salt your wounds.

The lash comes down a final time. A wretched sound escapes your clenched teeth, loud enough the crew must have heard. Rodin must have heard. And maybe it would be worse if he hadn't.

"Five."

There's an unbalanced pause where you're expecting another lick regardless, your shoulders up around your ears and thigh muscles clenched to tame their shaking. But then Rodin kicks your coat and shirt over to you.

"Finish your watch and then report to the surgeon," he says.

You force yourself to give up your grip on the mast. Every small movement is a knife-slice as you retrieve your uniform and reinstate it, your shirt cleaving itself to the damp wall of agony that is your back. It will be as red as your coat when you peel it off again later. You turn your collar a particular way, pleat your breeches and tuck them into your boots, and stand to attention, waiting to be dismissed. Sweat drips from the end of your nose but you know better than to wipe it.

Rodin lifts his foot and brings it down on your toecap, twisting his heel. You barely feel it. He does the same to your other boot, sullying the burnished surface.

"Polish those boots until you can see your face in them, or you'll taste five more tomorrow." Rodin sniffs and wipes at a spot of blood on his sleeve, his interest in you spent for now. "Dismissed." "Aye, sir." You keep your face very calm and very empty, sinking like a stone into the reality of your situation.

You're still wearing the same expression hours later, staring impassively into the mirror shine of your boots.

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