Chapter Text
Most of the stories we tell our children are those of ghosts and legends. Tales to urge them to behave, to go to sleep lest monsters creep out from the dark to steal them away in the night. We tell them stories of heroes and villains long dead or made up, but does it matter if they were real, when it comes to legends? There is always a needle of truth hidden in the haystack of make-believe.
Not often do we tell our children a story that has not yet run its course, a story still being written. A story that hadn’t had enough time to become legend yet, because the person it is about is still very much alive.
But it happens.
Her story can be heard most often in port towns, where it jumps from ship to ship like a sea rat, spreading rumors like disease in each place it might visit. People who’ve seen her ship sailing by, who’ve spied her astride the deck in her dark feathered hat and speak of her in hushed tones over flagons of beer once they’re safe in port, and they speak of these sightings like you might speak of a brush with death.
She’s sailed under black flags for two years. It’s a short stretch of time for a name to sink into infamy the way hers has, and yet people know of her, speak of her, fear her. She and her odd assemblage of people that she calls her crew: a musician, a shapeshifter, a convicted criminal, a royal navy guard, a mad scientist and a cartographer, all on the same ship that had once been her father’s.
They say she’s been a pirate since the very day she was born, brought up on her father’s thievery and lies. They say she is ruthless and cunning and cruel, that poison runs through her veins instead of blood. They say the sails of her ship turned black the night after her father hung from the gallows, stained with ash from the town she set aflame.
Those who speak of her rarely use her name, as if uttering it might call her like a siren’s wicked song. But her name need not be spoken for those to know of whom they refer to. The traitor to the throne, captain of the Silver Sword and daughter of one of the most infamous pirates to have ever sailed a ship, the dread pirate Franziska von Karma.
But this story does not begin with her.
“You’re sure you’re going to be okay minding the shop by yourself?”
Maya rolls her eyes. “Mia, please. It’s not like I haven’t done it before,” she says, taking a sip of her tea. “Also, I think you’re forgetting the fact that I’m twenty-eight? A full-grown adult? I’m gonna be fine.”
Her sister sweeps by the front desk in a rustle of skirts, and the look she gives Maya is one full of skepticism. “Yes, well, you say that, but don’t forget about how you fell asleep at the desk two weeks ago and that poor customer had to wake you up so he could buy his tea. If I remember correctly, you were twenty-eight then too.”
Maya groans. “That was one time.”
“One time too many,” Mia replies, swinging her cloak around her shoulders. “We might have a spice shipment coming in later today, so keep an eye out for that. We’re running a little low on lavender, too, so be aware of that if people ask for it. Oh, and don’t forget to take the sign off the door at five. I don’t want you channeling late in the day, you’ll-“
“Fall asleep right after and won’t eat dinner, yeah, yeah. Believe it or not, I do know this already, Mia. Again, full-grown adult here.” Maya crosses her arms, leaning on the back two legs of her chair. “Are you gonna keep nagging me all day and keep your girlfriend waiting?”
Mia frowns at her. “Don’t use Lana as a way to get me to stop nagging you. I will nag you however much I like, and whenever I please. And don’t lean back on your chair like that, you’re going to give yourself a concussion.”
Maya rights her chair with a thump, rolling her eyes again. “Okay, mom.”
Mia shakes her head with the kind of gently-irritated fondness a big sister knows so well, and turns to her reflection in the shop window, patting down her hair. She’s done it up differently today, tied up in the back in a pretty crown of braids. Mia usually isn’t the type to fret about her appearance, which makes Maya all the more amused over how anxious her sister gets about how she looks when it comes to Lana Skye.
As if on cue, Mia turns to Maya, hands propped on her hips and a nervous look on her face. “Do I look alright?”
“Mia, you could be wearing a potato sack and you’d look great.”
Maya means it. Mia Fey is the prettiest person in town, probably the country, really. She’s had all sorts of people swoon over her, walking through the door with flowers and gifts clutched tight in nervous hands. Unfortunately for them, only certain, special individuals have gained the key to her heart.
“Seriously, though,” Maya says, when her sister gives her a strained look. “You look gorgeous. You’re gonna sweep her right off her feet.”
“God, I certainly hope so,” Mia mutters, straightening her skirts for the tenth time. “That’s the goal, after all.”
“What are you doing today?”
“I’m not sure! I believe we’re just going to see what the afternoon brings us.”
“Really? And Lana’s okay with that?”
Mia chuckles. “Yes, well, I had quite the time convincing her that we don’t need our outings planned out to the minute. She’s still unconvinced, actually. She said she’s treating this as a trial run.”
“A trial run?" Maya repeats, then laughs. “She’s really something else.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mia says, a soft smile on her lips.
Maya grabs a cork from their stash under the desk and throws it at Mia’s head. “Gross.”
Mia promptly catches the cork in one hand. She sticks her tongue out at Maya before chucking it back at her; Maya, unfortunately, is quite a bit less hand-eye coordinated than her sister, and the cork hits her in the forehead.
“Those are for the tea bottles, Maya, not for throwing at people,” Mia says cheekily. Then, she catches sight of the clock behind the front desk and her face goes pale. “Oh my god, I’m going to be late.”
Maya snorts, returning the cork to its place. Her sister is so painstakingly practical about everything when it comes to their shop, but, yet again, Lana seems to be the exception to all of Mia’s rules. It’s like her head fills with heart-shaped clouds when thinking of her, leaving room for nothing else. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mia shakes her head and checks her hair one last time, then pats down her skirts one last time, then checks her hair one last time for real, before finally heading out the door. When she opens it, the glass bells above it jingle merrily; they have an enchantment on them to chime a different tune when someone leaves than when someone enters. It’s a charming little piece of magic that Mia had come home with one day after a trip to the market, her eyes bright and sparkling.
Halfway out the door, Mia hesitates, one foot on the cobblestones, her hand lingering on the handle. She turns to look back at Maya. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” she asks, because she is someone who cannot help but worry for those she loves, especially Maya, the one person she loves more than anyone or anything in the entire wide world.
And in this case, she is right to worry, though she does not yet understand why.
Because when she closes that door, it will be the last she sees of her little sister for a very long time.
Maya waves off her sister’s concerns. “I’ll be fine, Mia. Go have a nice time with Lana - tell her I say hi!”
“I will!” Mia says, smiling back. “I’ll see you later tonight. I love you!”
“Love you too. Now go!”
And so Mia does, sweeping out the door and waving at Maya through the windows of their little shop before she disappears into the hustle and bustle of the town square, leaving Maya to mind Fey’s Teas and Spirits on her own.
The Feys in this little port town of Kurain have always run a simple little shop like this: they sell teas and herbs in the front, and they do spirit channeling in the back. The need for spirit channeling isn’t high enough for them to rely on it fully for income, so they support themselves with the tea shop for something more consistent. Maya has worked there her entire life, learning how to spirit channel from Mia after their mom left and experimenting with tea flavors in her free time. Most of her experiments were unremarkable, some disastrous, and a few surprisingly delightful.
This has been her world for her entire life: this little shop, her sister, the surrounding town. The smell of the sea coming in off the breeze, the constant cry of gulls circling over the square, flocking on the sails of docked ships. Channeling every now and then, drinking tea during the day and wine with her sister at night while they laugh over customer horror stories and dream of what might lie in cities beyond this port. It is a pleasant, quiet existence, albeit a bit boring, sometimes.
Silence falls over the shop; only broken by the muffled sounds of the village square outside, the friendly chatter and laughter of people. Maya sighs, looking out the window. She watches a gull soar in to land on the fountain in the middle of the square, fluttering its wings. A young boy throws a rock at it and misses; the gull flaps off. She wonders what it would be like to be that gull, to be able to fly off whenever she likes, over the wide expanse of sea on great white wings. She traces a little pattern into the wood of the front counter, then leans back in her chair to grab the crate of bottles and basket of corks from under the desk. She can at least be productive to pass the time.
Crate tucked under her arm, she ducks into the back room, through the gauzy curtain. They reserve this room for spirit channeling; a comfortable space filled with cushions and candles and fabrics. None of it is necessary, but it plays into the mystique. Maya thinks it would be awfully boring to channel in a kitchen or something; she likes the drama of a dark room, even if Mia thinks it’s silly and misleading.
She crosses the room and unlocks the storage, retrieving their boxes of teas and spices. They don’t really need to restock their tea bottles, but she doesn’t exactly want to sit at the front desk bored out of her mind with nothing to do, so she might as well. Making tea bottles is a relatively mindless task, anyway; just pouring tea leaves and varying spices into a bottle that a customer can easily dump into water to make themselves a cup of tea. Maybe she’ll make masala today for the chai bottles.
Maya hums, setting out the cardamom seeds, the black peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon sticks, counting and measuring, grinding in a mortar. The back room fills with the fragrance of spices, the aromas sinking into her skin and her clothes. She’s put together four bottles when the front door rings, signaling someone’s arrival.
“Just a moment!” Maya calls. She quickly washes off the spice dust and pushes through the curtains, drying her hands on her skirts. She hopes the customer will want to channel someone; nothing makes time pass faster than spirit channeling. It’s essentially sleeping, sans dreaming.
To Maya’s delight, there’s not one but two people in her shop, a girl and a boy who both look a few years younger than herself. They’re dressed like sailors: the girl has her long, thick black hair tied back with a navy bandana, and her ears are studded with gemstones and hoops. It looks like there are black feathers in her hair, though Maya can’t tell whether it’s on purpose or not. She’s wearing trousers and tall boots, a white undershirt and a pink vest patterned with pale swirls. She grins at Maya as she walks in, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear with a gloved hand.
The boy is standing behind her, tall and lanky and awkward. It feels like he’s avoiding looking at Maya, pretending to be absorbed in the jars on the shelves. His outfit is just as unassuming as he is, similar to the girl’s but in plainer, more muted colors: brown trousers, white shirt. The only pop of color is a red and blue bandana tied around his neck. Slung around his back is what appears to be a lute, or perhaps a violin - Maya doesn’t have a good view of it. He’s wearing gloves too, stark and white, and as he stands there trying his hardest to look interested in a jar of matcha powder he fidgets with the hems.
“Hey there,” Maya says brightly, pleased to be able to chat with some folks. She was worried it’d be a slow day. “How can I help you two?”
The girl leans on the counter, golden bracelets jangling on tanned skin. Her eyes are a pretty shade of green. “You’re a spirit medium, right? Like the sign says?”
Maya nods. “I am. Do you need someone channeled?”
“Sure do,” the girl says, propping her chin in her hand. Her grin looks tight and forced, but Maya is used to that kind of thing in this business; people are always uncomfortable around death and spirits, so she thinks nothing of it.
Perhaps she should’ve.
The boy glances at Maya before immediately looking away. There’s a downward curve to his mouth, a furrow to his brow; Maya wonders if they might be channeling for him.
“Okay, no problem. Have you ever had someone channeled before?” Maya asks, focusing back on the girl.
The girl shakes her head, her earrings swinging. “No, but you just…talk to the dead, right?”
“Kind of! It’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s more like…the person you want to channel uses my body as a vessel, and you get to talk to them directly,” Maya explains. “So less of me talking to the dead, and more like you talking to the dead through me!”
“Oh. Okay.” The girl glances at the boy behind her. There’s a strange look on her face and Maya gets the distinct and peculiar feeling that she just said the wrong thing. She shakes off the feeling best she can and holds out her hand.
“I’m Maya Fey, by the way.”
The girl takes her hand and gives it a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Miss Maya!” she says, that weird look vanishing so quickly that Maya convinces herself that she’s just imagined it. The girl doesn’t offer her own name, nor does the boy. Maya doesn’t ask; some people prefer to stay anonymous at these kinds of things. It’s happened before.
“You can just call me Maya,” Maya says, smiling. “No miss required.”
“Yeah, I s’pose so, but Miss Maya the spirit channeler sounds a lot cooler than just Maya.”
Maya hums. “Huh. You know, I think you’re right, actually. It adds to the mystique, doesn’t it?”
The girl grins. “Exactly!”
The boy, then, clears his throat. He doesn’t say anything, but when the girl turns to look at him, he gives the clock a very pointed glance, so pointed, in fact, that Maya wonders if it was supposed to be subtle. Are they on a time crunch or something? She thinks it’s a little odd to request a channeling if you have somewhere to be, but it’s not her place to judge people on their time management.
(At least, not while she’s with customers. She’ll gossip about them to Mia later.)
“Well,” Maya says, clapping her hands together, “if you’re ready, we can go ahead and get started?”
“Sure,” the girl replies. “You just…channel out here?”
“Oh, no, no, we’ll head to the back. It’s much more comfortable to channel back there than in the middle of the shop, and we’ll get some privacy as well. You can follow me.” Maya sets out a sign on the desk that reads Gone Channelin’! before waving the two through the gauzy curtain to the backroom. “Careful, the doorframe is kind of low. You’re probably going to have to duck.”
She says this a bit too late, and she hears a soft thump behind her.
“ Ow ,” the boy hisses, and the girl snorts behind her hand.
Maya leaves the two to look around the back room as she goes about lighting candles, subtly pushing the box of spices she’d accidentally left on the side table into a corner. She notices the girl brushing her hand over some of the draping fabric on the wall, pushing it aside like it might have a window behind it (which it doesn’t). The boy stands perfectly still in front of the doorway, arms crossed tight across his chest.
“So…which one of you am I channeling for?” Maya asks, striking a new match. “Or am I channeling for both?”
“No, just me,” the girl says. She jabs a thumb over her shoulder at the boy. “That’s my brother. He’s just here for emotional support and stuff.”
Brother? Maya thinks. The two look nothing alike; the girl’s skin too tanned, the boy’s too pale, their eyes and hair different colors. She supposes they might be adopted siblings, or perhaps their genetics are just odd. Again, not her place to judge.
(She’s not very good at the whole not judging thing that comes with this line of work.)
Maya carefully lights the final candle, catching the way the boy’s eyes follow the match’s flame. She extinguishes it with a quick flick of her wrist. “Do you want to be with us while we channel?” she asks him.
The boy blinks, looking startled that she even addressed him. “Um…if that’s okay,” he says slowly, fidgeting with his gloves.
“Oh, yeah, we have other people sit in all the time! It’s all up to you guys and what you’re comfortable with,” Maya says, taking her place kneeling on the cushion in the center of the room. The fabric of it is slightly worn from continued use; they should probably get a new one sometime soon. “You can take a seat if you want, or you can stay standing.”
The girl complies, plopping down on one of the cushions before Maya. The boy remains standing, tucking himself into a corner. His index finger tap tap taps nervously at the crook of his elbow, and when Maya looks over at him, he quickly averts his gaze.
“Oh, should I kneel?” the girl asks, pulling Maya’s attention away.
“If you want to. Again, it’s all about what you’re comfortable with,” Maya replies, watching the boy out of the corner of her eye. These two seem especially nervous. People are usually nervous when they experience a channeling for the first time, but there’s something odd about the way these two are acting. Something more than just nerves.
It’s almost like they don’t actually want to be here at all.
Maybe they’re just hesitant about this whole thing, Maya decides. They probably don’t know what to expect. That’s normal, right?
She can hear her sister’s voice in her head. Just do your job, Maya.
“What’s the name of the person you’d like to channel?” she asks the girl.
“Byrne Faraday,” the girl replies promptly. The boy glances at her out of the corner of his eye, eyebrows raising. She doesn’t turn to look at him, her eyes trained on Maya.
“Byrne Faraday,” Maya repeats. She doesn’t ask if there’s a relation, or the reason for channeling. Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, and it’s not really her business, anyway. “Now, I should warn you. Sometimes, with spirits, if they’ve passed on, I won’t be able to reach them,” she says, folding her hands in her lap. “Or sometimes spirits don’t want to be channeled. If that does happen, you won’t have to pay me or anything, since I wasn’t able to channel them. Because of that, we’ll talk about payment afterwards. Sound good?”
“Got it,” the girl says, and her tone borders on impatient. Again, like they’re on a time limit.
“Okay, well…any questions before we get started, then?”
“Um…I don’t think so! You can just do your magic.”
“Alright. It’ll be a little while before I can find the spirit you’re looking for, but you’ll be able to tell once I’ve channeled them.” Maya smiles at the girl, trying for reassuring. “Ready?”
The girl nods. “As I’ll ever be.”
It sounds more ominous than Maya would like it to, but she nods back and readies herself.
The art of spirit channeling requires one to push their own soul aside to make room for another, to let a spirit slip in and momentarily take control. Not just anyone can do it, either. Only those with Fey blood are able to channel, which makes their talent unique and terribly rare. It’s a special kind of magic restricted to Maya’s family alone.
Maya closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
And here is where it begins.
It starts with a whistle, and at first it’s little more than an exhalation of breath, so quiet that Maya doesn’t hear it right away. It’s a gentle, lilting melody, repeating in on itself and though the sound is soft it seems to fill the entire room. Maya’s eyes flicker open - she hasn’t even reached out to contact the spirit yet - but when she moves to look up, she finds it’s hard to lift her chin, like she’s stuck in a fog.
It’s the boy. He’s the one whistling. He isn’t looking at Maya, he’s looking at the floor with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, hands tucked into his armpits. The girl sitting before Maya has her hands over her ears, a sad, complicated expression on her face that Maya doesn’t have time to dissect because suddenly her vision is growing unfocused and blurry.
“What are you-“ Maya begins, but her words slur and her mind feels hazy and strange.
The boy continues to whistle that slow and lilting tune, and Maya lurches to the side, barely catching herself on her elbows, slipping on cushions. She can barely keep her eyes open; she’s actively fighting to stay awake. She looks up at the girl, trying to force her mouth to form words, trying to will her body to move . The boy closes his eyes, but he does not stop.
The girl watches this struggle but she makes no move to help. She just kneels there, hands over her ears and there is something like regret held there in her pretty green eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she says softly, though Maya barely registers it because she’s slipping into unconsciousness.
She is asleep before she hits the floor, and she dreams of gulls, freewheeling over the sea, and when they call they are crying her name in her sister’s voice.
And then there is the sound like the string of a violin snapping, and Maya wakes with a gasp. Her first instinct is to lurch forward, but the movement causes a brief, cutting pain in her wrists from the shackles that bind them together. The chains clank and drag, heavy, and she follows the links with her fingers until she reaches a wall. She’s chained to a wall. She blinks rapidly to clear her vision, shaking her head to dispel the cotton in her brain but it does very little to help.
Maya sucks in a breath, trying to calm the frantic beating of her heart. She doesn’t know how she got here. She doesn’t even know where here is; though her eyes are open her vision is blurry, as if the haze of sleep refuses to leave. The room she’s in is dim, the only source of light too distant to extend to Maya so she can examine her surroundings. All she knows is that she is chained to a wall in an unfamiliar place. Her hair is undone, and it runs rivers down her shoulders and back, sweeping into her eyes and her chains jangle when she moves to brush her bangs away. She’s still wearing the same skirts, the texture of the well-worn fabric familiar and strangely comforting, though her shirt is stiff with sweat.
She reaches out with unsteady, nervous hands. She is resting on a cot, and when she wills her sluggish limbs to move and she manages to swing her legs over the cot’s edge, her feet hit wooden floorboards. There is a smell like salt in the air, a smell she grew up with, but it’s different, somehow. This is not the salty air of a port town.
Maya blinks again a few times. Her vision is slowly clearing, adjusting to this new place she’s in, and it’s then that the realization hits her, sudden and unkind, that she is not alone in this room.
As she lifts her head there is a soft fizzle, a hiss and a spark, and then a lantern is lit and raised. Light floods the room, revealing two figures standing before Maya, and a third, holding a lute, slipping out a door. The person holding the lantern is a tall, broad giant of a man, with a scar on his jaw and messy black hair. His white undershirt is wrinkled, haphazardly tucked into black trousers and he has on a tattered olive-green vest that looks like it’s seen better days. His dark-eyed gaze flickers between Maya and the second person in the room, and once Maya looks at her, she cannot find it in her to look away.
For the second person standing before her is a woman, and she is unlike any woman Maya has ever seen before in her life.
She stands there in fitted trousers and black leather boots that reach halfway up her calves, her features dagger-sharp and cast into vicious shadows by the lantern light. She has on a loose white shirt cinched at the wrists, her arms crossed firmly over a patterned vest, though it is too dark to make out the pattern. Thrown over her shoulders is a long, dark blue coat, the kind with shiny black buttons that glitter like dark gemstones, and on her belt she holsters two weapons: one, a leather bullwhip with silver in its handle, and the other a sword made from black metal inlaid with gold. Her hair is silvery-blue, cut close to her jaw, and her eyes are the color of storm clouds over the sea.
The heels of her boots clack on the wood floor as she strides forward towards Maya; she has a demanding step, a demanding presence. Maya cannot help but look at her with a mixture of awe and fear, this woman who captured her for reasons unknown.
When the woman speaks, she does not deign to crouch down to look Maya in the eye. She remains towering over her, staring down unblinking and fierce like a creature wild. She has a beauty mark under her left eye.
“Are you the one who can speak to the dead?” The woman asks, and her voice is as sharp as her gaze, cutting Maya down through flesh and through bone.
Maya stares at her. She opens her mouth, fishlike, and closes it. Words escape her in this moment, as this terrifyingly beautiful woman stands before her in a dark feathered cap. She realizes, then, staring up at this woman, why the salty air is different here. She realizes then that it’s because it’s stronger, like the breeze off the coast carrying with it salt and spray. She realizes then that the floor beneath her is swaying to and fro, gentle, but there.
She realizes, then, that she is on a ship.
The woman unsheathes her sword. The sound of it, the quicksilver shing, rings loud in this space. The blade is curved and wicked, dark as night, but Maya barely has time to focus on it before the woman catches the chain dangling between Maya’s shackles on the sword’s curve and drags her half-standing upwards so their faces are much, much closer than before.
“I do not like to waste time repeating myself,” the woman says harshly, her pupils blown wide in the dark like a cat after prey. “And I would advise, when you answer, to tell me the truth. Only the foolish think it smart to lie, and I am not merciful to fools.”
“Captain,” says the man holding the lantern, and there is anxiety knotted in his voice.
The woman tilts her head. “Yes, Scruffy?”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little…”
“A little what? ”
The man swallows. “You’re…you’re threatening her.”
“I’m not threatening anyone,” the woman replies, though her stormy gaze never leaves Maya’s face. “I’m stating a fact. If she lies to me, I will kill her.”
The man frowns at that, and Maya feels fear sluice down her back like a bolt of frozen lightning, arcing through her veins. Her thighs ache from holding herself up in such a position, though she wills herself not to shake. It is something defiant in Maya that does not want to give this woman, her captor, the satisfaction of seeing her tremble.
The woman searches Maya’s face. Her eyebrows, arched and perfect, raise. And then she tilts her sword upward, the steel screeching against the chains and presses the very tip into the underside of Maya’s jaw, not nearly hard enough to hurt, but that’s not the point of it. Maya fights the urge to close her eyes, meeting the woman’s gaze as they are, because even though she does not know where she is or what she’s here for, she is not the kind of woman who buckles easily at the hands of others.
“Captain,” the man says quietly, insistently. The anxiety in his voice has turned to something else.
The woman’s eyes dart over Maya’s face one more time, her jaw clenched. And then, she straightens, and when she pulls back her sword she does it slowly, so Maya has time to slide back to the ground. Maya watches as she twirls the sword in her hand before sheathing it, and then she crouches down to Maya’s level.
“I will only ask one more time,” the woman says, and she speaks with a calm that sounds forced. “Are you the one who can speak to the dead?”
After a long stretch of silence, Maya nods. “I channel them,” she whispers.
The woman raises her slim brows. “You channel them.”
“Y-yes. It’s like…the spirit comes in and takes over my body. And you can talk to them directly.”
“Directly.” The woman tilts her head. “Interesting.”
“Is that…good?” the man holding the lantern asks.
“It’s perfect, Scruffy. An unexpectedly perfect development.” The woman’s eyes dart across Maya’s face once more, a shadow of a smile playing across her lips. “Run up and tell Gavin that we’ll be leaving as soon as possible. Chart a course.”
“Leaving, sir?”
The woman’s eyebrow twitches. She whirls around, and the man flinches at the look on her face. “Are you questioning me?” She asks, and though her voice is collected there is a vein of danger running through it. The man tenses.
“N-no, sir. I’m not, sir, we just…we said earlier-“
“And I am saying now,” the woman says sharply, “to tell Gavin we’re leaving. Is that clear?”
The man frowns, looking down at Maya, then back at the woman. “Yessir,” he says, and then darts off, leaving the lantern hanging on a hook by the door. As he opens the door, Maya catches a glimpse of stairs, surely leading up to the deck before the door slams shut and they are alone once more, she and this strange, terrifying woman.
The woman straightens. Maya flinches at the sudden movement, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“A boy will be down with food when it is time,” the woman says. “Feel free to sleep on the cot, or the floor. I don’t particularly care, but we have provided you with a blanket and pillow for your comfort. I will leave the lantern with you so you may have light to see by, but it will stay on the hook by the door. I do not trust you yet to not burn down my ship. Is that all clear?”
Maya blinks up at her owlishly, which the woman seems to take as a yes. She turns on her heel without another word.
“W-wait,” Maya says frantically, finally finding her words as her heart flutters like a dying bird in her chest. “Who…who are you?”
The woman looks over her shoulder at Maya. Her eyes look like they’re glowing in the dim lantern light. “My name is Franziska von Karma,” she says cooly, “and I am the captain of this ship.”
And then she strides out of the room, the heels of her boots thump-thumping against the floor and up the stairs, until they are gone entirely, leaving Maya completely and utterly alone.