They moved out onto the main deck. Ahead, a merchant ship tacked across from port to starboard, the kind of ship that often brought immigrants and indentured servants to the colonies.
       Crow turned to Jason. "Your sextant, your charts. Would this ship have them?"
       Jason felt the tension coil in Mora's body as she pulled up short next to him. His mouth went dry, but the invisible rings at his throat and hands wrung the truth from him. "Likely."
       Crow nodded to Malak, who turned and bellowed orders. The crew, already wired from the sighting, leaped into action, tucking away games or nets, trimming sail, moving to assigned stations. Crow narrowed his eyes at Mora. She looked up to the sky, her face drawn tight.
       The wind shifted, coming around to an angle that fit snugly into the waiting sails. The ship surged forward.
       Jason eyed the merchant ship ahead, expecting it to tack to port with the wind shift, but it did not. The sea between the two ships grew choppy with cross-currents, and with a start, Jason realized they were running on their own wind, contrary to the air in the merchant ship's sails. He looked down at Mora with blotchy red patches rising in her cheeks. Mora's wind.
       Crow wrapped steely fingers around Mora's arm, yanking her close. "Destroy it. Keep the charts."
       Mora looked up, startled. The wind faltered. "What? There are families on that ship. Children."
       "I told you what to do," Crow growled, ruddy heat rising in his cheeks.
       Mora stepped back, heedless. "But why? They are women and children. Look at the ship, not even a cannon to-"
       Crow slapped her face, his grip on her arm bringing her up short as she tried to stumble away.
       Jason took a step forward before he could formulate a thought about what to do.
       Crow laughed a sharp sound. "Move away, sailor." He sounded like he was enjoying himself.
       And Jason found himself obeying, the power that compelled him tight around his throat. His feet moved him back beyond arm's length, Jason seething with every step.
       Mora gritted her teeth. "You swore no children would suffer by my hand. There were children on the last ship. And on this one too."
       "You swore to obey me. Yet you saved this man." Crow pointed to Jason, saw Jason try to respond. "Hold your tongue!"
       Mora ducked her head, her face concealed by her hair. Her voice shook. "I did what you asked. I did not save him; he was lucky." Her fingers twitched, and a wave whipped up to circle Jason's head with a ribbon of water. "Shall I drown him now for you since it sticks in your craw so much that he lives?"
       Jason found himself speared again by Crow's steely gray stare. Mora glanced up at Crow, her eyes flashing like the tips of spears. Jason sucked in a breath and reminded himself that it was only a death delayed and one that he deserved.
       Finally, Crow waved her off. "No," he hissed through clenched teeth. "He holds value, and you know it."
       The ribbon of water splashed to the deck.
       Crow lifted his chin. "Malak! Bring the iron."
       Mora's eyes grew wide. "What are you doing?"
       The captain reached across for her other arm and used both hands to pull her to her knees. He clawed the shift from her left shoulder.
       Malak loped over, barefoot and bare-chested as usual. He held a short iron bar the length of his arm in one hand. Rust bloomed in small patches along its length where the sea air had kissed it.
       Crow grabbed the bar and, without pause, drove the end into Mora's shoulder, into the muscle that connected shoulder and neck.
       The reaction was instant. Mora tensed in shock and screamed. The wound bubbled and hissed as if the end seared her skin, yet Crow held the bar in his bare hand. The ocean between the two ships thrashed as if a feeding frenzy took place just beneath the water.
       Jason tried to come to her aid, tried to shriek his fury at Crow, but the harder he tried, the more the burning at his throat and wrists sapped his strength. His body was not his to command. The invisible iron squeezed tighter until his fingers tingled and his vision faded. He sagged to his knees.
       Mora fumbled for the iron bar with her left hand, but where her fingers brushed the metal, they too blistered. Her movement faltered and then stopped.
       The ocean fell flat, smooth as glass. They were close enough now to the hapless merchant ship that Jason could hear cries of panic across the water.
       Crow twisted the iron, pushing against her shoulder. "Will you obey me now, bitch?"
       "Yes." Mora's voice was as flat as the water around them.
       Crow grinned, a rictus of victory. He yanked the iron lose. Skin clung to the bar and smoke curled from the half-inch that had burned its way into her shoulder. Jason's stomach turned. Mora's head hung low, every angle of her body defeated.
       The captain nodded to Malak, who dumped a skin of water on her shoulder. The wound hissed. Mora stiffened but did not cry out. The smell of scorched salt wafted to Jason. Malak dumped another wash of water over the wound, and when the water washed away, the wound was gone, closed.
       Mora raised her hand to the other ship, which had tacked around in a futile attempt to escape. She lifted her head, her blue eyes as dead and flat as the sea. Water climbed the merchant ship's sides. With a great rending crack, the ship was torn apart, leaving chunks of hull and barrels bobbing -- and screaming, crying people clinging to the pieces.
       Crow glared down at Mora.
       She kept her gaze pinned to the horizon. "You said to destroy the ship, and I have."
       Crow grunted, the flash of ironic humor on his lips almost hidden by his beard. "Very well. Then bring me the charts and the tools your young sailor desires."
       Thrashing in the water brought Jason's attention back to the wreckage. A wave swelled from its midst and headed straight for them. It rose up at last and dumped at Crow's feet a cylinder case and a larger square box, both of oiled leather designed to keep moisture at bay.
       Mora ducked her right shoulder out from Crow's grasp. She climbed to her feet and turned to see Jason still on his knees, paralyzed by his inability to act. She pushed past Malak and then Jason, headed for the captain's quarters. Her fingers paused on Jason's shoulder as she passed, a hidden touch that tore him apart more than hearing her scream.
       Crow threw his head back and laughed, laughed until the door to his cabin closed with a dull thud. No one else stirred.
       The wind picked up with a snap of sail and line, and the ship lurched forward. Crow stopped laughing. His eyes were cold and humorless when he nodded to Malak. "Fire the wreckage. All of it."
       Malak grinned.

       Jason was back to overnight scrubbing duty. He didn't know if it was permanent or something to make him do while they decided what to do to him. Or worse, while they decided what to do to Mora.
       His gaze strayed again to the aft of the ship, to the captain's cabin. He forced it away. He had no way of helping her. He could barely piss without permission. His knuckles scraped along the deck, and he realized he was pressing too hard against the stiff-bristled brush. He tried to stop and rest his aching back and shoulders, but the invisible bonds that held him flared to life, choking any hope of resistance out of his head. It wasn't Phibbs who had ordered him to scrub this time; it was Crow. He mentally thrashed against the compulsion until black spots crowded the edge of his vision.
       It was useless.
       A ghostly shadow flickered past the edge of his vision. He looked up to find Mora back at the gunwale, her black hair glinting with blue and her shift glowing in the moonlight. She looked like a siren, searching for sailors to lead to their doom.
       He snorted. Of course, she looked like a siren -- that was practically what she was.
       She glanced over her shoulder at the sound. The wild spark was gone from her eyes, and Jason felt the loss.
       He craned his neck to see if he could catch sight of Phibbs, and seeing no one to notice him, he scooted his bucket closer so that he was nearly scrubbing over her feet. "Is it your magic he uses to bind us?"
       Mora kept her face outward, to the sea, and answered in a pitch meant for his ears only. "No."
       That surprised him but left only one other way to trap her that he could think of. "How long was it before you drank?"
       Mora laughed, a low bitter sound. "He uses different bonds to hold me." She scanned the deck behind him and turned back to the sea, resting her arms on the rail. "We were trapped in a storm, my daughter and I. A storm of my father's making, and I could not fight it. She was too young, and I spent too much of myself protecting her."
       A look of triumph flashed across her face, a small, faded thing. "He didn't like my choice in husband, a mortal far beyond his reach, and his rage threatened to kill us both. But we lived." The triumph faded, replaced by a sadness deeper than the ocean itself. "I was too weak. We were taken by Crow. He knew much about my kind. I don't know where he acquired such knowledge. He killed my daughter. He bound me in iron."
       She flashed her ankle, angry and red, around the cuff and then turned back to the sea. "I died many times before he managed to bind my will to him. Each time, the sea brought me back. Even now, my daughter would be reborn in the sea, and I will not leave without her. He uses her bones to control you. He steeps them in barrels of spring water and serves it to you in his little ceremony."
       Jason clenched his jaw at the thought of having swallowed water imbued with the remains of a little girl. And still, he scrubbed relentlessly, driven by the unbreakable command the magic had set within him.
       Mora's fingers settled on his shoulder, a touch so light it sent a shiver down his spine. "You can break the bonds. I see that you have it in you."
       Jason tried again to stop scrubbing until his vision darkened to where he could not see the brush in his hands.
       Mora knelt down and placed her hands on his. His fingers tingled at her touch. Only then was he able to stop. He met her gaze, knowing the defeat he felt would be visible there. "I'm a slave, Mora. With far less power than you."
       "You fight the wrong way." Mora's touch moved to his wrists. "You try to overwhelm the bonds, to move past them. You need to break them."
       Jason shook his head. "I'm not like you."
       Mora pulled him up so that they stood face to face. Jason had to tilt his head down to see her. She set her mouth tightly. "You are like me! That's what I sense in you." She grasped his arms. "You can break the bonds, Jason; I know you can."
       Jason tried to pull away. Even with her touch to override the compulsion, his fingers itched for the brush. He shook his head.
       Soft amusement filled her eyes. "You know so little about who you are." She ran her hands up his arms until they found the back of his neck.
       He felt the warmth of her palm like a crack of lightning to the base of his skull. He gasped, the air he needed as he saw the amusement in her gaze melt into desire. His hands found her back and pulled her close. She bent his head to hers, their lips brushing together.
       "Mora. . ."
       Her hand tightened on his neck, and she turned her face quickly to the side, her breath hot against his ear. "Free my daughter, and you free me," she whispered and then planted her lips firmly against his. A jolt of heat arched from his chest through his belly and to his groin.
       A fist crashed against his ear. Bright light flashed behind his eyes, momentarily blinding him. He felt Mora yanked away from him. He fell to the deck. A heavy boot kicked him, catching him in the ribs. He curled into a ball, but rough hands grabbed his arms and feet, drawing him straight. The kick that came this time definitely broke ribs, and he howled in response.
       Crow's face emerged from the black stars blinding him. It leered over him. The captain's lips were peeled back in a terrifying grimace that made him look skeletal in the moonlight. He drew back his fist, and when it landed against the side of Jason's head, he knew nothing more.

       Jason woke and immediately choked on the awful liquid in his mouth and nose. Every cough to expel the foul brackish water echoed as a sharp pain in his left side, causing his breath to come short. He thrashed to his side, managed to grasp hold of some kind of leverage, and pulled himself to a sitting position. The fire in his side would not let him sit straight. More thrashing, and he finally found enough leverage to lean in a position that wasn't pure agony with every breath.
       He sat in a cage. He was braced in a corner of the bars, his back against one side and his forehead propped against the adjoining side, the only angle he could find that let him breathe.
       Jason lifted his head and found Captain Crow watching him from outside the cage. He held a lantern with smoked glass that cast a guttering orange light in the space around them. Sharply curved walls, filthy water that sloshed side to side with the ship's rhythm -- they were in the bilge, the bottom-most hold. The lantern light touched a jumble of crates and barrels that held the cage in place, which sat in the middle of the deck. Boxes of rocks, most likely -- ballast.
       Crow's gray stare regarded him from the other side of the bars, patiently waiting for Jason to gain his bearings. His eyes picked up the dim flame from the lantern as if he carried the fires of Hell within him but banked for the night.
       Crow shifted his weight when he saw that Jason was paying attention. His feet sent ripples through the inch of water that sloshed through the hold. "I'm disappointed in you. You shouldn't have touched her."
       "I didn't--"
       "Shut up."
       The invisible iron at Jason's throat flared, and his mouth closed with a snap.
       "I don't know how she did it, but she found a crack in my commands." Crow narrowed his eyes at Jason as if still trying to divine what had happened. "You're just fortunate I saw it before it went too deep. I would've had to kill you, then. I'll leave you to think on that this night and day while you stay in this cage." The words rang with a command that sank into Jason's bonds.
       Crow nodded behind him. Jason could barely make out a path through the cargo, a path that ended at the stairs out of the hold and a single barrel, stored alone against the aft wall right at the bottom of the stairs. "Tomorrow, you will face the choice again. Drink or die. I won't offer twice." Crow leaned in close, the bars pressing into his forehead. "Don't touch what is mine."
       Jason's throat constricted, but he couldn't make his voice respond. The captain, satisfied that his command held, turned and walked away.
       Jason tried to scream his fury at the retreating back. But he couldn't make his mouth work until Crow's boot left the last step up, and the hold's hatch fell closed, sending him into impenetrable darkness.
       "She's not yours."

       Jason lost all sense of time. His head still rang from Crow's fists. Every breath was an agony. He feared real damage from the last kick, the kind of damage that had once killed a crewman on the Ruby when a boom had caught the man in the chest, leaving him gasping until his lips turned blue and he died.
       In between breaths, Jason administered his own mental beating. How could he be so stupid? The one thing they told him to stay away from, he had run right to. Mora. He'd felt sorry for her. Let her use him, for certainly, he had ended up here because this was where she wanted him to be. Had it all been a trap? From the moment the air bubble had been there on the Ruby?
       He had never sensed malice from her -- had he been that blind? And to what purpose? She had to have known if they were caught, he'd end up in the brig--
       His hand tightened on the bar he was using to prop himself up. She had to have known. Known that he'd end up here.
       He uses her bones to control you. He steeps them in barrels of spring water and serves it to you in his little ceremony.
       Even though Jason couldn't see his own hand in front of his face, he raised his gaze to the aft wall and the single barrel there.
       Free my daughter, and you free me.
       He pulled on the bar to lever himself to his knees. His head and ribs howled in response, and he found himself back in his curled-up lean, propped up by the corner of his cage. He'd be lucky to live through the night, let alone do anything resembling heroics.
       A cross-wave slapped against the hull, and a ripple of colder water swirled against Jason's right leg.
       Wonderful. And the water down here was an active leak. Which would come first, suffocating from his constricted breath or drowning from a flooded hold?
       Something else Mora had said came back to him. Something he had not had time to absorb in the rush of everything that had happened this night. I died many times before he managed to bind my will to him. Each time, the sea brought me back. Just like it had washed away the burns from the iron bar.
       The hull wasn't leaking -- the ship would not take on water unless Mora willed it, he was suddenly certain. She controlled all of the seas around her; there was no way the hull just leaked. And that cold rush -- she was circulating the bilge he sat in, refreshing it but keeping it just below the threshold of annoying so that Crow dismissed it.
       Jason scooped his right hand in the shallow water best he could and splashed it up against his side, where it felt most like a brand was stuck there.
       Nothing happened.
       He wanted to rage against the frustration but knew it was useless. His breath wheezed as he fought to control it. How long before his lips turned blue?
       He dipped his hand in the water again, and this time focused on reaching into the water, dipping his mind into its depths. He tried to reach in the same way he mentally dipped into the readings and calculations that went into mapping a ship's position.
       The iron at his wrists and neck lit up, burning him. His cupped hand spasmed, splashing water in the creaking, sloshing dark.
       He pressed his right hand to his throat. She'd said something about that too -- that he was fighting it wrong. He was spending too much energy trying to fight around the bonds instead of trying to break the bonds directly.
       That made a kind of sense to him, but he wasn't sure what to do with that information. He had to fight to something prohibitive in order for the bonds to fight back. He slowed his breath as best he could when his ribs prevented him from breathing deeply. He tried to think about the problem the way that Mora would, even as his head ached already. She had a barrister's mind that poked and prodded at every gap in logic. He wasn't at his best for that kind of thinking at the moment.
       Crow's orders binding him were clear: always tell the truth. Never take what was his. Never harm him in any way. Jason stiffened in surprise. Had Crow never ordered him not to break the bonds? Truly? He cast his mind back -- it had only been two nights, or possibly three, that he'd been on this hell-ship. He was getting fuzzy on the details already.
       But he felt a sudden certainty. Crow had never ordered him to not break the bond. The captain had never had to worry about that because he'd never caught anyone for whom that was even a possibility.
       And Jason's own life unrolled itself in front of him, spurred by Mora's certainty that he did not know himself. His mother, a seamstress. His father lost at sea, she'd said. She of the same ashy chestnut hair and pale skin of the Welsh who lived above the dairy fields and docks along the Thames in London. And Jason, so unlike them. Sandy blond hair, a head taller than the next tallest lad, skin the sun could only toast and never burn. And always, the call of the sea.
       Jason shook the memories from his mind. He dipped his hands in the few inches of water around him, pressing down to cover as much of his wrists as he could. He focused on where the rings of heat sprang to life every time he tried to disobey or resist Crow's orders. He pictured clean ocean water -- sticky, salty, deep blue ocean water -- sweeping across his wrists to wash the heat away.
       They immediately bit into his wrists, but it was definitely different. Wavering or held by a rhythm of their own. He reached for the fever dreams of his first night on the Storm Tamer, the night he'd felt like his head had expanded to include all of the sea and all the things that lived within. The ceaseless motion of it, all the currents and cross-currents moving at odds to one another and yet all in a harmony he could feel in his bones, even if he could not quite hear it. The invisible rings flared again, lighting up at wrists and throat, but he could feel the waver in them even more strongly. He timed the rhythm, rocked with it in his head, and when it ebbed again, he pressed, pulling on the ocean waves that he could feel in his bones. The rings guttered out.
       Jason's left ankle hissed to life. He had his leg bent to help prop himself up and protect his ribs. He ran his right hand carefully along his calf to find what new injury awaited. His fingers brushed the iron cuff at his leg. They immediately blistered as if the cuff were straight off the forge. He yelped and pulled his hand away. The cuff itself continued to hiss and bubble and burn -- oh, it burned! And his left hand joined the chorus of agony as if someone was pressing a brand into his palm where he held on to the bars of his cage.
       He tried to gasp, an ill-advised move. His left side spasmed. He lost his grip on the bar that held him up. His foot slid out from its position, and he found himself slumped down as far as the space afforded to him by the cage allowed. All the screaming parts of his body ended up in the bilge water, and except for what felt like a tightening ring of molten metal at his left ankle, the water immediately silenced everything. His left palm. The fingers on his right hand.
       His head was still propped up by the bars, as the cage was not wide enough to let him lie down flat, but his hair seemed to serve as a protective layer, as best he could guess.
       As he lay in the slimy bilge, trying to catch his breath without catching his ribs, another wave of cool water brushed against his right side. And it sank in what had just happened.
       I broke the bond. But whatever sea-faery blood my father bore, I woke that. The actual iron at his ankle. The iron bars of the cage. Jason spread the fingers of his right hand wide, felt the fresh ocean water curl itself around his hand. He eased himself into the rhythm of the ship, the flex, and pulse of the great ocean that held this tiny ship of men. He waited for the next rolling wave to ebb, and pushed with his mind, pushed out through his hand.
       The water lit up, an icy blue spark that arced and spread. It sent pale blue lightning bolts into the cracks and crevices and spaces between the ballast crates. It lit up the aisle in front of him and darted with unerring intent to the lone barrel at its end.
       His fingers tingled. The light sparkled in response as if millions of krill had invaded the space and fluoresced all at once.
       And he felt the power of it. The whole of the ocean's energy, available to him if he wanted it. He directed it to the sharp pangs in his ribs, to the ache in his head and the ringing in his ears. The pain immediately dissolved; the ringing fell silent. He sent it to the molten band around his ankle -- and that faded for a moment but returned in force. He could not budge it.
       Iron.
       It didn't matter. Refreshed, renewed, healed, brimming with the power of the sea, Jason climbed to his feet. He put his hands on the cage door to lift it off its hinges, toss it to the side like a piece of driftwood, and free Mora's daughter.
       His hands sizzled when they met the bars. The pain broke his concentration, and the icy blue light that lit the hold faltered and went out.
       Iron bars. An iron cage.
       He was trapped.