The Pit, Port Pelagie, Fleet Territory

  Late-Dry Season, Year 17

  "Oh, are these our cute new hands?” a tall woman asked, grinning down at us. She was built like a statue you'd see in a fountain or garden full of shit you can't eat: a distracting face, almost glowing white under the sun, and absolutely carved with muscle.

  She looked down at Seiwuai at least, who she was towering over by a head despite bending at the waist to meet her. I came up to somewhere around her shoulders so not quite as easy to loom over, but she’d spotted us pretty much as soon as we crested the hill to this random piece of coastline.

  The trip here had taken us almost two weeks, meaning I’d actually spent longer travelling after training than all of my time as a Trainee. Part of that was the roundabout route we sailed to drop off the other recruits at their Flotillas.

  One of the Flotillas had oars instead of sails, with everyone in sight the size and shape of a small bar. Another one was completely silent, all the members we saw communicating through hand gestures. And another one banned alcohol - completely.

  So as suspect as this colourful band of individuals seemed right now, there were definitely worse places to end up.

  Our dispatch ship had sailed into a calm bay in a crescent of islands, a series of giant mountains on the largest one I immediately decided on as a landmark. They dumped us in the middle of a few hundred ships and a couple dozen islands, with more people I could guess at moving around between them. I was pretty sure there were more people outside here than lived on all of Wetherington, something that had me cautiously watching everybody who got within thirty paces.

  Some very stressed looking folks took about twenty seconds to look at us before they pointed us to a rowboat and told us to pound sand. I mean, they didn't actually tell us that, but that was the message. We got handed metal coins which would prove who we were and told where to find our squad, who were somewhere in this massive pseudo-city sprawl they called a Flotilla. That ‘somewhere’ turned out to be near the eastern edge of the sprawl, idling on the rocky beach of one of the larger islands.

  Or strictly speaking, just off of it, as half of them were sitting on a big rock out in the water.

  “I’m not small, you’re just huge,” Seiwuai pouted.

  “They’re not just cute, they've got personality!” the woman chirped. She gave me a…less thorough look over than Seiwuai, smiling like she knew something we didn't. “But I’m not just huge.”

  “You’re, uh, a little close,” I said, leaning away from the ample bosom threatening to take my head off if she even thought about turning left. She was dressed in the standard issue jumpsuit, slightly oversized from the loose fit, and a simple pair of thong sandals. She had a ponytail that'd give me a decent fight for size and weight, brown with sections dyed more red by the sun, and the whole thing securely held together by a half dozen belts. There was a band of dark green around her neck - her Scab, a thick band of seaweed braided into a choker.

  Right. Seaman. That more than anything brought home where I was. Here, Scabs weren't a crippling ailment. They were just another thing to style.

  “Yeah, lay off, Elia,” another woman’s voice called. I glanced over to see a tan freckled blonde oiling a bow taller than her, pausing briefly to throw us an appraising look. She was dressed in some sort of casual version of the uniform, with sleeves folded up past her elbows, and a sleeveless scale-patterned vest on too. There was a second layer of red seaweed under her hair, flashing streaks as she shifted her head, tied into a bun behind her. “Kid looks like he’ll have a stroke if a woman so much as breathes on him.”

  I exhaled loudly through my nose. “Sorry, I didn’t realize this was the cunt conference,” I said, earning me a glare - a pair of glares, as Seiwuai joined in - and a loud bark of laughter from a bald man on the rock. “We were told to report to a ‘Remus’.”

  “Squad leader’s over there,” the tall woman - Elia - said, straightening up and pointing a thumb over her shoulder. We leaned around her to look at the rock, spotting a dark bald man with a hook nose sitting on the least comfortable looking rock I'd ever seen. The whole goddamn thing was sharp edges, except the sides which were wet sharp edges.

  Baldie was polishing his axe - and that’s not a metaphor, he was carefully oiling down a weapon the length of my forearm- that actually sounds worse. It was the person beside him that Elia was pointing to, though, a beautiful woman lying in a pool of midnight hair. A white cloth was draped over the top third of her face, the top half of their jumpsuit open to reveal white cotton. “Oi, mate! We’ve got company!”

  “I heard,” the man under the cloth called, waving a hand for us to approach. Glad I caught that early.

  Elia stepped to the side, gesturing for us to go by with a wink. “Keep hold of your draws,” she said cheerily. “They tend to go missing around the mate.”

  “I don’t appreciate that kind of character assassination,” Remus yelled as we walked closer.

  “Good one putting it to Hua,” the man on the rock grinned at me, raising his also bald eyebrows in appreciation. His head was, in fact, completely hairless down to the eyelashes but perfectly even in colour, and it was really hard to read his expression - aside from the obvious amusement in his eyes. “Anybody on her bad side is a friend of mine.”

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  “Fuck you, Julius,” the archer - Hua, I guessed - said without any particular emotion to it.

  “Oh great,” Elia said, sighing. “Now they’ll be at it all day.”

  “What can you do,” Remus said, sitting up with a rueful smile, the cloth still covering his eyes and forehead. It...looked like he’d been using a weirdly cooperative turtle as a pillow, but I couldn’t see how that would be comfortable. Then again, he was also lying on a rock made of painful corners so what did I know? Remus shook his head, as Hua and Julius spat acid at each other, insults that flew fast but without any real venom to them, the cloth shifting but staying in place over his face. “So, you’re my new subordinates. Welcome.”

  “Good morning, Petty Officer Horacio!” Seiwuai said, doing the double chest tap thing to the man. “Seiwuai Yuai reporting to your squad after assignment! I’ll do my best to live up to your expectations!”

  “If you're speaking officially, my Authority is just Seaman. But I'm glad to have you.”

  I rubbed the back of my head, craning my neck. “Johannes. What she said.”

  “So, my cute little subs,” he started.

  “Don't call me that,” I said.

  “Please do not say it that way.” Elia said at the same time.

  Remus continued, ignoring us. “Who’d you piss off to get saddled here?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  “Well,” Remus said, pointing at himself. “I’m crippled. Elia there got disowned for absolutely tragic reasons.”

  “That is true,” Elia said. “They were tragic.”

  He pointed to the arguing two. “Julius and Hua ran away from their families. And Alonso...well, when you meet him.” He shrugged. “So if you’re here, the trend implies you did something and got thrown out.”

  “No family to have issues with,” I shrugged.

  “Oh? An orphan?” Remus asked.

  “Maybe. I guess I could’ve been abandoned, if you really want a story out of it,” I said. I glanced at Seiwuai who seemed unsure of what to say, and moved on. “You’re crippled?”

  Remus grinned, hooking a thumb under the edge of the cloth and raised it to reveal a mass of bulging veins across the middle section of his face. They ran from ear to ear and around his eyes, the orbs themselves fully white, with short curves of white coral on either side of his pale face. “Completely blind, my friend.”

  Oh, that...hm. That put a hamper on my plans. Not because it was harder to steal a blind man’s position, but because it would be harder to keep it. It already seemed like his squad liked him well enough and they’d have gotten used to him being in charge, so now I’d be fighting uphill against their protective desires. So…

  ...no, hang on, I just went through this. What the hell did that Dan-whatever guy say? Just ask?

  “Hey,” I said, interrupting a conversation he’d struck up with Seiwuai. “How can you be a good leader if you’re blind?”

  “I...don’t think that was very polite,” Seiwuai murmured, looking around nervously.

  I hadn’t realized how loud the argument between the other two had gotten until all the noise stopped, the gazes of the squad turned to me with disapproval and different amounts of implied threat behind them. Remus just smiled, teeth dazzling. “Why, you want the job?”

  “I might,” I hedged.

  “That’s great! I've been trying to pass it on for years. Well,” he grinned, holding up two fingers. “I don’t have many conditions. You see, taking over the squad means being responsible for all these strays I’ve picked up over the years. I'd like to make sure they're in good hands. That means you need to earn their trust.”

  I glanced around at the obviously mistrustful faces, letting my hand drop from my hair to my neck. “And the second?”

  He grinned wider, and-

  Guh, it was like a massive hand was pressing down on me, pushing me to the ground, the force of a sudden storm falling onto my shoulders and making my knees tremble-!

  -he held up his second finger as the pressure suddenly vanished. “You need to be stronger than me.”

  I panted for a second, wiping off the sudden beads of sweat on my forehead, and nodded. “Got it,” I said.

  “Good!” Remus yelled, folding the cloth into a band that he tied beneath his waterfall of hair. “Now, we need to treat the newbies! Let’s get some pork! To the Roastery!”

  “Can’t,” Elia called from where she stood, shaking her head. “They banned us after I ate the dinner service last time, remember?”

  “The whole thing?” Seiwuai squeaked.

  “I’m a big girl,” Elia winked at her, folding her arms with a shrug and making her chest jump- I let my eyes keep roaming back around, having already beaten that level of weaknesses a long time ago.

  “Right,” Remus frowned, thinking for a moment. “Pan chicken?”

  “Nah,” Julius shook his head, holding his chin in thought. “Old Aggy kicked us out after he caught you with his daughter.”

  “That was ages ago!” Remus protested, and I raised an eyebrow at him. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, throwing me a grin.

  ...wait, how did he know I was looking-

  “Yeah, but then you hit on his wife last week,” Hua replied, her voice flat.

  Remus tapped his jaw. “Hm. Maybe just a drink, then?”

  “Horseshoe incident,” the squad chorused.

  “Right, and we need to pick Alonso up anyway,” he said with a grimace. “Alright, then let’s go hunt some food!” he yelled, vaulting to his feet. “Carry me, Elia!”

  Elia rolled her eyes, striding over and scooping Remus up onto her shoulders. “Comfy?”

  “A little, oof, a little uneven.” He adjusted himself in place and waved a hand at the rest of us. “Come, my followers! We ride!”

  Seiwuai’s shoulders slumped as Elia set off at a brisk walk, the rest of the squad packing up to follow behind her. “I...I really thought I’d just join a normal squad,” she said, sounding lost.

  I looked at her, raising an eyebrow, then put my hands behind my head with a shrug. “I dunno. They seem alright to me.”