Aggie awoke on her bed of straw, and immediately felt herself recoil at the cell around her.

She judged from the angle of the sun coming from the small window in the neighboring cell, it was mid-morning, and with all that light, she could see the lack of cleanliness all the better.

The wooden floors were slightly sticky, and there were odd patches of stains everywhere- including the blanket Aggie was lying on.

The worst was yet to come Aggie realized however, when it dawned on her that she hadn’t gone to the bathroom since before she had to retrieve water from the well.

She glanced hopelessly at the stained chamber pot, and once again tried not to think too hard about her face being in it the night before.

The water that the crew must’ve filled it with, was now mostly depleted after Aggie’s thrashing around, and she begrudgingly admitted it was for the better, as she didn’t know where she’d dump the water out.

Glancing briefly at the blonde woman whom was still fast asleep in the cell beside her, Aggie hastily did her business, and was relieved that the other prisoners were making enough of a commotion to mask any sounds.

When she had finished, Aggie stood awkwardly, and placed the pot along the far back wall.

She stepped to the door of her cell, and stared at her fellow prisoners in their cells.

Aggie’s cell appeared to be on the very end of the cells, and if she had been allowed to walk through the door, she realized she could’ve turned left and walked up to the next level of the ship where she was sure there was a galley kitchen and benches. The level above that would be where the crew and Captain slept, and then there’d be the top deck.

Aggie could overhear some of the conversations from a few cell doors down, and after giving the cell door a small experimental push and tug- (she’d feel stupid if she had never tried), she laced her arms through the bars, and pressed her face against them.

“-Well Slicer may have finally met his match eh?”

“Oh please. ‘E was just overly cocky over decapitatin’ the last guy. Beast Awares with arms the siza tree trunks! ‘E’ll sort ‘is shit out an get ‘er.”

“I don’t know Gent, Beast Awares with 8 legs against his 6…? Plus her arms! My money would be on her on the next round.”

“Aaahh. We won’t get ‘er next round though. It’ll be that new chap they dragged in last night. You know how they love their rituals.”

“Pittin’ the new and the worst? Yeah… good thing they knew to give Lady Venom last night a real challenge right away.”

“I’d step away from the door if I were you.”

Aggie glanced over her shoulder at one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen in her life, who sitting upright on a cot wearing a grey stained dress. She had translucent skin that held a small alabaster glow, violet eyes, and thick wavy silvery blonde hair. The slant in her eyes and the pointed ears left little doubt that she was anything but Fey.

Aggie was so stunned by her beauty, that she failed to heed the warning. A crewman she hadn’t noticed walking down the steps, gave her wrist a painful whack upon touching down on the hall floor with a steel pipe he carried.

“Away from the door Lady.” He sneered making Aggie leap back as he then threw a chunk of stale hardened bread through her cell door.

He continued down the cells, chucking in bread to each of them, and ignoring the groans and complaints from the prisoners at the meager food, and instead dealing punishing blows in response to their audible dissatisfaction.

The cells were relatively quiet after that, and as the crewman sidled back up towards the stairs, he spotted Aggie still pressed against the wall, watching him. She kept a gentle touch on the blooming bruise over her wrist where the pipe had struck.

“Better eat up Lady, your debut is coming.” He grinned at her, revealing his missing eyetooth, which had an aging effect on his weathered face. He probably was only in his early 30’s, but looked as though he were over 50.

The only indication that he was not completely human was the long ropey curled tail behind him that twitched as he spoke.

Aggie watched him head up the stairs, before slowly kneeling down and picking up the bread. She gave it a sniff and brushed some of the floor dirt off, sat with her back against the back wall of her cell, and tore into it grimly.

“So you’re a Lady?” The Fey woman didn’t care to hide her skeptical tone.

“Was.” Aggie grunted as her jaw grew tired from tearing apart the hunk of bread. She was too lost in her thoughts over what the crewman said about her debut to pay much mind to her fellow prisoner talking with her.

“Which Kingdom?”

“Originally from the South.” Aggie paused, and tried to swallow, only to find the dry loaf was hard to take without water. After a few thumps on her chest, the blockage disappeared, and she gazed at the small remainder of crust in her hand dejectedly.

“You want this?” She turned to the Fey woman, and was once again disarmed by her beauty. Even though the woman looked malnourished, and her gray dress had a variety of questionable stains on it, she was still magnificent.

The woman shook her head.

“Kind of you to offer, but no. I’m Ines, and you?”

“Aggie.” The Lady rubbed her eyes to force herself to stop staring, and found her hand coming away black from the shoe polish.

She had forgotten about her Minkies disguise she had been wearing everyday.

With a sigh, Aggie used her sleeve to wipe off the rest of the black polish the best she could.

“I must say, despite your cleaning job not being superb, you are quite a beautiful woman.” Aggie paused, then turned to stare at the Fey woman named Ines before laughing heartily.

“Good Gods that is almost an insult coming from you! Are all Fey as…” Aggie waved a hand at Ines whom blushed prettily.

“Most of us are… attractive given your human standards. I meant what I said though.”

Aggie paused, and thought for a moment. Tork hadn’t trusted the Fey, and he had been right to be skeptical of Chay. Aggie turned to the Fey woman a little more warily, but found the apparent eagerness to talk to someone, made Ines look too heartwarmingly innocent.

“What do you want from me?” Aggie asked quietly, feeling too weary of conflict to care about the hidden agenda of the Fey.

Ines looked surprised, then hurt, then resolute before she answered.

“I… I know the Fey don’t have the best reputation in your world… And I don’t blame you. I just haven’t gotten to speak with someone who wasn’t trying to… Well. That’s neither here nor there I-”

“Sorry I asked.” Aggie cut her off, and gave a half-hearted smile as an apology. She wasn’t sure if she should’ve interrupted the spiel the Fey woman was trying to spin, but she had found being in the presence of the Minkies had limited her enjoyment of meandering conversations.

The nomadic tribe liked to be short and to the point. If you didn’t have anything to say, you stayed silent.

Arlen and Aggie had been the chatterboxes only because Aggie had a million questions about hunting, and the mountains…

“How long have you been here Ines?” Aggie asked leaning her head back against the cell wall, and trying to think of possible ways for her to escape once they made land. Arlen was probably trying to get to her, and if he came right when she was being handed off to Lord O’Farrell, she had no doubt that her fiancé would feel little remorse in dispatching the Servicer.

“A month.” Ines answered happily. She didn’t seem to mind the reluctance in Aggie’s question, and just seemed happy to talk.

“To be honest, I imagined worse morale amongst prisoners.” Aggie pointed out as she heard other prisoners chattering happily.

“There are worse prisons in the world, but a lot of them were fine with brutally beating someone within an inch of their life before being imprisoned here.”

“So the line is death when you’re fighting?” Aggie asked gently stroking her thumbnail as she tried to soothe her worries.

“For most. It sounded like they intend to keep you alive and well. Others they care less about. A Beast Awares got decapitated last night for example, but some of us do have members of our kind who would care if we suddenly died. Others that isn’t the case.”

Aggie suddenly frowned at the Fey woman.

“Why aren’t you breaking out of here using your powers?”

“Iron bars love. Even when I fight, they keep me in irons. It drains my power, and stops me from returning to Tara when I’m depleted. Which can also be dangerous if I’m ever injured. If I’m drained, I can’t even heal, and I’m already weak to begin with.”

“You’re pretty open about how to be killed.” Aggie pointed out mildly.

“Oh, I’ll die here. No question about that. Just a matter of time really.”

Aggie turned to stare at the Ines with a mixture of anger and concern.

“Why would you die here? Won’t your kind come get you?”

Ines smiled somewhat bitterly as she drew as close as possible to the iron bars without touching them to be closer to Aggie, and leaned her head against the wall behind her.

“No I’m sorry to say. I’m the black sheep of the family. I also scorned them by falling in love with a human.” She sighed, closing her eyes momentarily, before turning her head back to Aggie.

“While we can lay with as many humans as we wish, we do not ever lower ourselves to loving them. I’m glad to have a sane cell neighbor for once before I go though. The last fellow would grunt and growl a lot, and his snores would shake the whole boat.”

Aggie didn’t respond at first as she processed all of the new information she had just been given.

“So… you’re going to die here on this boat? What about the human you love? Unless…” Aggie looked at Ines who had a tight guilty smile and a gave a short confirming nod.

“If it makes you feel better, if I hadn’t been warned about him, I would’ve found him attractive.” Aggie offered weakly.

She couldn’t imagine the pain Ines felt over being betrayed by Captain James Murphy.

To be imprisoned by the person you loved, and eventually murdered by them…

“Want me to kill him for you?” Aggie asked more confidently than she felt, and felt a measure of satisfaction that her question surprised Ines into looking more shocked than hurt.

“You kill people? And you’re a Lady?”

“Was a Lady.” Aggie reminded sharply. “And I don’t exactly like killing people, but the Captain isn’t quite my favorite person right now.”

Ines laughed. A beautiful tinkling sound that silenced everyone else in the ship. A fact that didn’t escape Aggie or Ines’ notice as she stopped laughing, and Ines then somehow shrank down to make herself as small as possible.

Aggie frowned.

She was scared of something.

Before she had a chance to ask any further questions, a great ruckus began above their heads, that grew louder as Captain James Murphy himself descended the steps banging a ladle on the bottom of a pot and silencing the entire deck as his First Mate descended the stairs behind him in a far more dignified manner.

“Attention you ugly turds! We have a new initiation for our lunch time hour! The Ongoing loser Mister Harold Schlingeeeer!”

An echo of ‘boos’ and other cussing insults were directed towards a cell 5 doors down from Aggie.

“Aaand the new, freshly captured, Lady Agnes Beathaaaaa!”

“A Lady Cap’n? How in the world did ya pull tha’ off?”

James’ eyes were sparkling as he stared at Aggie who was sitting glowering at him she hadn’t moved an inch upon his arrival.

“Quite easily Gent. You all know the Legend of the Beatha’s don’t you?”

“They the ones who can’t keep their legs closed?” A different voice than the first prisoner named ‘Gent’ called.

This was met with laughter.

“Well she is cut from the same cloth you see! But I didn’t catch her having the fun we all wished to be having right now like the whole Kingdom expected!” Everyone whooped and leered.

“I caught her because her fiancé told me she has the Beatha eyes!”

The boat quieted down considerably.

“The ‘Eyes’ Cap’n?” The confusion in Gent’s voice was very easy to discern.

“Idiot.” A voice that both hissed and reverberated silenced even the crewman. Aggie sat up straighter, and caught a glimpse of a very large Beast Awares woman. She had silky black hair that fell down her creamy white back, until it met with the rest of her body that was the equivalent to a larger version of a tarantula’s. Her 6 black eyes blinked through the bars, and as she sneered exposed her white fangs in her pale face.

“The Beatha’s were Life Magickers.” She hissed the words as though they were disgusting, but Aggie couldn’t have been distracted from her for all the gold in the world.

“Yeah- Lady Venom, we already said they don’t keep their legs closed.” A Beast Awares who appeared more insect than human called from the cell diagonal and to the right of Aggie’s.

“Fools. All of you.” Lady Venom hissed at them before retreating back to the shadows of her cage. Aggie turned frustrated to stare at James Murphy whom was shaking his head as though witnessing a childish dispute.

“Calm down everyone. She hasn’t a drop of magick in her.” James Murphy sighed before turning to his First Mate.

“Prisoners take the fun out of things sometimes.” He turned back to the long hall of cells.

“No life taking, maiming, blows to the face or womb. This one has a bounty on her, and we don’t get our bounty if any of those 4 points aren’t delivered!” There was an explosion of complaints and furious retorts, and Aggie only then realized that she had begun to tremble slightly at the din.

“OYY! If I don’t collect my bounty for her, none of you get food for a week. The individual who does said maiming, killing, or other permanent harm, will be decapitated and I will fuck your skull before leaving it on your enemy’s doorstep to laugh at. Am I clear?”

The prisoners were quiet for a moment before all murmuring ‘yes’.

The Captain gave a comical bow to them, and as he turned to leave, locked eyes with Aggie who was sure that he wouldn’t have to guess what was on her mind.

He didn’t look in the least bit perturbed however, and in fact laughed at her dark expression as though she had said something charming.

He then bounded up the ship steps with his First Mate following behind him slowly. His First Mate stared at Aggie as he slowly walked past, and she continued staring back at him with the same look she had bestowed upon James.

Once they were gone, every cell was abuzz about the impending fight, and when Aggie finally looked back at Ines, her eyes were round as saucers.

“You’re a Beatha?!”