The rigging whistled with sea gales, eery still through all the layers of groaning wood between Kurama's miserable sojourn in the brig and the deck. Waves beat against the hull; icy fingers of sea water that felt like dread crept up Kurama's neck. He shivered, nude flesh bit by the iron manacles, tasting salt on his tongue and hating it, hating it.

Kurama narrowed his eyes in the wet and darkness, and thought bitterly of his short-lived career as a corsair. Originally from the village of Bazemont, Île-de-France born and bred, he'd run from farming to the nearby city of Paris and there, been press-ganged into a crew. The French corsairs, privateers who functioned little better than pirates, had been taken in battle by their betters: real pirates. Most of the men had been killed outright.

Kurama was spared, for a pretty face and a delicate body was an asset on a ship like this. Kurama knew that the captain of this damnable frigate, Karasu, a hard cold man with a hard cold face and hard cold desires, was starving and freezing him down here to make him weaker, more malleable. He'd been consigned to the brig when he refused to lick the scum from Karasu's boots. Kurama's pride, as he shivered and cursed, was already crushed - he knew he would rot away and die if he were kept in this cold, dank cage too long. At this point, he would lick the boots of a hundred men, and thank them, if afterwards he could have a square meal and a warm, dry place to curl up in.

No sooner had that treacherous thought entered his head than the door opened, and a lantern appeared, Kurama's eyes watering and squinting in the light, which pierced straight through his head in the extended hours of darkness.

"Unlock him, get him up." The captain's voice was smooth as the bolts of cotton cloth from the new world that were so prided by merchants, nay, smoother, like butter with no cow hairs in it. Barely able to see, let alone fight, Kurama was manhandled up, his bilboes unlocked and allowed to fall from chafed-raw wrists.

He could do little more than moan and shiver as he was dragged away, the sick smile on the captain's face hidden from his sight.