Chapter Two

Tris sniffed and pushed her glasses farther up on her long nose to keep them from slipping with a soapy hand. She put down the filthy bandage she held and dropped it back into the tub of boiling water, inspected her red, cracked hands, and sighed. It was only her second day of service at the infirmaries and already she was beginning to regret her decision to help with the wounded from the pirate attacks.

What have I gotten myself into? she wondered, drying her hands on a lone rag, possibly the only clean thing she'd seen there all day.

The sun was burning high and beating down on the citizens of Winding Circle, and the heat of the afternoon only heightened the horrible stench coming from the wards: flesh rotting from burns, old blood, and constant vomiting made Tris feel dizzy and sick herself, as well as the victims. She fought down the nausea as she left the laundering room to seek more chores.

A stressed Water Temple dedicate was dashing from room to room with armfuls of bandages, and caught sight of Tris in the hall. She beckoned to the girl with one hand, only to drop her burden on the floor. Squealing in distress – Tris thought she sounded much like a stuck pig – the woman went down on her knees to gather them up.

"Dirty pirates," Tris heard her muttering as she walked. "Not a whit of respect for dignity, you'd think even they would be grateful for what we're doing…" The dedicate straightened as Tris approached, her stained blue habit rumpled and askew. "You, girl!" she said, as if Tris were not two feet in front of her. "Take some bandages and burn ointment and see to those… those pirates down there. Attend to all the burn victims on this floor." She dumped half the bandages into the girl's empty arms and hurried off.

Tris sighed again as she fetched jars of ointment from a room with supplies already half diminished. Well, I did come to clear my conscience on them. She hoped there was already water available; her arms and back hurt from carrying pails of it just about everywhere in the infirmaries.

"It's th' fat little redhead," a pirate captive, nearest to the door, sneered at her as she entered. He had lost an eye, and blood was caked over the hollow socket. Tris shivered and turned her back to him, kneeling down by a woman whose right arm needed serious attention. "What, ye don' like me? Ain't I purdy enough for ye's?" She heard behind her, laughter following.

As she went from captive to captive, she was able to tune out the snide comments made to her without losing her temper. She had nearly finished the room when, out of the corner of her eye, there was a flicker of silver light. Tris turned her head to pin it down, but it had gone. Shrugging her shoulders absent-mindedly, she dabbed her finger in the glass jar of ointment and smoothed it gently over a small burn marring the face of an unconscious young man. Even as she did, the light flickered again, this time paler, and she turned once more.

She found herself looking at a girl about her own age, her skin a light bronze colour – either from some country that she couldn't place, or tanned from being outdoors – but hair a pale blonde and sun-streaked. Tris found her gaze drifting over the sharp features, thin, nearly invisible pale eyebrows set high over dark green, slightly oval eyes. It took her a moment to realize that those eyes glared haughtily at her, voicing an unspoken command to look away that made Tris feel like a bug.

A crash brought Tris back to the real world, and she looked down at her empty hands that had a moment ago hosted a half-full jar. All that remained of the jar was now several feet away, shards of glass in a growing, oozing puddle. No longer able to control her temper, Tris could feel her hair begin to frizz from static. Those around her backed away as she stomped towards the mess, picked up the glass and placed it in the apron she wore over her dress to keep it from soiling, and promptly left the room, leaving the ointment where it was.

"Look after yourself," she muttered as she exited. "Jishen."

Juda was mad.

No, mad was an understatement. When she'd been lying in the bottom of the boat that rescued her from potential drowning, through the haze of need for sleep and nourishment, the comments of the man who'd picked her up had confused her and perhaps given her a quick flick of anger before she'd finally sunk into blissful unconsciousness again. When she'd woken up in the infirmaries only to be put through washing and healers poking and prodding her many injuries, and fed with slop fit only for her sister's slaves, then she'd been mad.

Now, her clothes taken and burned – she'd managed to salvage her sister's pendant – and with every healer that so much as looked at her whose faces wrinkled up like old prunes in an expression of revulsion, Juda was livid.

She was sick more than once because of the smell from those around her – slaves, and other pirates she'd not seen before. There had been one old man that she knew, but Juda thought he should have been executed for his uselessness beforehand anyways. She hadn't bothered to ever learn his name, and his death was no loss now. Still, the loneliness was slowly denting, chipping away at her stone exterior.

The dent's depth was about half the thickness of her thumbnail, but it was still chipping away. One might think.

Juda was placed in a small room with other captives and one lone slave. The slave seemed almost mortally injured, and died in a short amount of time – with no lack of help from those around him. Staring at the ceiling, eyes blank, even his thick skull could not be impermeable to the words of hatred directed at him. Juda had watched in curious fascination as the man seemed to grow smaller and smaller with every word once his eyes finally focused on his tormenters. When the healers came in and discovered his body, she'd feigned ignorance with all the others. Why get in trouble for something they didn't do? After all, the slave was injured.

And who cared about a slave? Even the healers were too stressed to pay much attention to their patients. Or maybe that was just because their patients were pirates.

Either way, Juda was still in a bad mood, an almost visible cloud around her person, when the redhead came into the room.

She'd seen the girl before, only once. Fat in a stained, ugly wool dress, sweat shining on her forehead, Juda had dismissed the girl at once and brought her own attention back to picking fretfully at the restraining bandages wrapped around her hands.

Now, as she came in, her arms full, to 'minister to the wounded', Juda still ignored her even as her fellow pirates taunted and teased. It wasn't until she noticed the girl staring stupidly at her that she bothered to pay her any notice. Glaring at the redhead – she didn't enjoy being scrutinized by a girl that seemed to that seemed to be her own age, as if she were an animal in a cage – Juda felt her temper at the situation and everything that had gone on bubble up beneath her skin.

A relaxed smile then came over her face as an exceptionally nasty man by the name of Arnon reached out a thin arm, flicking his wrist quickly. The jar of bad-smelling burn goop she'd held went flying, smashing to the ground.

The smile froze on Juda's face as the girl's face turned as red as her hair. Her hair began to rise out of the large braids it had been pinned back in, and she heard a barely audible snapping sound as the frail thread holding them snapped, and the girl's hair popped free. Small bolts of light raced through her curls… had Juda not thought the very idea inconceivable, she would have said they were miniature lightnings. Seed lightning.

A mage?

Impossible. The only mage Juda had ever known of that would have been capable of such things was Enahar, and he was dead. There were, of course, the mimanders that harnessed the very winds and tied them into knots for use that they had bargained with – before either slaughtering or enslaving them. Never in her short years had she seen an individual sprout lightning.

The redhead literally stormed out of the room, static trailing behind her and dancing now over her fingers and entire body. On either side of her, men and women shied away, raising eyebrows at each other and jerking their heads in her direction. Juda shook her head, pushed her loose blonde hair over her shoulder – bits of it had burned, leaving a few minor ends uneven. Adjusting the loose shift she was forced to wear, she curled on her side, ignoring the pain it caused and trying not to think of mages.

On the eighth day after their capture, the pirate captives were rounded up and sent to Summersea.