First he was thrown into the skiff, hands roughly bound and a balled-up rag in his mouth, the bellowing Tinkerbull trapped in a cage, then hauled up onto the high deck of a much bigger ship flying the black and purple of Derse, screaming through the gag as his injuries were jarred, more through fear when he realised he felt nothing at all in his shattered legs. Tavros knew that was bad. Adult trolls surrounded him, big rough trolls of various colours, laughing at him. A greenblood woman knelt down, produced scissors from a black leather bag, and started to cut away his bloody breeches with gentleness but no expression of sympathy; she might as well have been cutting cloth for curtains. He whimpered and tried to struggle, and she stopped him with a warning look.
"Waste of time taking this one," said a brownblood with a heavy Dersite accent which Tavros took a moment to decipher. "Even if he doesn't die on us, who'll want him if he can't walk?"
"You'd be surprised," said another, this one a maroon. "Keep him alive, wait a few sweeps, and he won't need his legs." The speaker winked, and the crew cackled at a joke Tavros didn't get. He hugged himself as the greenblood woman started working on him with splints and bandages. Slavers. He'd been warned; slavery had been illegal in Prospit since time out of mind, but not Derse, and many of his favourite plays featured plucky young heroes snatching captives from their grasp. Those plays seemed very far away and very foolish now.
"Bandages cost a few pennies," the greenblood said. "A living wiggler and their lusus, well, if we can get him fixed up so much the better but even if not some foolish highblood'll want a matching set of ornaments and be willing to pay. It's worth a go."
Tavros wanted to say something, anything. Vriska or his father would have spoken up; he wished either of them were here. Tinkerbull battered at the cage door with his horns, but even though Tavros had seen those horns cut through trees the little bull needed to build up speed to get the appropriate force and in the tiny cage he could barely move his wings or legs at all.
The greenblood tugged Tavros' tunic down to cover him, stood up, and nodded. "I've done all I can. Don't move him or you'll waste all my work - we'll have to leave him here and try not to step on him. Don't look at me like that, we'll be rid of him once we land." With that, the crew turned their backs on Tavros and left him flat on his back on the deck, shaking with terror and cold.
Three days passed, and Tavros spent them on the deck, unable to move. The greenblood put together a little shelter from sailcloth and crates to keep him out of the sun and rain. Each midnight one sulky crewmember or another held him in a sitting position and poured gruel and water down his throat, then sloshed a bowl of water over him and mopped up the mess he and Tinkerbull had been forced to make on the deck. He averted his eyes in shame every time this happened, and hoped it was enough to prevent his legs getting infected. He was aware he was lucky; he could hear the sounds of trolls and humans in fear and pain below the decks, far too many crammed in together in the dark. At least here he had fresh air, and he could see his lusus, though he desperately wished he could also hold him, or even talk to him; every time he tried he earned a kick and an order to stop whining. He spent as much time as he could sleeping, trying to regain some strength, despite the nightmares plagueing him.
At dusk on the third day, they reached the other side of the Skaian Channel, and Tavros' fear peaked as he was strapped to a plank and dragged ashore by two shackled and dead-eyed maroonbloods, at least permitted at last to hold Tinkerbull's cage in his arms.
Derse.