Gild

The man, Captain Fane, calls to his second-in-command, Quarter. Quarter itemizes their loot, labeling the women “whores” (260). However, Captain Fane is more perceptive and realizes that the women are not regular sex workers; instead, they are King Midas’s personal royal saddles. With shock, he notices Auren and grabs her arm, pulling her up to inspect her face and hands. He licks her hand and laughs, realizing that she is not painted but is made of real gold. Triumphantly, he announces to his men that they have captured the king’s favored.

The men cheer and shout. Auren insists that Midas will pay for the safe return of both her and the other saddles, but Fane laughs, saying that he can earn more if he auctions her off. He orders Quarter to put the saddles to work aboard the ship; he intends to keep Auren in his own cabin.

From the line of guards, Sail shouts for Fane to leave Auren alone. Fane taunts Sail with lewd descriptions of what he intends to do to Auren. He adds that Sail will not care because he will be dead. Then, he stabs Sail in the chest with a large knife. Sail collapses, and Auren pulls away from Fane and holds Sail in her arms as he dies.

Auren feels defeated as the pirates drag her away from Sail’s body and onto the ship. Together, the saddles huddle on the deck. The pirates ignore them, not even bothering to tie them up as the ship begins to move. One saddle blames Auren for their predicament and is furious and bitter that the guards protected Auren over all the others. Auren feels guilty because she knows the woman’s complaint is justified; however, there is nothing she can do about it.

Rissa takes charge, saying that they do not have time to squabble amongst themselves. She reminds them that saddles are professionals and that their best chance of survival is to perform and keep the pirates satisfied. Auren moves to the ship’s railings, where she can see the bodies of the guards lying in the snow. However, she can longer see Sail. Around her, she sees the pirates laughing and pointing, and she realizes that Sail’s body is now hanging above them, “degraded and scorned, like a carved figurehead at the bow” (281). She turns away and vomits.

Soon, the ship is moving fast across the ice and snow, with the other two trailing behind it. As Auren looks up again to see Sail’s body, rage suddenly fills her. Sail was her only friend, and she will not allow this savage disrespect. She storms across the deck, her ribbons seething behind her like snakes ready to strike, and uses the ribbons to cut through the rope around Sail’s body.

The pirates rush around her, trying to stop her as she cuts Sail down and wraps her ribbons around him. She drags him toward the ship’s railing, quickly tiring as she wrestles him toward the edge. She looks to the other saddles, begging for help, but they only stand and watch. Fane taunts her, saying that no one will help her and asking if she intends to throw herself overboard. He tries to reach for her, but her ribbons lash out at him. Finally, Auren pulls Sail over the railing and tips him over the edge.

Exhausted, she lets her ribbons fall limp at her sides, and Fane grabs her. He points out that she failed to escape, even after all that work. She tells him that she did precisely what she intended to do and declares that he can no longer disrespect Sail’s body. Fane sneers that he will disrespect her body instead.

Fane grips Auren’s ribbons and ties them into vicious knots at her back. Auren idly wonders if Digby and the guards that he took with him are out in the snow somewhere, looking for them. She fears that the pirates may have already killed them, but she dares not think about that.

Fane drags Auren toward his cabin, but the arrival of a messenger hawk distracts him. After he reads the message tied to the hawk’s leg, he announces that they will soon have visitors. He orders the saddles, including Auren, to help the cook prepare for a feast in an hour. The cook instantly puts them to work, barking orders and abuse. Still, Auren is grateful for this reprieve from the captain’s threats of sexual assault.

The other saddles ignore Auren, hitting her with their elbows as they work and sneering at her as they pass. Eventually, they finish working and return to the deck in time to see Fane preparing for his visitors. The three pirate ships have stopped, and the crew falls eerily silent as something approaches. With everyone distracted, Auren stands in the back, trying to untie her tangled ribbons.

A dozen soldiers arrive and walk up a ramp to the ship; they wear imposing black armor and are moving in perfect formation. Shock ripples through Auren and the saddles as they realize that the men are soldiers from Fourth Kingdom. Then, a last man steps aboard. Spikes jut out from his spine and arms, and it is clear that there are yet more spikes hidden beneath his helmet. Auren knows from various rumors that this commander is said to be cursed, but as she looks at him, she realizes with certainty that he is fae.

Auren recalls the stories of the fae. A thousand years ago, Orea consisted of seven kingdoms, with Seventh Kingdom sitting at the edge of the flat world, past the frozen wasteland of Sixth Kingdom, looking over the precipice where the world ended. At the edge of the precipice, there was a bridge called Lemuria that led out into the gray empty void. Though many had ventured out onto the bridge, none ever returned.

Then, one day, a girl named Saira walked across the bridge in search of her father, who had gone over the bridge and disappeared. Nine years later, she returned to report that the bridge led to a world of magic called Annwyn, the realm of the fae. She had fallen off the bridge, “through their ground and landed on their sky,” and the fae called her the “broken-winged bird” (311). There, she befriended the fae and fell in love with a prince. As a wedding gift, the fae prince used magic to pull the bridge of Lemuria closer, binding the two sides together so that she could return to Orea whenever she wished.

Orea and Annwyn became allies. All magic power in the royal lines of Orea originate from Annwyn. For hundreds of years, the realms coexisted peacefully. Then, 300 years ago, the fae betrayed Orea. A new king rose in Annwyn, and because he believed that the Oreans had corrupted the fae bloodlines, he cut the connection between the realms with such force that it destroyed Seventh Kingdom in the process. No one has seen the fae since.