Free The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks Page A

smooth stones of the waterfall.
    In minutes, the galley arrived. They threw a line to him, then tossed webbing over the side and a toothless sailor shouted at him to climb.
    What else am I going to do, you cretin? Stay in the water?
    Zymun climbed. He hopped over the railing, spry, ignoring the drawn swords four men held pointed at him. No one had drawn a musket. Good. He kept his eyes down, though, waiting to see who would speak.
    “Young,” the mate said. He was the toothless man, and as ugly as a day at the oar was long. “Skinny, but not too soft. And at his age, he’ll toughen up fast. He’ll do nicely. Trench was coughing blood yesterday. Give us a chance to rest him. Orholam smiles on us.”
    “You’re going to enslave me?” Zymun asked, his tone that of a scared boy’s.
    The captain spoke up. He was a braided-beard Atashian, though with brown eyes rather than that people’s usual blue. “Enslave is such a hard term. We all work here. Doesn’t Orholam say all men are brothers? You’ll work beside your brothers on an oar.”
    “And if I refuse?” Zymun asked. He let the blue luxin travel down the underside of his arm. With his hands at his side, it would be all but invisible.
    “We all work,” the captain said flatly. “My ship, my world.”
    Zymun could make his proposal now. Could reveal that he was a polychrome. This captain didn’t seem terribly belligerent. He hadn’t struck Zymun, despite chances to do so.
    “I have a better idea,” Zymun said. “How about—” He shot a spike of blue luxin through the face of the man nearest him. The sharp luxin went straight through the man’s aquiline nose and into his brain. Zymun spun with the kick of having shot so much mass, using the spin to flick out another blade of blue luxin. He lopped off the other man’s hand at the wrist. He shot a blunt rock of blue luxin into that man’s chest, knocking him off his feet. In an instant, Zymun had another seething spike spinning slowly in his left hand, pointing it at the captain.
    His actions, so sudden and swift, and so swiftly stopped, stunned the slavers. They didn’t react, and Zymun didn’t move. If he did, he’d spook them. If the whole ship attacked him, he might be able to kill everyone, but he couldn’t command this ship. He didn’t know how it worked. He took advantage of the pause to replenish his luxin.
    “How about,” Zymun repeated, “I join your crew for a time? I’m a polychrome, Captain. This, this was me using one color. I can use six. You give me the mate’s room, and I’ll fight with you for three months, or three battles, whichever is first. My magic will make all the difference. Three battles that you’re guaranteed to win. Then, when I’ve paid you in full, you take me to Big Jasper and let me debark with the share of the treasure that you think I’ve earned. You’ll still be the captain, and I won’t take a thing from you. We’ll part as friends.”
    “Or?” the captain asked. His hand was twitching toward the pistol in the bag at his belt.
    “Or I kill you and offer the same deal to your first mate. Maybe he’ll not be so fast to leap to defend you, knowing that by doing nothing, he gets rich himself.”
    “Barrick was a good man,” the captain said, looking at the dead man. The other, handless, had already passed out from blood loss. He could still be saved.
    “So you know,” Zymun said, ignoring that, “I’ll be the most important man in the Seven Satrapies soon, and I could use a man of your talents in the future.”
    The captain looked from Zymun to his mate, who was stony-faced. The captain dipped his fingers into a pouch and pulled out some tobacco. He tucked it under his lip. He stared at the man, still bleeding on the deck. “Rawl, bind him up.”
    The mate, apparently named Rawl, did as he was bid. The captain still said nothing to Zymun.
    Zymun let it sit, the captain’s death still spinning slowly in his hand.
    The captain spit brown juice