It was a good life, working on a river barge. Evgeny leaned on his broom and gazed at the scenery ambling by. This was the beautiful country, away from the sweltering rainforests where the captain purchased spices and tea, but warmer than the frosted tundra kingdoms where she sold them. Here, bushes grew to the size of trees, and vines and flowers decorated everything. The fading late-afternoon sun painted everything a vivacious orange, throwing long, artful shadows on the mossy rocks and tall grasses beyond the river.
Footsteps padded on the deck behind him, and Evgeny set himself back to work, never one to appear idle.
He felt a sting on his right butt cheek. With a gasp, he whirled around. It was not the captain behind him, as he had thought, but his crewmate, Nadali. The stocky woman wore a lascivious smile under her thick carpet of blond hair, and her eyes stared lazily, invulnerably at him.
With an open palm, Evgeny shoved her away. "Don't!" he snapped. "If I had any sense, I'd shove you overboard for that."
"But you don't," said Nadali. "You're made to be abused, do you know that, Evgeny?"
Under her commandingly calm gaze, Evgeny felt the dangerous instinct to submit. With an angry rush, he threw down his broom and put up his fists. "Go ahead and try!"
Nadali let out an infuriating chuckle. "You're so cute when you're scared." Turning her back on him, she moseyed back into the cabin. Evgeny's eyes followed her all the way into the cabin.
With a huff, he took back his broom and kept sweeping. Nadali, he mused, would not hesitate to mount him and rape him if she ever got the chance. She reminded him of a girl Evgeny had once known. When he closed his eyes, he could still picture Rima, as clearly as through a mirror, demanding that they 'grow closer.' That was always her euphemism. It would forever embarrass him that he'd become a barge-man purely to escape her dangerous temper.
With a little start, he realized that he had stopped sweeping, and once again he set himself to it.
When he finished sweeping, the sun had begun to set. Hanging up his broom, he sat on a wooden crate and admired the view, eating from a sack of dried mango chips he had bought for himself in the hot regions. He could have gone into the cabin, he knew, and dined with everyone else, but today the mood struck him to be alone.
He heard a deck plank behind him creak. The captain never approached without announcing herself, and the male crew members were never awake this late. That creak could mean only one person. "Nadia," said Evgeny, "I can hear you. If you think-"
He did not finish his sentence. A hand clapped over his mouth, and a sudden force shoved him forward. He rolled onto the deck with some frightfully strong weight clamped onto him. Hands he could not see gripped his limbs, and soon he was pinned irresistibly to the deck, face down.
He looked up. Hard leather shoes stepped imperiously in front of him, not making a sound—but tracking mud onto his freshly swept deck!—and other feet scrambled furtively over the planks.
With a considerable effort, Evgeny looked up farther, and saw that the hard leather shoes belonged to a thin but strong-looking woman, her hair tied into a bundle behind her, her dark skin blending into the dark, cloudy sky. All he could make out clearly were her confident eyes and her impossibly bright red lips, bent into a sinister smile.
"Good catch, Shadi," the woman murmured, in a smooth, sharp accent. "Keep going, girls. It seems he was the only sentry. We have run of the place."
Evgeny tried to look around, but the hand over his mouth would not let him.
"Chief," said a lighter-skinned woman, stepping carefully up to her. "Can we keep this one?"
These were some ambitious thieves, Evgeny reflected, if they thought they could steal the entire barge.
The chief looked down at Evgeny, and in one heart-stopping moment he realized that they were talking about him.
"I offer you a deal," the chief said, kneeling in front of him. "Shadi will let you have your mouth back. But if you make any sound, my crew and I are leaving, and we're taking you with us. Am I clear?"
He did his best to nod.
"Good. Shadi, let go his mouth."
"What if I spank him?" asked a scratchy, feminine voice behind him. "If he makes enough noise, can we keep him?"
The chief gave her a knowing smile. "If you make him squeal, we're tying you up and leaving you to replace him. Now stand him up."
Shadi let go of his head, and as she stood him up, Evgeny looked back. To his amazement, he had been restrained by only one woman, and not a very strong-looking one at that. But now that the bandits had him surrounded, he did not dare move against her.
Behind the chief, one of the thieves stopped mid-stride and gaped at Evgeny. When Evgeny made her out, his jaw fell open, and he broke his promise to be silent.
"Rima!" he gasped.
Rima stepped up to Evgeny, fascination creasing her face. Her fingertips dabbed at his cheeks, then his mouth, as if she suspected he was some kind of illusion. A deep grin of understanding bloomed on her thin face. "Chief?" she said. "Do you know who this is? We've just found my boyfriend."
Rima had changed. Only a few years ago, her long hair and simple, modest peasant tunic had perfectly concealed the fierce passions inside her. Now they were written all over her. A threadbare shirt and tights hugged her body, fraying at every edge, and her hair barely came down to her prominent jaw. Her smile, too, seemed ragged somehow, and in a moment Evgeny recognized it—she was missing a tooth. In such a state, anyone else would have seemed broken, but Rima looked more whole than ever, as if the clean, pretty peasant girl had been nothing but an act all along. Rima herself showed no shame. Her grin only deepened as she saw Evgeny's reaction.
The chief looked probingly between Rima and Evgeny. "I thought he'd be smaller."
Evgeny, already smaller than the average man, ignored the insult.
"Can I do it, Chief?" Rima looked at her leader with eyes gleaming with excitement. "He needs to be popped."
The chief glanced at the cabin. With a silent gesture, she sent two women to guard the door, and Evgeny's hopes of rescue dimmed. Now, even if the rest of the crew became privy to his predicament, they would be too late to save him.
"Alright, Rima, it's your gift," said the chief, backing away from Evgeny. "Shadi, lash him up to that post."
Shadi pulled on his shoulders, and he did not resist. Wood thumped into his back, and the corners of the square-edged post bit painfully into his upper arms. He prepared for his legs to be lashed to the wood with them, but Shadi left those alone.
As Shadi restrained him, Evgeny did not fail to notice that other women had stopped looting and had gathered around him. Even in good circumstances, female attention had never made him feel comfortable, and now it took a concerted effort to stop himself from trembling.
Rima, on the other hand, had no trouble ignoring them as she pressed herself against Evgeny. Her breath broke against his face, and the warmth of her body reached through their clothes.
"Hey," one of the bandits piped up. "Let us have a turn."
As her response, Rima turned and drew a knife. It was a simple, deadly wedge of metal, the only clean thing about her. After a grim pause, she turned back to Evgeny and brought the knife up to his chest. The cutting edge faced her, not him, but still his breathing stopped.
