Galleons and Gangplanks
"The White City"

If I were wealthy or somehow related to nobility, I might be able to buy my way out of this mess.

I am not, however, either of those. No, indeed, Jem Nettles is nothing but a sailor. First mate on the Adrianna Gayle, in fact. Cutting into the profits of a Barbary Coast pirate will normally get a man killed.

Why I am still alive and in chains somehow escapes me.

I know that the curse of Algiers is slavery. People are bought and sold every day in the streets, hundreds of them. I know too that able bodied men are a premium, as many of the Barbary pirates sill need rowers.

The fact is that I am not a good bet.

So, while I am glad to be alive, and know I should not question it, but I do. I question everything.

Why would anyone wonder how I managed to get impressed into the navy, hmm? Trouble is my lot in life.

Still, as captivity goes, this is not nearly as bad as the three weeks I once spent in a gaol in Naples. The accommodations are much cleaner, the guards less likely to hit first and ask later. And I will not begin to describe the fortnight I spent in the hold of a Portuguese galleon beyond foul.

The sun shines brightly beyond the slitted windows on the third day of my latest captivity. The two big guards I have seen when I receive food and water come to collect me. They grab me, one on either side, and drag me down a long corridor with many studded-wood doors. I can hear the sound of tinkling water; that more than even the heavy woven rugs tells me how rich my captor is.

Interesting. How novel, that I might be taken before the emir, or sheik, or whatever these people call their leaders, only to be killed.

Or perhaps they had just found someone who would take me on one of their ships. To spend an eternity chained to an oar. I can tell you how the thought thrills me.

Finally they bring me to a room with double doors nearly double the height of my own head, the sound of them as they open like a death knell. Bright. The room is bright and white and stark, with only a few of the profusion of rugs I might have expected. There was one large piece of furniture, a writing table, the likes of which I have never seen outside of the Barbary coast.

Writing is not a skill I admit to, though I did learn it in my youth. It seems smarter to let my fellow sailors view me as simple Jem, rather than Jeremiah Nettles, son of a vicar.

The man behind the desk surprises me. Oh, to start he looks no different than the two brutes who have dragged me into the room. His dark head, bent over his work, is close-cropped and curly, and his skin is sun-darkened to a deep bronze. His eyes, when he looks up however, are a blazing blue.

They give me a shock, freezing me in place when I should perhaps be struggling and making myself as unpleasant as possible, so as to be sent away. I will have a much better time escaping if I am where no one takes notice of me. This room is not that place.

The man rises, coming around the desk to appraise me, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. His long nose wrinkles, and a soft spate of the Arab language issues from him.

I expect laughter, but what I get is two apologetically bowing servants, both of them all but groveling.

Those eyes meet mine again, one fine black brow rising above them. "You stink," he says, in perfectly accented English.

"Indeed," I agree immediately. "If you'll only release me, I shall go and find a brothel forthwith, and bathe myself until my skin shines."

His brows snap together for a moment, before he laughs softly, the sound much like his tinkling fountain. Musical.

"I think not, Mister Nettles. I vow, you are the most interesting thing to come through my doors in an age."

He could have said that I had a monkey in a fez sitting upon my shoulder and it would not shock me. That he knows my name, however, leaves my mouth hanging open.

"You're quite a wanted man, Jem. Did you know that? Sharim Reis alone has offered fifty gold pieces for your head."

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