Cole shut his eye to rest his retina from the halo of leaking light; he wiggled back against a pile of goods. One entire side of his body was almost completely numb from the cold metal, but he didn’t want to attract attention by sitting up. He worked the edge of the plate tight to his face again and cracked his eye to look for Riggs.

There was no sign of him, but he couldn’t see the entire deck. He craned his neck as much as possible, but the uncomfortable position and the constraints of his bound hands didn’t give him much of a vista. One thing he did notice was the absence of snow on the deck. Looking past the fur-clad men, he could see it was still driving sideways in heavy sheets, but none of it was in the air around the little craft. He couldn’t quite make out the bow of the ship, but something up ahead must’ve been splitting the flurries, sending the flakes to either side.

He raised his head to investigate, and one of the furry figures tapped another and pointed in his direction.

Cole froze. The alerted figure marched back in his direction, descend-ing the few steps from the platform around the mast. At the base of the steps, the man stopped by a wooden barrel crisscrossed with ropes and pulled something from the lid—a mug of some sort. Stooping down in front of the barrel, he came up with a trail of steam rising from the mug,  which wafted back in Cole’s direction.

The smell got to him before the man did: chocolate with a hint of rum. Or more like rum with a hint of chocolate. Cole felt paralyzed with indecision, wondering whether it was better to hide the plate and await his fate in darkness, or stay alert and have it stolen from him. Before he could decide, the figure was before him, crouching down close.

“I’ll have that,” the man said, snapping the plate out of Cole’s hand.

Cole squeezed his eyes shut and held them tight. The man’s accent was a bit different from the others, but there was still a hint of something foreign in it, or perhaps something archaic.

“Who are you guys?” Cole asked, his own voice shaky from the cold and fear.

The response was a loud sip from the mug, then the figure smacking his lips. Cole heard him put the mug down, followed by the sound of fluid being swished inside a vessel, like someone shaking a thermos back and forth.

“Who are we? We’re the same as you lads,” the man replied. “We’re the tainted.”

Before Cole could ask what that meant, he felt a wet rag laden with the smell of something chemical pressed to his face. He held his breath as long as he could, but he finally had to gasp for air.

As soon as he did—he was out again.