Olive made a small noise. A whimper. “Please.”

“Please, sir.”

She opened her hands helplessly. “Please, sir.”

“Kind sir.”

She was silent.

Evangeline, behind her in the skiff, leaned forward. “Olive. Just say it.”

The sandy-haired sailor looked at the other sailor and winked. Then he nudged Olive’s legs with his knee, pushing her closer to the water.

The men above them quieted. The only sound was the screeching of seagulls.

“Kind sir,” Olive whispered.

The sailor pulled the chain up, and with it, Olive’s body, so that she hung suspended over the water. He seemed poised to let go. Without thinking, Evangeline cried out and stood up. The skiff rocked wildly side to side. “Fer Chrissake, wench, will ye go overboard too?” the sailor behind her said, pushing her roughly on the shoulder so that she fell hard on the wooden bench.

The sandy-haired sailor yanked the chain back toward him, and Olive collapsed on the platform in a heap. For a few moments she lay at the base of the ramp. Her wrists were scored with blood. Her back heaved oddly up and down, and at first Evangeline thought she was laughing. Then she saw that Olive’s eyes were squeezed shut. Her body was shaking, but she didn’t make a sound.

After the four prisoners had been transferred to the ship, they stood on the main deck, waiting to be unshackled. A shirtless sailor with a scaly green-and-black dragon inked across his torso held up a ring of keys. Except for Cecil, in the shadowy light of a bedroom with the drapes closed, Evangeline had never seen a man without his shirt, not even her father in his dying days. “You.” The sailor gestured to Evangeline, motioning for her to sit on an overturned bucket.

A small crowd of sailors had formed. She’d never seen men like this, with faces leathery and as creased as walnut shells, hawklike eyes, sinewy arms covered in elaborate tattoos. The guards at Newgate had been contemptuous, but they didn’t lick their lips in lascivious revelry, making obscene noises with their tongues.

The locksmith instructed another sailor to hold the chain between Evangeline’s manacles, then he knelt down and opened the irons around her ankles before unfastening the ones around her wrists. When her shackles fell to the ground, the men around her yelled and clapped. Evangeline shook out her sore hands.

The locksmith jerked his head toward the others. “They’ll settle down. It’s always like this with a new group.”

Evangeline looked around. “Where are the other prisoners?”

“Most of ’em are down there.” He raised his chin toward a dark, square opening from which a handrail jutted out. “In the bowels. The orlop deck.”

The bowels. Evangeline shuddered. “Are they—caged?”

“No shackles on board. Unless ye do something to deserve it.”

It surprised her that prisoners were allowed to move freely, but then she realized, of course. Unless they chose to leap into the water, there was nowhere to go.

She couldn’t swim. But for a brief, wild moment, she considered leaping.