Sonder said nothing. She wasn't sure if she should say anything at all.
But the man went on.
"Undead, in some fashion, aren't you? Not like us though," he said, as if testing the thought while speaking it aloud. "Something different. Something… cultivated."
A faint, almost curious expression crossed his face.
"If you wished, you would not need to stand here as their shield," he said. "You could walk into my home as something more than prey… more than enemy. My father would hear you. If you are as strong as you seem, he would not dismiss you. There are arrangements that could be made. Alliances. Better than standing with the side that will clearly be torn apart."
The hold was completely still.
The sailors on guard were frightened, and a cold sweat ran down their spines.
But not Sonder.
Her face bunched up and she spoke.
"I'm not sure what to make of that. I don't think you're going to slaughter anyone. It's not just that I won't try to stop you."
There was a pause.
"I don't know if anything you're saying is true, after all. You could be lying. Trying to scare me and the people on board. I don't like when people lie and usually prefer the truth, but in this case, I don't."
"Intimidation works better when people are afraid," the man said, but his expression didn't change.
But something in his eyes shifted, a sort of mask slipping just a bit.
Interest, or amusement, or trying to cover for the fact that Sonder simply wasn't afraid.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The man let out a slow breath, his head resting back again, though his eyes never left Sonder.
"You are an odd one," he said at last, not mockingly, but with a kind of tired acknowledgment. "Most would have chosen fear by now. It is easier."
His gaze flicked briefly toward the sailors.
"They do," he added, almost absently. "But you're not wrong. I could lie. I could say anything, and it would serve me just as well in here."
A faint pause.
"But I am not. There is no need," he went on. "Fear is a tool, yes, but it is not the only one. Truth is also one. You say that you think I will not slaughter anyone. That is optimistic. I told you what will happen because it is what would happen."
His tone changed, less like a threat, more like an explanation he had decided she deserved.
"Not because I take pleasure in saying it. But I am here now, not there, but in a few days' time, maybe a week, I will be there. But you stopped me, not by chance or luck. And they speak to me as if I were something that could be reasoned with. Why?"
It sounded like a genuine question to all but Sonder.
She didn't know where she got the feeling from, but she felt that everything the man said was to gain something, something over her or the sailors or just in general. The overall feeling of still being in control or having some sort of trump card that hasn't been revealed yet; that they; anyone on the ship that wasn't him, were going into their doom in the short time that they thought they were in control.
In a way, she found that sad and pitiful.