 Acting as though she does not recognize Flavia (she and Jonathan have been untied so that they could be forced to walk to the ship, and are now bound upright to the mast) and the others, she talks with Kuanto, who explains that he is a freedman of Felix’s whose job for the patron had been leading posses to track down runaway slaves.Kuanto had the idea of selling the slaves instead of turning them into the law, and one of the other “pirates” suggested expanding into a kidnapping racket after the volcano erupted, knowing that there would be many runaway slaves and lost children in the chaos.Felix doesn’t know anything about it; the pirates had just used his name to intimidate the locals into doing what they wanted.