CHAPTER 95

Vincent

I won’t leave Bessie, and that’s all there is to it,” Daisy says, chin jutting proudly for a moment before she remembers to add, “My king.”

Vincent sighs, scratching the stubble of three suns that covers his cheeks, while he casts a leery eye upon the dairy cow Daisy stands beside, lead in hand. Bessie appears unimpressed with him, her cud of higher importance.

“Daisy,” Vincent tries again, his patience wearing thin, “I cannot give space on a ship that could go to Stilleans to a cow.”

“Why not, when the cow will make milk for the Stilleans?” she shoots back.

“Only if she is properly fed, which means taking along grain and hay—more space where people could be put.”

“And what if they don’t want to come?” she asks. “Winlan’s boat will carry the Hygodeans and their goats. Surely if there’s room for a whole village on one, I can put my cow on the ship meant to carry Stilleans.”

It’s not a bad argument, and he tells her he’ll consider it—not adding that Bessie might be called upon as meat for Stilleans as well as milk if land isn’t spotted before their stores run low.

Packing the ships has fallen to Dissa, her Scribes following her skirts like baby oderbirds with their mother. Lists have been made, provisions weighed against passengers—still too few, by far—and what can be moved to the beach taken there. One ship sits in its dock nearly finished, lacking only the deck. Sallin wanted to run a gangplank and load the lower decks, but Winlan warned that weighing it down before it found deeper waters was unwise. Small boats have been built, manned by oars, waiting to ferry provisions back and forth once the ship sails freely. Looking upon that makes Vincent think of the Lithos, and the fear he saw in him, that Vincent would abandon his word and leave the Pietran people as soon as his sails filled with wind.

Vincent looks in the direction of the Stone Shore, even the horizon there changed from the earth ripples that arrive each sun without fail. No Pietra have come, and time grows short. He closes his eyes against the sun and listens to the sounds of trees being made into timber, and timber into ships. If he must choose between leaving the Pietra behind and the sanity of his wife, he knows what he will do.

“Make haste,” Vincent says, his words meant both for those who stand near to hear, and for those cannot.