CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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SHIPS AND
SERPENTS

It was a crude tattoo, done hastily and only in blue ink. But for all that, it was her image marked on the boy’s face. She stared at him aghast. “This falls upon me,” she had said. “But for me, none of this would have befallen you.”

“That is true,” he agreed with her wearily. “But that does not mean it is your fault.”

He turned away from her to sit down heavily on the deck. Did he even guess how his words wounded her? She tried to share his feelings, but the boy who had vibrated with pain the night before was now a great stillness. He put his head back and drew a great breath of the clean wind sweeping her decks. He sighed it out.

The man at the wheel tried to force her back out into the main channel. With almost idle malice, she leaned against it, weltering as he forced her over. That for Kyle Haven, who thought he could bend her to his will.

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Wintrow confessed quietly. “When I think of you, I feel shamed, as if I betrayed you by running away. Yet when I think of myself, I am disappointed, for I nearly managed to regain my life. I don’t wish to abandon you, but I don’t wish to be trapped here either.” He shook his head, then leaned back against the railing. He was ragged and dirty, and Torg had not taken the chains from his wrists and ankles when he left him there. Wintrow now spoke over his shoulder as he looked up at her sails. “Sometimes I feel I am two people, reaching after two different lives. Or rather, joined to you, I am a different person from who I am when we are apart. When we are together, I lose … something. I don’t know what to call it. My ability to be only myself.”

A prickling of dread ran over Vivacia. His words were too close to what she had planned to say to him. She had left Jamaillia City the morning before this, but only now had Torg brought Wintrow to her. For the first time she had seen what they had done to him. Most jolting was her crude image in colored ink on the boy’s cheek. Nothing marked him as a sailor now, let alone the captain’s son. He looked like any slave. Yet despite all that had befallen him, he was outwardly calm.

Answering her thought, he observed, “I don’t have anything left for feelings anymore. Through you, I am all the slaves at once. When I allow myself to feel that, I think I shall go mad. So I hold back from it and try to feel nothing at all.”

“These emotions are too strong,” Vivacia agreed in a low voice. “Their suffering is too great. It overwhelms me, until I cannot separate myself.” She paused, then went on haltingly, “It was worse when they were aboard and you were not. Just your being gone made me feel as if I were adrift. I think you are the anchor that keeps me who I am. I think that is why a liveship needs one of her own family aboard her.”

Wintrow made no reply, but she hoped from his stillness he was listening. “I take from you,” she admitted. “I take and I give you nothing.”

He stirred slightly. His voice was oddly flat as he observed, “You’ve given me strength, and more than once.”

“But only that I might keep you by me,” she said carefully. “I strengthen you so I may keep you. So I can remain certain of who I am.” She gathered her courage. “Wintrow. What was I, before I was a liveship?”

He shifted his fetters and rubbed his chafed ankles distractedly. He did not seem to understand the importance of her question. “A tree, I suppose. Actually, a number of trees, if wizardwood grows as other wood does. Why do you ask?”

“While you were gone, I could almost recall … something else. Like wind in my face, only stronger. Moving so swiftly, of my own free will. I could almost recall being … someone … who was not a Vestrit at all. Someone separate from all I have known in this life. It was very frightening. But.” She halted, teetering on a thought she didn’t want to acknowledge.

After a long silence, she admitted, “I think I liked it. Then. Now … I think I had what men would call nightmares … if liveships could sleep. But I don’t sleep, and so I could not wake from them completely. The serpents in the harbor, Wintrow.” Now she spoke hurriedly in a low voice, trying to make him understand all of it at once. “No one else saw them in the harbor. All now admit of that white one that follows me. But there were others, many of them, in the bottom muck of the harbor. I tried to tell Gantry they were there, but he told me to ignore them. But I could not, because somehow they made the dreams that … Wintrow?”

He was dozing off in the warm sun on his skin. No one could blame him after the hardships he’d endured.

It still hurt her. She needed to talk to someone about these things, or she thought she would go mad. But no one was willing to truly listen to her. Even with Wintrow back on board, she still felt isolated. She suspected he was somehow holding himself back from her. Again, she could neither blame him, nor stop the hurt she felt at that. She felt an unfocused anger as well. The Vestrit family had made her what she was, created these needs in her. Yet since she had quickened, she had not had even a single day of ungrudging companionship. Kyle expected her to sail lively and well with a belly full of misery and no companion. It wasn’t fair.

The thud of hasty footsteps on her deck broke her thoughts.

“Wintrow,” she pitched urgency into her voice as she warned him, “Your father is headed this way.”

         

“You’re wide of the channel. Can’t you hold a course?” Kyle barked at Comfrey.

Comfrey looked up at him, a hooded glance. “No, sir,” he said evenly, as if he were not being insubordinate. “I can’t seem to. Every time I correct, the ship goes wide.”

“Don’t blame this on the ship. I’m getting sick of every crew-member on board this vessel blaming their incompetency on the ship.”

“No, sir,” Comfrey agreed. He stared straight ahead, and once more turned the wheel in an attempt to correct. The Vivacia answered as sluggishly as if she were towing a sea anchor. As if in response to that thought, Kyle saw a serpent thrash to the surface in her wake. The ugly thing seemed to be looking right at him.

Kyle felt the slow burn of his anger begin to glow. It was too much. It was just too damn much. He was not a weak man; he could face whatever fate threw his way and stand up to it. Unfavorable weather, tricky cargoes, even simple bad luck could not break his calm. But this was different. This was the direct opposition of those he strove to benefit. And he didn’t know how much more of it he could take.

Sa knew he had tried with the boy. What more could his son have asked of him? He’d offered him the whole damn ship, if he’d but be a man and step up and take her. But no. The boy had to run off and get himself tattooed as a slave in Jamaillia.

So he’d given up on the boy. He’d brought him back to the ship and put him completely at the ship’s disposal. Wasn’t that what she’d insisted she’d needed? He’d had the boy taken to the foredeck this morning, as soon as they were well out of the harbor. The ship should have been content. But no. She wallowed through the water, listing first to one side and then to another, constantly drifting out of the best channel. She shamed him with her sloppy gait, just as his own son had shamed him.

It all should have been so simple. Go to Jamaillia, pick up a load of slaves, take them up to Chalced, sell them at a profit. Bring prosperity to his family and pride to his name. He ran the crew well and maintained the ship. By all rights, she should sail splendidly. And Wintrow should have been a strong son to follow after him, a son proud to dream of taking the helm of his own liveship someday. Instead, at fourteen, Wintrow already had two slave tattoos on his face. And the larger one was the result of Kyle’s own angry and impulsive reaction to a facetious suggestion from Torg. He wished to Sa that Gantry had been with him instead of Torg that day. Gantry would have talked him out of it. In contrast, Torg had acted immediately, much to Kyle’s unspoken regret. If he had it to do over—

A movement off the starboard side caught his eye. It was the damn serpent again, slithering through the water, and watching him. It was a white serpent, uglier than a toad’s belly, that trailed in their wake. It didn’t seem much of a threat; the few glimpses of it he’d had, the thing had seemed old and fat. But the crew didn’t like it, and the ship didn’t like it. Looking down on it now, he realized just how much he didn’t like it. It stared up at him, meeting his gaze as if it were not an animal at all. It looked like a man trying to read his mind.

He left the wheel to be away from it, striding toward the bow in agitation. His troubled chain of thought followed him.

The damn ship stank, much worse than Torg had said it would. Stank worse than an outhouse, more like a charnel house. They’d already had to put three deaders over the side, one of which had seemed to die by her own hand. They’d found her sprawled wide in her chains. She’d torn strips from the hem of her garment and stuffed them into her mouth until she choked on them. How could anyone do such a stupid thing to herself? It had rattled several of the men, though none of them had spoken to him directly about it.

He glanced starboard again. The damn serpent was pacing him, staring up at him all the while. He looked away from it.

Somehow it reminded him of the tattoo down the boy’s face. It was just as inescapable. He shouldn’t have done it. He regretted it, but there was no changing it, and he knew he’d never be forgiven for it, so there was no sense in apologizing. Not to the boy or his mother. They’d hate him for it to the end of his days. Never mind that it hadn’t really hurt the boy; it wasn’t as if he’d blinded him or cut off a hand. It was just a mark. A lot of sailors wore a tattoo of their ship or the ship’s figurehead. Not on their faces, but it was the same thing. Still. Keffria was going to throw a fit when she saw it. Every time he looked at Wintrow, all he could imagine was his wife’s horrified face. He couldn’t even look forward to going home anymore. No matter how much coin he brought home, all they were going to see was the ship’s tattoo on the boy’s face.

Beside the ship, the serpent’s head lifted out of the water and regarded him knowingly.

Kyle found his angry stride had carried him the length of the ship, up to the foredeck. His son huddled there. It shamed him to look at such a creature as his elder son. This was his heir. This was the boy he had envisioned taking over the helm someday. It was just too damn bad that Malta was a female. She’d have made a much better heir than Wintrow.

A sudden flash of anger jolted through him, clearing his thought. It was all Wintrow’s fault. He saw that now. He’d brought the boy on board to keep the ship happy and make her sail right, and the little priest had only made her bitchy and sullen. Well, if she wasn’t going to sail well with the boy aboard, then there was no reason he had to put up with the puling whiner. He took two strides and seized Wintrow by the collar of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “I ought to feed you to the damn serpent!” he shouted at the startled boy who dangled in his grip.

Wintrow lifted shocked eyes to his father and met his gaze. He said nothing, setting his jaws firmly into silence.

He drew back his hand, and when Wintrow refused to cower, he backhanded his son with all the force he could muster, felt the sharp sting in his own fingers as they cracked across the boy’s tattooed face. The boy flew backwards, his feet tangling in his clanking fetters, to fall hard on the deck. He lay where he had fallen, his defiance of his father perfect in his lack of resistance.

“Damn you, damn you!” he roared at Wintrow and charged down on the boy. He intended to heave him over the side and let him sink. It was not only the perfect solution, it was the only manly thing left to do. No one would blame him. The boy was an embarrassment, and bad luck besides. Get rid of the whimpering boy-priest before Wintrow could shame him anymore.

Beside the ship, a death-white head reared suddenly from the water, jaws gaping expectantly. The scarlet maw was shocking, as were the red eyes that glittered so hopefully. It was big, bigger far than Kyle had thought from his glimpses of it. It kept pace with the Vivacia easily, even as it reared such a great length of itself out of the water. It waited for its meal.

         

The tangle had been following its provider into what Shreever now recognized as one of its resting places when Maulkin suddenly arced himself in a hard loop and veered away. He drove himself through the Plenty as if chasing prey, yet Shreever saw nothing worthy of pursuit.

“Follow,” she trumpeted to the others, and set out after him. Sessurea was not far behind her. In a few moments she became aware that the rest of the tangle had not complied. They had remained with the provider, thinking only of their bellies and the pleasures of growing and shedding and growing yet again. She thrust their betrayal from her mind and redoubled her efforts to overtake Maulkin.

She caught up with him only because he abruptly paused. Everything about his pose suggested fascination. His jaws were wide, gills flared and pumping as he stared.

“What is it?” she demanded, and then caught the tiniest flavor in the water. Shreever could not decide what it was she tasted, only that the sensation was a welcome and a fulfillment of a promise. She saw Sessurea join them, marked the widening of his eyes as he, too, was seized by the taste.

“What is it?” he echoed her earlier question.

“It is She Who Remembers,” Maulkin said in reverent awe. “Come. We must seek her.” He did not seem to notice that of all his tangle, only two of his followers had joined him. He had thought only for the hanging scent that threatened to disperse before he could track it to the source. He drove himself onward with a force and speed that Shreever and Sessurea could not match. They trailed him desperately, trying to keep sight of his golden false-eyes as they flashed through the murk. The fragrance grew stronger as they followed him, almost overwhelming their senses.

When they again overtook Maulkin, he was hanging at the respectful distance from a provider who shone silver through the murky plenty. Her scent hung thick in the water, sating them with its sweetness. Hope was a part of that scent, and joy, but thickest was the promise of memories, memories for all to share, knowledge and wisdom for the asking. Yet Maulkin hung back, and did not ask.

“Something is wrong,” he bugled quietly. His eyes were deep and thoughtful. A flickering of color ran the length of him and then faded. “This is not right. She Who Remembers is like to us. So all the holy lore says. I see only the silver-bellied provider. And yet, all my senses tell me that She is near. I do not understand.”

In confused awe they watched the silver provider as she moved languidly before them. She had a single attendant, a heavy white serpent who followed her closely. He hovered at the top of the Plenty, lifting his head out into the Lack.

“He speaks to her,” Maulkin blew out the thought softly. “He petitions her.”

“For memories,” Sessurea filled in. His ruff stood out in a shivering frill of anticipation.

“No!” Maulkin was suddenly incredulous, almost angry. “For food! He petitions only that she should bestow food upon him, food that she finds undesirable.”

His tail lashed the atmosphere so suddenly and savagely that it thickened with bottom particles. “This is not right!” he trumpeted. “This is a lure and a cheat! Her fragrance is that of She Who Remembers, and yet she is not of our kind. And that one speaks to her, and yet not to her, for she does not answer, and it was promised, forever promised, that she would always answer one who petitioned her. It is not right!”

There was great pain in the depth of his fury. His mane stood out wide, welling toxins in a choking cloud. Shreever wove her head aside from it. “Maulkin,” she besought quietly. “Maulkin, what must we do?”

“I do not know,” he replied bitterly. “There is nothing of this in holy lore, nothing of this in my tattered memories. I do not know. For myself, I shall follow her, simply to try to understand.” He bugled lower. “If you choose to return to the rest of the tangle, I will not fault you. Perhaps I have led you awry. Perhaps all my memories have been a deception of my own poisons.” His mane went suddenly limp with disappointment. He did not even look to see if they followed him as he trailed after the silver provider and her white hanger-on.

         

“Kyle! Let him go!” Vivacia shrieked the words at him, but there was no command in them, only fear. She leaned wildly to swat at the white serpent. “Go away, you foul thing! Get away from me! You shall not have him, you shall never have him!”

Her motion set the entire ship to rocking. She unbalanced her hull, making the entire ship list suddenly and markedly. She flailed at the serpent, ineffectual slapping motions of her massive wooden arms that rocked the ship wildly. “Get away, get away!” she screamed at it, and then, “Wintrow! Kyle!”

As Kyle dragged Wintrow toward the rail and the expectant serpent, Vivacia threw back her head and shrieked, “Gantry! In Sa’s name, get up here! GANTRY!”

Throughout the ship, other voices rose in a babel of confusion. Crew members shouted to one another, demanding to know what was going on, while in the holds slaves screamed wordlessly, terrified of anything—fire, shipwreck or storm—that might come upon them while they were chained down in the dark below the waterline. The fear and misery in the ship was suddenly palpable, a thick miasma that smelt of human waste and sweat and left a coppery taste in Kyle’s mouth and a greasy sheen of hopelessness on his skin.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Kyle heard himself shouting hoarsely, but was unsure of whom he ordered. He gripped Wintrow by the front of his tattered robe. He shook the unresisting boy, yet it was not the boy he battled.

Gantry was suddenly on the deck, barefoot and shirtless, the pale confusion of interrupted sleep in his face. “What is it?” he demanded, and then at sight of the serpent head that reared up near deck-high, he cried out wordlessly. In as close to panic as Kyle had ever seen the man, he snatched up a polishing stone from the deck. Two-handed he gripped it, and then he reared back and threw it at the serpent with such force that Kyle heard the cracking of his muscles. The serpent evaded it lazily with a gentle sway of its neck, and then slowly sank back down out of sight beneath the water. It was visible only as an unevenness in the pattern of the waves.

As if awakening from a nightmare, all purpose and understanding of what he was doing suddenly left Kyle. He looked at the boy he gripped without any clear idea of what his intent had been. Strength suddenly forsook him. He let Wintrow fall to the deck at his feet.

Chest heaving, Gantry turned to Kyle. “What is it?” he demanded. “What set this off?”

Vivacia was now uttering short panting shrieks, answered by incoherent cries from the slaves in the hold. Wintrow still sprawled where Kyle had dropped him. Gantry took two steps and looked down on the boy, then looked up at Kyle incredulously. “You did this?” he asked. “Why? The boy is knocked senseless.”

Kyle merely stared at him, speechless. Gantry shook his head and then glanced up at the sky as if imploring help from above. “Quiet down!” he snapped at the figurehead. “And I’ll see to him. But quiet down, you’re upsetting everyone. Mild! Mild, I want the medicine chest. And tell Torg I want the keys to these stupid chains, too. Easy. Easy, my lady, we’ll soon have things put as right as I can make them. Please. Calm down. It’s gone now, and I’ll see to the boy.” To a gaping sailor he shouted, “Evans. Go below, wake my watch. Have them go among the slaves and calm them, tell them there’s nothing to fear.”

“I touched it,” Kyle heard Vivacia tell Gantry breathlessly. “I hit it, and when I hit it, it knew me. Only I wasn’t me!”

“It’s going to be all right,” Gantry repeated doggedly.

The ship lurched again as Vivacia leaned far down to scrub her hands in the sea. She was still making small, frightened sounds.

Kyle forced himself to look down at his son. Wintrow was out cold. He massaged the puffy knuckles of his right hand and abruptly knew how hard he’d hit the boy. Hard enough to loosen teeth at least, possibly enough to break his face. Damn. He’d been going to feed the boy to the serpent. His own son. He knew he’d struck Wintrow, he recalled doing it. What he could not recall was why. What had goaded him into it? “He’s all right,” he told Gantry gruffly. “More than likely he’s faking it.”

“More than likely,” Gantry agreed sarcastically. He took a breath as if to speak, then suddenly seemed to change his mind. A moment later he said in a low voice, “Sir, we should make some sort of a weapon. A pike or a spear. Something. For that monster.”

“We’d probably just make it mad,” Kyle said uneasily. “Serpents follow slavers all the time. I’ve never heard of them attacking the ship itself. It will be content with the dead slaves.”

Gantry looked at him as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. “What if we don’t have any?” he said, speaking very clearly. “What if we’re as smart and good as you said we’d be, and we don’t kill half of them off on the way? What if it gets hungry? And what if the ship just plain doesn’t like it? Shouldn’t we try to get rid of it for her?” Belatedly his eyes roved over the idle sailors that were gathering to overhear this exchange. “Get back to your tasks!” he barked at them harshly. “If any man has nothing to do, let me know. I’ll find him something.” As the sailors dispersed, he swung his attention back to Wintrow. “I think he’s just stunned,” he muttered. “Mild!” he bellowed again, just as the young sailor bounded up with keys in hand and the medicine box under his arm.

Wintrow was stirring, and Gantry helped him sit up. He sat, hands braced wide on the deck behind him, and watched dazedly as Gantry unfastened the shackles on Wintrow’s feet. “This is stupid,” the man hissed angrily. He glared at the oozing sores on Wintrow’s ankles, then barked an order over his shoulder. “Mild, haul him up a bucket of salt water.” He turned his attention back to the boy before him. “Wintrow, wash those out good with salt water and then bandage them. Nothing like seawater for healing a cut. Leaves a good, tough scar. I should know, I got enough of them.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “And wash yourself while you’re at it. Those chained below have an excuse for stinking. You don’t.”

Gantry glanced up at Kyle, who still stood over them. He met his captain’s eyes and dared to shake his head in disapproval. Kyle tightened his jaw but said nothing. Then Gantry stood and walked away from them, to where he could look down at Vivacia. She had craned her head over her shoulder to watch what was going on. Her eyes were very wide and she clutched her hands together at her breast. “Now,” he said levelly. “I’ve had enough of this. Exactly what is it that you want to make you behave?”

Confronted so baldly, Vivacia almost recoiled from him. She was silent.

“Well?” Gantry demanded, indignation slipping into his voice. “You’ve tried the patience of every man aboard you. Just what in Sa’s name do you want to make you happy? Music? Company? What?”

“I want …” She paused and seemed to lose her thought. “I touched it, Gantry. I touched it. And it knew me and it said I wasn’t Vivacia nor was I of the Vestrits. It said I belonged to them.” She was babbling now, Kyle thought in disgust. Babbling like an idiot.

“Vivacia,” Gantry told her sternly. “Serpents don’t talk. It said nothing, it just frightened you. It rattled us all, but it’s over. No one’s badly hurt. But you could have hurt us, with your wild behavior and—”

She didn’t seem to be listening. Vivacia furrowed her wooden brow and frowned, then seemed to recall his first question. “What I want is to go back to the way it was before.” It was a desperate plea.

“Before what?” Gantry demanded in despair. Kyle knew the man was already defeated. No sense in asking the ship what she wanted, she always wanted what no one could give her. She was spoiled, that was all, a spoiled female with vast ideas of her own importance. Trying to please her was the wrong tack. The more Gantry catered to her, the more she’d bully them all. It was the nature of women. Why hadn’t they carved a man for a figurehead? A man could have understood reason.

“Before Kyle,” Vivacia said slowly. She turned to glare at him. “I want Ephron Vestrit back at the helm. And Althea on board. And Brashen.” She lifted her hands to cover her face and turned away from them. “I want to be sure of who I am again.” Her voice shook like a child’s.

“I can’t give you that. No man can give you that.” Gantry shook his head. “Come, ship. We’re doing our best. Wintrow’s out of the chains. I can’t force him to be happy. I can’t force the slaves to be happy. I’m doing the best I can.” The man was close to pleading.

Vivacia shook her head slowly. “I just can’t go on like this,” she said, and there were tears in her muffled voice. “I feel it all, you know. I feel it all.”

“Bilge,” Kyle growled. Enough of this. He mastered the disgust he felt for his own unbridled anger. So he’d lost his temper. Well, Sa knew he’d been pushed hard enough lately. It was time to let them all know he’d tolerate no more nonsense. He stepped up to the railing beside his mate. “Gantry, don’t encourage her to whine. Don’t encourage her to be childish.” He looked down on Vivacia and their eyes met. “Ship. You’ll sail. That’s all there is to it. You can sail willing or sail like a cow-hide raft, but we’ll sail you. I don’t give a rat’s ass for whether you’re happy or not. We’ve got a task to do and we’ll do it. If you don’t like having a hold full of slaves, why then, sail faster, damn you. The sooner we get to Chalced the sooner we’re rid of them. As for Wintrow, there’s no making him happy. He didn’t want to behave as my son, he didn’t want to be the ship’s boy. He made himself a slave. So that is what he is now. That’s your likeness needled into his face. He’s yours, to do with as you will and you’re welcome to him. If he doesn’t please you, you can throw him over the side for all I care.”

Kyle stopped. He was out of breath and they were all staring at him. He didn’t like the look on Gantry’s face. He was staring at Kyle as if he were mad. There was a deep uneasiness behind his eyes. Kyle didn’t like it. “Gantry. Take the watch,” he snapped at him. He glanced aloft. “Get her canvas up, every scrap of it, and see the men scramble lively. Move this tub along. If a seagull farts near us, I want the wind from it caught.” He strode off to go back to his cabin. He’d bought incense in Jamaillia City, on the advice of one of the experienced slaver captains. He’d burn that and get away from the stink of slaves for a time. He’d get away from all of them for a time.

         

The ship had returned to near calm. A slaveship was never completely peaceful. Always, there were cries from somewhere in the hold. People cried out for water, for air, begging voices rose, pleading for the simple light of day. Fights broke out amongst the slaves. It was astounding, how much damage two closely chained men could work upon each other. The cramped quarters and the stench, the stingy rations of ship’s bread and water made them turn on one another like rats in a rain barrel.

Not so different, Wintrow thought, from Vivacia and me. In their own way, they were like the slaves chained cheek by jowl below. They had no space to be separate from one another, not even in their thoughts and dreams. No friendship could survive such an enforced confinement. Especially not when guilt was an invisible third sandwiched between them. He had abandoned her, left her to her fate. And for her, the one whispered comment when she had first seen his marked face. “This falls upon me,” she had said. “But for me, none of this would have befallen you.”

“That is true,” he had had to agree with her. “But that does not mean it is your fault.”

By her stricken look, he had known that his words wounded her. But he had been too weary and despondent on his own behalf to try to soften them with yet more useless words.

That had been hours ago, back before his father had attacked him. Not a sound had she uttered since Gantry had left them. Wintrow had huddled in the angle of her prow, wondering what had possessed his father. He wondered if he would be suddenly attacked again. He had been too dispirited to speak. He had no idea what had stilled Vivacia’s tongue but her silence was almost a relief.

When she finally did speak, her words were banal. “What are we going to do?”

The futility of the question jabbed him. He refolded the wet rag to find a cooler spot, then held it against his swollen face. The bitter words rose to his lips spontaneously. “Do? Why do you ask me? I no longer have any choices as to what I will do. Rather, you should tell your slave what you command.”

“I have no slave,” Vivacia replied with icy dignity. Outrage crept gradually into her voice. “If you wish to please your father by calling yourself a slave, say you belong to him. Not me.”

His long frustration found a target. “Rather say my father is intent on pleasing you, with no regard to what it does to me. If it were not for your strange nature, he would never have forced me to serve aboard you.”

“My strange nature? And whence did that come? Not from my will. I am what your family has made me. You spoke of choices a moment ago, saying you no longer had any. I have never had any. I am more truly a slave than any mark on your face can make you.”

Wintrow snorted in disbelief. His anger was rising to match her own. “You a slave? Show me the tattoo on your face, the manacles on your wrists. Easy for you to flaunt such words about. Vivacia, this is not something I play act. This mark is on my face for the rest of my life.” He forced the bitter words from his lips. “I’m a slave.”

“Are you?” Her voice was hard. “Before, you said you were a priest, and that no man could take that from you. But that, of course, was before you ran away. Since you have been dragged back, you have shown me otherwise. I had believed you had more courage, Wintrow Vestrit. More determination to shape yourself.”

Outrage at her words overtook him. He sat up, to look over his shoulder and out at her. “What would you know of courage, ship? What would you know about anything that is truly human? What can be more degrading than to have someone take all decision from you, to tell you that you are a ‘thing’ that ‘belongs’ to him? To no longer have a say in where you will go or what you will do? How can one keep any dignity, any faith, any belief in tomorrow? You speak to me of courage—”

“What can I know of courage? What can I know of such things?” The look she swung upon him was terrible to behold. “When have I ever known anything else than to be a ‘thing’, a possession?” Her eyes blazed. “How dare you throw such things up to me!”

Wintrow gaped at her. For a moment he felt stricken, and then he tried to recover himself. “It is not the same! It is more difficult for me. I was born a man and—”

“Silence!” her words slashed at him. “I never put my mark upon your face, but your family spent three generations putting your mark upon my soul. Yes, soul! This ‘thing’ dares to claim one!” She looked him up and down, and began to speak. Then she caught her breath; a strange look passed across her face, so that for an instant a stranger seemed to look out at him.

“We are quarreling,” she observed in a sort of wonder. “We are at odds.” She nodded to herself, seeming almost pleased. “If I can disagree with you, then I am not you.”

“Of course not.” For a moment he was confused by her foray into the obvious. Then his irritation with her came back. “I am not you and you are not me. We are separate beings, with separate desires and needs. If you have not realized that before now, then you need to. You need to start being yourself, Vivacia, and discover your own ambitions and desires and thoughts. Have you ever even stopped to think what you might truly want for yourself, other than possessing me?”

With a suddenness that shocked him, she suddenly separated herself from him. She looked away from him, but it was far more than that. He gasped as if deluged with cold water, and a shiver ran over him followed by giddiness. If he had not already been sitting, he might have fallen. He hugged himself for the wind seemed suddenly colder on his skin. In wonder he admitted, “I didn’t realize how hard I was struggling to keep myself apart from you.”

“Were you?” she asked almost gently. Her anger of a few moments ago was gone. Or was it? He could no longer feel what she felt. He stood to look over the railing and found himself trying to read her emotions from the set of her shoulders. She didn’t look back at him.

“We are better parted,” she said with great finality.

“But …” he faltered through the next question. “I thought a liveship had to have a partner, one of her own family.”

“It didn’t seem to concern you when you ran away. Don’t let it concern you now.” Her voice was brusque.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he ventured. His own anger was suddenly gone. Perhaps he had only been feeling hers? “Vivacia. I am here, whether I want to be or not. As long as I’m here anyway, there is no reason why …”

“The reason is that you have always held back from me. You admitted that, just now. And another reason is that perhaps it is time I discovered who I am without you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That is because when I was trying to tell you something important, earlier today, you were not listening.” Her voice did not sound hurt. Instead there was a studied calm to it that suddenly reminded him of Berandol when his tutor tried to point out an obvious lesson.

“I suppose I wasn’t,” he admitted humbly. “I’ll listen now, if you want me to.”

“Now is too late,” she said sharply. Then she amended it to, “I don’t want to tell you about it now. Perhaps I want to puzzle it out for myself. Maybe it’s time I did that for myself, instead of always having a Vestrit do it for me.”

It was his turn to feel abandoned and shut out. “But … what shall I do?”

She turned to look back at him, and there was almost kindness in her green eyes. “A slave would ask such a question and wait to be told. A priest would know the answer for himself.” She almost smiled. “Or have you forgotten who you are without me?” She asked the question, but desired no answer. She turned her back on him. Head up, she stared at the horizon. She had shut him out.

After a time, he heaved himself to his feet. He found the bucket Mild had brought earlier and lowered it over the side. The rope jerked hard against his grip as it filled. It was heavy as he dragged it up. He picked up the rag he had used earlier. She did not watch him go as he left her, taking his bucket and rag below into the slave holds.

         

I don’t know if I can do this, she thought in despair. I don’t know how to be myself without help. What if I go mad? She looked past the islands and rocks that dotted the wide channel, ahead to the horizon. She spread out her senses, tasting both wind and water. She became immediately aware of serpents. Not just the fat white one that trundled along in her wake like a fat dog on a leash, but others that shadowed her at a distance. Resolutely she shut them out of her thoughts. She wished she could do the same for the misery of the slaves within her and the confusion of her crew. But the humans were too close to her, they touched her wizardwood in too many places. Despite herself, she was aware of Wintrow as he went from slave to slave, wiping faces and hands with his cool wet rag, offering what small comforts he could. Both priest and Vestrit, she thought to herself. She felt oddly proud of the boy, as if he were hers somehow. But he was not. With each passing moment of this separateness, she realized more the truth of that. Humans and their emotions filled her, but they were not herself. She tried to accept them and encapsulate them and find herself as someone separate from them. Either she could not, or there was not much to herself.

After a time, she lifted her head and set her jaw. If I am no more than a ship, then I shall be a proud ship. She located the rush of the channel’s current and edged herself into it. In tiny movements that were scarcely perceptible even to herself, she aligned her planking, trimming herself. Gantry was on the wheel now and she sensed his sudden pleasure in how well she ran before the wind. She could trust him. She closed her eyes to the rush of air past her face and tried to let the dreams come. What do I want of my life? she asked them.

         

“You lied to my captain.” The Ophelia had a husky, courtesan’s voice, sweet as dark honey. “Boy,” she added belatedly. She gave Althea a sideways glance. Ophelia, like many figureheads of her day, had been arrayed upon the beakhead of the ship, rather than positioned below the bowsprit. The glance she gave Althea over her bare and ample shoulder was an arch warning against lying.

Althea didn’t dare reply. She was sitting cross-legged on a small catwalk that had been built, she’d been told, solely that Ophelia might socialize more easily. Althea shook the large dice box in her hands. It was oversized, as were the dice within it. They were the property of the Ophelia. Upon discovering that there was an “extra” hand aboard the ship, she had immediately demanded that Althea would spend part of her watches amusing her. Ophelia was very fond of games of chance, but mostly, Althea suspected, because they gave her plenty of time to gossip. She also suspected that the ship routinely cheated, but this was something she had decided to over-look. Ophelia herself kept tally sticks of what each crew member owed her. Some of the sticks bore the notches of years. Althea’s stick already bore a generous number of notches. She opened the box, looked within, and frowned at it. “Three gulls, two fish,” she announced, and tilted the box for the figurehead’s inspection. “You win again.”

“So I do,” Ophelia agreed. She smiled crookedly at Althea. “Shall we up the stakes this time?”

“I already owe you more than I have,” Althea pointed out.

“Exactly. So, unless we change our wager, I have no chance of being paid. How about this: Let’s play for your little secret.”

“Why bother? I think you already know it.” Althea prayed it was no more than her sex. If that was all Ophelia knew and all she could reveal, then she was still relatively safe. Violence aboard a liveship was not unheard of, but it was rare. The emotions that radiated from violence were too unsettling to the ship. Most of the ships themselves disdained violence, although it was rumored that the Shaw had a mean streak, and had once even called for the flogging of an incompetent hand who’d spilled paint on him. But the Ophelia, for all her blowzy airs, was a lady, and a kind-hearted one as well. Althea doubted she would be raped aboard such a ship, though the rough courtship of a sailor attempting to be gallant could be almost as fierce and bruising. Consider Brashen, for instance, she thought to herself, and then she wished she hadn’t. Lately he popped into her mind at unguarded moments. She probably should have hunted him down in Candletown and bid him good-bye. That was all she was missing, putting a final close to things. Above all, she should never have let him have the last word.

“Well, you are right, I do know at least a part of it.” The Ophelia laughed huskily. Her lips were painted scarlet, her own conceit. Her teeth were very white when she laughed. She lowered both her eyelashes and her voice as she said more softly, “And right now I’m the only one that knows it. As I’m sure you’d like it to remain.”

“As I am sure it will,” Althea replied sweetly, shaking the dice box soundly. “For a lady so grand as yourself could never be so petty as to give away another’s secret.”

“No?” She smiled with a corner of her mouth. “Do you not think I have a duty to reveal to my captain that one of his hands is not what he thinks him to be?”

“Mmm.” It could be a very uncomfortable journey home, if Tenira decided to confine her. “So. What do you propose?”

“Three throws. For each one I win, I get to ask you a question, which you will answer truthfully.”

“And if I win?”

“I keep your secret.”

Althea shook her head. “Your stakes are not as high as mine.”

“You can ask me a question.”

“No. Still not enough.”

“Well, what do you want then?”

Althea shook the dice box thoughtfully.

Despite the time of year, the day was almost warm, an effect of the hot swamps to the west of them. All this stretch of coast was swamp and tussocky islands and shifting sand bars that changed seasonally. The hot water that mingled with the brine here was terrible for ordinary ships; sea-worms and other pests throve in it. But it wouldn’t bother the Ophelia’s wizardwood hull. An occasional whiff of sulfur was the only price they had to pay for it. The wind stirred the tendrils of hair that had pulled free of Althea’s queue and warmed the ache of hard work from her joints. Despite her title of “extra” hand, Tenira had found plenty to keep her busy. But he was a fair man and Ophelia was a beautiful and sweet-tempered ship. And Althea suddenly realized just how content she had been the last week or so.

“I know what I want,” she said quietly. “But I’m not sure even you can give it to me.”

“You think very loud. Has anyone ever told you that? I think I like you almost as much as you like me.” Ophelia’s voice was warm with affection. “You want me to ask Tenira to keep you on, don’t you?”

“There’s more than that. I’d want him to know what I am, and still be willing to let me work for him.”

“Ouch,” Ophelia complained mockingly. “That is a high stake. And of course I couldn’t promise it, only that I’d try for it.” She winked at Althea. “Shake the box, girl.”

Ophelia won the first round easily.

“So. Ask your question,” Althea said quietly.

“Not yet. I want to know how many questions I have, before I start.”

The next two rounds went to her as swiftly as the first. Althea still could not see how she was cheating; the figurehead’s large hands all but overlapped on the dice box.

“Well,” Ophelia purred as she handed the box to Althea for her to inspect her final winning throw. “Three questions. Let me see.” She deliberated a moment. “What is your full true name?”

Althea sighed. “Althea Vestrit.” She spoke very softly, knowing the ship would nonetheless hear her.

“No-o-o!” Ophelia breathed out in scandalized delight. “You are a Vestrit! A girl from an Old Trader family runs off to sea, and leaves her own liveship behind. Oh, how could you, you wicked thing, you heartless girl! Have you any idea what you put the Vivacia through? And her just a little slip of a thing, barely quickened and you leave her next to alone in the world! Heartless, wicked … tell me why, quickly, quickly, or I shall die of suspense!”

“It was not my choice.” Althea took a breath. “I was forced off my family ship,” she said quietly, and suddenly it all came back, the grief at her father’s death, her outrage at her disinheritance, her hatred of Kyle. Without thinking, she reached up to put her palm flat against the great hand that Ophelia reached down to her in sympathy. Like a floodgate opening, she felt the sudden outflow of her feelings and thoughts. She took a long shuddering breath. She had not realized how much she had missed simply being able to share with someone. The words spilled from her. Ophelia’s features grew first agitated, then sympathetic as she listened to Althea’s tale of her wrongs.

“Oh, my dear, my dear. How tragic! But why didn’t you come to us? Why did you let them part you?”

“Come to who?” Althea asked dazedly.

“Why, the liveships. It was all the talk of Bingtown harbor, when you disappeared and Haven took Vivacia over. More than a few of us were upset by it. We had always assumed you would take the Vivacia over when your father’s time was done. And she was so upset, poor thing. We could scarcely get a word out of her. Then that boy, um, Wintrow, came aboard, and we were so relieved for her. But even then she didn’t seem truly content. And if Wintrow was brought aboard against his will, why, then, that explains so much! But I still don’t see why you didn’t come to us.”

“I never thought of it,” Althea admitted. “It seemed a family thing. Besides. I don’t understand. What could the other liveships have done?”

“You give us very little credit, darling. There is much we could have done, but the final threat was that we would have refused to sail. All of us. Until the Vivacia was given a willing family member.”

Althea was shocked. After a moment she managed, “You would have done that, for us?”

“Althea, honey, it would be for all of us. Perhaps you are too young to remember, but once there was a liveship called the Paragon. He was similarly abused, and driven mad by the abuse.” Ophelia closed her eyes and shook her head. “At that time, we did not act. By our failure to aid one of our own, he was irreparably damaged. No liveship passes in or out of Bingtown harbor without seeing him, pulled out of the water and chained down, abandoned to his madness … Ships talk, Althea. Oh, we gossip just as much as sailors, and no one gossips like sailors. The pact was made long ago. If we had but known, we would have spoken up for you. And if speaking did not work, then, yes, we would have refused to sail. There are not so many liveships that we can afford to ignore one of our own.”

“I had no idea,” Althea said quietly.

“Yes, well, and perhaps I have spoken too freely. You understand that if such a pact were well known, it might be … misconstrued. We are not mutinous by nature, nor would we ever enact such a rebellion if it were not needed. But neither would we stand by and see one of our own abused again.” The drawling accents of a bawd had fallen from her voice. Althea now heard just as clearly the utterance of a Bingtown matriarch.

“Is it too late to ask for help?”

“Well, we’re a long way from home. It’s going to take time. Trust me to pass the word to other liveships as I encounter them. Don’t you try to speak for yourself. We can’t do much until the Vivacia herself comes into Bingtown harbor again. Oh, I do hope I’m there. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. At that time, I—or one of us, I do hope I get to be the one—will ask her for her side of your story. If she feels as aggrieved as you do, and I am sure she will, for I can read you almost as clearly as my own kin, then we will act. There are always one or two liveships in Bingtown harbor. We will speak to our families, and as other ships come in, they will join us, petitioning their families to speak to the Vestrits as well. The concept, you see, is that we pressure our own families to put pressure on your family. The ultimate pressure, of course, would be if we all refused to sail. It is, frankly, a stance we hope we shall never have to take. But we will if we have to.”

Althea was silent for a long time.

“What are you thinking?” Ophelia asked her at last.

“That I have wasted the better part of a year, away from my own ship. I have learned a great many things, and I do believe I am a better sailor than I was. But that I will never be able to regain the wonder of those first months of her life. You are right, Ophelia. Heartless and wicked. Or maybe just stupid and cowardly. I don’t know how I could have left her alone to deal with Kyle.”

“We all make mistakes, my dear,” Ophelia assured her gently. “I wish all of them could be righted as easily as this. Of course we will get you back on board your own ship. Of course we will.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.” It was like being able to take a deep breath again, or to stand up straight after bearing a heavy burden for a long time. She had never grasped that liveships might share such feelings for one another. Her individual bond with Vivacia had been all she had perceived. She had never paused to think that in time her ship might develop friendships with others like her. That she and Vivacia might have allies beyond each other.

Ophelia gave her throaty bawd’s chuckle. “Well, you still have to answer one question for me.”

Althea shook her head and smiled. “You have asked me far more than three questions.”

“I think not!” Ophelia declared haughtily. “I recall only that I asked you your name. The rest just all came out freely. You spilled your guts, girl.”

“Well, perhaps I did. No, wait. I clearly recall that you asked me why I hadn’t come to the liveships for help.”

“That was not a question, that was just a conversational gambit. But even if I give you that, you still owe me a question.”

Althea was inclined to feel generous. “Ask away, then.”

Ophelia smiled, and a bright spark of mischief came into her eyes. For a second she bit the tip of her tongue between her white teeth. Then she asked quickly, “Who is that dark-eyed man who gives you such … stimulating dreams?”