CHAPTER FORTY

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
THE RAIN WILD RIVER

The morning air was cool and soothing on her face. Paragon moved easily with the flow of the river. As she looked at the new day, Althea could tell Semoy was on the helm. It was more because he enjoyed it than because his skill was needed. This stretch of river was as placid as Paragon’s deck. Many of the crew had jumped ship in Bingtown. Others had stayed on as far as Trehaug, only to find new jobs there as laborers. When they had left Trehaug with little more than a skeleton crew, neither Brashen nor Althea had seen it as a real loss. It was going to be difficult enough to scrape together wages for those who remained. Their present errand was to return to Bingtown, where a load of stone awaited them. Althea suspected it was salvaged from destroyed New Trader holdings. It would be used to reinforce the bank where the dragons would eventually hatch. The dragon was adept at finding work for the liveships, and less than capable at finding pay for their crews.

Althea shook such dismal worries from her head. Doggedly she seized onto optimism. She could believe all would go well, as long as she didn’t think too hard. She crossed the main deck and bounded up to the foredeck. “Morning!” she announced to the figurehead. She looked around, stretching. “Every day, I think these jungles cannot be greener. Every morning, I awake and find I am wrong.”

Paragon didn’t reply. But Amber spoke from over the side. “Spring,” Amber agreed. “An amazing season.”

Althea stepped up to the railing to look down at her. “You fall in this river, you’re going to be sorry,” she warned her. “No matter how fast we fish you out, it’s going to sting. Everywhere.”

“I won’t fall,” Amber retorted. One of Paragon’s hands cupped her before him. She sat on it, legs swinging, carving tool in hand.

“What are you doing?” Althea asked curiously. “I thought he was finished.”

“He is. This is just decoration. Scrollwork and things. On his axe handle and his battle harness.”

“What are you carving?”

“Charging bucks,” Amber replied diffidently. She sheathed her tools abruptly. “Take me up, please,” she requested. Without a word, the figurehead restored her to the deck.

The river was a vast gray road flowing away from them. The thick forest of the Rain Wilds loomed close on the starboard side, while on the port side the wide waters stretched far to another green wall of plant life. Althea took a deep breath of cool air flavored with river water and teeming plant life. Unseen birds called in the trees. Some of the vines that festooned the gigantic trees had put out fat purple buds. A tall column of dancing insects caught the sunlight on their myriad tiny wings. Althea grimaced at the sparkling sight. “I swear, every one of those pests spent the night in our cabin.”

“At least one of them was in my room,” Amber contradicted. “It managed to buzz near my ear most of the night.”

“I’ll be glad to see salt water again,” Althea replied. “How about you, Paragon?”

“Soon enough,” the ship replied distractedly.

Althea raised one eyebrow at Amber. The carpenter shrugged. For the past two days, the ship had had a preoccupied air. Althea was willing to give him however much space and time he needed. This decades-delayed homecoming had to be a strange and wrenching experience for him. She was neither serpent nor dragon, yet the daily losses of the serpents as they guided them north had appalled and distressed her. That the serpents fed upon their own dead, however pragmatic that practice might be in conserving food and inherited memories, horrified her.

Tintaglia’s circling presence had protected them from the Chalcedean ships. Only twice had they been directly challenged. There had been one brief battle, put to an end when Tintaglia had returned to drive the foreign ship away. The second encounter had ended when She Who Remembers had risen from the depths to spray the Chalcedean vessel with venom. Her death, Althea thought, had been the most difficult one for Paragon. The crippled serpent had gradually wasted but had gamely continued in her migration. Unlike many of the serpents, she had actually reached the mouth of the Rain Wild River. The journey up it, against the current, had proven too much for her. One morning they had found her, wrapped motionless around Paragon’s anchor chain.

Many had perished in the acid flow of the river water. Battered and weary as they were, their small injuries turned to gaping wounds in the rushing wash of the gray water. Neither the ship nor Tintaglia could make that last long stretch any easier for them. One hundred and twenty-nine serpents entered the river mouth with them. By the time the tangle reached the river ladder the Rain Wilders had constructed, their numbers had dwindled to ninety-three. The rough interconnecting corrals of thick logs impeded and diverted the river’s shallow rush, deepening the flow just enough for the serpents to wallow upriver.

Rain Wild engineering skills had combined with the strong backs of both Traders and Tattooed to create an artificial channel that led to the ancient mudbanks. Tintaglia had supervised the quarrying of the silver-streaked mud. The stuff was near as stiff as clay. Yet another log corral had been built, and workers had toiled long cold hours painstakingly mixing the hard stuff with river water until Tintaglia approved of the sloppy muck. As the exhausted serpents managed to haul themselves out on the low banks of the river, workers had transported barrows of the sloshing mud and laved it over the serpents.

It had tormented Paragon that he could not witness the cocooning of the serpents. A large ship such as he could not approach through the shallow waters. Althea had gone in his stead. To her had fallen the task of telling him that only seventy-nine of the serpents had managed to complete their cocoons. The others had died, their bodies too wasted to summon the special secretions that would bind the mud into long threads to layer around themselves. Tintaglia had roared her grief at each death, and then shared out the wasted bodies as food amongst the remaining serpents. Despite her extreme distaste for that behavior, Althea thought it just as well. The dragon herself looked little better than the serpents. She refused to take time to hunt while the cocooning was going on. In a matter of days, her glittering hide hung on her in folds, despite the sympathetic workers who brought her birds and small game. Such largesse kept her alive, but not thriving.

Further work followed the cocooning. The muck-wrapped serpents had to be protected from the torrential deluges of a Rain Wild winter until the sheathing had dried hard. But eventually Tintaglia announced she was satisfied with the cocoons. Now the immense cases rested on the muddy bank of the river like giant seedpods hidden in a heaped litter of leaves, twigs and branches. Tintaglia once more gleamed since she had resumed her daily hunts. Some nights she returned to rest beside the cocoons, but increasingly she trusted the cadre of humans who watched over them from their treehouses. True to her word, the dragon now patrolled the river to its mouth, and overflew the coast of the Cursed Shores.

Tintaglia still spoke hopefully of more serpents returning. Althea suspected this was the true motive behind her coastal vigilance. She had even hinted that perhaps she would send liveships far south to seek for lost survivors. Althea considered that a measure of her anguish at their losses. From Selden, Althea had learned that not all the cocoons would hatch. There was always some mortality at this stage of a dragon’s development, but these weakened creatures were dying at far higher rates than normal. Selden seemed to mourn them as much as Tintaglia, though he could not completely explain to Althea how he knew which ones had perished unhatched.

She had never known her nephew well. In the weeks she had spent in Trehaug and at the site of Cassarick, she had seen him grow stranger. It was not just the physical changes that she marked. At times, he did not seem to be a little boy anymore. The cadence of his voice and his choice of words when he spoke to the dragon seemed to come from an older and foreign person.

The only time when he seemed like the Selden she recalled was when he had returned dirty and weary from a day spent exploring with Bendir. They had festooned the swampy jungle behind the cocoon beach with bright strips of fabric tied to stakes or tree limbs. The colors were a code of sorts, incomprehensible to Althea, intended to guide future excavation. Over meals, Selden and Bendir discussed them earnestly and made summer plans for serious digging. She no longer knew her nephew, she reflected, but she was sure of one thing. Selden Vestrit was fired with enthusiasm for this new life he had found. In that, she rejoiced. It surprised her that Keffria had let him go. Perhaps her older sister was finally realizing that life was to be lived, rather than hoarded against an unseen tomorrow. Althea drew a deep breath of the spring air, savoring both it and her freedom.

“Where’s Brashen?” Amber asked.

Althea groaned. “Torturing Clef.”

Amber smiled. “Someday Clef will thank Brashen for insisting that he learn his letters.”

“Perhaps, but this morning it does not seem likely. I had to leave them before I lost my temper with both of them. Clef spends more time arguing about why he cannot learn them than he does trying to learn them. Brashen gives him no ground. The boy is quick-witted on his seamanship. He should be able to learn his letters.”

“He will learn his letters,” Brashen asserted as he joined them. He pushed his hair back from his face with an ink-stained hand. He looked more like a frustrated tutor than a sea captain. “I set him three pages to copy and left him. I warned him that good work would free him faster than messy.”

“There!” Paragon’s voice boomed. His sudden shout flung a small flock of bright birds skyward from the looming forest. He lifted a big hand aloft, to point up and back into the trees. “There. That is it.” He leaned, swaying the entire ship slightly. “Semoy! Hard starboard!”

“You’ll run aground!” Brashen cried in dismay. Semoy had not questioned the order. The ship swung in suddenly toward the looming trees.

“It’s a mud bottom,” Paragon replied calmly. “You’ll get me off easily enough when you need to.”

Althea seized the railing, but instead of running aground, Paragon had found a deep if narrow channel of near-still water. Perhaps in the rainy season it was one of the many watercourses that fed the Rain Wild River. Now it was reduced to a finger of calm water winding back beneath the trees. They left the main channel of the Rain Wild River behind them. They did not get far, however, before Paragon’s rigging began to tangle in the overreaching branches. “You’re fouling your rigging,” Brashen warned him, but the ship deliberately moved deeper into the entangling mess. Althea exchanged an anxious grimace with him. He shook his head at her, and kept silent. Paragon was an independent soul. He had the right to command where his body would go. The new challenge to running this liveship was respecting his will for himself and crediting him with judgment. Even if it meant letting him run himself aground in a jungle lagoon.

There were questioning yells from several deckhands, but Semoy was steady on the wheel. Leaves and twiggy branches rained down on them. Startled birds gave cry and fled. The ship slowed and then stopped.

“We’re here,” Paragon announced excitedly.

“We certainly are,” Brashen agreed sourly, staring up at the tangled mess.

“Igrot’s hoard,” Amber breathed.

They both turned to look at her. Her gaze was following Paragon’s pointing finger. Althea saw nothing save a dark mass high overhead in some ancient trees. The figurehead turned to regard them with a triumphant grin. “She guessed first, and she guessed right,” he announced as if they had been playing a game.

Most of their reduced crew was on deck, staring up where Paragon had pointed. Igrot’s infamous star had been branded deep in the bark of the near tree. Time had expanded the mark.

“Igrot’s biggest haul,” Paragon reminisced, “was when he took a treasure shipment meant for the Satrap of all Jamaillia. This was back in the days when the Satrapy sent a tribute ship once a year, to collect what was due him from his outlying settlements. Bingtown had put in Rain Wild goods, a rich haul of them. But en route to Jamaillia, the entire barge disappeared. None of it was ever seen again.”

“That was before my time, but I’ve heard of it,” Brashen said. “Folk said it was the richest load ever to leave Trehaug. Some treasure chambers had been unearthed. All of it was lost.”

“Hidden,” Paragon corrected him. He looked again to the lofty trees. Althea peered up at the dark mass, festooned with vines and creepers, perched high. It spanned the live branches of several trees.

Paragon’s voice was triumphant. “Didn’t you ever wonder why Igrot wanted a liveship? It was so he could have a place to hoard his trove, a place that no ordinary pirates could ever reach. Even if a member of his crew jabbered of where it was, robbers would need a liveship to recover it. He put in here, and his hearties traveled from my rigging to the trees. There they built a platform and hoisted the treasure up to it. He thought it would be safe forever.”

Brashen made a low sound. There was fury in his voice as he asked, “Did he blind you before or after he selected this place?”

The figurehead didn’t flinch from the question. “After,” he said quietly. “He never trusted me. With reason. I lost count of how many times I tried to kill him. He blinded me so that I could never find my way back without him.” He turned back to the awestruck crew on his deck and dropped Amber a slow wink. “He never thought that anyone might recarve me. Neither did I, back then. Nevertheless, here I am. Sole survivor of that bloody crew. It’s mine now. And hence, yours.” A stunned silence followed his words. No one spoke or moved.

The figurehead raised his eyebrows questioningly. “No one wants to reclaim it for us?” he asked wryly.

Getting their first look at it was the easy part. Rigging catwalks and hoists through the trees to transport the stuff back to Paragon’s deck was the time-consuming part. Despite the backbreaking labor, no one complained. “As for Clef, you would think Paragon had planned this specifically to get him out of his lessons,” Brashen pointed out. As the ship’s nimblest rigging monkey, the boy had been freed from his lessons for this task.

“If he grins any wider, the top half of his head may come off,” Althea agreed. She craned her neck to see Clef. A heavy sack bounced on his back as he made his way back to the ship. Neither snakes nor swarming insects had dampened the boy’s enthusiasm for his rope-walking trips back and forth between ship and platform. “I wish he were a bit more cautious,” she worried.

She, Brashen and several crewmen stood on a layered platform of logs. The vines had reinforced the old structure with their growing strength through the years, actually incorporating it into their system of tendrils and air roots. The chests and barrels that had held Igrot’s hoard had not fared as well. A good part of the day’s work had been repacking the spilled treasure into emptied food crates and casks. The variety of it astounded them. They had found Jamaillian coins and worked silver among the loot, a sure sign that Igrot had squirreled more than just the Rain Wild hoard here. Some of his booty had not survived. There were the long-moldered remains of tapestries and rugs, and heaps of iron rings atop the rotted leather that had once structured the battle shirts. What had survived far outweighed what had perished. Brashen had seen jeweled cups, amazing swords that still gleamed sharp when drawn from their filigreed scabbards, necklaces and crowns, statues and vases, game boards of ivory and marble with gleaming crystal playing pieces and other items he could not even identify. There were humbler items as well, from serving trays and delicate teacups to carved hair combs and jeweled pins. Among the Rain Wild goods was a set of delicately carved dragons with flakes of jewels for scales and a family of dolls with scaled faces. These last items Brashen was packing carefully into the onion basket from Paragon’s galley.

“I think these are musical instruments, or what is left of them,” Althea theorized.

He turned, stretching his back, to see what she was doing. She knelt, removing items from a big chest that had split its seams. She lifted chained crystals that tinkled and rang sweetly against one another as she freed them from their tomb and smiled as she turned to display them. She had forgotten that her hair was weighted with a net of jeweled chains. The motion caught glittering sunlight in her hair. She dazzled him. His heart swelled.

“Brashen?” she complained a moment later. He realized he was still staring at her. Without a word, he rose and went to her. He pulled her to her feet and kissed her, careless of the tolerant grins of two sailors who were scooping scattered coins into heavy canvas bags. He held her in his arms, still half-amazed that he could do this. He swept her closer. “Don’t ever go away from me,” he said thickly into her hair.

She turned her head up to grin at him. “Why would I leave a rich man like you?” she teased. She put her hands on his chest and pushed gently free of him.

“I knew you were after my fortune,” he replied, letting her go. He held back a sigh. She always wanted to be clear of him before he was ready to let her go. It was her independent nature, he supposed. He refused to worry that she was wearying of him. Yet she had not seemed overly upset when he had been unable to arrange their wedding at the Traders’ Concourse. Perhaps she did not wish to be bound to him quite that permanently. Then he chided himself for his lingering doubts and discontent. Althea was still beside him. That was more than he’d ever had in his life and it was worth more to him than this incomprehensible wealth of treasure.

He looked around the platform they stood on, then lifted his eyes to the similar structures in two adjacent trees. “This booty will fill Paragon’s hold. Igrot brought him here heavy with treasure, and so he will be when we leave. I try to imagine how this will change things for us, and I cannot. I get caught up in the wonder of the individual pieces.”

Althea nodded. “I cannot relate it to myself. I think mostly of how it will affect others. My family. I can help Mother restore our home. Keffria need not worry so about the family finances.”

Brashen grinned. “My plans are mostly for Paragon. New windows. New rigging. The services of a good sailmaker. Then, something for us. Let’s make a trip south to the Spice Isles, a slow journey, exploring, with no schedules and no need to turn a profit. I want to revisit the ports we haven’t seen since your father was master on Vivacia.” He watched her face carefully as he added, “Maybe we could rendezvous with Wintrow and Vivacia. See how they’re getting along.”

He watched her consider it. For Althea, a visit to the southernmost trade isles would be a return to the ports of her childhood travels. Maybe there she could lose some of the constant regret that overshadowed her. And perhaps seeing Wintrow and Vivacia could lay some ghosts to rest. If she saw her ship was content and in good hands, would it lift the burden from her heart? He refused to fear such an encounter. Much as it hurt him to admit, if he could not lift her melancholy soon, it might be better to let her go. It was not that she did not smile and laugh. She did. But always, her smiles and laughter faded too soon into a silence that excluded him.

“I’d like that,” she conceded, recalling him to himself. “If Paragon could be persuaded. We could look for Tintaglia’s serpents at the same time.”

“Good,” he said with false heartiness. “That’s what we’ll do then.” He drew a deep breath and lifted his eyes. The brief spring day was closing. Through the interlacing treetops, he could glimpse storm clouds. Winter might make a brief return tonight. “Best get us all back to the ship for the night,” he decided. “It gets dark fast, and I see no sense in risking man or treasure to move it tonight.”

Althea nodded. “I’ll want to see how they’ve stowed it anyway.” She turned to the others. “Last load, men. Tomorrow is soon enough to finish this.”

She came out on deck into the darkness, bearing a lantern. Paragon did not turn to see who it was. He recognized Amber’s light barefoot tread. She often came to him by night. They had had many night conversations. They had also shared many times without talk, content to let the sounds of the night birds and the river running remain undisturbed. Usually, her hands on his railing radiated peace to him. Tonight she hung the lantern on a hook, and set something down on his deck before she leaned on the railing.

“It’s a lovely night, isn’t it?”

“It is. But it won’t be for long, for you. That lantern will attract every insect that flies. They are thickest immediately before a storm. Linger long and you’ll be bitten all over.”

“I just need it for a short time.” She drew a breath, and he sensed an unusual excitement running through her. She sounded almost nervous. “Paragon, earlier you offered to share your treasure with us. I’ve found something among it, something I desperately long to possess.”

He looked back at her. She was in her night robe, a long loose garment that reached to her bare feet. Her uneven hair fell loose to her shoulders. Her serpent scalds still showed, dead white against her golden skin. Time, perhaps, would erase those scars, or so he liked to think. In the lantern light, her eyes sparkled. He found himself returning her smile. “So what is this treasure you must possess? Gold? Silver? Ancient Elderling jewelry?”

“This.” She stooped to a rough burlap sack at her feet, opened the mouth of it and reached within. From it, she pulled a carved wooden circlet. She handled it almost reverently as she turned it in her hands. Then, daringly, she crowned herself with it and then lifted her gaze to his. “Reach into your dragon memories, if you can. For me. Do you recall this?”

He looked at her silently and she returned his gaze. She waited. The crown was decorated with the heads of birds. No. Chickens. He quirked one eyebrow at her. Regretfully, she took off the crown and held it out to him. He took it carefully in his hands. Wood. Carved wood. He shook his head over it. Gold and silver, jewels and art. He had offered her the pick of the riches of the Cursed Shores. What did the carpenter choose? Wood.

She tried again to wake a response in him. “It was gilded once. See. You can still see bits of gilt caught in the details of the rooster heads. And there are places for tail feathers to be set into it, but the feathers have rotted away long ago.”

“I remember it,” he said hesitantly. “But that is all. Someone wore it.”

“Who?” she pressed him earnestly. He held it out to her and she took it back again. She shook her hair from her eyes, and then set the rooster crown on her head again. “Someone like me?” she asked hopefully.

“Oh.” He paused, striving to recall her. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head at last. “She wasn’t an Elderling. That’s all I can recollect of her.” The woman who wore it had been pale as milk. Not like Amber at all.

“That’s all right,” she assured him quickly, but he sensed her disappointment. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to have this.”

“Of course. Did the others object?”

“I didn’t ask them,” she replied sheepishly. “I didn’t give them the chance.” She took the crown off again. Her eyes and fingers wandered lovingly over the carving.

“It’s yours,” Paragon confirmed. “Take it with you when you go.”

“Ah. You guessed that I am leaving, then.”

“I did. You will not even stay with me until high summer? That is when I will return here, to be near when the dragons hatch.”

Her fingers tracked the details of the carved bird heads. “I am tempted. Perhaps I will. But eventually, I think I must go north again. I have friends there. I haven’t seen them in a long time.” She lowered her voice. “A suspicion itches at me. I think I should go interfere in their lives some more.” She laughed with false lightness. “I hope I will fare better with them than I have down here.” Her face grew troubled. She climbed suddenly to the railing, saying softly, “Take me up.”

He reached over his shoulder to offer her his right hand. She climbed onto it and he turned back to contemplate the tangled jungle. It was easier to look away from the light and into the darkness. More restful. Carefully he shifted, until his arms were crossed on his chest. Trusting as a child, she sat on his crossed arms and leaned back against him companionably. All around them, night insects shrilled. Her bare legs dangled down.

She was always the one who dared to ask the questions others left unuttered. Tonight she had another one. “How did they all die?”

He knew exactly what she meant. Pointless to pretend he didn’t. And pointless to keep it a secret anymore. It almost felt good to share it with someone. “Wizardwood. Kennit kept a chunk from my face. One of his chores was to help with the cooking. He boiled it with the soup. Almost all of Igrot’s crew died from it.” He felt her cringe.

He tried to make her understand. “He was only finishing what Igrot had started. Men had begun to die on the ship. Igrot keelhauled two sailors for insubordination. They both drowned. Two others went over the side during a stormy night watch. There was a stupid accident in the rigging. Three died. We decided Igrot was behind it. He probably meant to do away with anyone who knew where the treasure was hidden. Including Kennit.” He forced himself to unclench his hands. “We had to do it, you see. To save Kennit’s life.”

Amber swallowed. She asked the question anyway. “And those that didn’t die from the soup?”

Paragon took a breath. “Kennit put them over the side anyway. Most were too poisoned to put up much of a fight. Three, I think, managed to put out a boat and escape. I doubt they survived.”

“And Igrot?”

The jungle seemed a black and peaceful place. Things moved in it, outside the circle of the lantern light. Snakes and night birds, small tree-dwelling creatures, both furred and scaled. Many things lived and moved in the tangled dark.

“Kennit beat him to death. Belowdecks. You’ve seen the marks down there. The handprints of a crawling man.” He took a breath. “It was fair, Amber. Only fair.”

She sighed. “Vengeance for both of you. For the times when he had beaten Kennit to death.”

He nodded above her. “Twice he did that. Once the boy died on my deck. But I couldn’t let him go. I could not. He was all I had. Another time, curled up belowdecks in his hidey-hole, he died slowly. He was bleeding inside, growing so cold, so cold. He cried for his mother.” Paragon sighed. “I kept him with me. I pushed life into him, and forced his body to mend itself as best as I could. Then I put him back in his body. Even then, I wondered if there was enough of him left to be a whole being. But I did it. It was selfish. I did not do it for Kennit. I did it for myself. So I would not be left alone again.”

“He truly was as much you as he was himself.”

Paragon almost chuckled. “There was no such line between Kennit and me.”

“And that was why you had to have him back?”

“He couldn’t die without me. Not any more than I could truly live without him. I had to take him back. Until I was whole again, I was vulnerable. I could not seal myself to others. Any blood shed on my deck was a torment to me.”

“Oh.”

For a long time, she seemed content to leave it at that. She leaned back against him. Her breathing became so deep and regular that he thought she slept. Behind him, on the deck, insects battered themselves against her lantern. He heard Semoy do a slow circuit of the deck. He paused by the lantern. “All’s well?” he asked Paragon quietly.

“All’s well,” the ship replied. He had come to like Semoy. The man knew how to mind his own business. His footsteps receded again.

“Do you ever wonder,” Amber asked him quietly, “how much you changed the world? Not just by keeping Kennit alive. By simply existing.”

“By being a ship instead of a dragon?”

“All of it.” A slight wave of her hand encompassed all his lives.

“I lived,” he said simply. “And I’ve stayed alive. I suppose I had as much a right to do that as anyone.”

“Absolutely.” She shifted, then reclined in his arms to look up. He followed her gaze but saw only darkness. The clouds were thick beyond the trees. “All of us have a right to our lives. But what if, for lack of guidance, we take the wrong paths? Take Wintrow for instance. What if he was meant to lead a different life? What if, because of something I failed to do or say, he became King of the Pirate Isles when he was meant to be a man leading a life of scholarly contemplation? A man whose destiny was to experience a cloistered, contemplative life becomes a king instead. His deep spiritual meditations never occur and are never shared with the world.”

Paragon shook his head. “You worry too much.” His eyes tracked a moth. It fluttered earnestly by, intent on battering itself to death against the lantern. “Humans live such short lives. I believe they have little impact on the world. So Wintrow will not be a priest. It is probably no more significant than if a man who was meant to be a king became a philosophical recluse instead.”

He felt a shiver run over her body. “Oh, ship,” she rebuked him softly. “Was that meant to be comforting?”

Carefully, he patted her as a father might soothe an infant. “Take comfort in this, Amber. You are only one small, short-lived creature. You’d have to be a fool to think you could change the course of the whole world.”

She was silent until she broke out in a shaky laugh. “Oh, Paragon, in that you are more right than you know, my friend.”

“Be content with your own life, my friend, and live it well. Let others decide for themselves what path they will follow.”

She frowned up at him. “Even when you see, with absolute clarity, that it is wrong for them? That they hurt themselves?”

“Perhaps people have a right to their pain,” he hazarded. Reluctantly he added, “Perhaps they even need it.”

“Perhaps,” she conceded unhappily. Then, “Up, please. I think I shall go to bed and sleep on what you have told me. Before the rain and the mosquitoes find me.”

Althea smothered in nightmare. It did no good to know she dreamed. She could not escape it. She could not breathe, and he was on her back, bearing her down and hurting her, hurting her. She wanted to scream, and could not. If only she could scream, she could wake up, but she could not find the sound to give it vent. Her screams were trapped inside her.

The dream changed.

Paragon suddenly stood over her. He was a man, tall, dark-haired and grave. He looked at her with eyes like Kennit’s. She cowered away from him. There was hurt in his voice when he spoke. “Althea. Enough of this. Neither of us can endure it longer. Come to me,” he commanded her. “Silently. Right now.”

“No.” She felt him plucking at her and she resisted. The knowing look in his eyes threatened her. No one should comprehend so fully what she felt.

“Yes,” he told her as she resisted. “I know what I’m doing. Come to me.”

She could not breathe. She could not move. He was too big and too strong. But still she struggled. If she struggled and fought, how could it be her fault?

“It wasn’t your fault. Come away from that memory; it isn’t now. That is over and done. Let yourself be done with it. Be still, Althea, be still. If you scream, you’ll wake yourself. Worse, you’ll wake the whole crew.”

Then they all would know her shame.

“No, no, no. That isn’t it at all. Just come to me. You have something of mine.”

The hand was gone from her mouth, the weight from her body, but she was still trapped inside herself. Then, abruptly, she floated free. She was somewhere else, somewhere cold and windy and dark. It was a very lonely place. Anyone’s company was better than that isolation. “Where are you?” she called, but it came out as a whisper.

“Here. Open your eyes.”

In a night storm, she stood on the foredeck. Rising wind shook the trees overhead, and little bits of debris fell in a dirty rain. Paragon had twisted to look back at her. She could not see his features, but she heard his voice. “That’s better,” he said reassuringly. “I needed you to come here, to me. I waited, thinking that eventually you would come on your own. But you did not. And this has gone on far too long for all of us. I know now what I must do.” The figurehead paused. His next words came harder from him. “You have something of mine. I want it back.”

“I have nothing of yours.” Did she speak the words, or only think them?

“Yes, you do. It’s the last piece. Like it or not, I must have it, to make myself whole. To make you whole as well. You think it is yours. But you’re wrong.” He glanced away from her. “By right, that pain is mine.”

Rain had begun to fall, icy cold. She heard it first in the trees above. Then the drops found their way through the canopy. They fell gently at first. Then a rising wind whipped the treetops, and they dropped their cold burden in a deluge. Althea was already numbed to the cold. Paragon spoke on, softly. “Give it back to me, Althea. There is no reason for you to keep it. It was never even his to give you. Do you understand that? He passed it on to you. He tried to get rid of pain by giving it away, but it was not his. It should have stayed with me. I take it back from you now. All you have to do is let it go. I leave you the memory, for that, I fear, is truly yours. But the hurt is an old hurt, passed on from one to another like a pestilence. I have decided to stop it. It comes back to me now, and with me it remains.”

For a time, she resisted, gripping it tightly. “You can’t take it from me. It was that horrible. It was that bad. No one would understand it; no one would believe it. If you take the pain away, you make a lie of what I endured.”

“No. No, my dear, I make it only a memory, instead of something that you live continuously in your mind. Leave it in the past. It cannot hurt you now. I will not let it.”

He reached a wide hand to her. Fearing him, but unable to resist, she set her small hand upon his. He sighed deeply. “Give it back to me,” he said gently.

It was like having a deep splinter pulled. There was the dragging pain of the extraction, and then the clean sting of fresh blood flowing. Something clamped tight inside her suddenly eased. He had been right. She did not have to grip her pain. She could let it go. The memory was still there. It had not vanished, but it had changed. It was a memory, a thing from her past. This wound could close and heal. The injury done to her was over. She did not have to keep it as a part of herself. She could allow herself to heal. Her tears were diluted in the rain that ran down her face.

“Althea!”

She didn’t even flinch. The continued rain was washing the night from the sky, bleaching it to a gray dawn that barely penetrated the tree cover. Althea stood on the foredeck, hands outstretched to the dimness, as the pouring rain drenched her. It sealed her nightgown to her body. Cursing her and himself for a fool, Brashen dashed across the deck to seize her by the shoulder and shake her. “Are you out of your mind? Come inside.”

She lifted a hand to her face, her eyes clenched shut in a grimace. Then she slammed suddenly into him, holding on to him tightly. “Where am I?” she demanded dazedly.

“Out on deck. Sleepwalking, I think. I woke up and you were gone. Let’s get inside.” Rain sluiced down his bare back and plastered his cotton trousers to his body. It made points of her fine hair and ran in streams down her face. She clung to him, making no effort to escape the deluge as she shivered.

“I had a dream,” she said disorientedly. “It was so vivid, for just a flash, and now it is gone. I can’t recall any of it.”

“Dreams are like that. They come and go. They don’t mean anything.” He feared that he spoke from experience.

With a roar, the storm renewed its fury. The pelting rain made a hissing sound on the water on the open river that reached them even here.

She didn’t move. She looked up at him, blinking water from her eyes. “Brashen, I—”

“I’m drowning out here,” he announced impatiently, and swooped her suddenly into his arms. She leaned her head against his shoulder as he carried her. She made no protest even when he bumped her head in the narrow companionway. In his stateroom, he kicked the door shut and lowered her to her feet. He pushed his hair back from his face and felt a fresh trickle of water down his back. She stood blinking at him. Rain dripped from her chin and eyelashes. The wet cloth of her nightgown clung to every curve of her body, tempting him. She looked so bewildered that he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. But she would not want that. With difficulty he turned away from her. “It’s near morning. I’m getting into some dry clothes,” he said gruffly.

He heard the wet slap of her nightgown falling to the floor and the small sounds of her rummaging through her clothing chest. He would not turn. He would not torment himself. He had learned to rein himself in.

He had just found a clean shirt in his cupboard when she embraced him from behind. Her skin was still wet where she pressed against him. “I can’t find any clean clothes,” she said by his ear. He stood stock-still. Her breath was warm. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take yours.” The kiss on the side of his neck sent a shiver down his back and put the lie to her words as she took the shirt from his hands and tossed it to the floor behind them.

He turned slowly in her arms to face her and looked down into her smile. Her playfulness astounded him. He had almost forgotten she could be like this. The boldness of her expressed desire set his heart racing. Her breasts brushed his chest. He set a hand to her cheek, and saw a shadow of uncertainty cross her face. He instantly took his hand away.

Dismay washed her smile away. Tears suddenly welled in her eyes. “Oh, no,” she pleaded. “Please don’t give up on me.” Some decision came to her. She seized his hand and set it to her face. The words broke from her. “He raped me, Brashen. Kennit. I’ve been trying to get past it. All the time that … I just wanted you,” she said brokenly. “Only you. Oh, Brashen.” Some emotion suddenly stole her words. She pressed herself against him, hiding her face against his chest. “Please tell me it can still be good between us.”

He’d known. On some level, he’d known.

“You should have told me.” That sounded like an accusation. “I should have guessed,” he accused himself.

She shook her head. “Can we begin again?” she asked him. “And go slowly this time?”

He felt a thousand things. Killing fury for Kennit. Anger at himself that he had not protected her. Hurt that she had not told him earlier. How was he to deal with all of it? Then he knew what she meant. By beginning again. He took a deep breath. With an effort, he set it all aside. “I think we have to,” he replied gravely. He resigned himself to patience. He studied her face. “Would you like to have this room to yourself for a time? Until you feel differently about … everything? I know we must go slowly.”

She shook tears from her eyes. The smile she gave him seemed more genuine now. “Oh, Brashen, not that slowly,” she disagreed. “I meant we should begin again now. With this.” She lifted her mouth to his. He kissed her very gently. It shocked him when he felt the darting tip of her tongue. She took an uneven breath. “You should get out of these wet trousers,” she chided him. Her rain-chilled fingers fumbled at his waist.

Paragon turned his face up to the sky. Rain ran over his closed eyes and into his mouth. The chill of winter eased from it as the sun touched the day more surely. He blinked his eyes open and smiled. As the rain suddenly pattered into cessation, a bird sang questioningly in the distance. Closer to hand, another answered it. Life was good.

A short time later, he felt Amber set one hand to his railing. Beside it, she rested a hot mug of something. “You’re up early,” he greeted her.

He glanced over his shoulder to find her studying him carefully. She was smiling. “I awoke suffused with a singular feeling of well-being.”

“Did you?” He smiled smugly, then looked back to the day. “I think I know the feeling. Amber, I think my luck is changing.”

“And everyone else’s with it.”

“I suppose so.” He pondered briefly. “Do you remember what we discussed last night?”

“I do.” She waited.

“I’ve changed my mind. You’re right to want to go north again.” He looked around at the wonder of the spring world. “It feels good to set people on the right path.” He smiled at her again. “Go north.”