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Silently he set down the coil of rope he’d been working on. Every piece of rope he’d touched look less, not more orderly than when he’d began. Well, Torg could recoil them as he wished, or push the task off on some poor sailor. Wintrow had known it was busy work from the start, though why his father had wished to humiliate and irritate him, he could not fathom. Perhaps it had something to do with his refusal to push in the peg that quickened the ship. His father had said some wild words then. Well, it was over now. His grandfather was dead and consigned to the sea, the family had made plain they wished no comfort from him, and he would go home as soon as he decently could. Tomorrow morning, he decided, would not be too soon.
He went up on deck and joined his family as they thanked and bid farewell to those mourners who had accompanied them on board the ship. Not a few said their goodbyes to the living figurehead as well. The summer dusk was venturing into true night as the last person left. The family stood a bit longer, silent and exhausted, while Kyle gave orders to the mate for the unloading to proceed at earliest daybreak. Then Kyle came to tell the family it was time to go home. Kyle took his mother’s arm, and Wintrow his grandmother’s. He was silently grateful that there would be a coach awaiting them; he was not sure the old woman could have managed the uphill walk through the dark cobbled streets.
But as they turned to leave the foredeck, the figurehead spoke up suddenly. ‘Are you going?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Right now?’
‘I’ll be back at first light,’ Kyle told her. He spoke as if a deckhand had questioned his judgement.
‘Are all of you going?’ the ship asked again. Wintrow was not sure what he responded to. Perhaps it was the note of panic in her voice.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he told her gently. ‘You’re safe, tied up to the docks here. There’s nothing to fear.’
‘I don’t want to be alone.’ The complaint was a child’s, but the voice was that of an uncertain young woman. ‘Where’s Althea? Why isn’t she here? She wouldn’t leave me all alone.’
‘The mate will sleep aboard, as will half the crew. You won’t be alone,’ Kyle replied testily. Wintrow could remember that tone from his own childhood. His heart went out to the ship despite his better judgement.
‘It’s not the same!’ she cried out, even as he heard himself offer, ‘I could stay aboard if she wished it. For this night, at least.’
His father scowled as if he had countermanded his order, but his grandmother squeezed his arm gently and gave him a smile. ‘Blood will tell,’ she said softly.
‘The boy can’t stay,’ Kyle announced. ‘I need to speak to him tonight.’
‘Tonight?’ Keffria asked incredulously. ‘Oh, Kyle, not tonight. Not anything more tonight. We are all too weary and full of sorrow.’
‘I had thought we might all sit down together tonight, and discuss the future,’ his father pointed out ponderously. ‘Weary and sorrowful we may be, but tomorrow will not wait.’
‘Whether tomorrow will wait or not, I shall,’ his grandmother cut across the argument. There was a shadow of imperiousness in her voice, and for a moment, he recalled more vividly the woman he had known as a child. Even as his father drew breath to speak, she added, ‘And if Wintrow would sleep aboard and give comfort to Vivacia as best he can, I would take it as a personal favour.’ She turned to the figurehead and added, ‘I shall need him to escort me to the coach first, though. Will you be all right alone, for just a few moments, Vivacia?’
He had been vaguely aware of how anxiously the ship had been following their conversation. Now a beaming smile broke out over the carved features. ‘I am certain I shall be just fine, Ronica. Just fine.’ She shifted her glance to Wintrow, her gaze diving into his eyes so deeply that it startled him. ‘When you come back on board, would you sleep up here, on the foredeck, where I can see you?’
He glanced uncertainly at his father. They seemed to be the only two aware that he had not yet given his permission for this. Wintrow decided to be diplomatic. ‘If my father permits it,’ he concurred cautiously. He still had to look up to his father to meet his eyes, but he forced himself to do it and not to look away.
His father scowled still but Wintrow thought he also saw grudging respect in the man’s eyes. ‘I permit it,’ he said at last, making it clear to everyone that he regarded this decision as his. He looked his son up and down. ‘When you come on board, report to Torg. He’ll see you get a blanket.’ Kyle glanced from the boy to the waiting second mate, who nodded to the order.
His mother sighed out, as if she had been holding her breath. ‘Well, if that’s settled, then let’s go home.’ Her voice broke unexpectedly on that last word, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, my father,’ she said softly, as if rebuking the dead man. Kyle patted her hand where it rested on his arm and escorted her from the ship. Wintrow followed more slowly with his grandmother. His younger siblings scrambled impatiently past them and hurried ahead to the carriage.
His grandmother moved so slowly, he thought she was excessively weary until she began speaking. Then he realized she had deliberately delayed to have a moment of privacy with him. Her voice was lowered, pitched for his ears alone.
‘It all seemed strange and foreign to you earlier today, Wintrow. Yet just now, you spoke as a Vestrit, and I believe I saw your grandfather in your face. The ship reaches for you.’
‘Grandmother, I fear I have no idea what you are talking about,’ he confessed quietly.
‘Don’t you?’ She halted their slow stroll and he turned to face her. Small but straight, she looked up into his face. ‘You say you don’t, but I see otherwise,’ she said after a moment. ‘If you did not already know it yourself, in your heart, you could not have spoken up for the ship the way you did. You’ll come to it, Wintrow. You’ll come round to it in time, no fear.’
He felt a tightening of foreboding. He wished he were going home with them tonight, and that he could sit down with his father and mother and speak plainly. Obviously they had discussed him. He did not know what they had been talking about, but he felt threatened by it. Then he sternly reminded himself to avoid pre-judgement. His grandmother said no more and he assisted her down the gangplank and then handed her up into the waiting carriage. All the others were already within.
‘Thank you, Wintrow,’ she told him gravely, and ‘You’re welcome,’ he replied, but uncomfortably, for he suspected she thanked him for more than walking her to the carriage. He wondered briefly whether he would truly welcome giving her whatever it was she assumed. He stood alone as the driver chupped to his horses and drove them off, their hooves thudding hollowly on the wooden planks of the docks. After they had gone, he lingered for a time, seeking the quiet of the night.
In truth, it was not quiet at all. Neither Bingtown proper nor the docks ever truly slept. Across the curve of the harbour, he could see the lights and hear the distant sounds of the night market. A trick of the wind brought him a brief gust of music: pipes and wrist-bells. A wedding, perhaps, with dancing. Closer to hand, the tarry torches bracketed to the dock supports provided widely-spaced circles of fitful light. The waves sloshed rhythmically against the pilings beneath the docks, and the tethered boats rubbed and creaked in their slips. They were like great wooden animals, he thought, and then a shiver walked up his spine as he recalled the liveship’s awareness. Neither animal nor wooden ship, he realized, but some unholy mix and wondered how he could have volunteered to spend the night aboard her.
As he walked down the docks to where Vivacia was tied, the dancing torchlight and moving water combined to confuse his vision and make every step uncertain. By the time he reached the ship, the weariness of the day had caught up with him.
‘Oh, there you are!’
He startled at the ship’s greeting, then recovered. ‘I told you I would come back,’ he reminded her. It seemed strange to stand on the docks and look up at her. The torchlight moved strangely over her, for though her features were human, the light reflected from her skin as it did from wood. From this vantage, it was markedly more obvious that she was substantially larger than life. Her ample bared breasts were more obvious from this point of view as well. Wintrow found himself avoiding looking at them, and thus uncomfortable about meeting her eyes as well. A wooden ship, he tried to remind himself. She’s a wooden ship. But in the gloom as she smiled down on him, she seemed more like a young woman leaning alluringly from a window. It was ridiculous.
‘Aren’t you coming aboard?’ she asked him, smiling.
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’
As he mounted the gangplank, and then groped his way forward on the darkened deck, he again wondered at himself. Liveships, so far as he knew, were unique to Bingtown. His instruction as a priest of Sa had never touched upon them. Yet there were certain magics he had been warned of as running counter to the holiness of all life. He ran through them in his head; the magics that deprived something of life in order to bring life to something else, the magics that deprived something of life in order to enhance one’s own power, the magics that brought misery to another’s life in order to enhance one’s own or another’s life… None of them seemed to apply exactly to whatever it was that wakened life in a liveship. His grandfather would have died whether the ship existed or not. He decided that one could not say his grandfather had been deprived of life in order to quicken the ship. At about the time he resolved that, he stumbled over a coil of rope. In trying to catch himself, his feet tangled in the hem of his brown novice’s robe and he fell, sprawling full length on the deck.
Somewhere, someone brayed out a laugh. Perhaps it was not at him. Perhaps somewhere on the shadowed deck, sailors kept watch together and told amusing stories to pass the time. Perhaps. His face still flushed, and he suppressed anger at the possible ridicule. Foolishness, he told himself. Foolish to be angered if a man was dull-witted enough to find his stumbling humorous, and even more foolish to be angry when he could not be certain that was the case at all. It had simply been too long a day. He got carefully to his feet and groped his way to the foredeck.
A single coarse blanket had been left in a heap there. It smelt of whoever had used it last, and was either badly woven or stiffened in spots with filth. He let it drop back to the deck. For a moment he considered making do with it; the summer night was not that cold, he might not need a blanket at all. Let the insult go by; he’d not be dealing with any of them after tomorrow. Then he stooped to snatch the blanket up from the deck. This was not the misfortune of an early fall of hail or a flooding river, a happenstance of nature to be weathered stoically. This was the cruelty of men, and a priest of Sa was not expected silently to accept it, regardless of whether that cruelty was inflicted on himself or on others.
He squared his shoulders. He knew how they saw him. The captain’s son, a boy, a runt, sent off to live in a monastery, to be raised to believe in goodness and kindness. He knew there were many who saw that as a weakness, who saw the priests and priestesses of Sa as sexless ninnies who spent their lives wandering about prating that the world could be a beautiful, peaceful place. Wintrow had seen the other side of a priest’s life. He had tended priests brought back to the monastery, priests maimed by the cruelty they had fought against, or dying of the plagues they had contracted when they nursed other victims. A clear voice and a steady eye, he counselled himself. He draped the offending blanket over one arm and picked his way carefully towards the afterdeck where a single night-lantern was burning.
Three men sat in the circle of dim light, a scatter of gaming pegs on the deck. Wintrow smelled the harsh edge of cheap spirits, and frowned to himself. The tiny flame of outrage inside him flared brighter. As if possessed by his grandfather’s anma, he stepped boldly into the circle of their lantern. Throwing the blanket to the deck, he asked bluntly, ‘And when did the night watch on board this ship begin drinking on duty?’
There was a general recoil from his direction until the three saw who had spoken.
‘It’s the boy-priest,’ one sneered, and sank back down into his sprawl.
Again the flash of anger ignited in him. ‘It’s also Wintrow Haven of Vestrit lineage, and on board this ship, the watch neither drinks nor games. The watch watches!’
All three men lumbered to their feet. They towered over him and all were brawnier, with the hard muscles of grown men. One had the grace to look shamed, but the other two were the worse for drink and unrepentant.
‘Watches what?’ a black-bearded fellow demanded insolently. ‘Watches while Kyle takes over the old man’s ship, and replaces her crew with his cronies? Watches while all the years we worked, and worked damned loyal, go over the side and mean naught?’
The second man took up the first’s litany. ‘Shall we watch while a Haven steals the ship that should be run by a Vestrit? Althea might be a snotty little vixen, but she’s Vestrit to the bone. Should be her that has this ship, woman or no.’
A thousand possible replies raced through Wintrow’s mind. He chose as he thought best. ‘None of that has anything to do with drinking on watch. It’s a poor way to honour Ephron Vestrit’s memory.’
The last statement seemed to have more effect on them than anything else he had said. The shame-faced man stepped forwards. ‘I’m the one that’s been assigned the watch, and I ain’t been drinking. They was just keeping me company and talking.’
Wintrow could think of nothing to say to that, so he only nodded gravely. Then his eyes fell on the discarded blanket and he recalled his original mission. ‘Where’s the second mate? Torg?’
The black-bearded man gave a snort of disdain. ‘He’s too busy moving his gear into Althea’s cabin to pay attention to anything else.’
Wintrow gave a short nod to that and let it pass without comment. He did not address any particular man as he added to the night, ‘I do not think I should have been able to board Vivacia unchallenged, even in our home port.’
The watch-man looked at him oddly. ‘The ship’s quickened now. She’d be swift to sing out if any stranger tried to board her.’
‘Are you sure she knows she is to do that if a stranger comes aboard?’
The incredulous look on the watch-man’s face grew. ‘How could she not know? What Captain Vestrit and his father and his grandmother knew of shipboard life, she knows.’ He looked aside and shook his head slightly as he added, ‘I thought all Vestrits would know that about a liveship.’
‘Thank you,’ Wintrow said, ignoring the last bit of the man’s comment. ‘I’ll be seeking Torg now. Carry on.’
He stooped and swept up the discarded blanket. He walked carefully as he left the dim circle of light, letting his eyes adjust to the deepening darkness. He found the door to Althea’s cabin standing ajar, light spilling out onto the deck. Those of her boxes that had not already been carted off were stacked unceremoniously to one side. The mate was engaged in judiciously arranging his own possessions.
Wintrow rapped loudly on the opened door, and tried not to take pleasure in the way Torg started almost guiltily.
‘What?’ the man demanded, rounding on him.
‘My father said to see you to get a blanket,’ Wintrow stated quietly.
‘Looks to me like you’ve got one,’ Torg observed. He could not quite hide the glint of his amusement. ‘Or does the priest-boy think it’s not good enough for him?’
Wintrow let the offending blanket drop to the deck. ‘This won’t do,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s filthy. I’ve no objection to worn, or patched, but no man should willingly endure filth.’
Torg scarcely gave it a glance. ‘If it’s filthy, then wash it.’ He made a show of returning to his stowing of his goods.
Wintrow refused to be cowed. ‘I should not need to point out that there is no time for the blanket to dry,’ he observed blandly. ‘I am simply asking you to do as my father commanded. I’ve come aboard for the night, and I need a blanket.’
‘I’ve done as your father commanded, and you have one.’ The cruel amusement in Torg’s voice was less veiled now. Wintrow found himself responding to that rather than to the man’s words.
‘Why does it amuse you to be discourteous?’ he asked Torg, his curiosity genuine. ‘How could it be more trouble to you to provide me with a clean blanket than to give me a filthy rag and force me to beg for what I need?’
The honesty of the question caught the mate off-guard. He stared at Wintrow, speechless. Like many casually cruel men, he had never truly considered why he behaved as he did. It was sufficient for him that he could. Quite likely, he had been a bully from his childhood days, and would be until he was disposed of in a canvas shroud. For the first time, Wintrow took physical stock of the man. All his fate was writ large upon him. He had small round eyes, blue as a white pig’s. The skin underneath the roundness of his chin had already began to sag into a pouch. The kerchief knotted about his neck was anciently soiled, and the collar of his blue-and-white striped shirt showed an interior band of brown. It was not the dirt and sweat of honest toil, but the grime of slothfulness. The man did not care to keep himself tidy. It already showed in the way his possessions were strewn about the cabin. In a fortnight, it would be a reeking sty of unwashed garments and scattered food scraps. In that instant, Wintrow decided to give up the argument. He’d sleep in his clothes on the deck and be uncomfortable, but he would survive it. He judged there was no point to further bickering with this man; he’d never grasp just how distasteful Wintrow found the soiled blanket, nor how insulting. Wintrow rebuked himself for not looking more closely at the man before; it might have saved them both a lot of useless chafing.
‘Never mind,’ he said casually and abruptly. He turned away. He blinked his eyes a few times to let them adjust and then began to pick his way forward. He heard the mate come to the door of the cabin to stare after him.
‘Puppy will probably complain to his daddy, I don’t doubt,’ Torg called mockingly after him. ‘But I think he’ll find his father expects a man to be tougher than to snivel over a few spots on a blanket.’
Perhaps, Wintrow conceded, that was true. He wouldn’t bother complaining to his father to find out. Pointless to complain about one night’s discomfort. His silence seemed to bother Torg.
‘You think you’ll get me in trouble with your whining, don’t you? Well, you won’t! I know your father better than that.’
Wintrow didn’t even bother to reply to the man’s threatening taunt. At the moment of deciding not to argue further, he had given up all emotional investment in the situation. He had withdrawn his anma into himself as he had been taught to do, divesting it of his anger and offence as he did so. It was not that these emotions were unworthy or inappropriate; it was simply that they were wasted upon the man. He swept his mind clean of reactions to the filthy blanket. By the time he reached the foredeck, he had regained not just calmness, but wholeness.
He leaned against the rail and looked out across the water. There were other ships anchored out in the harbour. Lights shone yellow from these vessels. He examined them. His own ignorance surprised him. The ships were foreign objects to him, the son of many generations of Traders and sailors. Most of them were trading vessels, interspersed with a few fishing or slaughter-ships. The Traders were transom-sterned for the most part, with after-castles that sometimes reached almost to the mainmasts. Two or three masts reached toward the rising moon from each vessel.
Along the shore, the night market was in full blossom of sound and light. Now that the heat of the day was past, open cook-fires flared in the night as the drippings of meat sizzled into them. An errant breeze brought the scent of the spiced meat and even the baking bread in the outdoor ovens. Sound, too, ventured boldly over the water in isolated snippets, a high laugh, a burst of song, a shriek. The moving waters caught the lights of the market and the ships and made of them rippling streamers of reflection. ‘Yet there is a peace to all of it,’ Wintrow said aloud.
‘Because it is all as it should be,’ Vivacia rejoined. Her voice was a woman’s timbre. It had the same velvety darkness as the night, with the same tinge of smoke. Warm pleasure welled up in Wintrow at the sound of it, and pure gladness. It took him a moment to wonder at his reaction.
‘What are you?’ he asked her in quiet awe. ‘When I am away from you, I think I should fear you, or at least suspect you. Yet now I am aboard, and when I hear your voice, it is like… like I imagine being in love would be.’
‘Truly?’ Vivacia demanded, and did not hide the thrill of pleasure in her own voice. ‘Then your feelings are like to my own. I have been awakening for so long… for years, for all the life of your father and his father, ever since your great-grandmother gave herself into my keeping. Then today, when finally I could stir, could open my eyes to the world again, could taste and smell and hear you all with my own senses, then I knew trepidation. Who are you, I wonder, you creatures of flesh and blood and bone, born in your own bodies and doomed to perish when that flesh fails? And when I wonder those things, I fear, for you are so foreign to me, I cannot know what you will do to me. Yet when one of you is near, I feel you are woven of the same strand as I, that we are but extensions of a segmented life, and that together we complete one another. I feel a joy in your presence, because I feel my own life wax greater when we are close to one another.’
Wintrow leaned on the rail, as motionlessly silent as if he were listening to a blessed poet. She was not looking at him; she did not need to look at him to see him. Like him, she gazed out across the harbour to the festive lights of the night market. Even our eyes behold the same sight, he thought, and his smile widened. There had been a few occasions when words had so reached into him and settled their truth in him like roots in rich earth. Some of the very best teachers in the monastery could wake this awe in him, when they spoke in simple words a truth that had swum unvoiced inside him. When her words had faded into the warmth of the summer night, he replied.
‘So may a harp string, struck strongly, awaken its twin, or a pure high note of a voice set crystal to shimmering as you have wakened truth in me.’ He laughed aloud, surprising himself, for it felt as if a bird, long caged in his chest, had taken sudden flight. ‘What you say is so simple, only that we complement one another. I can think of no reason why your words should so move me. But they do. They do.’
‘Something is happening, here, tonight. I feel it.’
‘As do I. But I don’t know what it is.’
‘You mean you have no name for it,’ she corrected him. ‘We both cannot help but know what this is. We grow. We become.’
Wintrow found himself smiling into the night. ‘We become what?’ he asked of her.
She turned to face him, the chiselled planes of her wooden face catching the reflected gleam of the distant lights. She smiled up at him, lips parting to reveal her perfect teeth. ‘We become us,’ she said simply. ‘Us, as we were meant to be.’
Althea had never known that misery could achieve perfection. Only now, as she sat staring at her emptied glass, did she grasp how completely wrong her world had become. Things had been bad before, things had been flawed, but it was only today that she had made one stupid decision after another until everything was as completely wrong as it could possibly be. She shook her head at her own idiocy. As she fingered the last coins from her flattened pouch, and then held up her glass to be refilled, she reviewed her decisions. She had conceded when she should have fought, fought when she should have conceded. But the worst, the absolute worst, had been leaving the ship. When she had walked off Vivacia before her father’s body had even been consigned to the waves, she had been worse than stupid and wrong. She had been traitorous. False to everything that had ever been important to her.
She shook her head at herself. How could she have done it? She had not only stalked off leaving her father unburied, but leaving her ship to Kyle’s mercy. He had no understanding of her, no real grasp of what a liveship was or what she required. Despair gripped her heart and squeezed. After all the years of waiting, she had abandoned Vivacia on this most crucial day. What was the matter with her? Where had her mind been, where had her heart been to have put her own feelings before that of the ship? What would her father have said to that? Had not he always told her, ‘The ship first, and all else will follow.’
The tavern keeper appeared suddenly, to take her coin, ogle it closely, and then refill her glass. He said something to her, his voice unctuous with false solicitude. She waved him away with the refilled glass and nearly spilled its contents. Hastily she drank it down lest she waste it.
She opened her eyes wide as if that would clear her head and looked around her. It seemed wrong that the folk in this tavern shared none of her misery. To all appearances, this slice of Bingtown had not even noticed the departure of Ephron Vestrit. Here they were having the same conversations that they’d been having for the past two years: the newcomers were ruining Bingtown; the Satrap’s delegate was not only overstepping his authority in inventing taxes, but was taking bribes to ignore slave-ships right in the harbour; the Chalcedeans were demanding of the Satrap that Bingtown drop their water taxes, and the Satrap would probably concede for the sake of the pleasure herbs Chalced sent him so freely. The same old woes, Althea thought to herself, but damn few in Bingtown would stand up and do anything about any of it. The last time she had gone to the Old Traders’ Council with her father, he had stood up and told them to simply outlaw it all. ‘Bingtown is our town,’ he’d told them determinedly. ‘Not the Satrap’s. We should all contribute toward our own patrol ship, and simply deny slave-ships access to our harbour. Turn the Chalcedean grain boats back, too, if they don’t want to pay a tax to water and provision here. Let them resupply elsewhere, perhaps in one of the pirate towns, and see if they’re better treated there.’ A roar of consternation had greeted his words, composed of both shock and approval, but when it came to the vote, the council had failed to take action. ‘Wait a year or two,’ her father had told Althea as they left. ‘That’s how long it takes for an idea to take root here. Even tonight, most of them know that I’m right. They just don’t want to face what needs to be done, that there must be confrontations if Bingtown is to remain Bingtown and not become southern Chalced. Sa’s sweat, the damn Chalcedeans are already challenging our northern border. If we ignore it, they’ll creep in here in other ways: face-tattooed slaves working Bingtown fields, women married off at twelve, all the rest of their corruption. If we let it happen, it will destroy us. And all the Old Traders know that, in their hearts. In a year or two, I’ll bring this up again, and they’ll suddenly all agree with me. You’ll see.’
But he wouldn’t. Her father was gone for ever now. Bingtown was a poorer, weaker town than it had been, and it didn’t even know it.
Her eyes brimmed with tears once more. Yet again, she wiped them on the cuff of her sleeve. Both cuffs were sodden, and she did not doubt that her face and her hair were a wreck. Keffria and her mother would be scandalized to see her now. Well, let them be scandalized. If she was a disgrace, they were worse. She had acted on impulse, going on this binge, but they had planned and plotted, not just against her but ultimately against the family ship. For they must realize what it meant for them to turn Vivacia over to Kyle, to a man not even blood related to her. A tiny cold trickle of doubt suddenly edged through her. But her mother was not born a Vestrit. She had married into the family, just as Kyle had. Perhaps, like him, she had no real feelings for the ship. No. No, it could not be so, not after so many years with her father. Althea sternly forbade the thought to have any truth in it. They must know, both of them, what Vivacia was to their family. And surely all of this was only some strange and awful, but temporary, revenge upon her. For what she was not sure; perhaps for loving her father more than she had loved anyone else in the family.
Tears welled afresh. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. They would have to change their minds, they would have to give the ship back to her. Even, she told herself sternly, even if it meant she had to serve under Kyle as captain. As much as she hated the thought, she suddenly embraced it. Yes. That was all they wanted. Some assurance that the ship’s business would be conducted as he and they saw fit. Well, at this point, she cared nothing for any of that. He could traffic in pickled eggs and dyeing nuts as much as he wished, as long as she could be aboard Vivacia and be a part of her.
Althea sat up suddenly. She heaved a huge sigh of relief, as if she had suddenly resolved something. Yet nothing had changed, she told herself. A moment later, she denied that as well. For something had changed, and drastically. She had found that she was much more willing to abase herself than she had believed, that she would do virtually anything to remain aboard Vivacia. Anything.
She glanced about herself and gave a soft groan of dismay. She’d had too much to drink, and wept too much. Her head was throbbing and she was not even sure which of Bingtown’s sailor dives she was in. One of the most sordid, that was for certain. A man had passed out and slid from his seat to the floor. That was not that unusual, but usually there was someone to drag them out of the way. Kinder innkeepers left them snoring by the door, while the more heartless simply tumbled them out into the alleys or streets for the crimpers to find. It was rumoured that some tavern keepers even trafficked with the crimpers, but Althea had always doubted that. Not in Bingtown. Other seaports, yes, she was certain of that, but not Bingtown.
She rose unsteadily. The lace of her skirts snagged against the rough wood of the table leg. She pulled it free, heedless of how it tore and dangled. This dress she would never wear again anyway; let it tatter itself to rags tonight, she did not care. She gave a final sniff and rubbed her palms over her weary eyes. Home and to bed. Tomorrow, somehow, she would face all of it and deal with all of it. But not tonight. Sweet Sa, not tonight, let everyone be asleep when she reached home, she prayed.
She headed for the door, but had to step over the sodden sailor on the floor. The wooden floor seemed to lurch under her, or perhaps she did not quite have her land legs back. She took a bigger stride to compensate, nearly fell, and recovered herself only when she grabbed at the door post. She heard someone laugh at her, but would not sacrifice her dignity to turn and see who. Instead, she dragged the door open and stepped out into the night.
The darkness and the cool were both disorienting and welcome. She halted a moment on the wooden walkway outside the tavern and took several deep breaths. On the third one, she thought suddenly that she might be sick. She grasped at the railing and stood still, breathing more shallowly and staring with wide eyes until the street stopped swinging. The door behind her scraped open again and disgorged another patron. She turned warily to have him in view. In the dimness, it took a moment for her to recognize him. Then, ‘Brashen,’ she greeted him.
‘Althea,’ he replied wearily. Unwillingly he asked, ‘Are you all right?’
For a moment she stood in the street looking at him. Then, ‘I want to go back to Vivacia.’ The moment she impulsively spoke the thought, she knew it was something she had to do. ‘I have to see the ship tonight. I have to speak to her, to explain why I left her today.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Brashen suggested. ‘When you’ve slept and you’re sober. You don’t want her to see you like this, do you?’ She heard the note of cunning in his voice as he added, ‘Surely she would be no more pleased than your father would.’
‘No. She’d understand. We know one another that well. She’d understand anything I did.’
‘Then she’d also understand if you came in the morning, clean and sober,’ Brashen pointed out reasonably. He sounded very tired. After a moment’s silence, he proffered her his elbow. ‘Come on. I’ll walk you home.’
8 NIGHT CONVERSATIONS (#ulink_621ab9c6-7ca5-57d0-8d22-b28ea0ae5f60)
HER MOTHER BROKE DOWN as soon as they were inside the door, her knees simply folding. Kyle stood shaking his head, so Keffria saw her mother to bed. The bedroom she had so long shared with her husband had become a chamber of sickness and dying. Rather than put her mother on the cot where she had kept watch so many nights, Keffria ordered Rache to make a guest room ready for her. She sat with her until the bed was ready and the serving woman settled her impassive mother into it. Then she went to check on Selden. He was crying. He had wanted his mother and Malta had told him she was busy, too busy for a crying baby. Then she had left him sitting on the edge of his bed, without so much as calling a servant to see to him. For an instant Keffria was angry with her daughter; then she reminded herself that Malta was little more than a child herself. It was not reasonable to expect a twelve year old to care for her seven-year-old brother after a day such as they had just had.
So she soothed the boy and helped him into his night robe and stayed by him until his eyes sagged shut. When she finally left him to seek her own bed, she was sure that every other soul in the household was already asleep. The dancing light of the candle as she trod the familiar halls put her in mind of ghosts and spirits. She suddenly wondered if the anma of her father might not still linger in the chambers where he had suffered so long. A shiver walked up her spine, standing up the hair on the back of her neck. A moment later she reproached herself. Her father’s anma was one with the ship now. And even if it were lingering here, surely her own father would bear her no ill will. Still, she was glad to slip soundlessly into the chamber where Kyle had already gone to bed. She blew out the candle lest she disturb him and undressed in the darkness, letting her garments fall as they might. She found the nightgown Nana had laid out for her and slipped into its coolness. Then finally, finally, her own bed. She turned back the blanket and linen and eased in beside her slumbering husband.
He opened his arms to welcome her in. He had not slept without her, but had waited for her here. Despite how long the day had been, despite how weary and sorrowful she was, that gladdened her. Keffria felt as if Kyle’s touch cut through knots of pain that had been strangling her for days. For a time he simply held her close. He stroked her hair and rubbed her neck until she relaxed in his arms. Then he made love to her, simply and gently, without words as moonlight spilled into their bedroom from the high windows. This summer night’s moon was bright enough to lend almost colours to all it touched; the cream-coloured sheets on the bed, Kyle’s hair like ivory, his skin two shades of dull gold where sun had and had not touched it. Afterwards, as she curved her body against his and rested her head on his shoulder, all was silence for a time. She listened to the beating of his heart, and the movement of air through his chest and was glad of it, and of his warmth.
Then she suddenly felt selfish and thoughtless, that she could possess all this and enjoy it, on the very night of the day when her mother lost her father, and with him all possibility of physical closeness and this kind of sharing. Lax and warm from their lovemaking, it suddenly seemed too terrible a loss to exist in any world. She did not move away from Kyle, but closer as her throat closed painfully and a single hot tear slid across her cheek to drip onto his bare shoulder. He reached up to touch it, and then her face.
