‘Are you sure you wish nothing in return?’ Althea asked baldly. She knew it was an awkward question, but something about Amber cautioned her that it was wiser to ask her a rude question than to blunder about with the wrong assumption.

‘In return,’ Amber answered smoothly. ‘I only ask that you allow me to help you.’

‘Allow you to help me what?’

Amber smiled. ‘Thwart fate,’ she replied.

Wintrow scooped a double handful of lukewarm water from the bucket and splashed and rubbed it over his face. With a sigh, he lowered his hands back into the bucket and allowed the water to soothe them for a moment. Broken blisters, his father had assured him, were the beginning of callous. ‘We’ll have those priest’s hands toughened up in a week. You’ll see,’ his father had jovially promised him the last time he had seen fit to notice his son’s existence. Wintrow had been unable to reply.

He could not remember when he had ever been so tired before. His training told him that the deepest rhythms of his body were being broken. Instead of rising at dawn and seeking his bed when darkness closed over the land, his father and the first and second mates were forcing him into a new regimen, based on watches and bells. There was no need for their cruelty. The ship was still tied firmly to the dock, but nevertheless they persisted. What they were insisting he learn was not that difficult, if only they would let his body and mind completely rest between lessons. Instead they woke him at hours that made no sense to him, and had him clambering up and down masts and tying knots and sewing canvas and scrubbing and scouring. And always, always, with a scant smile at the corners of their lips, with an edge of mockery to every command. He was convinced he could have dealt well with anything they threw at him, if only he had not had to face that ever-present scorn. He pulled his aching hands from the bucket and gently dried them on a bit of rag.

He looked around the chain locker that had become his home. A hammock of coarse twine was draped across one corner. His clothing shared pegs with coils of line. Every bit of rope was now precisely and neatly stowed. The broken blisters on Wintrow’s hands were testament to his repeated lessons.

He took down his cleanest shirt and eased into it. He thought about changing his trousers and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He’d washed put his other pair last night, but in the close confines of the storage room, they were still damp and were beginning to acquire a mildewy smell. He sank down onto his haunches; there was no comfortable place to sit. He put his aching head in his hands and waited for the bang on the door that would summon him to the captain’s table. Since he had tried simply to walk off the ship yesterday, Torg had taken to locking him in his quarters during the time allotted for him to sleep.

Incredibly, he dozed off as he crouched there, jerking back to wakefulness when the door was snatched open. ‘Cap’n wants you,’ Torg greeted him. As he strode off, the apish man added, ‘though why anyone would want you is a puzzle to me.’

Wintrow ignored the gibe and the screaming of his joints to rise and follow the man. As he walked, he tried to work his shoulders loose. It felt good to be able to stand completely upright again. Torg glanced back at him. ‘Hurry up, you! No one has time to put up with your dawdling.’

It was more his body than his mind that responded, making an effort to put spring in his step. Although Torg had threatened him several times with a knotted rope, he’d never used it. And the fact that he only threatened him when neither his father nor the first mate were on board made Wintrow suspect it was something Torg would have liked to do but dared not. Still, just the sensing of that capacity in the man was enough to make Wintrow’s flesh crawl whenever he was about.

Torg saw him right to the captain’s door, as if he could not trust the boy to report himself. And Wintrow supposed he could not. Even though his father had reminded him repeatedly that Sa’s precepts included obedience and honour due to one’s parents, Wintrow had decided that if any opportunity presented itself at all, he would leave the ship and return however he could to his monastery. Sometimes he felt that resolve was all he had left to cling to. Torg watched him as he knocked sharply on the door, and then entered to his father’s curt, ‘Come ahead.’

His father was already seated at a small table. A white cloth overlay it, and a goodly array of serving vessels graced it. It was set for two, and for an uncomfortable moment Wintrow stood in the door, wondering if he were intruding on a private meeting.

‘Come in,’ his father said, a shade of annoyance in his voice. ‘And shut the door,’ he added in a gentler tone.

Wintrow obeyed him but remained standing by the door, wondering what was required of him now. Had he been summoned to wait table for his father and a guest? His father was dressed well, almost formally. He wore tight-fitting breeches of blue and a blue jacket over a shirt of soft cream. His hair had been plaited with oil and it gleamed like old gold in the lamplight.

‘Wintrow, son, come and sit down and join me. Forget for a moment that I am the captain, and have a good meal and let us talk plainly.’ His father gestured at the plate and chair opposite him and smiled warmly. It only made Wintrow feel warier as he approached the table and gingerly seated himself. He smelled roast lamb and mashed turnips with butter and apple sauce and peas cooked with mint. Amazing, how keen one’s nose could become after a few days of hard bread and greasy stew as rations. Still, he kept his aplomb, forcing himself to unfold his napkin onto his lap and await his father’s signal to begin serving himself. He said, ‘Please,’ to his father’s offer of wine, and ‘thank you’ as each dish was offered him. He sensed his father watching him, but made no effort to meet his eyes as he filled and then emptied his plate.

If his father had intended this civilized meal and quiet moment as a bribe or a peace offering, it was ill-considered. For as the food filled his belly and the surroundings restored to him a sense of normality, Wintrow found a chill sense of outrage growing in him. From not knowing what to say to this man who smiled fondly as his son ate like a famished dog, Wintrow went to forcing his tongue to keep still. He tried to recall all he had been taught about dealing with adverse situations, that he should reserve judgement and action until he had grasped his opponent’s motivation. So he ate and drank silently, watching his father covertly from beneath his lashes. His father actually rose himself to set their plates on a sideboard and then offered Wintrow a serving of custard with fruit. ‘Thank you,’ Wintrow forced himself to say quietly as it was set before him. There was something in the way his father re-settled himself in his chair that let him know the point of this whole meeting was about to be announced.

‘You’ve developed a good appetite,’ Kyle observed genially. ‘Hard work and sea air will do that for a man.’

‘So it would seem,’ Wintrow replied evenly.

His father gave a gruff laugh. ‘So. Still smarting, are we? Come, son, I know this must seem hard to you, and perhaps just now you are still angry at me. But you must be coming to see this is what you were meant to do. Honest hard work and the company of men and the beauty of a ship under full sail… but I suppose you haven’t known the full measure of it yet. I just want you to know, I’m not doing this to you to be harsh or cruel. A time will come when you will thank me. I promise you that. When we have finished with you, you will know this ship as a true captain should, for you will have worked every measure of her, and there won’t be a task on her that you haven’t performed yourself.’ His father paused and smiled bitterly. ‘Unlike Althea, who just claims such knowledge, you will actually have done it, and not just when it pleased you, but as a sailor should, keeping busy every minute of your watch, and doing tasks as they need doing, not only when you are ordered to do so.’

His father paused, obviously expecting some response. Wintrow kept still. After a heavy pause, his father cleared his throat. ‘I know what I am asking you is hard. So I will tell you plainly what awaits you at the end of this steep road. In two years, I expect to make Gantry Amsforge captain of this vessel. In two years, I expect you to be ready to serve as mate. You’ll be very young for it; don’t deceive yourself as to that. And it’s not going to be handed to you. You’ll have to show both Amsforge and me that you are ready for it. And even if and when we accept you, you’ll still have to prove yourself to the crew, every day and every hour. It won’t be easy. Still, it’s an opportunity that damned few men have offered to them. So.’

With a slow smile he reached into his jacket. He drew out a small box. He opened it himself and then turned to proffer the contents to Wintrow. It was a small gold earring, wrought in the likeness of Vivacia’s figurehead. He had seen such earrings on the other sailors. Most crew members wore some device that signalled their allegiance to their ship. An earring, a scarf, a pin, a tattoo if one were really sure of continuing employment. All were ways of declaring one’s highest loyalty was given to a ship. Such an act was not fitting for a priest of Sa. Surely his father must already know his answer. But the smile on his father’s face was warm as he invited him with, ‘This is for you, son. You should wear it proudly.’

Truth. Simple truth, Wintrow counselled himself, spoken without anger or bitterness. So. Politely. Gently. ‘I don’t want this opportunity. Thank you. You must know I would never deface my body by piercing an ear to wear that. I would rather be a priest of Sa. I believe it is my true calling. I know you believe you are offering me a—’

‘Shut up!’ There was deep hurt beneath the anger in his father’s voice. ‘Just shut up.’ As the boy clenched his jaws and forced himself to look only at the table, his father spoke on to himself. ‘I’d rather hear anything from you than your mealy-mouthed prattle about being a priest of Sa. Say you hate me, tell me you can’t take the work, and I’ll know I can change your mind. But when you hide behind this priest nonsense… Are you afraid? Afraid of having your ear pierced, afraid of an unknown life?’ His father’s question was almost desperate. The man grasped after ways he could persuade Wintrow to his side.

‘I am not afraid. I simply don’t want this. Why don’t you offer it to the person who truly hungers for it? Why don’t you make this offer to Althea?’ Wintrow asked quietly. The very softness of his words cut through his father’s diatribe.

His father’s eyes glinted like blue stone. He pointed his finger at Wintrow as if it were a weapon. ‘It’s simple. She’s a woman. And you, damn you, are going to be a man. For years it stuck in my craw to see Ephron Vestrit dragging his daughter after him, treating her like a son. And when you came back and stood before me in those brown skirts with your soft voice and softer body, with your mild manners and rabbity ways, I had to ask myself, am I any better? For here before me stands my son, acting more like a woman than Althea ever has. It came to me like that. That it was time for this family—’

‘You speak like a Chalcedean,’ Wintrow observed. ‘There, I am told, to be a woman is but little better than to be a slave. I think it is born of their long acceptance of slavery there. If you can believe that another human can be your possession, it is but a step to saying your wife and your daughter are also possessions, and relegate them to lives convenient to one’s own. But in Jamaillia and in Bingtown, we used to take pride in what our women could do. I have studied the histories. Consider the Satrapa Malowda, who reigned consortless for a score of years, and was responsible for the setting down of the Rights of Self and Property, the foundation of all our laws. For that matter, consider our religion. Sa, whom we men worship as Father of All, is still Sa when women call on her as Mother of All. Only in Union is there Continuity. The very first precept of Sa says it all. It is only in the last few generations that we have begun to separate the halves of our whole, and divide the—’

‘I didn’t bring you here to listen to your priestly clap-trap,’ Kyle Haven declared abruptly. He pushed himself away from the table so violently that it would have overturned if it had not been so securely fastened down. He paced a turn around the room. ‘You may not recall her, but your grandmother, my mother, was from Chalced. And yes, my mother behaved as was proper for a woman to behave, and my father kept to a man’s ways. And I took no harm from such an upbringing. Look at your grandmother and mother! Do they seem happy and content to you? Burdened with decisions and duties that take them out into the harshness of the world, subjected to dealing with all sorts of low characters, forced to worry constantly about accounts and credits and debts? That isn’t the life I swore I’d provide for your mother, Wintrow, or your sister. I won’t see your mother grow old and burdened as your Grandmother Vestrit has. Not while I’m a man. And not while I can make you a man to follow after me and uphold the duties of a man in this family.’ Kyle Haven returned and slapped his hand firmly against the table and gave a sharp nod of his head, as if his words had determined the future of his entire family.

Words deserted Wintrow. He stared at his father and floundered through his thoughts, trying to find some common ground where he could begin reasoning with him. He could not. Despite the blood-bond between them, this man was a stranger, and his beliefs were so utterly different from all Wintrow had embraced that he felt no hope of reaching him. Finally he said quietly, ‘Sa teaches us that no one may determine the life path of another. Even if you cage his flesh and forbid him to utter his thoughts, even to cutting out his tongue, you cannot still a man’s soul.’

For a moment, his father just looked at him. He, too, sees a stranger, Wintrow thought to himself. When he spoke, his voice was thick. ‘You’re a coward. A craven coward.’ Then his father strode past him. It took all of Wintrow’s nerve to stop from cowering as his sire passed him. But Kyle only threw open the door of his cabin and bellowed for Torg. The man appeared so promptly that Wintrow knew he must have been loitering nearby, perhaps eavesdropping. Kyle Haven either did not notice this or did not care.

‘Take the ship’s boy back to his quarters,’ his father ordered Torg abruptly. ‘Keep a good watch on him and see he learns all his duties before we sail. And keep him out of my sight.’ This last he uttered with great feeling, as if wronged by the world.

Torg gave a jerk of his head and Wintrow rose silently to follow him. With a sinking heart, he recognized the smirk on Torg’s face. His father had given him over completely into this wretch’s hands, and the man knew it.

For now the man seemed content to shepherd him forward to his miserable dungeon. Wintrow just managed to duck his head before the man pushed him across the threshold. He stumbled, but caught himself before he fell. He was too deep in despair even to pay attention to whatever mocking comment it was that Torg threw after him before slamming the door shut. He heard the man work the crude latch and knew he was shut in for the next six hours at least.

Torg hadn’t even left him a candle. Wintrow groped through the darkness until his hands encountered the webbing of the hammock. Awkwardly he hauled his stiff body up into it and tried to arrange himself comfortably. Then he lay still. About him the ship moved gently on the waters of the harbour. The only sounds that reached him were muffled. He yawned hugely, the effects of his large meal and long day’s work overwhelming both his anger and his despair. Out of long habit, he prepared both body and mind for rest. As much as the hammock would permit, he did the stretches of the large and small muscles of his body, striving to bring all back into alignment before rest. The mental exercises were more difficult. Back when he had first come to the monastery, they had given him a very simple ritual called Forgiving the Day. Even the youngest child could do this; all it required was looking back over the day and dismissing the day’s pains as a thing that were past while choosing to remember as gains lessons learned or moments of insight. As initiates grew in the ways of Sa, it was expected they would grow more sophisticated in this exercise, learning to balance the day, taking responsibility for their own actions and learning from them without indulging in either guilt or regrets. Wintrow did not think he was up to that tonight.

Odd. How easy it had been to love Sa’s way and master the meditations in the quietly structured days of the monastery. Within the massive stone walls, it had been easy to discern the underlying order in the world, easy to look at the lives of the farmers and shepherds and merchants and see how much of their misery was self-generated. Now that he was out in the midst of it, he could still see some of that pattern, but he felt too weary to examine it and see how he could change it. He was tangled in the threads of his own tapestry. ‘I don’t know how to make it stop,’ he said softly to the darkness. Doleful as an abandoned child, he wondered if any of his teachers missed him.

He recalled his final morning at the monastery, and the tree that had come to him out of the shards of stained-glass. He had always taken a secret pride in his ability to summon beauty and hold it. But had it been his skill at all? Or had it been something created instead by the teachers who insulated him from the world and provided both a place and a time in which he might work? Perhaps, given the right atmosphere, anyone could do it. Perhaps the only thing about him that had been remarkable was that he had been given a chance. For an instant, he was overwhelmed by his own ordinariness. Nothing remarkable about Wintrow. An indifferent ship’s boy, a clumsy sailor. Not even worth mentioning. He would disappear into time as if he had never been born. He could almost feel himself unravelling into darkness.

No. No! He would not let go. He would hang onto himself, and fight and something would happen. Something. Would the monastery send anyone to inquire after him when he did not return? ‘I think I’m hoping to be rescued,’ he observed wearily to himself. There. That was a high ambition. To stay alive and remain himself until someone else could save him. He was not sure if… if… if. There had been the beginning of a thought there, but the upsurging blackness of sleep drowned it.

In the dark of the harbour, Vivacia sighed. She crossed her slender arms over her breasts and stared up at the bright lights of the night market. So engrossed was she in her own thoughts that she startled to the soft touch of a hand against her planking. She looked down. ‘Ronica!’ she exclaimed in gentle surprise.

‘Yes. Hush. I would speak quietly with you.’

‘If you wish,’ Vivacia replied softly, intrigued.

‘I need to know… that is, Althea sent me a message. She feared all was not well with you.’ The woman’s voice faltered. ‘The message actually came some days ago. A servant, thinking it unimportant, had set it in Ephron’s study. I only found it today.’

Her hand was still set to the hull. Vivacia could read some of what she felt, though not all. ‘It is hard for you to go into that room, isn’t it? As hard as it is to come down here and see me.’

‘Ephron,’ Ronica whispered brokenly. ‘Is he… is he within you? Can he speak through you to me?’

Vivacia shook her head sorrowfully. She was used to seeing this woman through Ephron’s eyes or Althea’s. They had seen her as determined and authoritative. Tonight, in her dark cloak with her head bowed, she looked so small. Vivacia longed to comfort her, but would not lie. ‘No. I’m afraid it isn’t like that. I’m aware of what he knew, but it is commingled with so much else. Still. When I look at you, I feel as my own the love he felt for you. Does that help?’

‘No,’ Ronica answered truthfully. ‘There is some comfort in it, but it can never be like Ephron’s strong arms around me, or his advice guiding me. Oh, ship, what am I to do? What am I to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vivacia answered. Ronica’s distress was awakening an answering anxiety in her. She put it in words. ‘It frightens me that you ask me that question. Surely you know what to do. Ephron certainly always believed you did.’ Reflectively, Vivacia added, ‘He thought of himself as a simple sailor, you know. A man who had the knack of running a ship well. You were the wisdom of the family, the one with the greater vision. He counted on that.’

‘He did?’

‘Of course he did. How else could he have sailed off and left you to manage everything?’

Ronica was silent. Then she heaved a great sigh.

Quietly Vivacia added, ‘I think he would tell you to follow your own counsels.’

Ronica shook her head wearily. ‘I fear you are right. Vivacia. Do you know where Althea is?’

‘Right now? No. Don’t you?’

Ronica answered reluctantly. ‘I have not seen her since the morning after Ephron died.’

‘The last time she came to see me, Torg came down onto the docks and tried to lay hands on her. She pushed him off the dock, and walked away while everyone else was laughing.’

‘But she was all right?’

Vivacia shook her head. ‘Only as “all right” as you or me. Which is to say she is troubled and hurt and confused. But she told me to be patient, that all would eventually be put right. She told me not to take matters into my own hands.’

Ronica nodded gravely. ‘Those are the very things I came down here to say tonight, also. Do you think you can keep such counsels?’

‘I?’ The ship almost laughed. ‘Ronica, I am three times a Vestrit. I fear I shall have only as much patience as my forebears did.’

‘An honest answer,’ Ronica conceded. ‘I will only ask that you try. No. I will ask one more thing. If Althea returns here, before you sail, will you give her a message from me? For I have no other way to contact her, save through you.’

‘Of course. And I will see that no one save her hears the message.’

‘Good, that is good. All I ask is that she come to see me. We are not at odds as much as she believes we are. But I will not go into details now. Just ask her to come to me, quietly.’

‘I shall tell her. But I do not know if she will.’

‘Neither do I, ship. Neither do I.’

14 FAMILY MATTERS

KENNIT DID NOT TAKE the captured ship to Divvytown. He did not trust the wallowing thing not to become mired in negotiating the narrow channels and numerous sandbars a ship must pass to get there. Instead, after a tense conference, he and Sorcor determined that Askew would be a better port for her. Kennit had thought it fitting; had not Askew been founded when a storm-driven slaver took shelter up a channel and the cargo managed a successful uprising against the crew, he had asked Sorcor in amusement. Yes, that was true, but Sorcor had still been opposed, for there was little more to Askew than sand and rocks and clams. What future could these folk have there? Better than what the slaver had offered them, Kennit pointed out. Sorcor became surly but Kennit insisted. The journey there had taken six slow days, far less than it would have taken them to reach Divvytown, and from Kennit’s point of view, the time had been well spent.

Sorcor had seen a number of his rescued slaves die; disease and starvation did not vanish simply because a man could claim to be free. To Rafo’s credit and that of his charges, they had turned to and given the vessel a good scrubbing. It no longer gave off the full stench of a slaver, but Kennit still insisted that the Marietta sail upwind of her. He would risk no wind bringing disease to his ship. He had permitted none of the freed slaves to board the Marietta, saying that crowding his own vessel to relieve the tight quarters on the Fortune would do no one any good. Instead the slaves had had to be content with spreading out on the decks and taking the living area of the devoured crew. Some of the healthier ones were pressed into service as deckhands to fill out the ranks of the skeleton crew that manned her. The unfamiliar work was hard for them, especially in their weakened state. Despite this, and the continued deaths, the morale on the captured ship seemed high. The former slaves were pathetically grateful for fresh air, for shares of the salt pork that had once gone to the slaver’s crew, and for whatever fish they could catch to supplement their diets. Sorcor had even been able to drive off the serpents with several showers of ballast shot from the ballistae on the decks of the Marietta. Those who died now were still heaved from the decks of the ship, but the bodies splashed into the water rather than being snatched up by an avid serpent. This seemed to afford them great satisfaction, though for the life of him, Kennit could not see what difference it could make to the dead men.