Ship of Destiny

‘Oh. Poor pirate. Poor, pathetic, unloved Kennit.’

The words were drawled sarcastically, in a small voice. It came from the carved charm he wore strapped to his wrist. He would not even have heard the tiny, breathless voice if he had not been climbing down the ladder, his hand still gripping the rung by his face. His foot reached the lower deck. He held to the ladder with one hand as he tugged his coat straight, and corrected the fall of lace from his cuffs. Anger burned in him. Even the wizardwood charm he had created to bring him luck had turned on him. His own face, carved in miniature, flung mockery at him. He thought of a threat for the beastly little wretch.

He lifted his hand to smooth the curl of his moustache. Carved face close to his mouth, ‘Wizardwood burns,’ he observed quietly.

‘So does flesh,’ the tiny voice replied. ‘You and I are bound as tightly as Vivacia is bound to Wintrow. Do you want to test that link? You have already lost a leg. Would you like to try life without your eyes?’

The charm’s words set a finger of ice to the pirate’s spine. How much did it know?

‘Ah, Kennit, there can be few secrets between two such as we. Few.’ It spoke to his thoughts rather than his words. Could it truly know what he thought, or did it shrewdly guess?

‘Here’s a secret I could share with Vivacia,’ the charm went on relentlessly. ‘I could tell her that you yourself have no idea what happened during that rescue. That once your elation wore off, you cowered in your bed and trembled like a child while Etta was nursing Wintrow.’ A pause. ‘Perhaps Etta would find that amusing.’

An inadvertent glance at his wrist showed him the sardonic grin on the charm’s face. Kennit pushed down a deep uneasiness. He would not dignify the ill-natured little thing with a reply. He recovered his crutch and stepped swiftly out of the path of a handful of men hastening to reset a sail that was not to Jola’s liking.

What had happened as they were leaving Others’ Island? The storm had raged about them, and Wintrow had been unconscious, perhaps dying in the bottom of the ship’s boat. Kennit had been furious with fate that it would try to snatch his future away just as he was so close to realizing it. He had stood up in the gig, to shake his fist and forbid the sea to drown him and the winds to oppose him. Not only had they heeded his words, but the serpent from the island had risen from the depths to reunite the gig with its mother ship. He exhaled sharply, refusing credulous fear. It was difficult enough that his own crew now worshipped him with their eyes, cowering in terror at his slightest remonstrance. Even Etta quivered fearfully under his touch and spoke to him with downcast eyes. Occasionally, she slipped back into familiarity, only to be aghast with herself when she realized she had done so. Only the ship treated him as fearlessly as she always had. Now she had revealed that his miracle had created another barrier between them. He refused to surrender to their superstition. Whatever had happened, he must accept it and continue as he always had.

Commanding a ship demanded that the captain always live a detached life. No one could fraternize on equal terms with the ship’s captain. Kennit had always enjoyed the isolation of command. Since Sorcor had taken over command of the Marietta, he had lost some of his deference for Kennit. The storm incident had once more firmly established Kennit as above Sorcor. Now his former second-in-command regarded him with a god-struck gaze. It was not the elevation in their regard that Kennit minded so much. It was knowing that a fall from this new pinnacle could shatter him. Even a slight mistake now might discredit him in their eyes. He must be more careful than ever before. The path he had set himself upon grew ever narrower and steeper. He set his customary small smile to his face. Let no one see his apprehension. He made his way towards Wintrow’s cabin.

‘Wintrow? Here is water. Drink.’

Etta squeezed a small sponge above his lips. A pattering of drops fell. She watched anxiously as his blistered lips opened to the water. His thick tongue moved inside his mouth, and she saw him swallow. It was followed by a quick gasp for breath. ‘Is that better? Do you want more?’

She leaned closer and watched his face, willing a response from him. She would accept anything, the twitch of an eyelid, the flaring of a nostril. There was nothing. She dipped the sponge again. ‘Here comes more water,’ she assured him, and sent another brief trickle into his mouth. Again, he swallowed.

Thrice more she gave him water. The last time, it trickled down his livid cheek. She dabbed it gently away. Skin came with it. Then she leaned back into the chair by his bunk and considered him wearily. She could not tell if his thirst was satiated or if he was too weary to swallow more. She numbered her consolations. He was alive. He breathed; he drank. She tried to build hope upon that. She dropped the sponge back into the pan of water. For a moment, she regarded her own hands. She had scalded them in Wintrow’s rescue, for when she had seized him to keep him from drowning, the serpent slime on his clothing had rubbed off on her, leaving shiny red patches, stingingly sensitive to both heat and cold. And it had done that damage after it had spent most of its strength on Wintrow’s clothing and flesh.

His clothing had been corroded away to flimsy rags. Then, as warm water dissolves ice, the slime had eaten his flesh. His hands had taken the worst damage, but spatters of it had marred his face. It had eaten into his sailor’s queue, leaving uneven hanks of black hair clinging to his head. She had cut his remaining hair to keep it from lying in his sores. His shorn scalp made him look even younger than he was.

In some places, the damage seemed no worse than sunburn; in others, raw tissue shone wet beside tanned and healthy flesh. Swelling had distorted his features, rendering his eyes as slits beneath a ledge of brow. His fingers were as sausages. His breath rattled in and out wetly. His oozing flesh stuck to the linen sheets. She suspected his pain was intense, and yet he gave few signs of it. He was so unresponsive that she feared he was dying.

She closed her eyes tightly. If he died, it would reawaken all the pain she had schooled herself to leave behind. It was so monstrously unfair that she was going to lose him so soon after finally coming to trust him. He had taught her to read. She had taught him to fight. She had competed with him jealously for Kennit’s attention. Somehow, in the process, she had come to consider him a friend. How had she let herself be so careless? Why had she allowed herself such vulnerability?

She had come to know him better than anyone else on board. To Kennit, Wintrow was a lucky piece and a prophet of his success, though he valued the boy, perhaps even loved him in his grudging way. The crew had accepted Wintrow, reluctantly at first, but with almost paternal pride since the mild lad had stood his ground at Divvytown, blade in hand, and voiced his support for Kennit as a king. His shipmates had been eager for Wintrow to walk the Treasure Beach, sure that whatever he discovered there would be omens of Kennit’s greatness to come. Even Sorcor had come to regard Wintrow with tolerance and affection. But none of them knew him as she did. If he died, they would be sad, but Etta would be bereaved.

She pushed her own feelings roughly aside. They were not important. The vital question was, how would Wintrow’s death affect Kennit? She truly could not guess. Five days ago, she would have sworn she knew the pirate as well as anyone. Not that she claimed to know all his secrets; he was a very private man, and his motives often mystified her. Nevertheless, he treated her kindly and more than kindly. She knew she loved him. That had been enough for her; she did not need to be loved in return. He was Kennit, and that was all she required of him.

She had listened with indulgent scepticism as Wintrow had shyly begun to voice his speculations. His initial distrust of Kennit had evolved slowly into a belief that Kennit was chosen by Sa to fulfil some great destiny. She had suspected Kennit of playing on the boy’s gullibility, encouraging Wintrow in his beliefs simply so he could enlist him in his own endeavours. Fond as she was of Kennit, she believed him capable of such deceptions. It did not make her think less of her man that he was willing to do whatever he must to achieve his ends.

But that had been before she had seen Kennit lift his hands and voice to quell a storm and command a sea serpent. Since that moment, she felt as if the man she loved had been snatched away and another set in his place. She was not alone in this. The crew that would have followed Captain Kennit to any bloody death now fell silent at his approach and near cowered at a direct command from him. Kennit scarcely noticed. That was the uncanny thing. He seemed to accept what he had done, and expect the same of those around him. He spoke to her as if nothing had changed. Shockingly, he touched her as he always had. She was not worthy to be touched by such a being, yet she dared not deny herself to him, either. Who was she to question the will of one such as he?

What was he?

Words she would once have scoffed came to her mind. God-touched. Beloved of Sa. Destined. Prophesied. Chosen by fate. She wanted to laugh and dismiss such fancies, but could not. From the very beginning, Kennit had been unlike any other man she had ever known. None of the rules had ever seemed to apply to him. He had succeeded where any other man would have failed, achieved the impossible effortlessly. The tasks he had set himself baffled her. The size of his ambitions astounded her. Had not he captured a Bingtown liveship? What other man had recovered from a sea serpent’s attack? Who but Kennit could have made the rag-tag villages of the Pirate Isles start to think of themselves as outposts of a far-flung realm, Kennit’s rightful kingdom?

What kind of a man harboured such dreams, let alone brought them to fruit?

Such questions made her miss Wintrow even more sharply. If he had been awake, he could have helped her understand. Though he was young, he had spent almost his entire life in schooling at a monastery. When she had first met him, she had disdained him for his educated ways and gentle manners. Now she wished she could turn to him with her uncertainties. Words like destiny and fate and omen fell from his lips as easily as curses came from hers. From him, such words were believable.

She found herself toying with the small pouch she wore around her neck. She opened it with a sigh, and once more took out the tiny manikin. She had found it in her boot, along with a quantity of sand and barnacle shells after they had escaped from Others’ Island. When she had asked Kennit what such an omen from the Treasure Beach might mean, he had told her that she already knew. That answer had frightened her more than any dire prophecy he could have uttered.

‘But truly, I don’t,’ she said softly to Wintrow. The doll just filled her palm. It felt like ivory, yet it was coloured the precise pink of a baby’s flesh. The curled and sleeping infant had tiny perfect eyelashes on its cheeks, ears like minute seashells, and a coiling serpentine tail that wrapped around it. It warmed quickly in her hand, and the smooth contours of the tiny body begged to be touched. Her fingertip traced the curve of its spine. ‘It looks like a baby to me. But what can that mean to me?’ She lowered her voice and spoke more confidentially, as if the youth could hear her. ‘Kennit spoke of a baby, once. He asked me if I would have a baby if he wanted that of me. I told him, of course I would. Is that what this means? Is Kennit going to ask me to have his child?’

Her hand strayed to her flat belly. Through her shirt, her finger touched a tiny lump. A wizardwood charm, shaped like a tiny skull, was ringed through her navel to protect her from disease and pregnancy. ‘Wintrow, I’m afraid. I fear I cannot live up to such dreams. What if I fail him? What am I to do?’

‘I will not ask of you anything I believe is beyond you.’

Etta leapt to her feet with a startled cry. She spun to find Kennit standing in the open door. She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I didn’t hear you,’ she apologized guiltily.

‘Ah, but I heard you. Is our boy awake now? Wintrow?’ Kennit limped into the room, to gaze hopefully on Wintrow’s still form.

‘No. He drinks water, but other than that, there is no sign of recovery.’ Etta remained standing.

‘But still you ask him these questions?’ Kennit observed speculatively. He turned his head to pierce her with his glance.

‘I have no one else to share such doubts,’ she began, and then halted. ‘I meant,’ she began hesitantly, but Kennit silenced her with an impatient motion of his hand.

‘I know what you meant,’ he revealed. He sank into her chair. When he let go of his crutch, she caught it before it could clatter to the floor. He leaned forwards to look at Wintrow more closely, a frown furrowing his brow. His fingers touched the boy’s swollen face with a woman’s gentleness. ‘I, too, miss his counsel.’ He stroked the stubble of hair on Wintrow’s head, then pulled his hand back in distaste at its coarseness. ‘I am thinking of putting him up on the foredeck, by the figurehead. She may be able to speed his healing.’

‘But –’ Etta began, then held her tongue and lowered her eyes.

‘You object? Why?’

‘I did not mean to…’

‘Etta!’ Kennit barked her name, making her jump. ‘Spare me this whining and cringing. If I ask you a question, it is because I wish you to speak, not whimper at me. Why do you object to moving him there?’

She swallowed her fear. ‘The scabs on his burns are loose and wet. If we move him, they may be rubbed off, and delay his healing. The wind and the sun may dry and crack raw skin all the more.’

Kennit looked only at the boy. He appeared to be pondering her words. ‘I see. But we shall move him carefully, and we will not leave him there long. The ship needs assurance that he lives still, and I think he may need her strength to heal.’

‘I am sure you know better than I –’ she faltered, but he cut off her objection with, ‘I am certain that I do. Go fetch some crewmen to move him. I shall wait here.’

Wintrow swam deep, in darkness and warmth. Somewhere, far above, there was a world of light and shadow, of voices and pain and touch. He avoided it. In another plane, there was a being that groped after him, calling him by his name and baiting him with memories as well. She was harder to elude, but his determination was strong. If she found him, there would be great pain and disillusionment for both of them. As long as he remained a tiny formless being swimming through the dark, he could avoid it all.

Something was being done to his body. There was clatter, talk, and fuss. He centred himself against anticipated pain. Pain had the power to grasp him and hold him. Pain might be able to drag him up to that world where he had a body and a mind and a set of memories that went with them. Down here, it was much safer.

It only seems that way. And while it seems that way for a long time, eventually you will long for light and movement, for taste and sound and touch. If you wait too long, those things may be lost to you forever.

This voice boomed rich all around him like the thundering of surf against rocks. Like the ocean itself, the voice turned and tumbled him, considering him from all angles. He tried in vain to hide from it. It knew him. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

The voice was amused. Who am I? You know who I am, Wintrow Vestrit. I am whom you most fear, and whom she most fears. I am the one you avoid acknowledging. I am the one you deny and conceal from yourself and each other. Yet, I am a part of you both.

The voice paused and waited for him, but he would not speak the words. He knew that the old naming magic worked both ways. To know a creature’s true name was to have the power to bind it. But the naming of such a creature could also make it real.

I am the dragon. The voice spoke with finality. You know me now. And nothing will ever be the same.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he babbled silently. ‘I didn’t know. None of us knew. I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry.’

Not as sorry as I am. The voice was implacable in its grief. Nor yet as sorry as you shall be.

‘But it wasn’t my fault! I had nothing to do with it!’

Nor was it my fault, yet I am the one punished most grievously of all. Fault has no place in the greater scheme of things, little one. Fault and guilt are as useless as apology once the deed is done. Once the action has been taken, all must endure what follows.

‘But why are you down here so deep?’

Where else should I be? Where else is left to me? By the time I recalled who I was, your memories were stacked many layers deep upon me. Yet here I am, and here I shall remain, no matter how long you deny me. The voice paused. No matter how long I may deny myself, it added wearily.

Pain scoured him. Wintrow struggled in a blaze of heat and light, fighting to keep his eyes closed and his tongue stilled. What were they doing to him? It did not matter. He would not react to it. If he moved, if he cried out, he would have to admit he was alive and Vivacia was dead. He would have to admit his soul was linked to a thing that had been dead longer than he had been alive. It was beyond macabre; it numbed him with horror. This was the wonder and glory of a liveship. He must consort forever with death. He did not wish to awaken and acknowledge that.

Would you prefer to remain down here with me? There was bitter amusement in the being’s voice now. Do you wish to linger in the tomb of my past?

‘No. No, I wish to be free.’

Free?

Wintrow faltered. ‘I don’t want to know any of this. I don’t want to have ever been a part of it.’

You were a part of it as soon as you were conceived. There is no way to undo such a thing.

‘Then what must I do?’ The words wailed through him, unvoiced. ‘I cannot live with this.’

You could die, the voice offered sardonically.

‘I don’t want to die.’ Of that, at least, he was certain.

Neither did I, the voice pointed out remorselessly. But I did. Rich as I am in memories of flying, my own wings never were unfurled. For the sake of building this ship, my cocoon was stripped from me before I could hatch. They dumped that which would have been my body to the cold stone floor. All I am are memories, memories stored in the walls of my cocoon, memories I should have reabsorbed as I formed in the hot sun of summer. I had no way to live or grow, save through the memories your kind offered. I absorbed what you gave me, and when it was enough, I quickened. But not as myself. No. I became the shape you had imposed upon me, and took to myself the personality that was the sum of your family’s expectations. Vivacia.

A sudden shift in the position of his body freshened Wintrow’s physical pain. Air flowed over him and the warmth of the sun touched him. Even that contact scoured his denuded flesh. But worst of all was the voice that called to him in a mixture of gladness and concern. ‘Wintrow? Can you hear me? It’s Vivacia. Where are you, what are you doing that I cannot feel you at all?’

He felt the ship’s thoughts reach for him. He cringed away, unwilling to let her touch minds with him. He made himself smaller, hid deeper. The moment Vivacia reached him, she must know all that he did. What would it do to her, to confront what she truly was?

Do you fear it will drive her mad? Do you fear she will take you with her? There was fierce exultance in the voice as it framed the thought, almost like a threat. Wintrow went cold with fear. Instantly he knew that this hiding place was no asylum, but a trap. ‘Vivacia!’ he called out wildly, but his body did not obey him. No lips voiced his cry. Even his thought was muffled in the dragon’s being, wrapped and stifled and confined. He tried to struggle; he was suffocating under the weight of her presence. She held him so close he could not recall how to breathe. His heart leaped arhythmically. Pain slapped him as his body jerked in protest. In a distant world, on a sun-washed deck, voices cried out in helpless dismay. He retreated to a stillness of body and soul that was one degree of darkness away from death.

Good. There was satisfaction in the voice. Be still, little one. Don’t try to defy me, and I won’t have to kill you. A pause. I really have no desire to see any of us die. As closely interwoven as we are, the death of any of us would be a risk to the others. You would have realized that, if you had paused to think. I give you that time now. Use it to ponder our situation.

For a space, Wintrow focused only on his survival. Breath caught, then shuddered through his lungs again. His heartbeat steadied. He was peripherally aware of exclamations of relief. Pain still seethed. He tried to pull his mind back from it, to ignore its clamour of serious damage to his body so that his thoughts could focus on the problem the dragon had set him.

He cringed at her sudden flash of irritation. By all that flies, have you no sense at all? How have creatures like you managed to survive and infest the world so thoroughly and yet have so little knowledge of yourselves? Do not pull back from the pain and imagine that makes you strong. Look at it, you dolt! It is trying to tell you what is wrong so you can fix it. No wonder you all have such short life spans. No, look at it! Like this.

The crewmen who had carried the corners of the sheet supporting Wintrow’s body had lowered him gently to the deck. Even so, Kennit had seen the spasm of fresh pain that crossed Wintrow’s face. He supposed that could be taken as an encouraging sign; at least he still reacted to pain. But when the figurehead had spoken to him, he had not even twitched. None of the others surrounding the supine figure could guess how much that worried Kennit. The pirate had been certain that the boy would react to the ship’s voice. That he did not meant that perhaps death would claim him. Kennit believed that there was a place between life and death where a man’s body became no more than a miserable animal, capable only of an animal’s responses. He had seen it. Under Igrot’s cruel guidance, his father had lingered in that state for days. Perhaps that was where Wintrow was now.

The dim light inside the cabin had been merciful. Out here, in the clear light of day, Kennit could not insist to himself that Wintrow would be fine. Every ugly detail of his scalded body was revealed. His brief fit of spasms had disturbed the wet scabs his body had managed to form; fluid ran over his skin from his injuries. Wintrow was dying. His boy-prophet, the priest who would have been his soothsayer was dying, with Kennit’s future still unborn. The injustice of it rose up and choked Kennit. He had come so close, so very close to attaining his dream. Now he would lose it all in the death of this half-grown man. It was too bitter to contemplate. He clenched his eyes shut against the cruelty of fate.

‘Oh, Kennit!’ the ship cried out in a low voice, and he knew that she was feeling his emotions as well as her own. ‘Don’t let him die!’ she begged him. ‘Please. You saved him from the serpent and the sea. Cannot you save him now?’

‘Quiet!’ he commanded her, almost roughly. He had to think. If the boy died now, it would be a denial of all the good luck Kennit had ever mustered. It would be worse than a jinx. Kennit could not allow this to happen.

Unmindful of the gathered crewmen who looked down on the wracked boy in hushed silence, Kennit awkwardly lowered himself to the deck. He looked long at Wintrow’s still face. He laid a single forefinger to an unblemished patch of skin on Wintrow’s face. He was beardless still and his cheek was soft. It wrung his heart to see the lad’s beauty spoiled so. ‘Wintrow,’ he called softly. ‘Lad, it’s me. Kennit. You said you’d follow me. Sa sent you to speak for me. Remember? You can’t go now, boy. Not when we’re so close to our goals.’