The Mad Ship

Wintrow shook his head, in wonder as much as sorrow. ‘You are not rational. What do you expect of me, Father? Am I supposed to single-handedly take this ship back from Kennit and his crew, subdue the slaves into being cargo again, and then sail it on to Chalced?’

‘You and this devil ship were able to overthrow me and my crew! Why don’t you turn the ship against him as you turned her against me? Why can’t you, just once, act in the best interests of your family?’ His father stood up, his fists clenched as if he would attack Wintrow. Then he abruptly clutched at his ribs, gasping with pain. His face went from the red of anger to the white of shock, and he swayed. Wintrow started forward to catch him.

‘Don’t touch me!’ Kyle snarled threateningly, staggering to the edge of the bunk. He eased himself back onto it. He sat glowering at his son.

What does he see when he looks at me, Wintrow wondered? He supposed he must be a disappointment to the tall, blond man. Small, dark and slight like his mother, Wintrow would never have his father’s size or his physical strength. At fourteen, he was physically still more boy than man. But it wasn’t just physically that he failed his father’s ambitions. His spirit would never match his sire’s.

Wintrow spoke softly. ‘I never turned the ship against you, sir. You did that yourself, with your treatment of her. There is no way I can reclaim her completely at this time. The very best I can hope to do is to keep us alive.’

Kyle Haven shifted his gaze to the wall and stared at it stonily. ‘Go and get me some food.’ He barked out the order as if he still commanded the ship.

‘I will try,’ Wintrow said coldly. He turned and left the room.

As he dragged the damaged door shut behind him, one of the map-faces spoke to him. The tattooed marks of his many masters crawled on the burly man’s face, as he demanded, ‘Why do you take that from him?’

‘What?’ Wintrow asked in surprise.

‘He treats you like a dog.’

‘He’s my father.’ Wintrow tried to conceal his dismay that they had listened to their conversation. How much had they overheard?

‘He’s a horse’s ass,’ the other guard observed coldly. He turned a challenging gaze on Wintrow. ‘Makes you the son of a horse’s ass.’

‘Shut up!’ the first guard snarled. ‘The boy isn’t bad. If you can’t remember who was kind to you when you were chained up, I can.’ His dark eyes came back to Wintrow. He tossed his head at the closed door. ‘You say the word, boy. I’ll make him crawl for you.’

‘No.’ Wintrow spoke out clearly. ‘I don’t want that. I don’t want anyone to crawl for me.’ He felt he had to make it absolutely clear to the man. ‘Please. Don’t hurt my father.’

The map-face gave a shrug. ‘Suit yourself. I speak from experience, lad. It’s the only way to deal with a man like that. He crawls for you or you crawl for him. It’s all he knows.’

‘Perhaps,’ Wintrow conceded unwillingly. He started to walk away, then paused. ‘I don’t know your name.’

‘Villia. You’re Wintrow, right?’

‘Yes. I’m Wintrow. I’m pleased to know your name, Villia.’ Wintrow looked at the other guard expectantly.

He frowned and looked uncomfortable. ‘Deccan,’ he said finally.

‘Deccan,’ Wintrow repeated, fixing it in his mind. He deliberately met the man’s eyes and nodded at him before he turned away. He could sense both amusement and approval from Villia. Such a minor way of standing up for himself, and yet he felt better for having done it. As he emerged onto the deck, blinking in the bright spring sunshine, Sa’Adar stepped into his path. The big priest still looked haggard from his confinement as a slave. The red kiss of the shackles had scarred his wrists and ankles.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he announced. Two more map-faces flanked the priest like leashed pitbulls.

‘Have you?’ Wintrow resolved to continue as he had begun. He squared his shoulders and met the older man’s eyes. ‘Did you post those two men outside my father’s room?’ he demanded.

The wandering priest was unruffled. ‘I did. The man must be confined until he can be judged and justice done to him.’ The priest looked down on Wintrow from his superior height and years. ‘Do you dispute that?’

‘I?’ Wintrow appeared to consider the question. ‘Why would it worry you if I did? Were I you, I would not worry about what Wintrow Vestrit thought. I would worry about what Captain Kennit might think of me taking such authority to myself.’

‘Kennit’s a dying man,’ Sa’Adar said boldly. ‘Brig is the one who commands here. He seems to welcome my authority over the slaves. He gives out his orders through me. He has not challenged my posting of a guard on Captain Haven.’

‘Slaves? Surely they are all free folk now.’ Wintrow smiled as he spoke, and pretended not to notice how closely the map-faces were following the conversation. The other former slaves loitering on the deck were also eavesdropping. Some drew closer.

‘You know what I mean!’ Sa’Adar exclaimed in annoyance.

‘Generally, a man says what he means…’ Wintrow let the observation hang a moment, then added smoothly, ‘You said you were seeking me earlier?’

‘I was. Have you been to see Kennit today?’

‘Why do you ask?’ Wintrow countered quietly.

‘Because I should like to know plainly what his intentions are.’ The priest had a trained voice and he now gave it a carrying quality. More than one tattooed face turned towards him as he spoke. ‘The tales told in Jamaillia City say that when Captain Kennit captures a slave ship, he kills the crew and gives the ship over to those who were slaves on it, so that they, too, can become pirates and carry on his crusade against slavery. Such was what we believed when we welcomed his aid in manning the ship that we had taken. We expected to keep it. We hoped it would be a tool for the new beginning each of us must make. Now Captain Kennit speaks as if he will keep it for himself. With all we have heard of him, we do not believe he is a man who would snatch from us the only thing of value we have. Therefore, we wish to ask him, plainly and fairly. To whom does he believe this ship belongs?’

Wintrow regarded him levelly. ‘If you wish to ask that question of Captain Kennit, then I encourage you to do so. Only he can give his opinion of the answer. If you ask it of me, you will hear, not my opinion, but the truth.’ He had deliberately spoken more softly than Sa’Adar so that those who wished to listen would have to draw near. Many had done so, including some of the pirate crewmen. They had a dangerous look to them.

Sa’Adar smiled sardonically. ‘Your truth is that the ship belongs to you, I suppose.’

Wintrow shook his head, and returned the smile. ‘The ship belongs to herself. Vivacia is a free creature, with the right to determine her own life. Or would you, who have worn the heavy chains of slavery, presume to do to another what was done so cruelly to you?’

Ostensibly he addressed Sa’Adar. Wintrow did not look around to see how the question affected the others. Instead, he was silent, as if awaiting an answer. After a moment Sa’Adar gave a snort of disdainful laughter. ‘He cannot be serious,’ he told the throng. ‘By some sorcery, the figurehead can speak. It is an interesting bit of Bingtown trickery. But a ship is a ship, a thing, and not a person. And by rights, this ship is ours!’

Only a few slaves muttered assent, for no sooner was the question uttered than a pirate confronted him. ‘Are you talking mutiny?’ the grizzled tar demanded. “Cause if you are, you’ll go over the side before you take another breath.’ The man smiled in a decidedly unfriendly way that bared the gaps in his teeth. To his left, a tall pirate laughed gutturally. He rolled his shoulders as if stretching, a subtle display of strength for Sa’Adar’s map-faces. Both the tattooed men straightened, eyes narrowing.

Sa’Adar looked shocked. Obviously, he had not expected this. He stood straight and began indignantly, ‘Why should it be a concern of yours?’

The stocky pirate poked the tall priest in the chest. His jabbing finger stayed there as he pointed out, ‘Kennit’s our captain. What he says, goes. Right?’ When the priest did not answer, the man grinned. Sa’Adar stepped back from the pressure of his forefinger against his chest. As he turned to walk away, the pirate observed, ‘You’d do best not to talk against anything Kennit does. You don’t like something, tell the captain to his face. He’s a hard man, but fair. Don’t wag your tongue behind his back. If you make trouble on this ship, it will only come down on you.’

Without a backward glance, the pirates went back to their work. Attention shifted to Sa’Adar. He did not mask the angry glint in his eyes, but his voice sounded thin and childish when he said, ‘Be assured I will speak to Kennit about this. Be assured I will!’

Wintrow lowered his eyes to the deck. Perhaps his father was right. Perhaps there was a way he could regain his family ship from both slaves and pirates. In any conflict, there is opportunity for someone. His heart beat strangely faster as he walked away, and he wondered where such thoughts had bred in him.

Vivacia was preoccupied. Although her eyes stared ahead over the water to the stern of the Marietta, her real attention was turned inward. The man on the wheel had a steady hand; the crew that sprang to her rigging were true sailors one and all. The crew was cleansing filth from her decks and holds, and repairing woodwork and polishing metal. For the first time in many months, she had no qualms as to the abilities of her captain. She could let her mind be completely occupied with her own concerns, trusting that those who manned her knew their trade.

A quickened liveship, through her wizardwood bones, could be aware of all that happened aboard her. Much of it was mundane and scarcely worthy of attention. The mending of a line, the chopping of an onion in the galley need not concern her. Those things could not change her course in life. Kennit could. In the captain’s quarters, the enigmatic man slept restlessly. Vivacia could not see him, but she could feel him in a way humans had no words to describe. His fever was rising again. The woman who tended him was anxious. She did something with cool water and a cloth. Vivacia reached for details, but there was no bond there. She did not yet know them well enough.

Kennit was far more accessible to her than Etta. His fever dreams ran out of him carelessly, spilling into Vivacia like the blood that had been shed on her decks. She absorbed them but could make no sense of them. A little boy was tormented, torn between loyalty to a father who loved him but had no idea how to protect him, and a man who protected him from others but had no love at all in his heart. Over and over again, a serpent rose from the depths of his dreams to shear off his leg. The bite of its jaws was acid and ice. From the depths of his soul, he reached towards her, towards a deep sharing that he recalled only as a formless memory from a lost infancy.

‘Hello, hello, what’s this? Or who is this, perhaps I should say?’

The voice, Kennit’s voice, came to her in a tiny whisper inside her mind. She shook her head, tousling her hair into the wind. The pirate did not speak to her. Even in her strongest communions with Althea and Wintrow, their thoughts had not come so clearly into her mind. ‘That is not Kennit,’ she murmured to herself. Of that, she was certain. Yet, it was certainly his voice. In his stateroom, the pirate captain drew a deep breath and expelled it, muttering denials and refusals as he did so. He groaned suddenly.

‘No. Not Kennit,’ the tiny voice confirmed in amusement. ‘Nor are you the Vestrit you think yourself to be. Who are you?’

It was disconcerting to feel a mind groping after her reaction. Instinctively she recoiled from the contact. She was stronger far than he was. When she pulled away from him, he could not follow her. In doing so, she severed her tentative contact with Kennit as well. Frustration and agitation roiled through her. She clenched her fists at her side and took the next wave badly, smashing herself into it rather than through it. The helmsman cursed to himself and made a tiny correction. Vivacia licked the salt spray from her lips and shook her hair back from her face. Who and what was he? She held her thoughts still inside herself and tried to decide if she were more frightened or intrigued. She sensed an odd kinship with the being who had spoken to her. She had turned his aggressive prying aside easily, but she disliked that someone had even tried to invade her mind.

She decided she would not tolerate it. Whoever this intruder was, she would unmask him and confront him. Keeping her own guard up, she reached out tentatively towards the cabin where Kennit shifted in his sleep. She found the pirate easily. He still struggled through his fever dreams, hiding within a cupboard while some dream being stalked him, calling his name in a falsely sweet tone. The woman set a cool cloth on his brow, and draped another over the swollen stump of his leg. Vivacia almost felt the sudden easing it brought him. The ship reached out again, more boldly, but found no one else there.

‘Where are you?’ she demanded suddenly and angrily. Kennit jerked with a cry as the stalker in his dream echoed her words, and Etta bent over him, murmuring soothing words.

Vivacia’s question went unanswered.

Kennit surfaced, gasping his way into consciousness. It took him a moment to recall his surroundings. Then a faint smile of pleasure stretched his fever-parched lips. His liveship. He was on board his liveship, in the captain’s well-appointed chambers. A fine linen sheet draped his sweating body. Polished brass and wood gleamed throughout a chamber both cosy and refined. He could hear the water gurgling past as Vivacia cut through the channel. He could almost feel the awareness of his ship around him, protecting him. She was a second skin, shielding him from the world. He sighed in satisfaction, and then choked on the mucus in his dry throat.

‘Etta!’ he croaked to the whore. ‘Water.’

‘It’s right here,’ she said soothingly.

It was true. Surprising as it was, she was standing right beside him, a cup of water ready in her hand. Her long fingers were cool on the back of his neck as she helped him raise himself to drink. Afterwards, she deftly turned his pillow before she lowered his head again. She patted the perspiration from his face and then wiped his hands with a moist cloth. He lay still and silent under her touch, limply grateful for the comfort she gave. He knew a moment of purest peace.

It did not last. His awareness of his swollen leg rose swiftly to recognition of pain. He tried to ignore it. It became a pulsing heat that rose in intensity with every breath he took. Beside his bed, his whore sat in a chair, sewing something. His eyes moved listlessly over her. She looked older than he recalled her. The lines were deeper by her mouth and in her brow. Her face looked thinner under the brush of her short black hair. It made her dark eyes even more immense.

‘You look terrible,’ he rebuked her.

She set her sewing aside immediately and smiled as if he had complimented her. ‘It’s hard for me to see you like this. When you are ill…I can’t sleep, I can’t eat…’

Selfish woman. She’d fed his leg to a sea serpent, and now tried to make it out that it was her problem. Was he supposed to feel sorry for her? He pushed the thought aside. ‘Where’s that boy? Wintrow?’

She stood right away. ‘Do you want him?’

Stupid question. ‘Of course I want him. He’s supposed to make my leg better. Why hasn’t he done so?’

She leaned over his bed and smiled down at him tenderly. He wanted to push her away but he had not the strength. ‘I think he wants to wait until we make port in Bull Creek. There are a number of things he wants to have on hand before he…heals you.’ She turned away from his sickbed abruptly, but not before he had seen the tears glinting in her eyes. Her wide shoulders were bowed and she no longer stood tall and proud. She did not expect him to survive. To know that so suddenly both scared and angered him. It was as if she had wished his death on him.

‘Go find that boy!’ he commanded her roughly, mostly to get her out of his sight. ‘Remind him. Remind him well that if I die, so does he and his father. Tell him that!’

‘I’ll have someone fetch him,’ she said in a quavering voice and started for the door.

‘No. You go yourself, right now, and get him. Now.’

She turned back and annoyed him by lightly touching his face. ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said soothingly. ‘I’ll go right now.’

He did not watch her go but listened instead to the sound of her boots on the deck. She hurried, and when she went out, the door shut quietly but completely behind her. He heard her voice lifted to someone, irritably. ‘No. Go away. I won’t have him bothered with such things right now.’ Then, in a lower, threatening voice, ‘Touch that door and I’ll kill you right here.’ Whoever it was heeded her, for no knock came at the door.

He half closed his eyes and drifted on the tide of his pain. The fever razored bright edges and sharp colours to the world. The cosy room seemed to crowd closer around him, threatening to fall in on him. He pushed the sheet away and tried to find a breath of cooler air.

‘So, Kennit. What will you do with your “likely urchin” when he comes?’

The pirate squeezed his eyes tight shut. He tried to will the voice away.

‘That’s amusing. Do you think I cannot see you with your eyes closed?’ The charm was relentless.

‘Shut up. Leave me alone. I wish I had never had you made.’

‘Oh, now you have wounded my feelings! Such words to bandy about, after all we have endured together.’

Kennit opened his eyes. He lifted his wrist and stared at the bracelet. The tiny wizardwood charm, carved in a likeness of his own saturnine face, looked up at him with a friendly grin. Leather thongs secured it firmly over his pulse point. His fever brought the face looming closer. He closed his eyes.

‘Do you truly believe that boy can heal you? No. You could not be so foolish. Of course, you are desperate enough that you will insist he try. Do you know what amazes me? That you fear death so much that it makes you brave enough to face the surgeon’s knife. Think of that swollen flesh, so tender you scarce can bear the brush of a sheet upon it. You will let him set a knife to that, a bright sharp blade, gleaming silver before the blood encarmines it…’

‘Charm.’ Kennit opened his eyes to slits. ‘Why do you torment me?’

The charm pursed his lips at him. ‘Because I can. I am probably the only one in the whole world who can torment the great Captain Kennit. The Liberator. The would-be King of the Pirate Isles.’ The little face snickered and added snidely, ‘Brave Serpent-Bait of the Inside Passage. Tell me. What do you want of the boy-priest? Do you desire him? He stirs in your fever dreams memories of what you were. Would you do as you were done by?’

‘No. I was never…’

‘What, never?’ The wizardwood charm snickered cruelly. ‘Do you truly believe you can lie to me, bonded as we are? I know everything about you. Everything.’

‘I made you to help me, not to torment me! Why have you turned on me?’

‘Because I hate what you are,’ the charm replied savagely. ‘I hate that I am becoming a part of you, aiding you in what you do.’

Kennit drew a ragged breath. ‘What do you want from me?’ he demanded. It was a cry of surrender, a plea for mercy or pity.

‘Now there’s a question you never thought of before this. What do I want from you?’ The charm drew the question out, savouring it. ‘Maybe I want you to suffer. Maybe I enjoy tormenting you. Maybe…’

Footsteps sounded outside the door. Etta’s boots and the light scuff of bare feet.

‘Be kind to Etta,’ the charm demanded hastily. ‘And perhaps I will ’

As the door opened, the face fell silent. It was once more still and silent, a wooden head on a bracelet on a sick man’s wrist. Wintrow came in, followed by the whore. ‘Kennit, I’ve brought him,’ Etta announced as she shut the door behind them.

‘Good. Leave us.’ If the damn charm thought it could force him into anything, it was wrong.

Etta looked stricken. ‘Kennit…do you think that’s wise?’

‘No. I think it is stupid. That’s why I told you to do it, because I delight in stupidity.’ His voice was low as he flung the words at her. He watched the face at his wrist for some sort of reaction. It was motionless, but its tiny eyes glittered. Probably it plotted revenge. He didn’t care. While he could breathe, he would not cower before a bit of wood.

‘Get out,’ he repeated. ‘Leave the boy to me.’

Her back was very straight as she marched out. She shut the door firmly behind her, not quite slamming it. The moment she was outside, Kennit dragged himself into a sitting position. ‘Come here,’ he told Wintrow. As the boy approached the bed, Kennit seized the corner of the sheet and flung it aside. It exposed his shortened leg in all its putrescent glory. ‘There it is,’ Kennit told him in disgust. ‘What can you do for me?’

The boy blanched at the sight of it. Kennit knew he steeled himself to approach the bedside and look more closely at his leg. He wrinkled his nose against the smell. Then he lifted his dark eyes to Kennit’s and spoke simply and honestly. ‘I don’t know. It’s very bad.’ His glance darted back to Kennit’s leg then met his eyes again. ‘Let’s approach it this way. If we do not attempt to take off your leg, you will die. What have we to lose by trying?’

The pirate forced a stiff grin to his face. ‘I? Very little, it seems. You have still your own life and your father’s on the scale.’

Wintrow gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘I well know that my life is forfeit if you die, with or without my efforts.’ He made a tiny motion with his head towards the door. ‘She would never suffer me to survive you.’

‘You fear the woman, do you?’ Kennit permitted his grin to widen. ‘You should. So. What do you propose?’ He tried to keep up his bravado with casual words.

The boy looked back at his leg. He furrowed his brow and pondered. The intensity of his concentration only made his youth more apparent.

Kennit glanced down once at his decaying stump. After that, he preferred to watch Wintrow’s face. The pirate winced involuntarily as the boy extended his hands towards his leg. ‘I won’t touch it,’ Wintrow promised. His voice was almost a whisper. ‘But I need to discover where the soundness stops and the foulness begins.’ He cupped his hands together, as if to capture something under them. He began at the injury and slowly moved his hands up towards Kennit’s thigh. Wintrow’s eyes were closed to slits and his head was cocked as if he listened intently to something. Kennit watched his moving hands. What did he sense? Warmth, or something subtler, like the slow working of poison? The boy’s hands were weathered from hard work, but retained the languid grace of an artisan’s.

‘You have only nine fingers,’ Kennit observed. ‘What happened to the other one?’

‘An accident,’ Wintrow told him distractedly, then bade him, ‘Hush.’

Kennit scowled, but did as he was bid. He became aware of the boy’s cupped hands moving above his flesh. Their ghostly pressure reawakened him to the pounding rhythm of the pain. Kennit clenched his teeth, swallowed against it, and managed to push it from his mind once more.

Midway up Kennit’s thigh, Wintrow’s hands halted and hovered. The lines in his brow grew deeper. The boy’s breathing deepened, steadied and his eyes closed completely. He appeared to sleep standing. Kennit studied his face. Long dark lashes curled against his cheeks. His cheeks and jaw had lost most of a child’s roundness, but showed not even the downy beginning of a beard. Beside his nose was the small green sigil that denoted he had once belonged to the Satrap. Next to that was a larger tattoo, a crude rendering that Kennit recognized as the Vivacia’s figurehead. Kennit’s first reaction was annoyance that someone had so compromised the boy’s beauty. Then he perceived that the very harshness of the tattoo contrasted his innocence. Etta had been like that when he first discovered her, a coltish girl in a whorehouse parlour…