Читать книгу The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny - Робин Хобб - Страница 23

‘AND IF I WISHED to dispute these documents?’ Althea asked slowly. She tried to make her voice impartially calm, but inside she was quivering with both anger and hurt.

Curtil scratched reluctantly at what was left of his greying hair. ‘That is specifically provided for. Anyone who disputes this last testament is automatically excluded from benefiting from it.’ He shook his head, almost apologetically. ‘It’s a standard thing,’ he told her gently. ‘It’s not as if your father was thinking specifically of you when we wrote it.’

She looked up from her tangled hands and met his eyes firmly. ‘And you believe this is actually what he wished? That Kyle take over Vivacia, and I be dependent on my sister’s charity?’

‘Well, I doubt that is how he envisioned it,’ Curtil said judiciously. He took a sip of his tea. Althea wondered if that were a delaying tactic, to give him time to think. The old man straightened in his chair as if he’d decided something. ‘But I do believe he knew his own mind. No one deceived him or coerced him. I would never have been a party to that. Your father wished to see your sister as his sole heir. He did not desire to punish you, but rather to safeguard his entire family.’

‘Well, in both of those desires he failed,’ Althea said harshly. Then she lowered her face into her hands, ashamed to have spoken so of her father. Curtil let her be. When she lifted her face some time later, she observed, ‘You must think me a carrion bird. Yesterday my father died, and today I come quarrelling for a share of what was his.’

Curtil offered her his handkerchief and she took it gratefully. ‘No. No, I don’t think that. When the mainstay of one’s world is taken away, it’s only natural to cling to all the rest, to try desperately to keep things as close to the way they were as one can.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘But no one can ever go back to yesterday.’

‘No. I suppose not.’ She sighed heavily. She considered her last pathetic straw of hope. ‘Trader Curtil. By Bingtown law, if a man swears an oath to Sa, cannot he be held to that oath as a legal contract?’

Curtil’s long brow furrowed. ‘Well. It depends. If in a fit of anger, in a tavern, I say that by Sa, I’m going to kill so-and-so, well, that’s not a legal action in the first place, so…’

Althea stopped mincing words. ‘If Kyle Haven swore before witnesses that if I could produce proof that I was a worthy seaman, he would give Vivacia back to me, if he swore that in Sa’s name, could it be enforced?’

‘Well, technically, the ship is your sister’s property, not his—’

‘She has ceded control of it over to him,’ Althea said impatiently. ‘Is such an oath legally binding?’

Curtil shrugged. ‘You’d end up before the Traders’ Council, but, yes, I think you’d win. They’re conservative, the old customs count for much with them. An oath sworn before Sa would have to be legally honoured. You have witnesses to this, at least two?’

Althea leaned back in her chair with a sigh. ‘One, perhaps, who would speak up for the truth of what I say. The other two… I no longer know any more what I could expect of my mother and sister.’

Curtil shook his head. ‘Family disputes such as these are such messy things. I counsel you not to pursue this, Althea. It can only lead to even worse rifts.’

‘I do not believe that it can get any worse,’ she observed grimly, before bidding him farewell.

She was her father’s daughter. She had gone immediately to Curtil in his offices. The old man had not seemed at all surprised to see her. As soon as she was shown into his chambers, he rose and took down several rolled documents. One after another, he set them before her, and made plain to her just how untenable her position was. She had to give her mother credit for thoroughness; the whole thing was lashed down like storm-weather cargo. Legally, she had nothing. Legally, she was dependent entirely on her sister’s goodwill.

Legally. She did not intend that her reality would have anything to do with that kind of legality. She would not live off Keffria’s charity, especially not if it meant she would have to dance to Kyle’s tunes. No. Let them go on thinking her father had died and left her nothing. They’d be wrong. All he had taught her, all her knowledge of the sailing trade and her observations of his trading were still hers. If she could not make her own way on that, then she deserved to starve. Stoutly she told herself that when the first Vestrit came to Bingtown, he probably knew little more than that, and he had made his own way. She should be able to do as much for herself.

No. More than that. She’d get the proof that she was all she said she was, and she’d hold Kyle to his oath. Wintrow, she was sure, would support her. It was his only way out from under his father’s thumb. But would her mother or Keffria? Althea considered. She did not think they would willingly do so. On the other hand, she did not think they would speak before the Traders’ Council and lie. Her resolve firmed itself. One way or another, she’d stand up to Kyle and claim what was rightfully hers.

The docks were busy. Althea picked her way down to where Vivacia was tied, side-stepping men with barrows, freight wagons drawn by sweating horses, chandlers making deliveries of supplies to outbound ships and merchants hastening to inspect their incoming shipments before taking delivery. Once the hustle of the midday business on the docks would have excited her. Now it weighed her spirits. Abruptly she felt excluded from these lives, set apart and invisible. When she walked the docks dressed as befitted a daughter of a Bingtown Trader, no sailor dared to notice her, let alone call out a cheery greeting to her. It was ironic. She had chosen the simple dark dress and laced sandals that morning as a partial apology to her mother for how badly she had behaved the night before. She had little expected that it would become her sole fortune as she set off on her own into the world.

But as she walked down the docks, her confidence peeled away from her. How was she to employ such knowledge to feed herself? How could she approach any ship’s captain or mate, dressed as she was, and convince him that she was an able-bodied sailor? While female sailors were not rare in Bingtown, they were not all that common either. One frequently saw women working the decks of Six Duchies ships when they came to Bingtown. Many of the Three-Ships’ Immigrants had become fisherfolk, and among them, family ships were worked by the whole family. So while female sailors were not unknown in Bingtown, she’d be expected to prove herself just as tough or tougher than the men she’d have to work alongside. But she wouldn’t even be given the chance to try, dressed as she was. As the rising heat of the day made her uncomfortably aware of the weight and breadth of her dark skirts and modest jacket, she longed more and more for simple canvas trousers and a cotton shirt and vest.

Finally she stood beside Vivacia. She glanced up at the figurehead. To anyone else, it would have appeared that the ship was dozing in the sun. Althea did not even need to touch her to know that in actuality, the ship’s senses and thoughts were turned inward, keeping track of her own unloading. That job was proceeding apace, with longshoremen streaming down her gangplanks burdened with the variety of her cargo like ants fleeing a disturbed nest. They paid scant attention to her; Althea was just another gawker on the docks. She ventured closer to Vivacia and set a hand to her sun-warmed planking. ‘Hello,’ she said softly.

‘Althea.’ The ship’s voice was a warm contralto. She opened her eyes and smiled down at Althea. Vivacia extended a hand towards her, but lightened as she was, she floated too high for their hands to reach. Althea had to content herself with the sensations she received through the rough planking her hand rested on. Already her ship had a much greater sense of self. She could speak to Althea, and still keep awareness of cargo as it was shifted in her holds. And, Althea realized with a pang, she focused much of her awareness on Wintrow. The boy was in the chain locker, coiling and stowing lines. The heat of the tiny enclosed room was oppressive, while the thick ship’s smell all around him made him nauseated. The distress he felt had spread through the ship as a tension in the planking and a stiffness to the spars. Here, tied to the dock, that was not so bad, but out in the open sea a ship had to be able to give with the pressures of the water and wind.

‘He’ll be all right,’ Althea told Vivacia comfortingly, despite the jealousy she felt over the ship’s concern. ‘It’s a hard and boring task for a green hand, but he’ll survive it. Try not to think of his discomfort right now.’

‘It’s worse than that,’ the ship confided quietly. ‘He’s all but a prisoner here. He doesn’t want to be aboard, he wants to be a priest. We started out to be such wonderful friends, and now I think they are making him hate me.’

‘No one could hate you,’ Althea assured her, and tried to make her words sound confident. ‘He does want to be somewhere else; there’s no use in my lying to you about that. So what he hates is not being where he wants to be. He couldn’t possibly hate you.’ Steeling herself, as if she plunged her hand into fire, she added, ‘You can be his strength, you know. Let him know how much you value him, and what a comfort it is to you that he is aboard. As you once did for me.’ Try as she might, she could not keep her voice from breaking on the last words.

‘But I am a ship, not your child,’ Vivacia replied to Althea’s unvoiced thought rather than her words. ‘You are not giving up a little child with no knowledge of the world. I know in many ways I am naive still, but I have a wealth of memories and information to draw on. I just need to put them in some sort of order, and see how they relate to who I am now. I know you, Althea. I know you did not abandon me by choice. But you also know me. And you must understand how deeply it hurts me when Wintrow is forced to be aboard me, forced to be my companion and heart’s friend when he wishes he were elsewhere. We are drawn to one another, Wintrow and I. But his anger at the situation makes him resist that bond. And it makes me ashamed that I so often reach toward him.’

The division within the ship’s heart was terrible to feel. Vivacia battled her own need for Wintrow’s companionship, forcing herself to stand still in a cold isolation that was grey as fog. Almost Althea could sense it as a terrible place, rainswept and chill and endlessly grey. It appalled her. As Althea searched for comforting words, a man’s voice rang out loud and commanding over the ordinary dock yells and thuds. ‘You. You there! Get away from the ship! Captain’s orders, you aren’t to come aboard her.’

Althea tipped her head back, shielding her eyes against the sun’s glare. She stared up at Torg as if she had not recognized his voice. ‘This, sir, is a public dock,’ she pointed out calmly.

‘Well, this ain’t a public ship. So shove off!’

As little as two months ago, Althea would have exploded at him. But the time she had spent secluded with Vivacia and the events of the last three days had changed her. It was not that she was a better-tempered person, she decided detachedly. It was that her anger had learned a terrible patience. What good was wasting words on a petty and tyrannical second mate? He was a little yapping dog. She was a tigress. One did not waste snarls on such a creature. You waited until you could snap his spine with a single blow. He had sealed his fate with his mistreatment of Wintrow. His rudeness to Althea would be redeemed at the same time.

And with a wave of giddiness, Althea realized that while her hand rested on the planking, her thoughts were Vivacia’s and Vivacia’s were hers. Belatedly she pulled free of the ship, feeling as if she drew her hand out of cold, wrist-deep molasses. ‘No, Vivacia,’ Althea said quietly. ‘Do not let my anger become your own. And leave vengeance to me, do not soil yourself with it. You are too big, too beautiful; it is unworthy of you.’

‘He is unworthy of my deck, then,’ Vivacia replied in a low, bitter voice. ‘Why must I tolerate vermin like him while you are put ashore? You cannot tell me it is the Vestrit way to treat kinsmen so.’

‘No. No, it is not,’ Althea hastily assured her.

‘I said, move on,’ Torg shouted once more from the deck above her. Althea glanced up at him. He was leaning over the railing, shaking his fist at her. ‘Move along, or I’ll have you moved along!’

‘There’s really nothing he can do,’ Althea assured the ship. But even as she spoke, she heard a muffled cry and then a heavy thud from within Vivacia’s hold. Someone cursed fluently on the deck, followed by cries for Torg. A young sailor’s voice floated up clearly. ‘The hoist tackle’s pulled free of the beam, sir! I’d swear it was set sound enough when we started work.’

Torg’s head disappeared and Althea heard the sound of his feet running across the deck. The unloading of Vivacia’s cargo ground to a halt as half the crew came to gawk at the smashed pallet and crates and the scattered comfer nuts. ‘That should keep him busy for a time,’ Vivacia observed sweetly.

‘I do have to leave, though,’ Althea hastily decided. If she stayed, she would have to ask the ship if she had had anything to do with the fallen block-and-tackle. ‘Take care of yourself,’ she told Vivacia. ‘And look after Wintrow, too.’

‘Althea! Will you be back?’

‘Of course I will. There are just a few things I need to take care of. But I’ll be back to see you again before you sail.’

‘I can’t imagine sailing without you,’ Vivacia said desolately. The figurehead lifted her eyes to the distant horizon, as if she were already far beyond Bingtown. A stray breeze stirred the heavy locks of her hair.

‘It’s going to be hard to stand here on the docks and watch you go off into the distance. At least you’ll have Wintrow aboard.’

‘Who hates being with me.’ The ship abruptly sounded very young again. And very distressed.

‘Vivacia. You know I can’t stay here. But I will be back. Know that I am working on a way to be with you. It will take me some time, but I will be with you again. Until then, behave yourself.’

‘I suppose so,’ Vivacia sighed.

‘Good. I will see you again soon.’

Althea turned and hastened away. Her insincerity had nearly choked her. She wondered if the ship had been fooled at all. She hoped she had, and yet every instinct she had about Vivacia told her that she could not be tricked that easily. She must know how jealous Althea was of Wintrow’s place aboard her, she must be able to sense her deep, deep anger at how things had turned out. And yet Althea hoped she did not, hoped that Vivacia had had nothing to do with the fallen hoist, and prayed to Sa fervently that the ship would not attempt to right things on her own.

As she turned to go, she reflected that the ship was both like and unlike what she had expected. She had dreamed of a ship with all the good qualities of a proud and beautiful woman. She had not paused to think that Vivacia had inherited not just her father’s experience, but that of her grandfather and great-grandmother as well, to say nothing of what Althea herself had added. She feared now that the ship would be just as hammer-headed as any other Vestrit, just as slow to forgive, just as intent on having her own way. If I were aboard, I could guide her, as my father guided me through my stubborn times. Wintrow will not have the vaguest idea of how to deal with her. A tiny black thought pushed itself into her mind. If she kills Kyle, he will have brought it on himself.

A chill of disgust raced through her that she could even harbour such a thought. She stooped hastily, to rap her knuckles against the wood of the dock, to proof her fate against Vivacia ever doing anything so horrible. As she straightened up, she felt eyes on her. She lifted her gaze to find Amber standing, staring at her. The golden woman was dressed in a long simple robe the colour of a ripe acorn, and her hair was bound down her back in a single shining plait. The fabric of the robe fell in pleats from her shoulders to the hem, concealing every line of her body. Her hands were gloved, to conceal the scars and callouses of an artisan’s fingers in the guise of a gentlewoman’s hands. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the busy dock, she stood still, as unaffected by all of it as if she were enclosed in a glass bubble. For a second her tawny eyes locked with Althea’s, and Althea’s mouth went dry. There was something other-worldly about her. All around her, folk came and went on their business, but where she stood there was stillness and focus. She wore a necklace of simple wooden beads, gleaming in every tone of brown that wood could be. Even from where she stood, they caught Althea’s eyes and she felt drawn to them. She doubted that anyone could look at them and not desire to possess them.

Her eyes darted up to Amber’s face. Once more their eyes met. Amber did not smile. She slowly turned her head, first to one side and then to another as if inviting Althea to admire her profile. Instead Althea noticed only her mismatched earrings. She wore several in each ear, but the ones that drew Althea’s attention were the twisted serpent of gleaming wood in her left ear and the shining dragon in her right. Each was as long as a man’s thumb, and so cunningly carved she almost expected them to twitch with life. Althea suddenly realized how long she had been staring. Unwillingly she met Amber’s gaze again. The woman smiled questioningly at her. When Althea kept her own features perfectly still, the woman’s smile faded to a look of disdain. That expression did not change as she set a slender-fingered hand to her flat belly. As if those gloved fingers had touched her own midsection, Althea felt a chill dread spread throughout her. She glanced once more at Amber’s face; it looked set and purposeful now. She stared at Althea like an archer fixing his eye on his target. In all the hurrying, busy folk, they were abruptly alone, eyes locked, impervious to the crowd. With an effort as physical as pulling away from a grasping hand, Althea turned and fled up the docks, back towards Bingtown.

She hurried clumsily through the crowded summer market, bumping into folk, knocking against a table full of scarves when she turned to look back over her shoulder. There was no sign of Amber following her. She moved on more purposefully down the walk. Her pounding heart slowed and she became aware of how she was sweating in the afternoon sun. Her encounters with the ship and Amber had left her dry-mouthed and almost shaky. Silly. Ridiculous. All the woman had done was look at her. Where was the threat in that? She had never before been prone to such flights of fancy. Likely it was the stress of the last two days. And she could not recall when she had last eaten a decent meal. Come to think of it, other than beer, she had had almost nothing since the day before yesterday. That was most likely what was wrong with her.

She found a back table in a small streetfront tea shop, and sat down. She felt limply grateful to be out of the afternoon sun. When the boy came to the table, she ordered wine and smoked fish and melon. After he had bowed and gone, she belatedly wondered if she had enough coin to pay for it. When she had dressed so carefully that morning, she had not given any thought to such things. Her room at home was as immaculately tidy as it always was when she had returned to it after a sea voyage. There had been some coins and notes in the corner of her drawer; these she had scooped and stuffed in her pockets before she tied them on, more out of habit than anything else. Even if there was enough to pay for this simple meal, there was certainly not enough to pay for an inn room somewhere. Unless she wanted to go crawling home with her tail between her legs, she’d better think of what she actually planned to do to get by.

While she was still wrestling with that, the food came. She recklessly called for wax and pressed her signet ring into a blotch on a tally stick. Probably the last time she’d get away with sending the bill to her father’s house. If she’d thought of that, she would have let Keffria buy her a more elegant meal. But the melon was crisp and sweet, the fish moistly smoked and the wine was, well, drinkable. She had had worse before and would no doubt have worse again. She just had to persevere and things would get better with time. Things had to get better.

As she was finishing her wine, it came to her in a sudden rush that her father was still dead, and he was going to be dead for the rest of her life. That part of her life was never going to get better. She had almost become accustomed to her grief; this new sense of deep loss jellied her legs. No matter how long she managed to hang on, Ephron Vestrit wasn’t going to come home and straighten it all out. No one was going to make it all right unless she did it herself. She doubted Keffria’s ability to manage the family fortunes. Keffria and her mother might have handled things well enough, but Kyle was going to be stirring the pot, too. Leaving herself entirely out of the picture, how bad could things get for the Vestrits?

They could lose everything.

Even Vivacia.

It had never quite happened yet in Bingtown, but the Devouchet family had come close. They had sunk themselves so deeply in debt that the Traders’ Council had agreed that their main creditors, Traders Conry and Risch, could take possession of the Devouchet liveship. The eldest son was to have remained aboard the ship as an indentured servant to them until the family debts were paid, but before the settlement had been finalized, that same son had brought the ship into port at Bingtown with a cargo rich enough to satisfy their creditors. The whole town had rejoiced in his triumph, and for a time he had been a sort of hero. Somehow Althea could not see Kyle in that role. No. More likely he would surrender both ship and son to his creditors, and tell Wintrow it was his fault.

With a sigh, she forced her mind back to that which she feared most. What was happening to Vivacia? The ship was but newly quickened; liveship lore claimed that her personality would develop over the next few weeks. All agreed there was really no predicting what temperament a ship might have. A ship might be markedly like its owners, or amazingly different. Althea had glimpsed a ruthlessness in Vivacia that chilled her. In the weeks to come, would that trait become more marked, or would the ship suddenly evince her father’s sense of justice and fair-play?

Althea thought of Kendry, a notoriously wilful ship. He would not tolerate live cargo in his hold and he hated ice. He’d sail south to Jamaillia willingly enough, but sailors declared that working his decks on a trip north to Six Duchies or beyond was like sailing a leaden ship. On the other hand, given a fragrant cargo and a southern destination, the ship would fair sail himself, swift as the wind. So a strong will in a ship was not so terrible a thing.

Unless the ship went mad.

Althea poked at the last bit of fish on her plate. Despite the warmth of the summer day, she felt cold inside. No. Vivacia would never become like Paragon. She could not. She was properly quickened, with ceremony and welcome, after three full lifetimes of sailing had been put into her. All knew that was what ruined Paragon. The greed of the owners had created a mad liveship, and brought death and destruction on their family line.

The Paragon had had but one lifetime when Uto Ludluck assumed command. All said that Uto’s father Palwick had been a fine Trader and a great captain. Of Uto, the kindest thing that could be said was that he was shrewd and cunning. And willing to gamble. Anxious to pay off the liveship in his lifetime, he had sailed the Paragon always overloaded. Few sailors cared to ship aboard him twice, for Uto was a harsh taskmaster, not only with his underlings but with his young son Kerr, the ship’s boy. There were rumours that the unquickened ship was difficult to handle, though most blamed it on too much canvas and too little free board due to Uto’s greed.

The inevitable happened. There came a winter day in the storm season when the Paragon was reported as overdue. Setre Ludluck haunted the docks, asking word of every ship that came in, but no one had seen the Paragon or had word of her husband and son.

Six months later, the Paragon came home. He was found floating in the mouth of the harbour, keel up. At first no one knew who the derelict was; only that from the silver wood it was a liveship. Volunteers in dories towed the ship into the beach and anchored it there until a low tide could ground it and reveal the disastrous news it bore. When the retreating waters ebbed away, there lay the Paragon. His masts had been sheared away from the ferocity of some killer storm, but the hardest truth was on his deck. Lashed so securely to his deck that no storm or wave could loose it were the remains of his final cargo. And tangled in the cargo net were the fish-eaten remains of Uto Ludluck and his son Kerr. The Paragon had brought them home.

But perhaps most horrible of all was that the ship had quickened. The deaths of Uto and Kerr had finished out the count of three lives ended aboard him. As the water slipped away to bare the figurehead, the bearded countenance of the fiercely carved warrior cried out aloud in a boy’s voice, ‘Mother! Mother, I’ve come home!’

Setre Ludluck had shrieked and then fainted. She was borne away home, and refused ever after to visit the sea wall in the harbour where the righted Paragon was eventually docked. The bereft and frightened ship was inconsolable, sobbing and calling for days. At first folk were sympathetic and made efforts to comfort him. Kendry was tied up near him for close to a week, to see if the older ship could not soothe him. Instead Kendry became agitated and difficult and eventually had to be moved. And Paragon wept on. There was something infinitely terrible in that fierce, bearded warrior with the muscled arms and hairy chest, who sobbed like a frightened child and begged for his mother. From sympathy, folk’s hearts turned to fear, and finally a sort of anger. It was then that Paragon earned a new name for himself: Pariah, the outcast. No ship’s crew wanted to tie up alongside him; bad luck, sailors nodded to one another, and left him to himself. The ropes that bound him to the docks grew soft with rot and heavy with barnacles. Paragon himself grew silent, save for unpredictable outbursts of savage cursing and wailing.

When Setre Ludluck died young, ownership of Paragon passed to the family’s creditors. To them he was but a stone about their necks, a ship that could not be sailed, taking up an expensive slip in the harbour. In time, several cousins were grudgingly offered a part ownership in the vessel if they could induce the ship to sail. Two brothers, Cable and Sedge came forward to claim the ship. The competition was fierce, but Cable was the elder by a few minutes. He claimed the prize and vowed he would reclaim the family’s liveship. He spent months talking to Paragon, and eventually seemed to have a sort of bond with him. To others he said the ship was like a frightened child who responded best to coaxing. Those who held the family’s debt on the liveship extended Cable credit, muttering somewhat about sending good money after bad, but unable to resist the hope that they might recoup their losses. Cable hired crew and workmen, paying outrageous wages simply to get sailors to approach the inauspicious ship. It took the better part of a year for him to have Paragon refitted and to hire a full crew to sail him. He was roundly congratulated on having salvaged the ship, for in the days before he sailed, Paragon became known as a bashful but courteous ship, given to few words but occasionally smiling so as to melt anyone’s heart. On a bright spring day, they left Bingtown. Cable and his crew were never heard from again.

When next Paragon was sighted, he was a wreck of shattered and dangling rigging and tattered canvas. Reports of him reached Bingtown months before he did. He rode low in the water, his decks nearly awash, and no human replied to the hails of other passing ships. Only the figurehead, black-eyed and stone-faced, stared back at those who ventured close enough to see for themselves that no one worked his decks. Back to Bingtown he came, back to the sea wall where he had been tied for so many years. The first and only words he was reputed to have spoken were, ‘Tell my mother I’ve come home.’ Whether that was truth or the stuff of legend, Althea could only guess. When Sedge had been bold enough to tie up the ship and go aboard, he found no trace of his brother or of any sailor, living or dead. The last entry in the log spoke of fine weather, and the prospect of a good profit on their cargo. Nothing indicated a reason why the crew would have abandoned the ship. In his hold had been a waterlogged cargo of silks and brandy. The creditors had claimed what was salvageable, and left the ship of ill omen to Sedge. All the town had thought the man was mad when he claimed Paragon, and took notes on his house and lands to refit him.

Sedge had made seventeen successful voyages with Paragon. To those who asked how he had managed it, he replied that he ignored the figurehead, and sailed the ship as if it were no more than wood. For those years, Paragon’s figurehead was indeed a mute thing, glaring balefully on any who glanced his way. His powerful arms were crossed on his muscled chest, his jaws clamped as tightly shut as they had been when he was wood. Whatever secret the ship knew about the fates of Cable and his crew, he kept them to himself. Althea’s father had told her that Paragon had been almost accepted in the harbour; that some said that Sedge had broken the string of ill luck that had haunted the ship. Sedge himself bragged of his mastery of the liveship, and fearlessly took his eldest son off to sea with him. Sedge redeemed the note on his house and lands and made a comfortable living for his wife and children. Some of the ship’s former creditors began to mumble that they had acted too hastily in signing the ill-omened ship back to him.

But Paragon never returned from Sedge’s eighteenth voyage. It was a bad year for storms, and some said that Sedge’s fate was no different from what many a mariner suffered that year. Heavily-iced rigging can overturn any ship, live or no. Sedge’s widow walked the docks and watched the horizon with empty eyes. But it was a full twenty years, and she had remarried and borne more children before Paragon returned.

Once more he came floating hull up, defying wind and tide and current to drift slowly home. This time when the silvery wood of his keel was sighted, folk knew almost at once who he was. There were no volunteers to tow him in, no one was interested in righting him or finding out what had become of his crew. Even to speak of him was deemed ill luck. But when his mast stuck fast in the greasy mud of the harbour and his hulk became a hazard to every ship that came and went, the harbourmaster ordered his men out. With curses and sweat they dragged him free, and on the highest tide of that month, they winched him as far ashore as they could. The retreating tides left him completely aground. All could see then that it was not just the crew of Paragon that had suffered a harsh fate. For the figurehead itself was mutilated, hacked savagely with hatchet bites between brow and nose. Of the ship’s dark and brooding glance, nothing remained but splintered wood. A peculiar star with seven points, livid as a burn scar, marred his chest. It was all the more terrible that his mouth scowled and cursed as savagely as ever, and that the groping hands reached out, promising to rend whoever came in reach of them. Those bold enough to venture aboard told of a ship stripped to its bare bones. Nothing remained of the men who had sailed him, not a shoe, not a knife, nothing. Even his log books were gone, and deprived of all his memories, the liveship muttered and laughed and cursed to himself, all sense run out of his words like sand out of a shattered hourglass.

So Paragon had remained for all of Althea’s lifetime. The Pariah or Goner, as he was sometimes referred to, was occasionally almost floated by an exceptionally high tide, but the harbourmaster had ordered him well anchored to the beach cliffs. He would not allow the hulk to break free and wash out to sea where he might become a hazard to other ships. Nominally, Pariah was the property of Amis Ludluck now, but Althea doubted she had ever visited the beached wreckage of the liveship. Like any other mad relative, he was kept in obscurity, spoken of in whispers if spoken of at all. Althea imagined such a fate befalling Vivacia and shuddered.

‘More wine?’ the serving boy asked pointedly. Althea shook her head hastily, realizing she had lingered far too long at this table. Sitting here and mulling over other people’s tragedies was not going to make her own life any better. She needed to act. The first thing she should do was tell her mother just how troubled the liveship seemed to be and somehow convince her that Althea must be allowed back on board to sail with her. The second thing she would do, she decided, was to cut her own throat before she did anything that might appear as childish whining.

She left the tea shop and wandered the busy market streets. The more she tried to focus her mind on her problems, the more she could not decide which problem to confront first. She needed a place to sleep, food, a prospect of employment for herself. Her beloved ship was in insensitive hands, and she could do nothing to change it. She tried to think of allies she could depend on to help her and could come up with no one. She cursed herself now for not cultivating the company of other Traders’ sons and daughters. She had no beau she could turn to, no best friend who would shelter her for a few days. On board the Vivacia she had had her father for companionship and serious talk, and the sailors for company and joking. Her days in Bingtown had either been spent at home, revelling in the luxury of a real bed and hot meals of fresh food, or following her father about on business errands. She knew Curtil his advisor, and several money-changers, and a number of merchants who had bought cargo from them over the years. Not one of them was someone she could turn to in her present difficulties.

Nor could she go home without appearing to crawl. And there was no predicting what Kyle would attempt to do if she appeared on the doorstep, even to claim her things. She wouldn’t put it past him to try and lock her up in her room like a naughty child. Yet she had a responsibility to Vivacia that didn’t stop even if they had declared the ship no longer belonged to her.

She finally salved her conscience by stopping a message runner. For a penny, she got a sheet of coarse paper and a charcoal pencil and the promise of delivery before sundown. She penned a hasty note to her mother, but could find little more to say except that she was concerned for the ship, that Vivacia seemed unhappy and restless. She asked for nothing for herself, only that her mother would visit Vivacia herself and encourage the ship to speak plainly to her and reveal the source of her unhappiness. Knowing it would be seen as overly dramatic, she nevertheless reminded her mother of Paragon’s sad fate, saying she hoped her family’s ship would never share it. Then Althea re-read her missive, frowning at how histrionic it seemed. She told herself it was the best she could do, and that her mother was the kind of person who would at least go down and see for herself. She sealed it with a dab of wax and an uneven press from her ring, and sent the lass on her way with it.

That much done, she lifted her head and looked around her. She had wandered into Rain Wild Street. It had always been a favourite section of town for her father and her. After they had conducted their business, they almost always found an excuse to stroll down it arm in arm, delighting in calling each other’s attention to new and exotic wares. The last time they had walked here together, they had spent almost an afternoon in a crystal shop. The merchant featured a new kind of wind chimes. The slightest breath stirred them to music, and they played, not randomly, but an elusive and endless tune, too delicate for mortal tongue to hum and lingering oddly in the mind afterward. He had bought her a little cloth bag full of candied violets and rose petals, and a set of earrings shaped like sailfish. She had helped him pick out some perfume gems for her mother’s birthday, and had gone with him to the silversmith to have them set in rings. It had been an extravagant day, of wandering in and out of the odd little shops that showcased the wares of the Rain River folk.

It was said that magic flowed with the waters of the Rain River. And certainly the wares that the Rain River families sent into town were marvellously tinged with it. Whatever dark rumours one might hear of those settlers who had chosen to remain in the first settlement on the Rain River, their trade goods reflected only wonder. From the Verga family came trade goods with the scent of antiquity on them: finely woven tapestries depicting folk not quite human, with eyes of lavender or topaz; bits of jewellery made of a metal whose source was unknown, in wondrously strange designs; lovely pottery vases, both aromatic and graceful. The Soffrons marketed pearls in deep shades of orange and amethyst and blue, and vessels of cold glass that never warmed and could be used to chill wine or fruit or sweet cream. From others came kwazi fruit, whose rind yielded an oil that could numb even a serious wound and whose pulp was an intoxicant with an effect that lingered for days. The toy shops always lured Althea the strongest: there one could find dolls whose liquid eyes and soft warm skin mimicked that of a real infant, and clockwork toys so finely geared they would run for hours, pillows stuffed with herbs that assured wonderful dreams, and marvellously carved smooth stone that glowed with a cool inner light to keep nightmares at bay. The prices on such things were dear, even in Bingtown, and extravagantly high once the goods had been shipped to other ports. Even so, price was not the reason why Ephron Vestrit refused to buy such toys, even for the outrageously spoiled grand-daughter Malta. When Althea had pressed him about it, he had only shaken his head. ‘You cannot touch magic and not carry away some of its taint upon you,’ he had told her darkly. ‘Our forebears judged the price too high, and left the Rain Wilds to settle Bingtown. And we ourselves do not traffic in Rain Wild goods.’ When she had pressed him as to what he meant, he had shaken his head and told her that they would discuss it when she was older. But even his misgivings had not stopped him from buying the perfume gems that his wife had so longed for.

When she was older.

Well, no matter how much older she got, that was a discussion they would never have. The bitterness of this broke her out of her pleasant memories and into the dwindling afternoon. She left the Rain Wild Street, but not without an apprehensive glance at Amber’s shop on the corner. She almost expected to spy the woman staring out of the window at her. Instead the window showed only her wares draped artfully on a spread of cloth-of-gold. The door to the shop stood invitingly open, and folk were coming and going. So her business prospered. Althea wondered which of the Rain River families she was allied with, and how she had managed it. Unlike most of the other stores, her street sign did not bear a Trader family insignia.

In a quiet alley, Althea untied her pockets and considered their contents. It was as she had expected. She could have a room and a meal tonight, or she could eat frugally for several days on what it held. She thought again of simply going home, but could not bring herself to do it. At least, not while Kyle might be there. Later, after he had sailed, if she had not found work and a place to stay by then, then she might be driven to go home and retrieve at least her clothes and personal jewellery. That much she surely could claim, without loss of pride. But not while Kyle was there. Absolutely not. She dumped the coins and notes into her purse and cinched it tight, wishing she could call back the money she had spent so carelessly on drink the night before. She couldn’t, so best to be careful with what remained. She hung the pockets back inside her skirts.

She left her alley and found herself walking purposefully down the street. She needed a place to stay for the night and there was but one that came to mind. She tried not to think of the many times her father had sternly warned her about his company before he finally outright forbade her to visit him. It had been months since she had last spoken to him, but when she was a child, before she began sailing with her father, she had spent many summer afternoons in his company. Although the other children from town had found him both alarming and disgusting, Althea had soon lost her fear of him. She had felt sorry for him, truth to be told. He was frightening, true, but the most frightening part about him was what others had done to him. Once she had grasped that, a tentative friendship had followed.

As the afternoon sun dimmed into a long summer’s evening, Althea left Bingtown proper behind her and began to pick her way down the rock-strewn beach to where Paragon reposed on the sand.