by Robin Hobb
‘Not them. Under the circumstances, I think they have been very tolerant of us. It is Paragon who has taken us prisoner.’ I lowered my voice, painfully conscious that I could not tell what the liveship was or was not aware of within his wooden body. ‘He cares nothing now for Althea and Brashen’s contracts and deliveries. Nothing for our comfort and safety. He does not care that we are ill supplied for this voyage, having failed to take on supplies in Bingtown. Short rations mean nothing to him. On he goes, through night and storm. When Althea ordered the sails reefed, he rocked so violently that she called her crew back from going aloft.’
‘He has caught the current,’ the Fool said. ‘Even without sails, we would be carried through the Pirate Islands and past Jamaillia and on to the Spice Islands beyond them. He knows that, and the crew knows that.’
‘And the crew blames us for our situation.’ I sat up slowly in the cramped top bunk, careful of my head on the low ceiling of the cabin. ‘Coming down,’ I warned the Fool, and left the upper bunk. My body ached from inactivity. ‘I don’t like it when Lant and the youngsters are gone for so long. I’m going out to check on them.’
‘Be careful,’ he said, as if I needed a warning.
‘When am I not a cautious fellow?’ I asked him and he lifted his brows at me.
‘Wait. I’ve decided to go with you,’ he said and reached for Amber’s skirts that were wilted on the floor. The fabric rustled as he drew them up around his hips.
‘Must you?’
He frowned at me. ‘I know Althea and Brashen far better than you do. If there is trouble of any kind, I think I am the better judge of what to do.’
‘I mean the skirts. Must you continue to be Amber?’
His face grew still. He spoke more quietly, the skirts drooping in his hands. ‘I think that adding any other difficult truths to what the crew and the captains must absorb right now would only make our lives more difficult. They knew me as Amber, so Amber I must remain.’
‘I don’t like her,’ I said abruptly.
He gave a caw of laughter. ‘Really?’
I spoke honestly. ‘Really. I don’t like who you are when you are Amber. She’s, she’s not a person I would choose as a friend. She’s … conniving. Tricky.’
A half-smile curved his mouth. ‘And as the Fool, I was never tricky?’
‘Not this way,’ I said, but wondered if I lied. He had publicly mocked me when he thought it was politically advantageous. Manoeuvred me into what he needed me to do. Still I did not modify my stare.
He cocked his head at me. ‘I thought we were past all this,’ he said softly.
I said nothing. He bowed his head as if he could see his hands as he fastened the waistband of his skirts. ‘It is my best judgment that they continue to know me as Amber. And if you are leaving the cabin to look for the others, I think it best I go with you.’
‘As you wish,’ I said stiffly. Then, childishly, I added, ‘But I am not waiting for you.’ I left the small space, shutting the door not loudly but firmly behind me. Anger was a hot boil inside my throat and chest. I stood for a time in the passage, telling myself that it was simply close quarters for too long, and not true anger I was feeling for my friend. I took a deep breath and went back out onto the deck.
A fresh wind was blowing and the sun was shining, scattering silver on the water. I stood for a while, letting my eyes adjust and enjoying the wind on my face. After the crowded cabin, it felt as if I had the whole world around me. The dancing water that surrounded us was dotted with green islands in the distance. They rose abruptly from the water like mushrooms sprouting up from the forest floor. I drew a deep breath, ignored the sullen stare of Cord who had paused in her work to watch me, and went to find my straying wards.
I found Spark and Per leaning on the railing beside Lant. Spark’s hand was all but touching Lant’s on the railing. I sighed to myself. All three were looking morosely out over the water. As I took a spot behind them, Lant glanced back at me. ‘All well?’ I asked him.
He raised a brow. ‘I’m hungry. None of the crew will speak to me. I don’t sleep well at night. And how are you?’
‘Much the same,’ I said. The captains had reduced the rations for everyone.
On the day Paragon had by-passed the channel that would have taken us to Trader Bay and Bingtown, the captains and crew had confronted him. ‘I won’t be tied to a dock,’ Paragon had declared. ‘I won’t allow you to trick me into having lines roped to me so you can drag me aground on a beach.’
‘It’s not about trying to thwart you,’ Brashen had said. ‘It’s purely about taking on some water and food. Delivering the cargo we were to leave there. And sending some messages back to Bingtown and Trehaug and Kelsingra. Paragon, we have simply disappeared to those people! They will think the worst has befallen us.’
‘Oh, the worst?’ His voice had grown sly. ‘So they will think the mad ship has rolled and drowned another crew.’ There had been acid in his voice and his dragon eyes had whirled swiftly. ‘Isn’t that what you mean?’
Anger had spasmed over Brashen’s face. ‘Maybe. Or maybe our Bingtown merchants and our Rain Wild clients will think we’ve become thieves, taking their goods and running off to sell them elsewhere. Maybe we’ll lose the only things left to Althea and me, our good names.’
‘The only thing?’ the ship demanded. ‘Did you spend every penny of Igrot’s treasure, then? That was a fair windfall for you, when I took you to that!’
‘There’s enough left perhaps to commission an impervious ship to replace you. One of wood that would let us lead a simple life. If anyone consented to trade with us again after you’ve made us liars and cheats!’
‘Replace me? Ha! Impossible! I am the only reason you have ever prospered, you spend-thrift spoiled son of—’
‘Stop this.’ Althea had intervened, stepping closer to the figurehead, apparently without fear. ‘Paragon, be reasonable. You know we need fresh water to drink. You know we need food. We didn’t supply for a long voyage. We had enough on board to get us to Bingtown, and a bit extra. That was all. And we’re days past that. If you make us just keep going, we’re going to die of thirst. Or starve. You’ll get to wherever you’re going with a deck full of bodies—including Amber’s. Then how will you get your Silver and become dragons?’
There was no rationality in those spinning blue eyes. He turned his gaze out over the water. ‘There’s plenty of fish you can eat.’
So we’d sailed on, and Althea and Brashen had cut the rations. And yes, there were fish in these waters, and moisture in the cooked flesh. The crew had pulled enough aboard each day to eke out the hard tack and salt-meat that was left to us. We’d had two spring storms, and Althea had ordered out clean canvas and channelled rainwater into barrels to replenish our meagre stores. And still we sailed on, through the region known as the Cursed Shores with its shifting sandbars and toxic waters, and on until we began to see the scattered islets and then the islands of the Pirate Isles.
Motley swooped down and startled me by landing on my shoulder. ‘Well, where have you been?’ I greeted the crow.
‘Ship.’ She spoke the word urgently. ‘Ship, ship, ship.’
‘We’re on a ship,’ I conceded to her.
‘Ship! Ship, ship, ship!’
‘Another ship?’ Per asked her, and she bobbed her head wildly up and down and agreed, ‘Ship, ship.’
‘Where?’ I pushed the word at her with Wit as well as voice. As always, I felt as if I shouted down a well.
‘Ship!’ she insisted, and launched from my shoulder. The wind caught her and flung her skyward. I lifted my eyes to follow her flight. Up she went and up, far higher than the ship’s mast. There she hung, rocking in the wind. ‘SHIP!’ she called, and her word reached us faintly.
Ant had been halfway up the mast. At the crow’s call, she looked around, scanning the full horizon before climbing even higher. When she reached the crow’s nest at the top of the mast, she scanned the horizon, then, poi
nting, ‘SAIL!’ she called.
In an instant, Brashen had joined Althea on the deck. They both looked up, followed Ant’s finger. Brashen’s face was grave.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked Amber softly.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ she replied. ‘But at one time, passage through the Pirate Isles might cost your life. Or your freedom, or your cargo. When Kennit was raiding these passages, he built an empire, going from pirate captain to king. He didn’t ransom the ships he captured. Instead, he appointed one of his loyal men to be captain and sent him out to raid, taking a share of whatever loot he captured. He crewed his new ships with escaped slaves, or sometimes with the very men they had defeated. From a single ship, he went to two, then half a dozen and then a fleet. He became a leader, and then a king.’ She paused. ‘A fairly good king, as it turned out.’
‘Yet an evil bastard of a man.’ Althea had approached quietly as Amber was speaking.
Amber turned, showing no evidence of surprise. ‘That, too, is true. According to some.’
‘According to me,’ Althea said brusquely. ‘But now the Pirate Isles are themselves plagued with pirates. And if it is not a pirate ship that overtakes you, it may be one of the tariff ships, come to collect a “passage tax”. Like pirates, but with far more paperwork.’ She turned to Per. ‘That crow of yours. He talks. Is there any chance he could tell us what ship he has sighted?’
Per shook his head, surprised to be singled out. ‘She says words, but I’m not sure she always knows what she’s saying. Or that she could tell one sort of ship from another.’
‘I see.’ Althea fell thoughtfully silent.
‘Are you worried what will happen if that is Vivacia or another liveship?’ Amber dropped the question as if she were plopping small stones into a quiet pond.
Althea’s response was so calm I wondered if she had forgiven Amber. ‘The thought occurred to me. Yes, it’s a worry. We can’t know yet how the Silver will affect him, or if he can ever transform completely into a dragon. I’d sooner not create misery for every liveship and liveship family until we know how Paragon’s experiment will end.’
I felt Brashen coming to join us before he stepped into my peripheral vision. He had the presence of a predator and my Wit-sense of him was edged with scarlet anger. I managed to keep my hands lax and my shoulders lowered but it was not easy.
Althea’s mouth moved, as if she considered words and rejected them. ‘Right now, Amber, you have a better connection with Paragon than either Brashen or me. And I have to ask you to use whatever influence you have with him.’
‘What do you wish of me?’
‘If that sail is a liveship, we judge it best to stay clear. However, if it is an ordinary wooden ship, we’d like to come alongside and see if we can buy provisions from them. Anything would be welcome, but chiefly we need water.’ She shifted her gaze to me. ‘In the Rain Wilds we take on rainwater from wooden cisterns high in the trees. It’s expensive, and we try to take only what we need. The water from the river and its tributaries are usually unsafe to drink.’ She sighed. ‘To ration food is harsh enough. But soon we will have to cut the water allowance again, unless Paragon allows us to put in at one of the Pirate Islands and take on water. Or we encounter a ship that has enough fresh water to wish to sell some.’
I watched her shoulders rise and fall with her deep sigh. Then she rolled them back, squaring them, and I felt my admiration for her rise. She possessed the sort of grinding courage I had seldom seen in man or woman. Facing the end of all she had known as her life—the end of all she had expected her life to be—she would nonetheless think not only of her crew but of those who crewed the other Bingtown liveships. And of the ship she still loved, even as he prepared to abandon her.
Verity. Carving his dragon. That was who she reminded me of.
Amber spoke my question aloud. ‘So. You have forgiven me?’
Althea gave her head a short shake. ‘Not any more than I’ve forgiven Kennit for raping me. Or Kyle for taking Vivacia from my care. For some things, there is no forgiving or unforgiving. They are simply a crossroads, and a direction taken, whether I would or no. Someone else set my feet on that path. All I can control is every step I take after that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Amber said softly.
‘You’re sorry?’ Brashen asked incredulously. ‘Now you say you’re sorry?’
Amber lifted one shoulder. ‘I know I don’t deserve forgiveness for what I’ve done. I don’t want to seem as if I expect it, based on old friendship. Yet I say it now to let you know it’s the truth. I’m sorry that it was what I had to do. Althea is right. Events set my feet on a path. All I can do is take the next step.’
‘She’s flying Pirate Island colours!’ Ant called down to us. ‘And she’s tacking to cut our path. Moving fast, too.’
‘Most likely a tariff ship,’ Brashen suggested. He scowled toward the horizon. ‘If it is, it will be sure to intercept us, to demand to inspect our cargo, and charge us for passage through these waters.’
‘And as we are carrying Elderling artefacts from Trehaug and Kelsingra—items that were originally destined for Bingtown—the value they will assign and hence the tariffs on that value will be far beyond our ability to pay. We will be detained in the Pirate Isles and given a choice between sending for the funds or surrendering part of our cargo to pay the tariff—cargo that is not ours to use to pay our debts. Cargo we were contracted to transport to Bingtown.’ Althea spoke as if the words were made of thorns.
Brashen laughed without humour. ‘And if we refuse to be boarded by the Pirate Isle tariff agents, or if we refuse to follow them to port until the tariff is paid, then they will endeavour to force their way onto Paragon and take control of him. And we have no idea how he will react to that.’
‘Actually, I fear that I have a very clear idea of how he will react,’ Althea said. ‘I think he will do his best to sink the other ship, with little mercy for the crew.’ She shook her head bitterly before turning back to Amber. ‘And so I am going to ask you to use every bit of influence you have to persuade him to be reasonable. To let them come alongside and talk with us. There will be trouble over the tariffs, but at least putting into port will give us the chance to take on food and water. Or to release our crew.’
‘Release the crew?’ There was alarm in Amber’s voice.
Althea was resolute. ‘As many as will go. Whatever is to become of Paragon, and of us, I see no point in taking them all with us. The sooner they are off Paragon’s decks, the sooner they can find other employment. Other lives.’
‘How can Paragon get to Clerres with no crew?’ Amber demanded.
‘Skeleton crew.’ She looked Amber up and down. ‘You’ll have to lose those skirts and remember how to work the deck again.’ She tipped her head toward me. ‘Him, too. And Lant and the youngsters.’
I opened my mouth to respond but Amber spoke quickly. ‘I’m blind. But what I can do, I will. We all will. And I will do all I can to encourage Paragon to be reasonable. I’ve no wish for this to be any worse than it must be.’
‘Any worse,’ Brashen said softly, a terrible wondering in his voice. ‘How could it be any worse?’
As if in answer to his question, a wave of something swept past me that spun me like a weathervane. It seemed as palpable as the wind, but it was not air that slid past me, but Skill and Wit, twined together and moving through the wizardwood of the ship in a way I knew but did not understand. I knew it, for I had done it—done it without thinking or understanding it in the days when I had first begun to try to master my magics. I had done it because I had not known how to separate them. I had been told my Skill was tainted with the Wit, and I had known that my Wit had undertones of Skill to it. I had struggled to separate the two, to use the Skill properly. And I had succeeded. Almost.
But now I felt it rippling and surging through the ship, and it felt, not wrong, but pure. As if two halves of something had been restored to a whole. It was powerful, and for
a time I could focus on nothing but the wonder I felt at it.
‘Oh, no!’ Althea said in a low voice, and that was when I knew the others were aware of it too. All of them stood still, faces frozen, as if they were listening to the distant howling of hungry wolves. Everyone save Perseverance, who looked from face to face and then demanded, ‘What is it?’
‘Something’s changing,’ Spark whispered. Transfixed as I was by the flow of magic, I still noted in a small corner of my mind how her hand crept out to grasp Lant’s forearm, and how he set his hand over hers to reassure her. Something was changing indeed, and it wasn’t just the ship. I felt Amber catch hold of my sleeve.
Althea and Brashen moved as if one will controlled them, striding toward the foredeck. Overhead, Motley still circled, cawing ‘Ship, Ship!’ We followed, and Clef came dashing past us. As abruptly as the surging magic had begun, it passed. Althea and Brashen had gained the foredeck.
Paragon twisted slowly to look back at them. ‘What?’ he asked mildly, raising a questioning brow.
I had a single instant of disconnection before the obvious stunned me. He looked back at us with my face, save for his pale blue eyes. ‘That’s exactly how Prince FitzChivalry looks when he’s puzzled,’ Per observed, answering a question I hadn’t even formed in my mind. Slowly, Paragon turned away from us. He lifted his arm, offering the back of his wrist to the sky. Motley swooped in to land there, completing my utter confusion.
‘Ship!’ she told him.
‘I see it. It’s a tariff ship. We’d best heave to, and then let them know we’ll be following them to Divvytown to pay our taxes.’ He glanced back to give his captains a boyish grin. ‘Vivacia is out of Divvytown, isn’t she? I have a feeling she’ll be there. It will be so good to see Boy-O again, won’t it? And Queen Etta has her court there. Perhaps, at last, Paragon Kennitsson will see fit to walk my decks. Let’s put on some more sail and pick up some speed.’
‘Paragon, what are you playing at?’ Brashen demanded in a low voice.