by Robin Hobb
‘No, but you have been sleeping a lot. You should get up and eat some food and move about.’
When he mentioned food, my body asserted that it was hungry, and very thirsty. He led me through the jungle of hammocks to a long table with benches alongside it. There were a few people sitting at it, finishing food. And a plate with a bowl covering it. ‘To keep it warm,’ Per told me.
It was a thick stew that smelled strange, yet was also good. Cinnamon and a creamy but sour smell. Onions and potato pieces. The meat was mutton, Per claimed, but it was not tough and stringy. Per pushed a large bowl of boiled brown seeds toward me. ‘It’s rice. They tell me it grows in a swamp and they harvest it in boats. Try it with the stew. It’s good.’
I ate until my belly felt tight and Per had scraped the bottom of the big black kettle clean. ‘Want to come out on the deck now?’ he invited, but I shook my head.
‘I want to sleep,’ I told him.
He frowned at that, but walked back to the hammock with me and helped me into it. ‘Are you sick, to sleep this much?’ he asked me.
I shook my head. ‘It’s easier than being awake,’ I told him, and closed my eyes.
I awoke again but didn’t open my eyes to hear them whispering about me. ‘But she sleeps so much. It’s all she does!’ Per, worried.
‘Let her sleep. It means she feels safe. She’s getting the rest she didn’t get the whole time they had her. And sorting things out. When I came back … when Fitz took me back to Buckkeep Castle, for many days after I spent most of my time in sleep. It’s the great healer.’
Nonetheless, a few hours later when I opened my eyes, Per was beside my hammock. ‘Are you awake enough to talk now? I want to know everything that has happened to you since last we were together. And I have much to tell you.’
‘I have not so much to tell you. They stole me, and they dragged me to Clerres. They treated me badly.’ I stopped speaking. I didn’t want to recount it for Perseverance or anyone else.
He nodded. ‘Not yet, then. But I shall tell you of all I have done and seen since you covered me with the butterfly cloak and left me in the snow.’
I climbed out of the hammock and we went out on the deck. It was a fine blue day. He took me to a place near the figurehead, but not in anyone’s way. He told me his story, and it sounded to me like a tale of heroes on a quest. I wondered if Hap would ever make a song of it. I cried several times, to hear of all my father and Per had done to seek me. But they were good tears as well as sad ones. In all the days when I had wondered why my father had not come to save me, I had wondered if he had ever loved me at all. I went back to my hammock and my sleep knowing that he had.
It was the ship that woke me the next time. She drilled through my walls. Please help us. Come to me, at the foredeck. You are needed.
I thought I would wake the others when I dropped and fell from the hammock to the deck. It was always dark belowdecks, but from the number of occupied hammocks around me, I guessed it was night. There was a single dim lantern, swinging with the motion of the ship. I didn’t like to look at it. I made my way through hammocks full of sleeping sailors like ripe fruit hanging on a tree, through shifting shadows to a ladder. I went up onto Vivacia’s deck.
The wind was blowing fresh and I was suddenly glad to be awake. I looked up. The canvas was belled out like a rich merchant’s belly, and beyond it were realms of stars in a clear sky. The deck of a sailing ship is never deserted when underway, but tonight’s wind was steady and kind, so not many sailors were scurrying about. No one noticed me as I moved forward. There was a short set of steps and then I was on the crowded foredeck. All sorts of lines terminated there; they were taut and humming a wind song. Past them was a smaller deck, a feature I’d never seen, that poked out toward the figurehead. On that deck, a man was stretched out. As I stepped toward him cautiously, two other people stirred. I recognized one of them. Boy-O’s father, Captain Brashen Trell. Captain of nothing now, I guessed, and his son burned and still. I’d almost forgotten that we’d regained Boy-O’s mother. Her face and arms were pebbled; I stared and then recognized that they were the healing blisters from where the sun had burned her. She looked at my scarred face and her brows drew together in pity. I looked away.
Her name is Althea Vestrit. If the past had been a bit different she would be my captain now. Regardless of that, she is still of my liveship family. As is her son. And Trell served on my decks for many years, and I value him as well.
‘What do you want of me?’ I spoke the words aloud and in my mind.
The ship didn’t answer. ‘She’s here!’ Brashen Trell was wearily surprised. ‘Althea, this is the child I told you about. The one they came to rescue. She touched Boy-O in Clerres, and where she touched him, his burns healed.’
‘Hello Bee,’ she said. Softly and sadly she added, ‘I am sorry that you lost your father.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied. Was it correct to thank someone for feeling bad about a death? I knew why the ship had summoned me now. Boy-O smelled bad. When I knelt beside him, I felt how the ship cradled him. It was not that there was a hollow in her deck where she held him. But where he touched her wizardwood, she reminded him how to be alive, and gave him gentle memories of his time on her deck. Memories that were not just his, but his mother’s and his grandfather’s and his great-grandmother’s. All had sailed on this ship. Vivacia held all the memories of those who had died on her deck.
‘That’s why the dragons ate Kennitsson,’ I said to myself.
Yes.
‘Paragon’s dragons ate Kennitsson?’ Althea asked in disbelief.
‘They meant well by it. They wanted to keep him with them. They shared the body.’
‘Oh.’ She touched Boy-O. ‘Did you need something?’ She wanted me to leave.
‘The ship asked me to come here. She wants me to help.’
‘What can—’ Althea began.
‘Ssh,’ Brashen warned her, for I had already put my hands on Boy-O’s good arm. I wanted to fix him. He was a wrong place on this perfect ship. I should make him right. ‘He’s thirsty,’ I told his parents.
‘He hasn’t moved or spoken today.’
‘He’s thirsty,’ I insisted. He needed water if I was going to make anything happen.
His mother seemed afraid to touch him as she lifted his head. She trickled water into his dry mouth. He choked a little, swallowed. That was my first way to help him. ‘More water,’ I told her. She held the cup to his lips while I reminded him how to drink. He drank that cup, and three more. Now I could move within him more easily. ‘That salty soup that you make sometimes. It’s yellow. That would be good.’
Even without opening my eyes, I knew they stared at me. The woman got up and hurried away. She was frightened and she was eager to do anything that might help her son. She would make the soup.
I rocked gently as my hands talked to his body. I found a little tune, one I’d never known before, and began to hum it as I worked. Two voices began to sing words to the song. The ship and the father sang softly together, and it was a little song about knots and sails, a teaching song like my father’s rhyme about the points one looked for in a good horse. I wondered, as I pushed dead skin and flesh away and fastened good skin, if every family and every trade had those little songs. I found a place where something that didn’t belong in his body was trying to grow. I killed it and pushed it away. It slid away like slime, stinky and nasty.
His body was working on itself in so many places. I knew them all. He had breathed in hot smoke, and it had hurt his throat and the breathing parts inside him. His arm was burned, and his chest and the side of his face. What was the worst hurt? I asked his body, and it was his arm. I went to work there.
His mother came back with the soup in a pot. ‘Oh, sweet Sa!’ she exclaimed. She was less fearful as she cradled his head and held the cup to his lips. It smelled wonderful and I remembered how good it would taste, salty and a bit sour. He drank it down, and where I had worked on his
throat, he could swallow now.
‘What goes on here?’
‘Amber! She’s helping Boy-O.’
‘She has to stop! She’s only a child. How can you ask this of her?’
‘We didn’t ask her! We were keeping a death-watch with him. Then she came and put her hands on him. He’s going to live. Boy-O is going to live!’
‘But will she?’ He was angry. Beloved was angry—no, frightened. He spoke to me now. ‘Bee. Stop. You can’t do this.’
I drew a deep breath. ‘Yes I can,’ I told him as I breathed out.
‘No. You are giving him too much of your own strength. Lift your hands from him.’
I smiled as I remembered words I had given my father. ‘No one can say no to me now. Not even you.’
‘Bee. Now!’
I smiled. ‘No.’
‘Lift your hands, Bee, or I will pull you back from him!’
Did he know that that would hurt both of us? ‘A moment more,’ I told him, and heard the frustrated noise he made. I told Boy-O’s body to fare well, told it to keep working, gently, gently, gently, I had to go now, but it should keep working, yes, we would give it more soup. It was like calming an animal, and I suddenly knew that Boy-O’s mind lived inside his animal body, and that was who I spoke to.
I opened my eyes. Beloved reached toward me. I lifted my hands before he could touch me. I folded my arms on my chest and sat back. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been crouching over Boy-O. My back complained when I moved. I wiped my hands down my shirt. They were wet and sticky.
And then I knew something. ‘Ship, you tricked me! You made me want to do this.’
The carved woman turned slightly toward me. ‘It was necessary.’
‘She’s a child!’ Beloved objected. ‘You used her ruthlessly.’
‘I didn’t realize,’ Brashen said, and he sounded both guilty and unrepentant.
‘It didn’t hurt me,’ I objected, but when I tried to stand up, I could not.
The mother offered me a cup of the soup from the pot and I drank it in long sips. There were warm spices in it and some of them stung my tongue. Beloved watched me drink. Boy-O was breathing, and it was a good sound. I set the cup down on the deck and said, ‘The ship made me love her. I think it was like that thing dragons can do …’ I was suddenly very tired again. ‘When they make themselves so important to someone. I read about that. Somewhere.’
‘Humans call it a glamour,’ the ship said quietly. ‘Your name is Bee? I give you thanks. At the end of this voyage, we will all go our separate ways. It grieved me that Althea and Brashen might have to go without their son. But he will live, and go with them, and be a comfort to them. And knowing that will be a comfort to me, I think. Even as a dragon.’
‘As Bee should be a comfort to me. And Per. And her sister Nettle! Ship, interfere with this child again and I shall …’
‘You have no threat to offer, Amber. Be still. She has done enough for Boy-O. What would I ask again of her?’
He had fallen silent but I could see words piling up in him like unrecorded dreams.
‘I will be fine,’ I assured them as I stood. I had to smile. ‘Vivacia, you are as beautiful and perfect as you told me. I could love you.’ I was only a little tottery. And very tired. Don’t tell that. ‘I am going to go sleep. Good night to all of you.’
Behind me, the adults spoke softly. My hearing has always been keen. Brashen spoke with regret. ‘She must have been a very pretty child, once.’
‘Such scars! But thank Sa she is here with us now. She has great heart.’
‘I beg you to be more careful of her. She is not strong. Not yet.’ That was Beloved. He was wrong. I could be as strong as I needed to be. It bothered me that he tried to protect me. That he thought I was weak and tried to make others believe it as well. It made a hot little fire of anger in me.
My legs trembled slightly as I made my way back to my hammock. I couldn’t get into it. I thought of the first time I’d had to climb onto Pris’s back. My horse. Per was right. I’d be glad to see my horse again.
When Beloved spoke, I startled. ‘Bee. That healing was a kind thing. But you must think first of your own health. You are not well yet. I won’t ask you to promise me, but I will ask that you let me know if you are going to do something like that. Someone must be with you who has your best interests at heart.’
‘I do not think the ship would have let me go too far,’ I said. I smiled inside as I felt a warm, wordless reassurance that she would have stopped me. To him, I showed an expressionless face.
‘You are like your father. That isn’t really an answer to my request.’ He smiled, sad but serious.
I sighed. I wanted to sleep, not talk. Even more, I didn’t want his concern for me. It wasn’t his task. I found a lie. ‘You needn’t worry. My ability to do this is almost gone.’
The smile changed to a worried scowl. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The night I fought Symphe and Dwalia and Vindeliar, Symphe had a vial of serpent spit. What Dwalia called serpent potion. I think it had traces of Silver in it, like the Silver Paragon used to turn into dragons.’ I yawned wide. Suddenly I wanted to explain. ‘In a dream I had, they got it from keeping a sea serpent in a very tiny pool of salt water. Symphe was going to have Vindeliar drink it. He had used it before, and it gave him great power. But when I set fire to Symphe, she dropped the vial and it broke. When I was stabbing her, I cut my feet on the glass and some got into my blood. It made me stronger than Vindeliar. I was so strong I could just tell Dwalia to be dead, and she was.’
He went still. I watched him. Would he fear me now? Hate me?
No. When he came back to himself, his eyes were sorrowful. ‘You set fire to Symphe. And stabbed her.’
How could he think it sad that I had done that? I put it clearly. ‘I told you when I told my father. I killed them. It wasn’t evil, and I have no regret. It needed to be done, I was the one who was in the place and time to do it, and it was my task. So, I did it. I should have killed Vindeliar that night, too. It would have saved us all a great deal of trouble.’
‘Did you dream it?’ he asked hesitantly. When I stared at him, he said, ‘Did you have a dream that killing them was something you were supposed to do?’
I shrugged one shoulder. I seized the edge of the hammock and this time I got into it. I pulled up my blanket. It was summer above, but belowdecks, it was chill at night. I closed my eyes. ‘I don’t know. I have dreams. I know they mean something, but they are so strange I can’t connect them to what I will do. I dreamed a silver man carving his heart. The serpent spit was silver. Was that a dream of me carving Dwalia’s heart into death?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said quietly.
That had been a recent dream. I felt better for having told someone. ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ I told him. I closed my eyes and ignored him. He did not move. It was very annoying. I’d hoped he would leave. I waited a long time and then looked through my lashes. I was going to tell him to go away. Instead I asked, ‘Did you love my father?’
He went as still as a cat. When he spoke it was with reservation. ‘I had a deep bond with your father. A connection I had with no one else.’
‘Why won’t you say you loved him?’ I opened my eyes to see his face. My father had given him all his strength, and this man would not even say he had loved him?
His smile was too tight, as if he were forcing a different expression to be a smile. ‘It always made him uncomfortable if I used that word.’
‘He did not use that word very much. His love was things he did.’
‘He never counted up the things he did for me, but he always remembered the things I did for him.’
‘So he loved you.’ Loved you so much he left me to take you to Buckkeep.
All expression fell away from his face. His peculiar eyes were empty.
‘He wrote long letters to you, but he had nowhere to send them. He missed you desperately. He loved my mother, but he alwa
ys had to be strong for her. He had Riddle, too, and my brother Hap. But the things he wrote about in those letters were things he could not say to my mother, nor Riddle nor Hap. You left him, and all he could do was write them down.’
I watched him carefully and saw my barbed words hit and hold. I wanted to drive him away. I did not care that I hurt him. He was alive and my father was dead. I added, ‘You never should have left him.’
His voice and face were expressionless as he asked, ‘How do you know what he wrote?’
‘Because he did not always burn them every night. Sometimes he waited until the morning.’
‘So you read his private papers.’
‘I believe you read my journals?’
He looked startled. ‘I did,’ he admitted.
‘You still do. When you think I am deeply asleep, you have looked at my writing.’
He did not flinch. ‘You know that I do. Bee, you have endured much, but you are still a child. Your father gave you into my care. I promised to watch over you. Understand me, adults do what is best for a child. Parents especially have that obligation. It comes far before doing what you wish or what you might think is best. You have a White heritage; your dreams are both important and dangerous. You need to be guided. Yes, I read your journal, to know you better. I will read the dreams you write.’
My mind had snagged on his earlier words. ‘Do I get my White heritage from my mother?’ For I knew my father was Mountain and Buck, and nothing else.
‘You get it from me.’
I stared at him. ‘How?’
‘You are young to understand this.’
‘No, I am not. I knew my father and I knew my mother.’ I held my breath, waiting for him to tell a terrible lie about my mother.
‘Do you know how the dragons change the Elderlings? How they give them scales and colours? How their children are born sometimes with scales?’
‘No. I did not know they did that.’
‘You saw Rapskal, the scarlet man?’
‘Yes.’