The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  Instead, she discreetly drew more brine into her own half-opened jaws and then let it escape slowly over her gills. She tasted the strangeness of this new brine. It carried foreign salts that near stung with their intensity. She tasted, too, the salts of Maulkin’s body as he twisted strenuously against himself. The lids of her own eyes rose, cloaking her vision. For an instant, she dreamed, and in the dream the Lack was the Plenty and she soared freely within it.

  Before she could control herself, she threw back her head and trumpeted triumphantly. ‘The way is clear!’ she called, and then came to awareness of her own cry. The others were watching her now with the same tension with which they regarded Maulkin. She sleeked her ruff back to her throat in confusion. Maulkin sheered towards her and suddenly wrapped her firmly in the full length of his body. His ruff stood out in wild aggression, welling toxins that both stunned and intoxicated her. He gripped her with immense strength, daubing his musk against her scales, deluging her senses with the half-grasped memories that lured him on. Then he freed her abruptly and whipped his body clear of hers. Slowly, limply, she settled to the bottom, gulping to breathe.

  ‘She shares,’ Maulkin declared to his followers. ‘She sees and is anointed with my memories. With our memories. Come, Shreever, arise and follow me. The time of the gathering is nigh. Follow me to rebirth.’

  9

  A CHANGE OF FORTUNES

  THE CRUNCHING OF SHOD FEET on the sandy rocks brought him to alertness. Despite his years of blindness, he lifted his head and turned his eyes towards the sound. Whoever was coming was silent save for the footsteps. It was not a child: a child walked more lightly and they usually came in groups, to run past him shouting insults at him and dares to one another. They had used to throw rocks at him, until he learned not to dodge them. When he endured them stoically, they soon became bored and went off to find small crabs or starfish to torture instead. Besides, the rocks did not hurt that much, and most of them did not even hit. Most of them.

  He kept his arms crossed over his scarred chest, but it took an act of will to do so. When one fears a blow and cannot know from what quarter it will come, it is hard not to try to guard one’s face, even when all that is left of that face is a mouth and nose and the splintered wreckage that a hatchet had made of his eyes.

  The last high tide had nearly reached him. Sometimes he dreamed of a gigantic storm, one that would come to lift him from the rocks and sand and carry him back out to sea. Even better would be one that almost lifted him, one that would slam and crash him against the rocks, break him up into planks and beams and oakum and scatter him wherever the waves and winds pushed him. He wondered if that would bring him oblivion, or if he would live on as a carved chunk of wizardwood, bobbing for ever on the tides. Sometimes such thoughts could deepen his madness. Sometimes, as he lay on the beach, listing to starboard, he could feel the screw-worms and barnacles eating into his wood, boring in and chewing deep, but never into his keel nor any of the wizardwood planking. No. That was the beauty of wizardwood; it was impervious to the assault of the sea. The beauty and the eternal condemnation.

  He knew of only one liveship that had died. Tinester had perished in a fire that spread swiftly through his cargo holds full of barrels of oil and dry hides, consuming him in a matter of hours. A matter of hours of the ship screaming and begging for help. The tide had been out. Even when the blaze holed him and he sank, saltwater pouring onto his internal flames, he could not sink deeply enough to douse the deck fires. His wizardwood self had burned slowly, with black greasy smoke that poured up from him into the blue sky over the harbour, but he had burned. Maybe that was the only possible peace for a liveship. Flames and a slow burning. He wondered that the children had never thought of that. Why did they fling stones when they could have set fire to his decaying hulk a long time ago? Should he suggest it to them sometime?

  The footsteps were closer now. They halted. Feet grinding sand grittily against underlying stone. ‘Hey, Paragon.’ A man’s voice, friendly, reassuring. It took him a moment and then he had it.

  ‘Brashen. It’s been a time.’

  ‘Over a year,’ the man admitted easily. ‘Maybe two.’ He came closer, and a moment later Paragon felt a warm human hand brush the point of his elbow. He unfolded his arms and reached down his right hand. He felt Brashen’s small hand attempt to grasp his own.

  ‘A year. A full turning of the seasons. That’s a long time for you people, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The man sighed. ‘It was a lot longer when I was a kid. Now each passing year seems shorter than the one before.’ He paused. ‘So. How have you been?’

  Paragon grinned through his beard. ‘Now there’s a question. Answer it yourself. I’m the same as I have been for the past, what, thirty of your years? At least that many, I think. Passing time has little meaning for me.’ It was his turn to pause. Then he asked, ‘So. What brings you out to see an old derelict like me?’

  The man had the grace to sound embarrassed. ‘The usual. I need a place to sleep. A safe place.’

  ‘And you’ve never heard that just about the worst luck that can be found will be found aboard a ship like me.’ It was an old conversation between them. But they had not had it in a while, and so Paragon found it comforting to lead Brashen once more through its measures.

  Brashen gave a bark of laughter. He gave a final squeeze to Paragon’s hand before releasing it. ‘You know me, old ship. I’ve already got about the worst luck that anyone could hunt up. I doubt that I’ll find worse aboard you. And at least I can sleep sound, knowing I’ve a friend watching over me. Permission to come aboard?’

  ‘Come aboard and welcome. But watch your step. Bound to be a bit more rot than the last time you sheltered here.’

  He heard Brashen circle him, heard his leap and then a moment later felt the man hauling himself up and over the old railing. Strange, so strange to feel a man walk his decks after such a long time. Not that Brashen strode them easily. Hauled out as he was on the sand, Paragon’s decks sloped precipitously. Brashen more clambered than walked as he crossed the deck to the forecastle door. ‘No more rot than the last time I was here,’ the man observed aloud, almost cheerily. ‘And there was damned little then. It’s almost weird how sound you are after all the weathering you must take.’

  ‘Weird,’ Paragon agreed, and tried not to sound glum about it. ‘No one’s been aboard since the last time you were here, so I fancy you’ll find all within as you left it. Save for a bit more damp.’

  He could hear and feel the man moving about inside the forecastle, and then into the captain’s quarters. His raised voice reached Paragon’s ears. ‘Hey! My hammock is still here. Still sound, too. I’d forgotten all about it. You remember, the one I made last time I was here.’

  ‘Yes. I remember,’ he called back. Paragon smiled a rare smile of remembered pleasure. Brashen had kindled a small fire on the sand, and drunkenly instructed the ship in the ways of weaving. His hands, so much larger than a man’s, had proven a challenge to Brashen as he tried to teach the blind ship the necessary knots by touch alone. ‘Didn’t no one ever teach you anything before?’ Brashen had demanded with drunken indignance as Paragon had fumbled his way through the simple motions.

  ‘No. No one. At least, nothing like this. When I was young, I saw it done, but no one ever offered me a chance to try it for myself,’ Paragon had answered. He wondered how many times since then he had dragged out the memory to pass the long night hours, how many times he had held his empty hands up before him and woven imaginary lines into the simple webbing of a hammock. It was one way to keep the deeper madness at bay.

  Within the captain’s quarters, he knew Brashen had kicked his shoes off. They slid down into a corner, the same corner that everything slid into. But the hammock was secured to hooks that Brashen had mounted, and so it hung level as the man grunted and clambered his way into it. Paragon could feel it give with his weight, but the hooks held. It was as Brashen had said: surpr
isingly little new rot. As if Brashen could sense how hungry the ship was for companionship, he roused himself enough to call, ‘I’m really tired, Paragon. Let me sleep a few hours and then I’ll tell you all my adventures since the last time I saw you. My misadventures, too.’

  ‘I can wait. Get some sleep,’ the ship told him affably. He wasn’t sure if Brashen heard him or not. It didn’t matter.

  He felt the man shift in the hammock and then settle more comfortably. After that there was almost silence. The ship could sense his breathing. It was not much for company, but it was more than Paragon had had for many a month. He folded his arms more comfortably across his bare chest, and focused on the sound of Brashen breathing.

  Kennit faced Sorcor across the white linen cloth on the captain’s table. The mate wore a new shirt of red-and-white striped silk, and garish earrings: mermaids with tiny pearls in their navels and green glass eyes. Sorcor’s scarred face looked painfully scrubbed above his beard and his hair was sleeked back from his brow with an oil that was probably supposed to be aromatic. To Kennit, the scent suggested both fish and musk. But he let nothing of that opinion show on his face. Sorcor was ill at ease enough. Formality always strained the man. Formality plus the captain’s disapproval would probably paralyse his mind entirely.

  The Marietta creaked softly against the dock. Kennit had closed the cabin’s small window against the stench of Diwytown, but the noise of night revelry still penetrated in a distant cacophony. There was no crew aboard save for the ship’s boy to wait the table and a single man on watch on deck. ‘That will do,’ Kennit told the boy abruptly. ‘Be careful cleaning those. That’s pewter, not tin.’

  The boy left the cabin with his tray of dishes, shutting the door firmly but respectfully behind himself. For a few moments, there was almost silence within the snug chamber as Kennit deliberately considered the man who was not only his right hand on the deck, but his sounding line for the crew’s temper.

  Kennit leaned back slightly from the table. The white beeswax candles had burned about a third down. He and Sorcor had disposed of a sizable lamb’s haunch between them. Sorcor had eaten most of it; not even formality could curb his appetite when confronted with any food a notch better than swill. Still silent, Kennit lifted a bottle of wine and refilled both their long-stemmed crystal goblets. It was a vintage that Sorcor’s palate probably had no appreciation for, but tonight it was not the quality of the wine, but the expense of it that he wanted the mate to notice. When both glasses were near brimming, he lifted his and waited for the mate to take up his as well. He leaned forwards to gently ring their glasses together. ‘To better things,’ he offered softly. With his free hand, he indicated the more recent changes in his chamber.

  Sorcor had been dumbfounded when he had first entered. Kennit had always had a taste for quality, but in the past he had restrained it save for pragmatic areas. He had far rather wear small earrings of gold with flawless gemstones than ornate brass gauded with glass. The quality had been in the cut and fabric of his clothing, rather than in a vast amount of ostentatious garments. Not so now. The simplicity of his cabin had given way to glitter and splendour as he had spent every last coin of his last trip’s share in Divvytown. Some of the items were not of the very finest quality, but they were the best Divvytown had to offer. And they had had the desired effect upon Sorcor. Beneath the awe in the mate’s eyes were the beginnings of a gleam of avarice. Sorcor needed but to be shown to desire.

  ‘To better things,’ Sorcor echoed him in his bass voice, and they drank together.

  ‘And soon. Very soon,’ Kennit added as he leaned back against the cushions of his austerely-carved oak chair.

  Sorcor set down his glass and regarded his captain attentively. ‘You have something specific in mind,’ he guessed.

  ‘Only the ends. The means are still to be considered. That’s why I invited you to dine with me. That we might consider our next voyage, and what we desire from it.’

  Sorcor pursed his lips and sucked his teeth speculatively. ‘I desire what I’ve always desired from a voyage. Rich booty, and plenty of it. What else is there for a man to want?’

  ‘A lot, dear Sorcor. A very great deal. There is power, and fame. Security in one’s riches. Comfort. Homes and families safe from the slaver’s whip.’ The last item had no place at all in Kennit’s personal list of desires, but well he knew it was the fantasy of many a sailor. A fantasy he suspected they would find stifling were it ever granted to them. It didn’t matter. What he was offering the man was what Sorcor thought he wanted. Kennit would have offered him sugared lice if he had believed they’d be a better bait.

  Sorcor affected a clumsy nonchalance. ‘A man can want such things, of course. But he’s only going to have them if he’s born to them. A noble or lord or some such. It’s never going to be for me, nor even for you, begging your pardon for saying so.’

  ‘Ah, but it will be. It will be if we have the spine to reach out and take those things for ourselves. Lords and nobles you say, and a man has to be born to it, you say. But somewhere, there had to be the first lord. Somewhere back there, there had to be some common man who reached out and took what he wanted, and kept it too.’

  Sorcor took another drink of his wine, slugging it down like beer. ‘I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘I suppose those things all had to get started somehow.’ He set his wine back down on the table and considered his captain. ‘How?’ he finally asked, as if fearing he wouldn’t like the answer.

  Kennit rolled his shoulders, in a movement gentler than a shrug. ‘As I have told you. We reach out and take it.’

  ‘How?’ Sorcor repeated stubbornly.

  ‘How did we get this ship, and this crew? How did I get the ring on my finger, or you the earrings you wear? What we’ll be doing is no different than anything we’ve done before. Except in scale. We’ll be setting our goals a bit higher.’

  Sorcor shifted nervously. When he spoke, his deep voice had gone almost dangerously soft. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  Kennit smiled at him. ‘It’s very simple. All we must do is dare to do something no one has dared do before.’

  Sorcor frowned. Kennit suspected the wine was reaching his wits. ‘This is that “king” stuff you were talking before, isn’t it?’ Before Kennit could answer, the mate shook his heavy head slowly. ‘It won’t work, Cap’n. Pirates don’t want a king.’

  Kennit forced his smile to remain. He shook his own head in response to his mate’s charge. As he did so, he felt the blistered flesh under the linen bandage break anew. The nape of his neck grew wet with fluid. Fitting. Fitting. ‘No. My dear Sorcor, you took my earlier words much too literally. What do you suppose, that I see myself sitting on a throne, wearing a gold crown covered with jewels while the pirates of Divvytown bend a knee to me? Folly! Sheerest folly! No man could look at Divvytown and imagine such a thing. No. What I see is what I have told you. A man living like a lord, with a fine house and fine things, and knowing he will keep his fine house and fine things, yes and knowing his wife may sleep safely at his side, and his kiddies in their beds as well.’ He took a measured sip of his wine and replaced the glass on the table. ‘That is kingdom enough for you and me, eh, Sorcor?’

  ‘Me? Me, too?’

  There. It was reaching him at last. Kennit was proposing that Sorcor himself could have these things, not just Kennit. Kennit’s smile broadened. ‘Of course. Of course you, why not you?’ He permitted himself a deprecating laugh. ‘Sorcor, do you think I’d ask you to throw in with me as we have done before, would I ask you to risk everything alongside me, if all I had in mind were improving my own fortunes? Of course not! You’re not such a fool. No. What I have in mind is that together we shall reach for this fortune. And not just for ourselves, no. When we are done, all our crew will have benefited. And if Divvytown and the other Pirate Isles choose to follow us, they will benefit as well. But no man will be forced to throw in his hand with ours. No. It will be a free alliance of free men. So.’ He leane
d forward across the table to his mate. ‘What say you?’

  Sorcor blinked his eyes and looked aside from his captain’s gaze. But when he did so, he must look about the finely appointed room, on the carefully arrayed wealth Kennit had set out just for that reason. There was no spot in the room where the man’s eyes could rest without avarice awaking in his heart.

  But in the depths of his soul, Sorcor was a more cautious sort than Kennit had given him credit. His dark eyes came back to lock gazes with Kennit’s pale ones. ‘You speak well. And I cannot think of a reason not to say yes. But I know that does not mean there isn’t a reason.’ He put his elbows on the table and leaned on his arms heavily. ‘Speak plainly. What must we do to bring these things about?’

  ‘Dare,’ said Kennit briefly. The licking flame of triumph he felt would not let him sit still. He had the man, even if Sorcor himself did not know it yet. He rose to pace the small cabin, wine glass in his hand. ‘First, we capture their imaginations and their admiration by what we dare to do. We amass wealth, yes, but we do it as no one has before. Look you, Sorcor. I need not show you a chart. All trade that comes from Jamaillia and the Southlands must pass us before it can reach Bingtown, or Chalced and the lands beyond. This is so?’

  ‘Of course.’ The mate’s brow furrowed in his effort to see where this obvious fact might lead. ‘A ship can’t get from Jamaillia to Bingtown, save that they pass the Pirate Isles. Unless they’re fool enough to go Outside and dare the Wild Sea.’

  Kennit nodded agreement. ‘So ships and captains have but two choices. They can take the Outside Passage, where storms off the Wild Sea are fiercest and serpents thickest and the way is longest. Or they can risk the Inside Passage, with the tricky channels and currents and us pirates. Correct?’

  ‘Serpents, too,’ Sorcor insisted on pointing out. ‘Almost as many serpents haunt the Inside Passage as the Outside now.’