by Robin Hobb
Nothing was especially intended for him.
He forced himself to remember that, and so he could be calm when, after she had been silent for some time, she said, ‘I have no place to stay tonight. Could I sleep aboard?’
‘It’s probably a smelly mess in there,’ he cautioned her. ‘Oh, my hull is sound enough, still. But one can do little about storm waters, and blown sand and beach lice can find a way into anything.’
‘Please, Paragon. I won’t mind. I’m sure I can find a dry corner to curl up in.’
‘Very well, then,’ he conceded, and then hid his smile in his beard as he added, ‘if you don’t mind sharing space with Brashen. He comes back here every night, you know.’
‘He does?’ Startled dismay was in her voice.
‘He comes and stays almost every time he makes port here. It’s always the same. The first night it’s because it’s late and he’s drunk and he doesn’t want to pay a full night’s lodging for a few hours’ sleep and he feels safe here. And he always goes on about how he’s going to save his wages and only spend a bit of it this time, so that some day he’ll have enough saved up to make something of himself.’ Paragon paused, savouring Althea’s shocked silence. ‘He never does, of course. Every night he comes stumbling back, his pockets a bit lighter, until it’s all gone. And when he has no more to spend on drink, then he goes back and signs on whatever ship will have him until he ships out again.’
‘Paragon,’ Althea corrected him gently. ‘Brashen has worked the Vivacia for years now. I think he always used to sleep aboard her when he was in port here.’
‘Well, but, yes, I suppose so, but I meant before that. Before that, and now.’ Without meaning to, he spoke his next thought aloud. ‘Time runs together and gets tangled up, when one is blind and alone.’
‘I suppose it would.’ She leaned her head back against him and sighed deeply. ‘Well. I think I shall go in and find a place to curl up, before the light is gone completely.’
‘Before the light is gone,’ Paragon repeated slowly. ‘So. Not completely dark yet.’
‘No. You know how long evening lingers in summer. But it’s probably black as pitch inside, so don’t be alarmed if I go stumbling about.’ She paused awkwardly, then came to stand before him. Canted as he was on the sand, she could reach his hand easily. She patted it, then shook it. ‘Good night, Paragon. And thank you.’
‘Good night,’ he repeated. ‘Oh. Brashen has been sleeping in the captain’s quarters.’
‘Right. Thank you.’
She clambered awkwardly up his side. He heard the whisper of fabric, lots of it. It seemed to encumber her as she traversed his slanting deck and finally fumbled her way down into his cargo hold. She had been more agile as a girl. There had been a summer when she had come to see him nearly every day. Her home was somewhere on the hillside above him; she spoke of walking through the woods behind her home and then climbing down the cliffs to him. That summer she had known him well, playing all sorts of games inside him and around him, pretending he was her ship and she his captain, until word of it came to her father’s ears. He had followed her one day, and when he found her talking to the cursed ship, he soundly scolded them both and then herded Althea home with a switch. For a long time after that she had not come to see him. When she did come, it was only for brief visits in early dawn or evening. But for that one summer, she had known him well.
She still seemed to remember something of him, for she made her way through his interior until she came to the aft space where the crew used to hang their hammocks. Odd, how the feel of her inside him could stir such memories to life again. Crenshaw had had red hair and was always complaining about the food. He had died there, the hatchet that ended his life had left a deep scar in the planking as well, his blood had stained the wood…
She curled up against a bulkhead. She’d be cold tonight. His hull might be sound, but that didn’t keep the damp out of him. He could feel her, still and small against him, unsleeping. Her eyes were probably open, staring into the blackness.
Time passed. A minute or most of the night. Hard to tell. Brashen came down the beach. Paragon knew his stride and the way he muttered to himself when he’d been drinking. Tonight his voice was dark with worry and Paragon judged he was close to the end of his money. Tomorrow he would rebuke himself long for his stupidity, and then go out to spend the last of his coins. Then he’d have to go to sea again.
Paragon would almost miss him. Having company was interesting and exciting. But also annoying and unsettling. They made him think about things better left undisturbed.
‘Paragon,’ Brashen greeted him as he drew near. ‘Permission to come aboard.’
‘Granted. Althea Vestrit’s here.’
A silence. Paragon could almost feel him goggling up at him. ‘She looking for me?’ Brashen asked thickly.
‘No. Me.’ It pleased him inordinately to give the man that answer. ‘Her family has turned her out, and she had nowhere else to go. So she came here.’
‘Oh.’ Another pause. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Well, the sooner she gives up and goes home, the wiser she’ll be. Though I imagine it will take her a while to come to that.’ Brashen yawned hugely. ‘Does she know I’m living aboard?’ A cautious question, one that begged for a negative answer.
‘Of course,’ Paragon answered smoothly. ‘I told her that you had taken the captain’s cabin and that she’d have to make do elsewhere.’
‘Oh. Well, good for you. Good for you. Good night, then. I’m dead on my feet.’
‘Good night, Brashen. Sleep well.’
A few moments later, Brashen was in the captain’s quarters. A few minutes after that, Paragon felt Althea uncurl. She was trying to move quietly, but she could not conceal herself from him. When she finally reached the door of the aftercastle chamber where Brashen had strung his hammock, she paused. She rapped very lightly on the panelled door. ‘Brash?’ she said cautiously.
‘What?’ he answered readily. He had not been asleep, nor even near sleep. Could he have been waiting? How could he have known she would come to him?
Althea took a deep breath. ‘Can I talk to you?’
‘Can I stop you?’ he asked grumpily. It was evidently a familiar response, for Althea was not put off by it. She set her hand to the door handle, then took it away without opening the door. She leaned on the door and spoke close to it.
‘Do you have a lantern or a candle?’
‘No. Is that what you wanted to talk about?’ His tone seemed to be getting brusquer.
‘No. It’s just that I prefer to see the person I’m talking to.’
‘Why? You know what I look like.’
‘You’re impossible when you’re drunk.’
‘At least with me, it’s only when I’m drunk. You’re impossible all the time.’
Althea sounded distinctly annoyed now. ‘I don’t know why I’m even trying to talk to you.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Brashen added as an aside, as if to himself. The Paragon suddenly wondered if they were aware of how clearly he could hear their every word and movement. Did they know he was their unseen audience, or did they truly believe themselves alone? Brashen, at least, he suspected included him.
Althea sighed heavily. She leaned her head on the panelled door between them. ‘I have no one else to talk to. And I really need to… Look, can I come in? I hate talking through this door.’
‘The door isn’t latched,’ he told her grudgingly. He didn’t move from his hammock.
In the darkness, Althea pushed the door open. She stood in the entry uncertainly for a moment, then groped her way into the room. She followed the wall, bracing herself to keep from falling on the slanted deck. ‘Where are you?’
‘Over here. In a hammock. Best sit down before you fall.’
He offered her no more courtesy than that. Althea sat, bracing her feet against the slope of the floor and leaning back against a bulkhead. She took a deep breath. ‘Brashen, my whole life just
fell apart in the last two days. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Go home,’ he suggested without sympathy. ‘You know that eventually you’ll have to. The longer you put it off, the harder it will be. So do it now.’
‘That’s easy to say, and hard to do. You should understand that. You never went home.’
Brashen gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Didn’t I? I tried. They just threw me out again. Because I had waited too long. So. Now you know you are getting good advice. Go back home while you still can, while a bit of crawling and humble obedience will buy you a place to sleep and food on your plate. Wait too long, let the disgrace set in, let them get used to life without the family troublemaker, and they won’t have you back, no matter how you plead and crawl.’
Althea was silent for a long time. Then, ‘That really happened to you?’
‘No. I’m making it all up,’ Brashen replied sourly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Althea said after a time. More resolutely she went on, ‘But I can’t go back. At least, not while Kyle’s in port. And even after he’s gone, if I do go back, it will only be to get my things.’
Brashen shifted in his hammock. ‘You mean your dresses and trinkets? Precious relics from your childhood? Your favourite pillow?’
‘And my jewellery. If I have to, I can always sell that.’
Brashen threw himself back in the hammock. ‘Why bother? You’ll find you can’t drag all that stuff around with you anyway. As for your jewellery, why not pretend you already got it, sold it piece by painful piece and the money is gone and now you really have to find out how to live your own life. That’ll save you time, and any heirloom stuff will at least remain with your family. If Kyle hasn’t seen to having it locked up already.’
The silence that followed Brash’s bitter suggestion was blacker than the starless darkness that Paragon stared into. When Althea did speak again, her voice was hard with determination.
‘I know you’re right. I need to do something, not wait around for something to happen. I need to find work. And the only work I know anything about is sailing. And it’s my only path to getting back on board Vivacia. But I won’t get hired dressed like this…’
Brashen gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Face it, Althea. You won’t get hired no matter how you are dressed. You’ve got too much stacked up against you. You’re a woman, you’re Ephron Vestrit’s daughter, and Kyle Haven won’t be too happy with anyone who hires you, either.’
‘Why should being Ephron Vestrit’s daughter be a mark against me?’ Althea’s voice was very small. ‘My father was a good man.’
‘True. That he was. A very good man.’ For a moment Brashen’s tone gentled. ‘But what you have to learn is that it isn’t easy to stop being a Trader’s daughter. Or son. The Bingtown Traders look like as solid an alliance you can imagine, from the outside. But you and I, we came from the inside, and the inside works against us. See, you’re a Vestrit. All right. So there are some families that trade with you and profit, and other families that compete with you, and other families that are allied with those who compete with you… no one is an enemy, exactly. But when you go looking for work, it’s going to be, well, like it was for me. Brashen Trell, eh, Kelf Trell’s son? Well, why don’t you work for your family, boy? Oh, had a falling out? Well, I don’t want to get on your father’s bad side by hiring you. Not that they ever come right out and say it, of course, they just look at you and put you off and say, “come back in four days”, only they aren’t in when you come back. And those that don’t get along with your family, well, they don’t want to hire you, either, ’cause they like seeing you down in the dirt.’ Brashen’s voice was winding down, getting deeper and softer and slower. He was talking himself to sleep, Paragon thought, as he often did. He’d probably forgotten that Althea was even there. Paragon was overly familiar with Brashen’s long litany of the wrongs and injustices suffered by him. He was even more familiar with Brashen’s caustic self-accusations of idiocy and worthlessness.
‘So how did you survive?’ Althea asked resentfully.
‘Went to where it didn’t matter what my name was. First boat I shipped out on was Chalcedean. They didn’t care who I was, long as I would work hard and cheap. Meanest set of rotten bastards I ever shipped with. No mercy for a kid, no, not them. Jumped ship in the first harbour we put into. Left that same day, on a different boat. Not much better, but a little. Then we… ’ Brashen’s voice trailed off. For a moment Paragon thought he had fallen asleep. He heard Althea shifting about, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on the slanted deck. ‘… by the time I came back to Bingtown, I was a seasoned hand. Oh, was I seasoned. But still the same old damn thing. Trell’s boy this, and Trell’s son that… I’d thought I’d made something of myself. I actually tried to go to my father and patch things up. But he was not much impressed with what I’d made of myself. No, sir, he was not. What a horse’s ass… so I went to every ship in the harbour. Every ship. No one was hiring Kelf Trell’s son. When I got to the Vivacia, I kept my scarf down low on my brow and kept my eyes on the deck. Asked for honest work for an honest sailor. And your father said he’d try me. Said he could use an honest man. Something about the way he said it… I was sure he hadn’t recognized me, and I was sure he’d turn me off if I told him my name. But I did anyway. I looked at him and I said, “I’m Brashen Trell. I used to be Kelf Trell’s son.” And he said, “That won’t make your watch one minute shorter or longer, sailor.” And you know. It never did.’
‘Chalcedeans don’t hire women,’ Althea said dully. Paragon wondered how much of Brashen’s tale she had truly heard.
‘Not as sailors,’ Brashen agreed. ‘They believe a woman aboard ship will draw serpents after you. Because women bleed, you know. Lots of sailors say that.’
‘That’s stupid,’ she exclaimed in disgust.
‘Yeah. Lots of sailors are stupid. Look at us.’ He laughed at his own jest, but she did not join him.
‘There are other women sailors in Bingtown. Someone will hire me.’
‘Maybe, but not to do what you expect,’ Brashen said harshly. ‘Yes, there are women sailors, but most of the ones you see on the docks are working on their family boats, with fathers and brothers to protect them. Ship out alone on anything else, and you’d better choose early which shipmates you want to roll. If you’re lucky, they’ll be possessive enough to keep the others off you. If you’re not lucky, they’ll turn a nice profit from your services before you reach the next port. And most mates and captains will turn a blind eye to what goes on, to keep order on the ship. That’s if they don’t claim your services for themselves.’ He paused, then added grumpily, ‘And you already knew all that. You couldn’t grow up around sailors and not know it. So why are you even considering this?’
Anger engulfed her. She wanted to shout that she didn’t believe it or demand to know why men had to be such pigs. But she did believe it, and she knew that Brashen could not answer that question anymore than she could. Silence bled into the darkness between them, and even her anger deserted her.
‘So what am I to do?’ she asked miserably. It did not seem to Paragon she was speaking to Brashen, but he answered anyway.
‘Find a way to be reborn as a boy. Preferably one that isn’t named Vestrit.’ Brashen rearranged himself in the hammock and drew in a long breath that emerged as a buzzing snore.
In her cramped corner, Althea sighed. She leaned her head back against the hard wood of the bulkhead and was still and silent.
The slaver was a darker silhouette against the night sky. If he felt he was in any danger of pursuit, he showed no signs of it. He had a respectable amount of canvas on but Kennit’s keen eyes saw no flurry of activity aloft to indicate he felt a need for extreme speed. The night was perfect, a sweet even wind breathing over the sea, the waves willing beasts bearing the ship along. ‘We’ll overhaul him before dawn,’ he observed quietly to Sorcor.
‘Aye,’ Sorcor breathed. His voice betrayed far more excitement at the prospe
ct than his captain felt. Over his shoulder, he said quietly to the helmsman, ‘Keep her in close to the shore. Hug it like your granny. If their lookout chances to glance this way, I don’t want us visible against the open water.’ To the ship’s boy he hissed, ‘Below. Pass the word yet again. Still and silent, no movement that isn’t in response to a command. And not a light to show, not so much as a spark. Go and softly, now.’
‘He’s got a couple of serpents off his stern,’ Kennit observed.
‘They follow for the dead slaves thrown overboard,’ Sorcor said bitterly. ‘And for those too sick to be worth feeding. They go over the side, too.’
‘And if the serpents choose to turn and attack us during battle?’ Kennit inquired. ‘What then?’
‘They won’t,’ Sorcor assured him. ‘Serpents learn quickly. They’ll let us kill each other, well knowing they’ll get the dead with not a scale lost.’
‘And after?’
Sorcor grinned savagely. ‘If we win, they’ll be so fat with the crew of the slaver, they won’t be able to wiggle after us. If we lose…’ he shrugged. ‘It won’t much matter to us.’
Kennit leaned on the railing, sour and silent. Earlier in the day, they had spotted Ringsgold, a fine old fat waddling cog of a liveship, near as deep as he was tall. They had had the advantage of surprise; Kennit had had the crew hang out every bit of canvas the rigging would hold, and yet the liveship had lifted and dashed off as if driven by his own private wind. Sorcor had stood silent by his side as Kennit had first been silently incredulous and then savagely angry at the turn of events. When Ringsgold rounded Pointless Island to catch the favourable current there and be whisked from sight, Sorcor had dared to observe, ‘Dead wood has no chance against wizardwood. The very waves of the sea part for it.’