by Robin Hobb
She paused as if reflecting. ‘And with a good measure of greed thrown in. I did not think Davad the type of man who could listen to a tale such as Rache’s and then continue the trade that had bred it. But he has. And he pushes, quite persistently, at those he knows well to ask them to vote to legalize his trade for Bingtown as well.’ Again her eyes speared Keffria. ‘Now that you have inherited your father’s holdings, you inherit his Council vote as well. No doubt Davad will begin to court you to use that vote to his bidding. And if your own economic interests align with that of slavery… what do you think Kyle will bid you do?’
Keffria felt paralysed. She dared not answer. She wished to say her husband would not countenance slavery in Bingtown, but already her mind was unwillingly marking up the ledger. Were slaves legal, certain properties could suddenly become profitable once again. Grain fields. The tin mine. But apart from that, Kyle would not have to take his cargo as far as Chalced to dispose of it profitably, but could sell the slaves right here in Bingtown. Less time in transit meant more of his cargo would arrive alive and in good condition to be sold…
With a shudder, Keffria suddenly considered the full import of her thought. More of his cargo would arrive alive. From the beginning, she had accepted that if Kyle chose to transport slaves, it was inevitable that some would die in the process. Of what? Of old age or ill health? No. Kyle was too sage to buy slaves likely to die. She had been expecting them to die from the trip. Accepting that it must happen. But why? In her journeys by ship, she had never feared for her own life or health. So only the treatment of the unwilling passengers could be the reason for the deaths. The treatment of the slaves that might well be part of Wintrow’s duties as a sailor. Would her son learn to ignore the pleading cries of a young woman begging mercy for her child? Would he help fling the lifeless bodies to the serpents?
Her mother must have read something of her thoughts, for she said quietly, ‘Remember, it is your vote. You can cede it to your husband if you wish. Many Bingtown Trader wives in your position would do so, though Bingtown law does not require it. But remember that the Vestrit family gets one vote on the Traders’ Council, and one vote only. And once you have ceded it to your husband, you cannot reclaim it. He can appoint whomever he wishes to vote his will in his absence.’
Keffria suddenly felt very cold and alone. No matter how she decided this, she would suffer for it. She could not doubt that Kyle would advocate for slavery. She could almost hear his logical, rational arguments, even when he argued that slavery in Bingtown was bound to be a kinder fate for the slaves than slavery in Chalced. He would persuade her. And when he did, her mother would lose respect for her. ‘It is but one vote on the Traders’ Council,’ she heard herself say faintly. ‘One vote of fifty-six.’
‘Fifty-six remaining Trader families,’ her mother conceded. In the next breath she went on, ‘and do you know how many newcomers have amassed enough leffers of land to claim a vote on the Bingtown Council now? Twenty-seven. You look shocked. Well, so was I. Evidently there are folk settling to the south of Bingtown, quietly taking up land with grants signed by the new Satrap, and then coming into Bingtown to assert their right to a place on the Bingtown Council. That second Council that we created, in a sense of fairness, that the Three Ships’ Immigrants could have a place to resolve their own grievances among themselves, and a voice in governing Bingtown is now being used against us.
‘And the pressure is not just from within Bingtown. Chalced itself casts greedy eyes on our wealth. They have challenged our northern border, more than once, and that fool boy of a Satrap has all but conceded to them without a murmur. All for the sake of the gifts they send him, women and jewellery and pleasure herbs. He will not stand for Bingtown against Chalced. He will not even keep Esclepius’s promises to us. Rumour has it that this new Satrap has depleted Jamaillia’s treasury with his wastrel ways, and seeks to find more coin for his amusement by issuing grants of land to whoever will court his favour with gifts and promises of gifts. Not just to Jamaillian nobles does he give our land, but to his Chalcedean sycophants as well. So you may be correct in what you were about to say, Keffria. Perhaps one vote will do no good at all to stop the changes that are overtaking Bingtown.’
Her mother rose slowly from her place at the table. She had taken no food, not even a sip of tea. As she drifted toward the door, she sighed. ‘In time, not even all fifty-six Trader votes will be enough to stem the will of this wave of newcomers. And if this new Satrap Cosgo will so violate one promise given to us by Esclepius, will he hold the others sacred? How long before the monopolies granted to us are sold to others as well? I do not like to think of what may happen here. It will be far more than the end of our way of life. What such greedy and incautious folk as these may awaken if they venture up the Rain Wild River, I do not like to think.’
For one horrific instant, Keffria’s mind was carried back to the birth of her third child. Or rather, her third time to be brought to childbed, for no child was born of that long pregnancy and painful labour. Only a creature her mother had neither allowed her to see nor to hold, something that had growled and snarled and thrashed wildly as her mother carried it from the room. Kyle had been at sea. Her father had been at home, and it had been left to him to do what was the burden of the Bingtown Trader families. No one had spoken of it afterwards. Even when Kyle came home from sea, he had not asked about the cradle still empty, but only accepted it and treated her with great tenderness. Once, since then, he had referred to her ‘stillbirth’. She wondered if that was what he truly believed. He was not Trader-born; perhaps he did not believe in the price that must be paid. Perhaps he did not grasp all that it meant to have married into a Trader family. Perhaps he did not grasp that they protected as well as profited from the Rain Wild River and all it brought down with its waters.
For a brief instant she saw her husband as a stranger, as, perhaps, a threat. Not an evil, malevolent threat, but part of a storm or immense tide that, soulless, still crushes and destroys all in its path.
‘Kyle is a good man,’ she said to her mother. But her mother had left the room soundlessly, and her own words fell lifeless in the uncaring air.
15
NEGOTIATIONS
‘WE SAIL TOMORROW MORNING.’ Torg didn’t even try to mask the enjoyment he took from imparting these tidings.
Wintrow refused to look up from his work. The man’s words were neither a question nor an order. He was not required to reply.
‘Yep. We sail from here. Last you’ll see of Bingtown for a time. We’ve got seven ports between here and Jamaillia. First three are in Chalced. Going to get rid of those comfer nuts. I could have told him they wouldn’t sell in Bingtown, but then, no one asked me.’ Torg rolled his shoulders and grinned in self-satisfaction. He seemed to think that his captain’s poor decision proved that Torg was a wiser man. Wintrow saw no such connection.
‘Captain’s going to build up a bit of a cash pot, is what I hear, and have all the more to spend on slaves in Jamaillia. We’ll take on a nice haul of them, boy.’ He licked his lips. ‘Now, that’s what I look forward to, especially as he’ll be listening to my advice once we reach Jamaillia. That’s a market I know. Yeah. I know prime slave-flesh when I see it, and I’ll be holding out for the best. Maybe I’ll even get some skinny little girls for you to fancy. What do you think of that, laddie?’
Questions had to be answered, if one didn’t want a boot in the small of one’s back. ‘I think that slavery is immoral and illegal. And that it isn’t appropriate for us to be discussing the captain’s plans.’ He kept his eyes on his work. It was a pile of old line. His task was to untangle it, salvage what was good, and render the rest down into fibres that could either be re-cycled into line or used as chinking as needed. His hands had become as rough as the hemp he handled. When he looked at them, it was hard to recall they had once been the hands of an artist with a fine touch for glass. Across from him on the foredeck, Mild was working on his side of the pile. He e
nvied the young sailor the agility of his calloused hands. When Mild took up a piece of rope and gave it a shake, it seemed to untangle itself magically. No matter how Wintrow tried to coil a piece of line, it still always wanted to twist in the other direction.
‘Oh, ho. Getting a bit snippy, are we?’ Torg’s heavy boot nudged him painfully. He was still bruised from an earlier kick.
‘No, sir,’ Wintrow answered reflexively. It was getting easier, sometimes, simply to be subservient. When his father had first given him over to this brute, he had tried to speak to the man as if he had a mind. He had rapidly learned that any words Torg didn’t understand he interpreted as mockery, and that explanations were only seen as feeble excuses. The less said, the fewer bruises. Even if it meant agreeing with statements he normally disagreed with. He tried not to see it as an eroding of his dignity and ethics. Survival, he told himself. It was simple survival until he could get away.
He dared to venture a question. ‘What ports shall we be stopping in?’
If there were any on the peninsula of Marrow, he’d be off the ship, somehow. He didn’t care how far he had to walk, or if he had to beg his way across the entire peninsula, he’d get back to his monastery. When he told his tale there, they’d listen to him. They’d change his name and place him elsewhere, where his father could never find him again.
‘Nowhere near Marrow,’ Torg told him with vicious delight. ‘If you want to get back to your priesting, boy, you’re going to have to swim.’ The second mate laughed aloud, and Wintrow saw how he had been set-up to ask that question. It disturbed him that even Torg’s slow wit could know so clearly where his heart was. Did he dream on it too much, did it show in his every action? He had begun to think it was the only way for him to stay sane. He constantly planned ways to slip away from the ship. Every time they latched him into the chain locker for the night, he would wait until the footsteps had died away and then try the door. He wished he had not been so impatient when he first was dragged aboard the ship. His clumsy attempts to leave had alerted both captain and crew to his intent, and Kyle had made it well known that any man who let him leave the ship would pay heavily for it. He was never left alone, and those who worked alongside him resented that they could not trust him, but must guard him as well as work.
Now Torg made a great show of stretching his muscles. He lifted a booted foot to tap Wintrow’s spine again. ‘Got to go, boys. Work to do. Mild, you’re the nanny. See pretty boy here keeps busy.’ With a final painful nudge, Torg lumbered away down the deck. Neither boy looked up to watch him go. But when he was out of earshot, Mild observed calmly, ‘Someone will kill him some day and tip him over the side and no one will be the wiser.’ The young sailor’s hands never paused in their work as he imparted this information to Wintrow. ‘Maybe it will be me,’ he added pleasantly.
The youth’s calm avocation of murder chilled Wintrow. Much as he disliked Torg, as difficult as it was for him not to hate the man, he had never considered killing him. That Mild had was disconcerting. ‘Don’t let someone like Torg distort your life and focus,’ he suggested quietly. ‘Even to think of killing for the sake of vengeance bends the spirit. We cannot know why Sa permits such men as Torg to have power over others, but we can deny him the power to distort our spirits. Yield him obedience where we must, but do not…’
‘I didn’t ask for a sermon,’ Mild protested irritably. He flung down the piece of line he’d been working on in disgust. ‘Who do you think you are? Why should you be telling me how to think or live? Don’t you ever just talk? Try it sometime. Just say out loud, “I’d really love to kill that dog-pronging bastard.” You’d be surprised what a relief it is.’ He turned his face away from Wintrow and spoke aloud in an apparent aside to a mast. ‘Dung. You try to talk to him like he’s a person and he acts like you’re on your knees begging his advice.’
Wintrow felt a moment of outrage, followed by a rush of embarrassment. ‘I didn’t mean it like that…’ He started to say he didn’t think he was any better than Mild, but the lie died on his lips. He forced himself to speak truth. ‘No. I never talk without thinking first. I’ve been schooled to avoid careless words. And in the monastery, if we see or hear someone putting himself on a destructive path, then we speak out to each other. But to help each other, not to…’
‘Well, you’re not in a monastery any more. You’re here. When are you going to get that through your thick head and start acting like a sailor? You know, it’s painful to watch how you let them all push you around. Get some gumption and stand up to them instead of preaching Sa all the time. Take a swing at Torg. Sure, you’ll get a beating for it. But Torg is a bigger coward than you are. If he thinks there’s even a chance you’re going to lay for him with a marlin spike, he’ll back off you. Don’t you see that?’
Wintrow tried for dignity. ‘If he makes me behave like he does, then he’s truly won. Don’t you see that?’
‘No. All I see is that you’re so afraid of a beating you won’t even admit you’re afraid of it. It’s just like your shirt the other day, when Torg put it up the mast to taunt you. You should have known you’d have to go get it yourself, so you should have just done it, instead of waiting until you were forced to do it. That made you lose to him twice, don’t you see?’
‘I don’t see how I lost at all. It was a cruel joke, not worthy of men,’ Wintrow replied quietly.
Mild lost his temper for an instant. ‘There. That’s what you do that I hate. You know what I mean, but you try to talk about it a whole different way. It isn’t about what is “worthy of men”. Here and now, it’s about you and Torg. The only way you could have won that round was pretending that you didn’t give a damn, that climbing the mast to get your shirt back wasn’t anything. Instead, you got sunburned sitting around acting too holy to go get your shirt…’ Mild sputtered off into silence, obviously frustrated by Wintrow’s lack of response. He took a breath, tried again. ‘Don’t you get it at all? The worst was him forcing you to climb the mast ahead of him. That was when you really lost. The whole crew thinks you’ve got no spine now. That you’re a coward.’ Mild shook his head in disgust. ‘It’s bad enough you look like a little kid. Do you have to act like one all the time?’
The sailor rose in disgust and stalked away. Wintrow sat staring down at the heap of rope. The other boy’s words had rattled him more than he liked to admit. He had pointed out, too clearly, that Wintrow now lived and moved in a different world. He and Mild were probably of an age, but Mild had taken up this trade, of his own inclination, three years ago. He was a sailor to the bone now, and no longer the ship’s boy since Wintrow had come aboard. No longer a boy at all in appearance. He was hard-muscled and agile. He was a full head taller than Wintrow as well, and the hair on his cheeks was starting to darken into proper whiskers. Wintrow knew that his slight build and boyish appearance were not a fault, were not something he could change even if he saw them as a fault. But somehow it had been easier in the monastery, where one and all agreed that each would grow in his own time and way. Sa’Greb would never be taller than a lad, and his short stocky limbs would have made him the butt of all jokes had he remained in his home village. But in the monastery he was respected for the verses he wrote. No one thought of him as ‘too short’, he was simply Sa’Greb. And the kind of cruel pranks that were the ordinary day-to-day of this ship would never have been expected nor tolerated there. The younger boys teased and shoved one another when they first arrived, but those with a penchant for bullying or cruelty were swiftly returned to their parents. Those attributes had no place among the servants of Sa.
He suddenly missed the monastery with a sharp ache. He forced the pain away before it could bring tears smarting to his eyes. No tears aboard this ship; no sense in letting anyone see what they could only view as a weakness. In his own way, Mild was right. He was trapped aboard Vivacia, either until he could make his escape or until his fifteenth birthday. What would Berandol have counselled him? Why, to make the best of his time
here. If sailor he must be, then he were wiser to learn it swiftly. And if he were forced to be a part of this crew for… however long it would be… then he must begin to form alliances at least.
It would help, he reflected, if he had had the vaguest idea of how one made friends with someone one’s own age, but with whom one had next to nothing in common. He took up a worn piece of line and began to pick it apart as he pondered this very thing. From behind him, Vivacia spoke quietly. ‘I thought your words had merit.’
Wonderful. A soulless wooden ship, animated by a force that might or might not be of Sa, found his words inspiring. Almost as soon as he had the unworthy thought, Wintrow suppressed it. But not before he sensed a vibration of pain from the ship. Had not he just been telling himself he needed allies? And here he was viciously turning on the only true ally he had. ‘I am sorry,’ he said quietly, knowing he scarcely needed to speak the words aloud. ‘It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.’
‘I’ve seen it before,’ Vivacia agreed listlessly. ‘And you are not alone in your bitterness. The whole crew is in turmoil. Scarcely a soul aboard feels content with his lot.’
He nodded to her observation. ‘There has been too much change, too fast. Too many men dismissed, others put on lesser wage because of their age. Too many new hands aboard, trying to discover where they fit into the order of things. It will take time before they feel they are all part of the same crew.’