The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

Somewhere there was great pain, but Wintrow and Vivacia watched the mate lean on the blade to force it into the boy’s flesh. Bright red blood welled. Clean blood, Wintrow observed somewhere. The colour is good, a thick deep red. But he spoke no word and the sound of the mate swallowing as he worked was almost as loud as the shuddering breath Kyle drew in as the blade sank deep into the boy’s knuckle. Gantry was good at this; the fine point of the blade slipped into the splice of the joint. As it severed it, Wintrow could feel the sound it made. It was a white pain, shooting up his finger bone, travelling swift and hot through his arm and into his spine. Ignore it, he commanded himself savagely. In a willing of strength unlike anything Vivacia had ever witnessed before, he kept the muscles of his arm slack. He did not allow himself to flinch or pull away. His only concession was to grip hard the wrist of his right hand with his left, as if he could strangle the coursing of the pain up his arm. Blood flowed freely now, puddling between his thumb and middle finger. It felt hot on Vivacia’s planking. It soaked into the wizardwood and she drew it in, cherishing this closeness, the salt and copper of it.

  The mate was true to Wintrow’s wishes. There was a tiny crunch as the last gristle parted under the pressure of the blade, and then he drew the knife carefully across to sever the last bit of skin. The finger rested on her deck now, a separate thing, a piece of meat. Wintrow reached down carefully with his left hand to pick up his own severed finger and set it aside. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he pinched the skin together over the place where his right forefinger had been.

  ‘Stitch it shut,’ he told the mate calmly as his own blood welled and dripped. ‘Not too tight; just enough to hold the skin together without the thread cutting into it. Your smallest needle and the finest gut you have.’

  Wintrow’s father coughed and turned away. He walked stiffly to the railing, to stand and stare out at the passing islands as if they held some deep and sudden fascination for him. Wintrow appeared not to notice, but Gantry darted a single glance at his captain. Then he folded his lips, swallowed hard himself, and took up the needle. The boy held his own flesh together as the mate stitched it and knotted the gut thread. Wintrow set his bloodied left hand flat to the deck, bracing himself as the mate bandaged the place where the finger had been. And the whole time he gave no sign, by word or movement, that he felt any pain at all. He might have been patching canvas, Vivacia thought. No. He was aware, somewhere, of the pain. His body was aware, for the sweat had flowed down the channel of his spine and his shirt was mired in it, clinging to him. He felt the pain, somewhere, but he had disconnected his mind from it. It had become only his body’s insistent signal to him that something was wrong, just as hunger or thirst was a signal. A signal that one could ignore when one must.

  Oh. I see. She did not, quite, but was moved at what he was sharing with her. When the bandaging was done, he rocked back on his heels but was wise enough not to try to stand. No sense in tempting fate right now. He had come too far to spoil it with a faint. Instead he took the cup of brandy that Mild poured for him with shaking hands. He drank it down in three slow swallows, not tossing it back but drinking as one drank water when very thirsty. The glass was bloodied with his fingerprints when he handed it back to Mild.

  He looked around himself. Slowly he called his awareness back into his body. He clenched his teeth against the white wave of pain from his hand. Black dots swam for an instant before his eyes. He blinked them away, focusing for a time on the two bloody handprints he had left on Vivacia’s deck. The blood had soaked deep into the wizardwood. They both knew that no amount of sanding would ever erase those twin marks. Slowly he lifted his gaze and looked around. Gantry was cleaning the knife on a rag. He returned the boy’s gaze, his brow furrowed but a small smile on his face. He gave him the smallest of nods. Mild’s face was still pale, his eyes huge. Kyle gazed out over the rail.

  ‘I’m not a coward.’ He didn’t speak loud, but his voice carried. His father turned slowly to the challenging words. ‘I’m not a coward,’ Wintrow repeated more loudly. ‘I’m not big. I don’t claim to be strong. But I’m neither a weakling nor a coward. I can accept pain. When it’s necessary.’

  A strange odd light had come into Kyle’s eyes. The beginnings of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. ‘You are a Haven,’ he pointed out with quiet pride.

  Wintrow met his gaze. There was neither defiance nor the will to injure, but the words were clear. ‘I’m a Vestrit.’ He looked down to the bloody handprints on Vivacia’s deck, to the severed forefinger that still rested there. ‘You’ve made me a Vestrit.’ He smiled without joy or mirth. ‘What did my grandmother say to me? “Blood will tell”. Yes.’ He stooped to the deck and picked up his own severed finger. He considered it carefully for a moment, then held it out to his father. ‘This finger will never wear a priest’s signet,’ he said. To some he might have sounded drunken, but to Vivacia his voice was broken with sorrow. ‘Will you take it, sir? As a token of your victory?’

  Captain Kyle’s fair face darkened with the blood of anger. Vivacia suspected he was close to hating his own flesh and blood at that moment. Wintrow stepped lightly toward him, a very strange light in his eyes. Vivacia tried to understand what was happening to the boy. Something was changing inside him, an uncoiling of strength was filling him. He met his father’s gaze squarely, yet in his own voice was nothing of anger, nor even pain as he stepped forward boldly, to a place close enough to invite his father to strike him. Or embrace him.

  But Kyle Haven moved not at all. His stillness was a denial, of all the boy was, of all he did. Wintrow knew in that instant that he would never please his father, that his father had never even desired to be pleased by him. He had only wanted to master him. And now he knew he would not.

  ‘No, sir? Ah, well.’ With a casualness that could not have been faked, Wintrow walked to the bow of the ship. For a moment he made a show of studying the finger he held in his hand. The nail, torn and dirtied in his work, the mangled flesh and crushed bone of it. Then he flipped the small piece of flesh overboard as if it were nothing at all, had never been connected to him in any way. There he remained, not leaning on the railing but standing straight beside her. He looked far ahead to a distant horizon. To a future he had been promised that now seemed far further than days or distance could make it. He swayed very slightly on his feet. No one else moved or spoke. Even the captain was still, his eyes fastened to his son as if their gaze could pierce him. Cords of muscle stood out on his neck.

  Gantry spoke. ‘Mild. Take him below. See him to his berth. Check on him at each bell. Come to me if he runs a high fever or is delirious.’ He rolled up his tools and tied the canvas round them. He opened a wooden case and sorted through some bottles and packets in it. He did not even look up as he added quietly, ‘You others should find your duties before I find them for you.’

  It was enough of a threat. The men dispersed. His words had been simple, the commands well within the range of his duties as mate. But no one could miss that in a very evasive way, Gantry had come between the captain and his son. He had done it as smoothly as he might for any other man aboard who had brought himself too sharply to the captain’s attention. It was not an unheard of thing for the mate to do; he’d done it often enough before when Kyle had first taken over the Vivacia. But never before had he interfered between the captain and his son. That he had done so now marked his acceptance of Wintrow as a genuine member of the crew, rather than as the captain’s spoiled son, brought along for the sake of his discipline.

  Mild made himself small and unnoticed as he waited. After a time, Captain Kyle turned without a word and stalked aft. Mild watched him go for a time, then jerked his eyes away, as if it were somehow shameful to watch his captain retreat to his own quarters.

  ‘And Mild,’ Gantry suddenly went on, as if there had been no pause. ‘Assist Wintrow in moving his gear and bedding to the forecastle. He’ll bunk with the rest of the men. Once he’s settled, give him this. No more
than a spoonful and bring the rest back to me right away. It’s laudanum,’ he added, raising his voice for Wintrow’s benefit. ‘I want him to sleep. It’ll speed the healing.’ He handed the boy the fat brown bottle, then rose and tucked the rest of his supplies under his arm. With no more than that, Gantry turned and walked away.

  ‘Yessir,’ Mild agreed. He moved up shyly to Wintrow’s side. When the other boy did not deign to notice him, he nerved himself to tug at Wintrow’s sleeve. ‘You heard what the mate said,’ he reminded him awkwardly.

  ‘I’d rather stay here.’ Wintrow’s voice had gone drifting and dreamy. The pain, Vivacia realized, must be paid for sooner or later. He had kept his body from reacting to it at the time, but the price now was complete exhaustion.

  ‘I know,’ Mild said, almost kindly. ‘But it was an order.’

  Wintrow sighed heavily and turned. ‘I know.’ With the docility of weariness, he followed the other boy below.

  A short time later Vivacia was aware that Gantry had gone back to take the wheel himself. It was something he did when he was disturbed and wanted time to think. He was not, she thought to herself, a bad mate. Brashen had been better, but Brashen had been with her longer. His touch on the wheel was sure and steady, reassuring but not distrustful of her.

  She looked down furtively and opened her hand. The finger lay in her palm. She did not think anyone had seen her catch it. She could not have explained why she had done so, save that it had been a part of Wintrow, and she was unwilling to lose even so small a fragment of him. It was so tiny compared to her own larger-than-life digits. A thin, jointed rod of bone, coated with flesh and skin, and at the end of it, the finely-ridged nail. Even crushed and bloody, it fascinated her with its delicacy and detail. She compared it to her own hand. Her carver had done a competent job, with her joints and nails and even the tendons on the back of her hand. But there was no fine pattern of follicles on the back of her fingers, no tiny hairs, no whorling prints on the pads of her fingers. She bore, she decided regretfully, only a passing resemblance to a true creature of flesh and blood.

  For a time longer she examined her treasure. Then she glanced furtively aft before she lifted it to her lips. She could not throw it away and she had no place to keep it, save one. She placed it in her mouth and swallowed. It tasted like his blood had smelled; of salts and copper and in an odd way, like the sea itself. She swallowed it down, to become part of herself. She wondered what would become of it, deep inside her wizardwood gullet. Then she felt it being absorbed, in much the same way the deck-planks had soaked up his blood.

  She had never eaten anything meat before. She had never known hunger or thirst. Yet in the taking of Wintrow’s severed flesh into herself, she satisfied some longing that had gone nameless before. ‘We are one, now,’ she whispered to herself.

  In a bunk in the forecastle, Wintrow turned over restlessly. The laudanum could soften but not still the throbbing in his hand. His flesh felt hot and dry, tight over the bones of his face and arm. ‘To be one with Sa,’ he said in a small cracked voice. The priest’s ultimate goal. ‘I shall be one with Sa,’ he repeated more firmly. ‘It is my destiny.’

  Vivacia had not the heart to contradict him.

  It was raining, the relentless pelting rain that was the hallmark of winter in Bingtown. It ran down his carved locks and dripped from his beard onto his bare chest. Paragon crossed his arms on his chest, and then shook his head, sending heavy drops flying. Cold. Cold was mostly something he remembered from sensations humans had stored for him. Wood cannot get cold, he told himself. I’m not cold. No. It was not a matter of temperature, it was just the annoying sensation of water trickling over him. He wiped a hand over his brow and shook the water from it.

  ‘I thought you said it was dead.’ A husky contralto voice spoke unnervingly near him. That was another problem with rain; the sound of it filled his ears, numbing them to important sounds like footsteps on wet sand.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded. His voice sounded angry. Anger was a better thing to show humans than fear. Fear only made them bolder.

  No one replied. He hadn’t expected anyone to answer, really. They could see that he was blind. They’d probably creep about and he’d never know where they were until the rock hit. He put all his concentration into listening for stealthy footsteps. But when the second voice spoke, it was not far from where the first had originated. He recognized it right away by the Jamaillian accent. Mingsley.

  ‘I thought it was. It never moved nor spoke at all the last time I was here. Dav — my intermediary assured me that it was alive still, but I doubted him. Well. This puts a whole new slant on this.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The Ludlucks have been reluctant to deal, and now I see why. I thought I was bidding on dead wood. My offer was far too low. I shall have to approach them again.’

  ‘I think I’ve changed my mind.’ The woman’s voice was low. Paragon couldn’t decide what emotion she was repressing. Disgust? Fear? He could not be sure. ‘I don’t think I want anything to do with this.’

  ‘But you seemed so intrigued earlier,’ Mingsley objected. ‘Don’t be squeamish now. So the figurehead is alive. That only increases our possibilities.’

  ‘I am intrigued by wizardwood,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘Someone brought me a tiny piece to work on once. The customer wanted me to carve it into the shape of a bird. I told him, as I tell you, that the work I do is determined by the wood I am given, not by any whim of my own or the customers. The man urged me to try. But when I took the wood from him, it felt… evil. If you could steep wood with an emotion, I’d say that one was pure malice. I couldn’t bear to even touch it, let alone carve it. I told him to take it away.’

  Mingsley chuckled as if the woman had told an amusing story. ‘I’ve found,’ he said loftily, as if speaking in generalities, ‘that the finely-tuned sensibilities of an artist are best soothed with the lovely sound of coins being stacked. I am sure we can get past your reservations. And I can promise you that the money from this would be incredible. Look at what your work brings in now, using ordinary wood. If you fashioned beads from wizardwood, we could ask… whatever we wanted. Literally. What we would be offering buyers has never been available to them before. We’re two of a kind in this. Outsiders, seeing what all the insiders have missed.’

  ‘Two of a kind? I am not at all sure we can even talk.’ There was no compromise to the woman’s tone, but Mingsley seemed deaf to it.

  ‘Look at it,’ he gloated. ‘Fine straight grain. Silvery colour. Plank after plank and I haven’t spotted a single knot. Not one! Wood like that, you can do anything with it. Even if we remove the figurehead, have you restore it, and sell it separately, there is still enough wizardwood in this hulk to found an industry. Not just your beads and charms; we have to think bigger than that. Chairs and bedsteads and tables, all elaborately carved. Ah! Cradles. Imagine the status of that, rocking your first-born to sleep in a cradle all carved from wizardwood. Or,’ the man’s voice suddenly grew even more enthused, ‘perhaps you might carve the headboard of the cradle with women’s faces. We could find out how to quicken them, teach them to sing lullabies, and we’d have a cradle that could sing a child to sleep!’

  ‘The thought makes my blood cold,’ the woman said.

  ‘You fear this wood then?’ Mingsley gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Don’t succumb to Bingtown superstition.’

  ‘I don’t fear wood,’ the woman snapped back. ‘I fear people like you. You charge into things blindly. Stop and think. The Bingtown Traders are the most astute merchants and traders this part of the world has ever seen. There must be a reason why they do not traffic in this wood. You’ve seen for yourself that the figurehead lives. But you don’t ask how or why! You simply want to make tables and chairs of the same substance. And finally, you stand before a living being and blithely speak of chopping up his body to make furniture.’

  Mingsley made an odd sound. ‘We have no real assurances that this is a live being,’ he sai
d tolerantly. ‘So it moved and it spoke. Once. Jumping jacks on sticks move, as do puppets on strings. Parrots talk. Shall we give them all the status of a human?’ His tone was amused.

  ‘And now you are willing to spout whatever nonsense you must to get me to do your will. I’ve been down to the North wall where the liveships tie up. As have you, I’ll wager. The ships I saw there are clearly alive, clearly individuals. Mingsley. You can lie to yourself and convince yourself of anything you wish. But don’t expect me to accept your excuses and half-truths as reasons I should work for you. No. I was intrigued when you told me there was a dead liveship here, one whose wood could be salvaged. But even that was a lie. There is no point to me standing out here in the rain with you any longer. I’ve decided this is wrong. I won’t do it.’

  Paragon heard her striding away, heard Mingsley call after her, ‘You’re stupid. You’re walking away from more money than you can even imagine.’

  Her footsteps halted. Paragon strained his ears. Would she come back? Her voice alone came, pitched in a normal tone but carrying clearly. ‘Somehow,’ she said coldly, ‘you have confused profitable and not profitable with right and wrong. I, however, have not.’

  Then he could hear her walking away again. She strode like an angry man. The rain began to pelt even harder; the drops would have stung human flesh. He heard Mingsley grunt with distaste at the new downpour.

  ‘Artistic temperament,’ he scoffed to himself. ‘She’ll be back.’ A pause. Then, ‘Ship. You, ship. Are you truly alive?’

  Paragon chose not to reply.

  ‘It’s not smart to ignore me. It’s only a matter of time before I own you. It’s in your own best interests to tell me what I need to know. Are you separate from the ship, or truly a part of it?’

  Paragon faced the pounding rain and did not reply.

  ‘Would it kill you if I cut you free of your ship?’ Mingsley asked in a low voice. ‘For that is what I intend to do.’