The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  Wintrow lifted shocked eyes to his father and met his gaze. He said nothing, setting his jaws firmly into silence.

  He drew back his hand, and when Wintrow refused to cower, he backhanded his son with all the force he could muster, felt the sharp sting in his own fingers as they cracked across the boy’s tattooed face. The boy flew backwards, his feet tangling in his clanking fetters, to fall hard on the deck. He lay where he had fallen, his defiance of his father perfect in his lack of resistance.

  ‘Damn you, damn you!’ he roared at Wintrow and charged down on the boy. He intended to heave him over the side and let him sink. It was not only the perfect solution, it was the only manly thing left to do. No one would blame him. The boy was an embarrassment, and bad luck besides. Get rid of the whimpering boy-priest before Wintrow could shame him any more.

  Beside the ship, a death-white head reared suddenly from the water, jaws gaping expectantly. The scarlet maw was shocking, as were the red eyes that glittered so hopefully. It was big, bigger far than Kyle had thought from his glimpses of it. It kept pace with Vivacia easily, even as it reared such a great length of itself out of the water. It waited for its meal.

  The tangle had been following its provider into what Shreever now recognized as one of its resting places when Maulkin suddenly arced himself in a hard loop and veered away. He drove himself through the Plenty as if chasing prey, yet Shreever saw nothing worthy of pursuit.

  ‘Follow,’ she trumpeted to the others, and set out after him. Sessurea was not far behind her. In a few moments she became aware that the rest of the tangle had not complied. They had remained with the provider, thinking only of their bellies and the pleasures of growing and shedding and growing yet again. She thrust their betrayal from her mind and redoubled her efforts to overtake Maulkin.

  She caught up with him only because he paused abruptly. Everything about his pose suggested fascination. His jaws were wide, gills flared and pumping as he stared.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded, and then caught the tiniest flavour in the water. Shreever could not decide what it was she tasted, only that the sensation was a welcome and a fulfilment of a promise. She saw Sessurea join them, marked the widening of his eyes as he too was seized by the taste.

  ‘What is it?’ he echoed her earlier question.

  ‘It is She Who Remembers,’ Maulkin said in reverent awe. ‘Come. We must seek her.’ He did not seem to notice that of all his tangle, only two of his followers had joined him. He had thought only for the hanging scent that threatened to disperse before he could track it to the source. He drove himself onward with a force and speed that Shreever and Sessurea could not match. They trailed him desperately, trying to keep sight of his golden false-eyes as they flashed through the murk. The fragrance grew stronger as they followed him, almost overwhelming their senses.

  When they again overtook Maulkin, he was hanging at the respectful distance from a provider who shone silver through the murky Plenty. Her scent hung thick in the water, sating them with its sweetness. Hope was a part of that scent, and joy, but thickest was the promise of memories, memories for all to share, knowledge and wisdom for the asking. Yet Maulkin hung back, and did not ask.

  ‘Something is wrong,’ he bugled quietly. His eyes were deep and thoughtful. A flickering of colour ran the length of him and then faded. ‘This is not right. She Who Remembers is like to us. So all the holy lore says. I see only the silver-bellied provider. And yet, all my senses tell me that She is near. I do not understand.’

  In confused awe they watched the silver provider as she moved languidly before them. She had a single attendant, a heavy white serpent who followed her closely. He hovered at the top of the Plenty, lifting his head out into the Lack.

  ‘He speaks to her,’ Maulkin blew out the thought softly. ‘He petitions her.’

  ‘For memories,’ Sessurea filled in. His ruff stood out in a shivering frill of anticipation.

  ‘No!’ Maulkin was suddenly incredulous, almost angry. ‘For food! He petitions only that she should bestow food upon him, food that she finds undesirable.’

  His tail lashed the atmosphere so suddenly and savagely that it thickened with muddy particles. ‘This is not right!’ he trumpeted. ‘This is a lure and a cheat! Her fragrance is that of She Who Remembers, and yet she is not of our kind. And that one speaks to her, and yet not to her, for she does not answer, and it was promised, forever promised, that she would always answer one who petitioned her. It is not right!’

  There was great pain in the depth of his fury. His mane stood out wide, welling toxins in a choking cloud. Shreever wove her head aside from it. ‘Maulkin,’ she besought quietly. ‘Maulkin, what must we do?’

  ‘I do not know,’ he replied bitterly. ‘There is nothing of this in holy lore, nothing of this in my tattered memories. I do not know. For myself, I shall follow her, simply to try to understand.’ He bugled lower. ‘If you choose to return to the rest of the tangle, I will not fault you. Perhaps I have led you awry. Perhaps all my memories have been a deception of my own poisons.’ His mane went suddenly limp with disappointment. He did not even look to see if they followed him as he trailed after the silver provider and her white escort.

  ‘Kyle! Let him go!’ Vivacia shrieked the words at him, but there was no command in them, only fear. She leaned wildly to swat at the white serpent. ‘Go away, you foul thing! Get away from me! You shall not have him, you shall never have him!’

  Her motion set the entire ship to rocking. She unbalanced her hull, making the entire ship list suddenly and markedly. She flailed at the serpent, ineffectual slapping motions of her massive wooden arms that rocked the ship wildly. ‘Get away, get away!’ she screamed at it, and then, ‘Wintrow! Kyle!!’

  As Kyle dragged Wintrow toward the rail and the expectant serpent, Vivacia threw back her head and shrieked, ‘Gantry! In Sa’s name, get up here! GANTRY!’

  Throughout the ship, other voices rose in a babel of confusion. Crew members shouted to one another, demanding to know what was going on, while in the holds slaves screamed wordlessly, terrified of anything, fire, shipwreck or storm, that might come upon them while they were chained down in the dark below the waterline. The fear and misery in the ship was suddenly palpable, a thick miasma that smelt of human waste and sweat and left a coppery taste in Kyle’s mouth and a greasy sheen of hopelessness on his skin.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Kyle heard himself shouting hoarsely, but was unsure of whom he ordered. He gripped Wintrow by the front of his tattered robe. He shook the unresisting boy, yet it was not the boy he battled.

  Gantry was suddenly on the deck, barefoot and shirtless, the pale confusion of interrupted sleep in his face. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, and then at sight of the serpent head that reared up near deck-high, he cried out wordlessly. In as close to panic as Kyle had ever seen the man, he snatched up a polishing stone from the deck. Two-handed he gripped it, and then he reared back and threw it at the serpent with such force that Kyle heard the cracking of his muscles. The serpent evaded it lazily with a gentle sway of its neck, and then slowly sank back down out of sight beneath the water. It was visible only as an unevenness in the pattern of the waves.

  As if awakening from a nightmare, all purpose and understanding of what he was doing suddenly left Kyle. He looked at the boy he gripped without any clear idea of what his intent had been. Strength suddenly forsook him. He let Wintrow fall to the deck at his feet.

  Chest heaving, Gantry turned to Kyle. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What set this off?’

  Vivacia was now uttering short panting shrieks, answered by incoherent cries from the slaves in the hold. Wintrow still sprawled where Kyle had dropped him. Gantry took two steps and looked down on the boy, then looked up at Kyle incredulously. ‘You did this?’ he asked. ‘Why? The boy is knocked senseless.’

  Kyle merely stared at him, speechless. Gantry shook his head and then glanced up at the sky as if imploring help from above. ‘Quieten down!’ he snapped at
the figurehead. ‘And I’ll see to him. But quieten down, you’re upsetting everyone. Mild! Mild, I want the medicine chest. And tell Torg I want the keys to these stupid chains, too. Easy. Easy, my lady, we’ll soon have things put as right as I can make them. Please. Calm down. It’s gone now, and I’ll see to the boy.’ To a gaping sailor he shouted, ‘Evans. Go below, wake my watch. Have them go among the slaves and calm them, tell them there’s nothing to fear.’

  ‘I touched it,’ Kyle heard Vivacia tell Gantry breathlessly. ‘I hit it, and when I hit it, it knew me. Only I wasn’t me!’

  ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Gantry repeated doggedly.

  The ship lurched again as Vivacia leaned far down to scrub her hands in the sea. She was still making small, frightened sounds.

  Kyle forced himself to look down at his son. Wintrow was out cold. He massaged the puffy knuckles of his right hand and abruptly knew how hard he’d hit the boy. Hard enough to loosen teeth at least, possibly enough to break his face. Damn. He’d been going to feed the boy to the serpent. His own son. He knew he’d struck Wintrow, he recalled doing it. What he could not recall was why. What had goaded him into it? ‘He’s all right,’ he told Gantry gruffly. ‘More than likely he’s faking it.’

  ‘More than likely,’ Gantry agreed sarcastically. He took a breath as if to speak, then suddenly seemed to change his mind. A moment later he said in a low voice, ‘Sir, we should make some sort of a weapon. A pike or a spear. Something. For that monster.’

  ‘We’d probably just make it angry,’ Kyle said uneasily. ‘Serpents follow slavers all the time. I’ve never heard of them attacking the ship itself. It will be content with the dead slaves.’

  Gantry looked at him as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. ‘What if we don’t have any?’ he said, speaking very clearly. ‘What if we’re as smart and good as you said we’d be, and we don’t kill half of them off on the way? What if it gets hungry? And what if the ship just doesn’t like it? Shouldn’t we try to get rid of it for her?’ Belatedly his eyes roved over the idle sailors that were gathering to overhear this exchange. ‘Get back to your tasks!’ he barked at them harshly. ‘If any man has nothing to do, let me know. I’ll find him something.’ As the sailors dispersed, he swung his attention back to Wintrow. ‘I think he’s just stunned,’ he muttered. ‘Mild!’ he bellowed again, just as the young sailor bounded up with keys in hand and the medicine box under his arm.

  Wintrow was stirring, and Gantry helped him sit up. He sat, hands braced wide on the deck behind him, and watched dazedly as Gantry unfastened the shackles on Wintrow’s feet. ‘This is stupid,’ the man hissed angrily. He glared at the oozing sores on Wintrow’s ankles, then barked an order over his shoulder. ‘Mild, haul him up a bucket of saltwater.’ He turned his attention back to the boy before him. ‘Wintrow, wash those out well with saltwater and then bandage them. Nothing like seawater for healing a cut. Leaves a good, tough scar. I should know, I got enough of them.’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste. ‘And wash yourself while you’re at it. Those chained below have an excuse for stinking. You don’t.’

  Gantry glanced up at Kyle, who still stood over them. He met his captain’s eyes and dared to shake his head in disapproval. Kyle tightened his jaw but said nothing. Then Gantry stood and walked away from them, to where he could look down at Vivacia. She had craned her head over her shoulder to watch what was going on. Her eyes were very wide and she clutched her hands together at her breast. ‘Now,’ he said levelly. ‘I’ve had enough of this. Exactly what is it that you want to make you behave?’

  Confronted so baldly, Vivacia almost recoiled from him. She was silent.

  ‘Well?’ Gantry demanded, indignation slipping into his voice. ‘You’ve tried the patience of every man aboard you. Just what in Sa’s name do you want to make you happy? Music? Company? What?’

  ‘I want…’ She paused and seemed to lose her thought. ‘I touched it, Gantry. I touched it. And it knew me and it said I wasn’t Vivacia nor was I of the Vestrits. It said I belonged to them.’ She was babbling now, Kyle thought in disgust. Babbling like an idiot.

  ‘Vivacia,’ Gantry told her sternly. ‘Serpents don’t talk. It said nothing, it just frightened you. It rattled us all, but it’s over. No one’s badly hurt. But you could have hurt us, with your wild behaviour and—’

  She didn’t seem to be listening. Vivacia furrowed her wooden brow and frowned, then seemed to recall his first question. ‘What I want is to go back to the way it was before.’ It was a desperate plea.

  ‘Before what?’ Gantry demanded in despair. Kyle knew the man was already defeated. No sense in asking the ship what she wanted, she always wanted what no one could give her. She was spoiled, that was all, a spoiled female with vast ideas of her own importance. Trying to please her was the wrong tack. The more Gantry catered to her, the more she’d bully them all. It was the nature of women. Why hadn’t they carved a man for a figurehead? A man could have understood reason.

  ‘Before Kyle,’ Vivacia said slowly. She turned to glare at him. ‘I want Ephron Vestrit back at the helm. And Althea on board. And Brashen.’ She lifted her hands to cover her face and turned away from them. ‘I want to be sure of who I am again.’ Her voice shook like a child’s.

  ‘I can’t give you that. No man can give you that.’ Gantry shook his head. ‘Come, ship. We’re doing our best. Wintrow’s out of the chains. I can’t force him to be happy. I can’t force the slaves to be happy. I’m doing the best I can.’ The man was close to pleading.

  Vivacia shook her head slowly. ‘I just can’t go on like this,’ she said, and there were tears in her muffled voice. ‘I feel it all, you know. I feel it all.’

  ‘Bilge,’ Kyle growled. Enough of this. He mastered the disgust he felt for his own unbridled anger. So he’d lost his temper. Well, Sa knew he’d been pushed hard enough lately. It was time to let them all know he’d tolerate no more nonsense. He stepped up to the railing beside his mate. ‘Gantry, don’t encourage her to whine. Don’t encourage her to be childish.’ He looked down on Vivacia and their eyes met. ‘Ship. You’ll sail. That’s all there is to it. You can sail willing or sail like a cow-hide raft, but we’ll sail you. I don’t give a rat’s arse for whether you’re happy or not. We’ve got a task to do and we’ll do it. If you don’t like having a hold full of slaves, why then, sail faster, damn you. The sooner we get to Chalced the sooner we’re rid of them. As for Wintrow, there’s no making him happy. He didn’t want to behave as my son, he didn’t want to be the ship’s boy. He made himself a slave. So that is what he is now. That’s your likeness needled into his face. He’s yours, to do with as you will and you’re welcome to him. If he doesn’t please you, you can throw him over the side for all I care.’

  Kyle stopped. He was out of breath and they were all staring at him. He didn’t like the look on Gantry’s face. He was staring at Kyle as if he were mad. There was a deep uneasiness behind his eyes. Kyle didn’t like it. ‘Gantry. Take the watch,’ he snapped at him. He glanced aloft. ‘Get her canvas up, every scrap of it, and see the men scramble lively. Move this tub along. If a seagull farts near us, I want the wind from it caught.’ He strode off to go back to his cabin. He’d bought incense in Jamaillia City, on the advice of one of the experienced slaver captains. He’d burn that and get away from the stink of slaves for a time. He’d get away from all of them for a time.

  The ship had returned to near calm. A slaveship was never completely peaceful. Always, there were cries from somewhere in the hold. People cried out for water, for air, begging voices rose, pleading for the simple light of day. Fights broke out amongst the slaves. It was astounding, how much damage two closely-chained men could work upon each other. The cramped quarters and the stench, the stingy rations of ship’s bread and water made them turn on one another like rats in a rain barrel.

  Not so different, Wintrow thought, from Vivacia and me. In their own way, they were like the slaves chained cheek by jowl below. They had no space to be separate
from one another, not even in their thoughts and dreams. No friendship could survive such an enforced confinement. Especially not when guilt was an invisible third sandwiched between them. He had abandoned her, left her to her fate. And for her, the one whispered comment when she had first seen his marked face. ‘This falls upon me,’ she had said. ‘But for me, none of this would have befallen you.’

  ‘That is true,’ he had had to agree with her. ‘But that does not mean it is your fault.’

  By her stricken look, he had known that his words wounded her. But he had been too weary and despondent on his own behalf to try to soften them with yet more useless words.

  That had been hours ago, back before his father had attacked him. Not a sound had she uttered since Gantry had left them. Wintrow had huddled in the angle of her prow, wondering what had possessed his father. He wondered if he would be suddenly attacked again. He had been too dispirited to speak. He had no idea what had stilled Vivacia’s tongue but her silence was almost a relief.

  When she finally did speak, her words were banal. ‘What are we going to do?’

  The futility of the question jabbed him. He refolded the wet rag to find a cooler spot, then held it against his swollen face. The bitter words rose to his lips spontaneously. ‘Do? Why do you ask me? I no longer have any choices as to what I will do. Rather, you should tell your slave what you command.’

  ‘I have no slave,’ Vivacia replied with icy dignity. Outrage crept gradually into her voice. ‘If you wish to please your father by calling yourself a slave, say you belong to him. Not me.’