The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  His long frustration found a target. ‘Rather say my father is intent on pleasing you, with no regard to what it does to me. If it were not for your strange nature, he would never have forced me to serve aboard you.’

  ‘My strange nature? And whence did that come? Not from my will. I am what your family has made me. You spoke of choices a moment ago, saying you no longer had any. I have never had any. I am more truly a slave than any mark on your face can make you.’

  Wintrow snorted in disbelief. His anger was rising to match her own. ‘You a slave? Show me the tattoo on your face, the manacles on your wrists. Easy for you to flaunt such words about. Vivacia, this is not something I play-act. This mark is on my face for the rest of my life.’ He forced the bitter words from his lips. ‘I’m a slave.’

  ‘Are you?’ Her voice was hard. ‘Before, you said you were a priest, and that no man could take that from you. But that, of course, was before you ran away. Since you have been dragged back, you have shown me otherwise. I had believed you had more courage, Wintrow Vestrit. More determination to shape yourself.’

  Outrage at her words overtook him. He sat up, to look over his shoulder and out at her. ‘What would you know of courage, ship? What would you know about anything that is truly human? What can be more degrading than to have someone take all decision from you, to tell you that you are a “thing” that “belongs” to him? To no longer have a say in where you will go or what you will do? How can one keep any dignity, any faith, any belief in tomorrow? You speak to me of courage—’

  ‘What can I know of courage? What can I know of such things?’ The look she swung upon him was terrible to behold. ‘When have I ever known anything else, than to be a “thing”, a possession?’ Her eyes blazed. ‘How dare you throw such things up to me!’

  Wintrow gaped at her. For a moment he felt stricken, and then he tried to recover himself. ‘It is not the same! It is more difficult for me. I was born a man and—’

  ‘Silence!’ her words slashed at him. ‘I never put my mark upon your face, but your family spent three generations putting your mark upon my soul. Yes, soul! This “thing” dares to claim one!’ She looked him up and down, and began to speak. Then she caught her breath; a strange look passed across her face, so that for an instant a stranger seemed to look out at him.

  ‘We are quarrelling,’ she observed in a sort of wonder. ‘We are at odds.’ She nodded to herself, seeming almost pleased. ‘If I can disagree with you, then I am not you.’

  ‘Of course not.’ For a moment he was confused by her foray into the obvious. Then his irritation with her came back. ‘I am not you and you are not me. We are separate beings, with separate desires and needs. If you have not realized that before now, then you need to. You need to start being yourself, Vivacia, and discover your own ambitions and desires and thoughts. Have you ever even stopped to think what you might truly want for yourself, other than possessing me?’

  With a suddenness that shocked him, she suddenly separated herself from him. She looked away from him, but it was far more than that. He gasped as if deluged with cold water, and a shiver ran over him followed by giddiness. If he had not already been sitting, he might have fallen. He hugged himself for the wind seemed suddenly colder on his skin. In wonder he admitted, ‘I didn’t realize how hard I was struggling to keep myself apart from you.’

  ‘Were you?’ she asked almost gently. Her anger of a few moments ago was gone. Or was it? He could no longer feel what she felt. He stood to look over the railing and found himself trying to read her emotions from the set of her shoulders. She didn’t look back at him.

  ‘We are better parted,’ she said with great finality.

  ‘But…’ he faltered through the next question. ‘I thought a liveship had to have a partner, one of her own family.’

  ‘It didn’t seem to concern you when you ran away. Don’t let it concern you now.’ Her voice was brusque.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ he ventured. His own anger was suddenly gone. Perhaps he had only been feeling hers? ‘Vivacia. I am here, whether I want to be or not. As long as I’m here anyway, there is no reason why…’

  ‘The reason is that you have always held back from me. You admitted that, just now. And another reason is that perhaps it is time I discovered who I am without you.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That is because when I was trying to tell you something important, earlier today, you were not listening.’ Her voice did not sound hurt. Instead there was a studied calm to it that suddenly reminded him of Berandol when his tutor tried to point out an obvious lesson.

  ‘I suppose I wasn’t,’ he admitted humbly. ‘I’ll listen now, if you want me, too.’

  ‘Now is too late,’ she said sharply. Then she amended it to, ‘I don’t want to tell you about it now. Perhaps I want to puzzle it out for myself. Maybe it’s time I did that for myself, instead of always having a Vestrit do it for me.’

  It was his turn to feel abandoned and shut out. ‘But… what shall I do?’

  She turned to look back at him, and there was almost kindness in her green eyes. ‘A slave would ask such a question and wait to be told. A priest would know the answer for himself.’ She almost smiled. ‘Or have you forgotten who you are without me?’ She asked the question, but desired no answer. She turned her back on him. Head up, she stared at the horizon. She had shut him out.

  After a time, he heaved himself to his feet. He found the bucket Mild had brought earlier and lowered it over the side. The rope jerked hard against his grip as it filled. It was heavy as he dragged it up. He picked up the rag he had used earlier. She did not watch him go as he left her, taking his bucket and rag below into the slave-holds.

  I don’t know if I can do this, she thought in despair, I don’t know how to be myself without help. What if I go mad? She looked past the islands and rocks that dotted the wide channel, ahead to the horizon. She spread out her senses, tasting both wind and water. She became immediately aware of serpents. Not just the fat white one that trundled along in her wake like a fat dog on a leash, but others that shadowed her at a distance. Resolutely she shut them out of her thoughts. She wished she could do the same for the misery of the slaves within her and the confusion of her crew. But the humans were too close to her, they touched her wizardwood in too many places. Despite herself, she was aware of Winttow as he went from slave to slave, wiping faces and hands with his cool wet rag, offering what small comforts he could. Both priest and Vestrit, she thought to herself. She felt oddly proud of the boy, as if he were hers somehow. But he was not. With each passing moment of this separateness, she realized more the truth of that. Humans and their emotions filled her, but they were not herself. She tried to accept them and encapsulate them and find herself as someone separate from them. Either she could not, or there was not much to herself.

  After a time, she lifted her head and set her jaw. If I am no more than a ship, then I shall be a proud ship. She located the rush of the channel’s current and edged herself into it. In tiny movements that were scarcely perceptible even to herself, she aligned her planking, trimming herself. Gantry was on the wheel now and she sensed his sudden pleasure in how well she ran before the wind. She could trust him. She closed her eyes to the rush of air past her face and tried to let the dreams come.

  ‘You lied to my captain.’ The Ophelia had a husky, courtesan’s voice, sweet as dark honey. ‘Boy,’ she added belatedly. She gave Althea a sideways glance. Ophelia, like many figureheads of her day, had been arrayed upon the beakhead of the ship, rather than positioned on the stern below the bowsprit. The glance she gave Althea over her bare and ample shoulder was an arch warning against lying.

  Althea didn’t dare reply. She was sitting cross-legged on a small catwalk that had been built, she’d been told, solely that Ophelia might socialize more easily. Althea shook the large dice-box in her hands. It was oversized, as were the dice within it. They were the property of the Ophelia. Upon di
scovering that there was an ‘extra’ hand aboard the ship, she had immediately demanded that Althea would spend part of her watches amusing her. Ophelia was very fond of games of chance, but mostly, Althea suspected, because they gave her plenty of time to gossip. She also suspected that the ship routinely cheated, but this was something she had decided to overlook. Ophelia herself kept tally-sticks of what each crew member owed her. Some of the sticks bore the notches of years. Althea’s stick already bore a generous number of notches. She opened the box, looked within, and frowned at it. ‘Three gulls, two fish,’ she announced, and tilted the box for the figurehead’s inspection. ‘You win again.’

  ‘So I do,’ Ophelia agreed. She smiled crookedly at Althea. ‘Shall we up the stakes this time?’

  ‘I already owe you more than I have,’ Althea pointed out.

  ‘Exactly. So, unless we change our wager, I have no chance of being paid. How about this: let’s play for your little secret.’

  ‘Why bother? I think you already know it.’ Althea prayed it was no more than her sex. If that was all Ophelia knew and all she could reveal, then she was still relatively safe. Violence aboard a liveship was not unheard of, but it was rare. The emotions that radiated from violence were too unsettling to the ship. Most of the ships themselves disdained violence, although it was rumoured that the Shaw had a mean streak, and had once even called for the flogging of an incompetent hand who’d spilled paint on him. But Ophelia, for all her blowsy airs, was a lady, and a kind-hearted one as well. Althea doubted she would be raped aboard such a ship, though the rough courtship of a sailor attempting to be gallant could be almost as fierce and bruising. Consider Brashen, for instance, she thought to herself and then she wished she hadn’t. Lately he popped into her mind at unguarded moments. She probably should have hunted him down in Candletown and bid him goodbye. That was all she was missing, putting a final close to things. Above all, she should never have let him have the last word.

  ‘Well, you are right, I do know at least a part of it.’ Ophelia laughed huskily. Her lips were painted scarlet, her own conceit. Her teeth were very white when she laughed. She lowered both her eyelashes and her voice as she said more softly, ‘And right now I’m the only one that knows it. As I’m sure you’d like it to remain.’

  ‘As I am sure it will,’ Althea replied sweetly, shaking the dice-box soundly. ‘For a lady as grand as yourself could never be so petty as to give away another’s secret.’

  ‘No?’ She smiled with a corner of her mouth. ‘Do you not think I have a duty to reveal to my captain that one of his hands is not what he thinks him to be?’

  ‘Mmm.’ It could be a very uncomfortable journey home, if Tenira decided to confine her. ‘So. What do you propose?’

  ‘Three throws. For each one I win, I get to ask you a question, which you will answer truthfully.’

  ‘And if I win?’

  ‘I keep your secret.’

  Althea shook her head. ‘Your stakes are not as high as mine.’

  ‘You can ask me a question.’

  ‘No. Still not enough.’

  ‘Well, what do you want, then?’

  Althea shook the dice-box thoughtfully.

  Despite the time of year, the day was almost warm, an effect of the hot swamps to the west of them. All this stretch of coast was swamp and tussocky islands and shifting sand bars that changed seasonally. The hot water that mingled with the brine here was terrible for ordinary ships; sea-worms and other pests throve in it. But it wouldn’t bother the Ophelia’s wizardwood hull. An occasional whiff of sulphur was the only price they had to pay for it. The wind stirred the tendrils of hair that had pulled free of Althea’s queue and warmed the ache of hard work from her joints. Despite her title of ‘extra’ hand, Tenira had found plenty to keep her busy. But he was a fair man and Ophelia was a beautiful and sweet-tempered ship. And Althea suddenly realized just how content she had been the last week or so.

  ‘I know what I want,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’m not sure even you can give it to me.’

  ‘You think very loud. Has anyone ever told you that? I think I like you almost as much as you like me.’ Ophelia’s voice was warm with affection. ‘You want me to ask Tenira to keep you on, don’t you?’

  ‘There’s more than that. I’d want him to know what I am, and still be willing to let me work for him.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Ophelia complained mockingly. ‘That is a high stake. And of course I couldn’t promise it, only that I’d try for it.’ She winked at Althea. ‘Shake the box, girl.’

  Ophelia won the first round easily.

  ‘So. Ask your question,’ Althea said quietly.

  ‘Not yet. I want to know how many questions I have, before I start.’

  The next two rounds went to her as swiftly as the first. Althea still could not see how she was cheating; the figurehead’s large hands all but overlapped on the dice-box.

  ‘Well,’ Ophelia purred as she handed the box to Althea for her to inspect her final winning throw. ‘Three questions. Let me see.’ She deliberated a moment. ‘What is your full true name?’

  Althea sighed. ‘Althea Vestrit.’ She spoke very softly, knowing the ship would nonetheless hear her.

  ‘No-o-o!’ Ophelia breathed out in scandalized delight. ‘You are a Vestrit! A girl from an Old Trader family runs off to sea, and leaves her own liveship behind. Oh, how could you, you wicked thing, you heartless girl! Have you any idea what you put the Vivacia through? And her just a little slip of a thing, barely quickened and you leave her next to alone in the world! Heartless, wicked… tell me why, quickly, quickly, or I shall die of suspense!’

  ‘It was not my choice.’ Althea took a breath. ‘I was forced off my family ship,’ she said quietly, and suddenly it all came back, the grief at her father’s death, her outrage at her disinheritance, her hatred of Kyle. Without thinking, she reached up to put her palm flat against the great hand that Ophelia reached down to her in sympathy. Like a floodgate opening, she felt the sudden outflow of her feelings and thoughts. She took a long shuddering breath. She had not realized how much she had missed simply being able to share with someone. The words spilled from her. Ophelia’s features grew first agitated, then sympathetic as she listened to Althea’s tale of her wrongs.

  ‘Oh, my dear, my dear. How tragic! But why didn’t you come to us? Why did you let them part you?’

  ‘Come to who?’ Althea asked dazedly.

  ‘Why, the liveships. It was all the talk of Bingtown harbour, when you disappeared and Haven took Vivacia over. More than a few of us were upset by it. We had always assumed you would take the Vivacia over when your father’s time was over. And she was so upset, poor thing. We could scarcely get a word out of her. Then that boy, um, Wintrow, came aboard, and we were so relieved for her. But even then she didn’t seem truly content. And if Wintrow was brought aboard against his will, why, then, that explains so much! But I still don’t see why you didn’t come to us.’

  ‘I never thought of it,’ Althea admitted. ‘It seemed a family thing. Besides. I don’t understand. What could the other liveships have done?’

  ‘You give us very little credit, darling. There is much we could have done, but the final threat was that we would have refused to sail. All of us. Until the Vivacia was given a willing family member.’

  Althea was shocked. After a moment she managed, ‘You would have done that, for us?’

  ‘Althea, honey, it would be for all of us. Perhaps you are too young to remember, but once there was a liveship called the Paragon. He was similarly abused, and driven mad by the abuse.’ Ophelia closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘At that time, we did not act. By our failure to aid one of our own, he was irreparably damaged. No liveship passes in or out of Bingtown harbour without seeing him, pulled out of the water and chained down, abandoned to his madness… Ships talk, Althea. Oh, we gossip just as much as sailors, and no one gossips like sailors. The pact was made long ago. If we had but known, we would have spoken up for yo
u. And if speaking did not work, then, yes, we would have refused to sail. There are not so many liveships that we can afford to ignore one of our own.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Althea said quietly.

  ‘Yes, well, and perhaps I have spoken too freely. You understand that if such a pact were well known, it might be… misconstrued. We are not mutinous by nature, nor would we ever enact such a rebellion if it were not needed. But neither would we stand by and see one of our own abused again.’ The drawling accents of a bawd had fallen from her voice. Althea now heard just as clearly the utterance of a Bingtown matriarch.

  ‘Is it too late to ask for help?’

  ‘Well, we’re a long way from home. It’s going to take time. Trust me to pass the word to other liveships as I encounter them. Don’t you try to speak for yourself. We can’t do much until the Vivacia herself comes into Bingtown harbour again. Oh, I do hope I’m there. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. At that time, I — or one of us, I do hope I get to be the one — will ask her for her side of your story. If she feels as aggrieved as you do, and I am sure she will, for I can read you almost as clearly as my own kin, then we will act. There are always one or two liveships in Bingtown harbour. We will speak to our families, and as other ships come in, they will join us, petitioning their families to speak to the Vestrits as well. The concept, you see, is that we pressure our own families to put pressure on your family. The ultimate pressure, of course, would be if we all refused to sail. It is, frankly, a stance we hope we shall never have to take. But we will if we have to.’

  Althea was silent for a long time.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Ophelia asked her at last.

  ‘That I have wasted the better part of a year, away from my own ship. I have learned a great many things, and I do believe I am a better sailor than I was. But that I will never be able to regain the wonder of those first months of her life. You are right, Ophelia. Heartless and wicked. Or maybe just stupid and cowardly. I don’t know how I could have left her alone to deal with Kyle.’