by Robin Hobb
The relief was shortlived as, a moment later, bodies began to splash overboard. The white serpent that Wintrow had supposed left far behind in the storm suddenly broke the surface to gape eagerly for the corpses. Several others, more gaudily coloured, lifted their heads at a distance to regard the ship both warily and curiously. One suddenly lifted a great crest around its neck and flourished its head with a challenging bellow.
Vivacia cried out in terror at the sight of them. ‘No! Get them away!’
Wintrow glanced at his father. Kyle’s eyes looked dead. ‘I have to go to her,’ Wintrow apologized. ‘Stay here.’
His father snorted. ‘There’s no sense in bothering. You’ve already lost her. You listened to that priest and let the pirates just board her. You just stood here and let the pirates take her. Just as last night you did nothing to warn us when the slaves rose against us.’ He shook his head. ‘For a time, last night, I thought I had misjudged you. But I was right all along.’
‘Just as I stood by and did nothing as you changed my ship into a slaver,’ Wintrow pointed out bitterly. He looked his father up and down slowly. ‘I fear I was right, too,’ he said. He looped off the wheel and went forward without a glance back. The ship, he told himself. I do it for the ship. He did not leave Kyle there alone and injured because he hated his father. He did not leave him there half-hoping someone would kill him. He did it only because the ship needed him. He moved toward the foredeck. When he reached the waist, he tried to thread his way inconspicuously through the gathered slaves there.
By daylight, the released slaves were an even more ungodly sight than they had been in the dimness of the holds. Chafed by chains and the movement of the decks beneath them, their ragdraped hides showed scabby and pale. Privation had thinned many to near bones. Some few wore better clothes, stripped from the dead or salvaged from the crew’s belongings. The map-faces seemed to have appropriated his father’s wardrobe and seemed to be more at ease than some of the others. Many had the blinking, confused gaze of animals caged long in the dark and suddenly released. They had broken into the ship’s stores. Barrels had been dragged out onto the deck and stove open. Some of them clutched handfuls of ship’s biscuit, as if to promise themselves food readily available. Freed of chains, they looked as if they could not yet recall how to move freely or act as they wished. Most shuffled still, and looked at each other only with the dull recognition that cattle have for one another. Humanity had been stolen from them. It would take them time to regain it.
He tried to move as if he were truly one of the slaves, slipping from one huddled knot to another. Sa’Adar and his map-faces stood in the centre of the ship’s waist, apparently offering a welcome to the pirates. The priest was speaking to three of them. The few words that Wintrow overheard seemed to be a flowery speech of welcome and thanks. None of the three looked particularly impressed. The tall man looked sickened by it. Wintrow shared his feelings.
They were not his concern. Vivacia was. Her futile pleas had died away to small inarticulate sounds. Wintrow caught sight of two map-faces on the lee side of the ship. They were systematically throwing the stacked bodies of slain crewmen and slaves overboard. Their faces were detached, their only comments relating to the gluttony of the white serpent who seized them. Wintrow caught a glimpse of Mild as he went over, and would recall for ever the image of his bare feet dangling from his ragged trousers as the white serpent seized his friend’s body in an engulfing maw. ‘Sa forgive us,’ he prayed on a breath. He spun away from the sight and got his hands on the ladder to the foredeck. He had started up it when he heard Sa’Adat order a map-face, ‘Fetch Captain Haven here.’ Wintrow halted an instant, then swarmed up it and raced to the bow. ‘Vivacia. I’m here, I’m here.’ He pitched his voice low.
‘Wintrow!’ she gasped. She turned to him, teached up a hand. He leaned down to touch it. The face she turned up to him was devastated with both shock and fear. ‘So many are dead,’ she whispered. ‘So many died last night. And what will become of us now?’
‘I don’t know,’ he told her truthfully. ‘But I ptomise that of my own will, I will nevet leave you again. And I will do all I can to stop any further killing. But you have to help me. You must.’
‘How? No one listens to me. I’m nothing to them.’
‘You are everything to me. Be strong, be btave.’
In the waist there was a sudden stir, a muttering that grew to an animalistic roar. Wintrow didn’t need to look. ‘They have my father down there. We have to keep him alive.’
‘Why?’ The sudden harshness in her voice was chilling.
‘Because I promised him I would try. He helped me through the night, he stood by me. And you. Despite all that is between us, he helped me keep you off the rocks.’ Wintrow took a breath. ‘And because of what it would do to me if I just stood by and allowed them to kill my father. Because of who that would make me.’
‘There is nothing we can do,’ she said bitterly. ‘I could not save Comfrey, I could not save Mild. Not even Findow for the sake of his fiddling could I save. For all these slaves have suffered, they have only learned to disregard suffering. Pain is the coin they use now in all their transactions. Nothing else teaches them, nothing else will satisfy them.’ An edge of hysteria was creeping into her voice. ‘And that is what they fill me with. Their own pain, and their hunger for pain and…’
‘Vivacia,’ he said gently, and then more firmly, ‘Ship. Listen to me. You sent me below to recall who I was. I know you did. And you were right. You were right to do so. Now. Recall who you are, and who has sailed you. Recall all you know of courage. We will need it.’
As if in response to his words, he heard Sa’Adar’s voice raised in command. ‘Wintrow! Come forth. Your father claims you will speak for him.’
A breath. Two. Three. Finding himself at the centre of all things, finding Sa at the centre of himself. Recalling that Sa was all and all was Sa.
‘Do not think you can hide yourself!’ Sa’Adar’s voice boomed out. ‘Come out. Captain Kennit commands it!’
Wintrow pushed the hair back from his eyes and stood as tall as he could. He walked to the edge of the foredeck and looked down on them all. ‘No one commands me on the deck of my own ship!’ He threw the words down at them and waited to see what would happen.
‘Your ship? You, made a slave by your father’s own hand, claim this ship as yours?’ It was Sa’Adar who spoke, not one of the pirates. Wintrow took heart.
He did not look at Sa’Adar as he spoke but at the pirates who had turned to stare at him. ‘I claim this ship and this ship claims me. By right of blood. And if you think that true claim can be disputed, ask my father how well he succeeded at it.’ He took a deep breath and tried to bring his voice from the bottom of his lungs. ‘The liveship Vivacia is mine.’
‘Seize him and bring him here,’ Sa’Adar ordered his map-faces disgustedly.
‘Touch him and you all die!’ Vivacia’s tone was no longer that of a frightened child, but that of an outraged matriarch. Even anchored and grappled as she was, she contrived to put a rock in her decks. ‘Doubt it not!’ she roared out suddenly. ‘You have soaked me with your filth, and I have not complained. You have spilled blood on my decks, blood and deaths I must carry with me for ever, and I have not stirred against you. But harm Wintrow and my vengeance will know no end. No end save your deaths!’
The rocking increased, a marked motion that the Marietta did not match. The anchor rope creaked complainingly. Most unnerving for Wintrow, the distant serpents lashed the surface of the sea, trumpeting questioningly. The ugly heads swayed back and forth, mouths gaping as if awaiting food. A smaller one darted forwards suddenly, to dare an attack at the white one, who screamed and slashed at it with myriad teeth. Cries of fear arose from Vivacia’s deck as slaves retreated from the railings and from the foredeck, to pack themselves tightly together. From the questioning tones of the cries, Wintrow surmised that few of them had any understanding of what the liveship was.
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Suddenly a woman broke free of the pirate group, to race across the deck and then swarm up onto the foredeck. Wintrow had never seen anything like her. She was tall and lean, her hair cropped close. The rich fabric of her skirts and loose shirt were soaked to her, as if she had stood watch on deck all night, yet she looked no more bedraggled than would a wet tigress. She landed with a thud before him. ‘Come down,’ she said to him, and her eyes made it more a command than her voice did. ‘Come down to him now. Don’t make him wait.’
He did not answer her. Instead he spoke to the ship. ‘Don’t fear,’ he told her.
‘We are not the ones who need to fear,’ Vivacia replied. He had the satisfaction of seeing the woman’s face go blank with astonishment. It was one thing to hear the liveship speak, another to stand close enough to see the angry glints in her eyes. She glowered scornfully at the woman on her deck. The Vivacia gave a sudden shake to her head that tossed her carved tresses back from her face. It was a womanly display, a challenge from one man’s female to another. The woman brushed back from her brow the short black strands that had fallen over her forehead and returned the figurehead’s stare. For an instant it shocked Wintrow that the two could look so different and yet so frighteningly alike.
Wintrow did not wait any longer. He leaped lightly from the foredeck to the waist of the ship. Head up, he strode across the deck to confront the pirates. He did not even look at Sa’Adar. The more he saw of the man, the less he thought of him as a priest.
The pirate chief was a large, well-muscled man. Dark eyes glinted above the burn scar on his cheek. A former slave himself, then. His unruly hair was caught back in a queue and further confined in a bright gold kerchief. Like his woman, his opulent clothing was soaked to him. A man who worked his own deck, then, Wintrow thought, and felt a grudging respect for that.
He met the man’s gaze. ‘I am Wintrow Vestrit, of the Bingtown Trader Vestrits. You stand on the decks of the liveship Vivacia, also of the Vestrit Family.’
But it was a tall pale man next to the scarred man who replied to him. ‘I am Captain Kennit. You address my esteemed first mate, Sorcor. And the ship that was yours is now mine.’
Wintrow looked him up and down, shocked beyond speech. Numbed as his nose was to the stench of humans, this man reeked of disease. He glanced down to where Kennit’s leg stopped, and took note of the crutch he leaned on, on the swollen leg that distended the fabric of his trousers as a sausage stuffs a casing. When he met Kennit’s pale eyes, he noted how large and fever-bright they were, how the man’s flesh clung to his skull. When Wintrow replied, he spoke gently to the dying man. ‘This ship can never be yours. She is a liveship. She can only belong to one of the Vestrit family.’
Kennit made a brief motion of his hand to indicate Kyle. ‘Yet this man claims he is the owner.’ Wintrow’s father yet managed to stand, and almost straight. Neither fear nor his physical pain did he permit to show. He was a man who waited now. Kyle spoke not a word to his son.
Wintrow shaped his words with care. ‘He “owns” her, yes, in the sense that one can own a thing. But she is mine. I do not claim to own her, any more than a father can claim to own his child.’
Captain Kennit looked him up and down disdainfully. ‘You look a bit young of a pup to be claiming any kind of a child. And by the mark on your face, I would say the ship owned you. I take it your father married into a Trader family, then, but you are blood of that line.’
‘I am a Vestrit by blood, yes.’ Wintrow kept his voice even.
‘Ah.’ Again the small gesture of his hand toward Kyle. ‘Then we don’t need your father. Only you.’ Kennit turned back to Sa’Adar. ‘That one you may have, as you requested. And those other two.’
There was a splash, and a trumpeting from one of the serpents. Wintrow looked starboard just in time to see two map-faces tip the other Jamaillian sailor over the edge. He went screaming until the white serpent cut his cry short with a snap. Wintrow’s own cry of ‘Wait!’ went unheeded. Vivacia gave a wordless cry of horror, and flailed at the serpents, but could not reach them. Map-faces were laying hold of his father. He sprang, not towards them, but at Sa’Adar. He gripped the man by the front of his shirt. ‘You promised them they would live! If they worked the ship for you through the storm, you promised them they would live!’
Sa’Adar shrugged and smiled down at him. ‘It’s not my will, boy, but that of Captain Kennit. He does not have to keep my word for me.’
‘You spin your word so thin, I doubt anyone could be bound by it,’ Wintrow cried furiously. He whirled on the men who had seized his father. ‘Set him free.’
They paid no attention to him as they forced his struggling father to the rail. Physically, Wintrow had no chance against them. He turned back to Captain Kennit, speaking quickly. ‘Set him free! You have seen how the ship is about the serpents! If you throw one of her own to them, she will be greatly angered.’
‘No doubt,’ the pirate captain replied lazily. ‘But he isn’t truly one of her own. So she’ll get over it.’
‘I won’t,’ Wintrow told him furiously. ‘And you will soon discover that if you cut one of us, we both bleed.’ His father was struggling, but wordlessly and without much strength. Beside the ship, the white serpent trumpeted eagerly. Wintrow knew he had not the strength to prevail against those two men, let alone however many would muster to Kennit’s command.
Kennit, however, was another matter. Swift as a snake striking, Wintrow seized the pirate captain by his shirt front. He jerked him forward, so that his crutch fell to the deck and he must depend on Wintrow or fall also. The sudden motion wrung a low cry of pain from the man. The mate sprang forwards with a snarl.
‘Back!’ Wintrow warned him. ‘And stop those men. Or I’ll kick him in that leg and spatter his rotten flesh all over the deck.’
‘Wait! Release him!’ The command came not from Sorcor, but the woman. The men halted uncertainly, looking from her to Sa’Adar. Wintrow did not waste time speaking to them. Kennit was all but fainting in Wintrow’s grasp. Wintrow gave him another shake and growled up into the man’s face. ‘You burn with fever and you stink of decay. As you stand here, on the one leg left to you, you may kill both my father and myself. But if you do, you will not possess my ship for more than a handful of days before you follow us down. And whoever you leave behind upon the Vivacia’s decks will perish, too. The ship will see to that. So I suggest we find a bargain between us.’
Captain Kennit lifted his hands slowly, to clutch at Wintrow’s wrists with both of his own. The boy didn’t care. At the moment, he had it within his power to cause the man incredible pain, perhaps enough pain to kill him with the shock of it. The deep lines in the pirate’s face told Wintrow that he, too, knew that. Beads of pain sweat shone on the pirate’s brow. For a scant moment, Wintrow’s eyes were caught by the odd wrist-brooch the man wore. A tiny face, like to the pirate’s own, grinned up at him gleefully. It unsettled him. He looked up again at the man’s face, met his eyes and stared deep into their coldness. They returned his gaze and seemed to look deep into the core of him. He refused to be cowed.
‘Well? What say you?’ Wintrow demanded, with the barest hint of a shake. ‘Do we bargain?’
The pirate’s mouth scarcely moved as, in the softest whisper imaginable, Wintrow heard him say, ‘A likely urchin. Perhaps something useful can be made of him.’
‘What?’ Wintrow demanded furiously. Savage anger rose in him at the man’s mockery.
An extremely strange look had come over the pirate’s face. Kennit stared down at him in a sort of fascination. For an instant, he seemed to recognize him, and Wintrow, too, felt an uncanny sense of having been here, done this and spoken these words before. There was something compelling in Kennit’s gaze, something that demanded to be acknowledged. The silence between them seemed to bind them together.
Wintrow felt a sudden prick against his ribs. The woman with the knife said, ‘Take Kennit gently, Sorcor. Boy, you have missed your c
hance to die swiftly. All you have bought is that you and your father will die together, each praying to be the first to go.’
‘No. No, Etta, stand aside.’ The pirate managed his pain well, never losing his educated diction. He still had to take a breath to speak on. ‘What is your bargain, boy? What do you have left to offer? Your ship, freely given?’ Kennit shook his head slowly. ‘I already have her, one way or another. So I am intrigued. Just what do you think you have to trade with?’
‘A life for a life,’ Wintrow offered slowly. He spoke knowing that what he proposed was likely beyond his skill to perform. ‘I have been trained in healing, for I was once promised to Sa’s priesthood.’ He glanced down at the pirate’s leg. ‘You need the skills I have. You know you do. I’ll keep you alive. If you allow my father to live.’
‘No doubt you’ll want to cut more of my leg off for such a bet.’ His question was contemptuous.
Wintrow looked up, searching the older man’s eyes for acceptance. ‘You already know that must be done,’ he pointed out to him. ‘You were simply waiting until the pain of the festering would make the pain of the removal seem like a relief.’ He glanced down at the stump again. ‘You have nearly waited too long. But I am still ready to honour the bargain. Your life for my father’s.’