Mad Ship

by Robin Hobb

  “Now there’s something to look forward to,” Amber muttered.

  Althea hung her head over the edge of her bunk and peered down at her curiously. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You really hate this that much?”

  Amber didn’t look at her. She stared at the bulkhead that was in front of her nose. “All my life, I’ve always had somewhere I could go to be alone. To go without solitude is like going without salt.”

  “Brashen offered you the use of his room, when he is not in it.”

  “It used to be my room,” Amber said without rancor. “Now it is his, with his things in it. That is all the difference in the world. I cannot settle myself in there. I feel like an intruder. Nor can I latch the door against the world.”

  Althea pulled her head back up. She racked her brains. “It would not be much, but you could curtain your bunk with canvas. It would be a tiny space, but Jek and I would respect it. Or you could learn to climb the rigging. Up at the top of the mast is an entirely different world.”

  “Exposed to everyone’s view,” Amber suggested sarcastically. But there was a note of interest in her voice.

  “Up there, the sky and the ocean are so large that the little world below you does not matter. In reality, once you are up the mast, you are almost invisible to anyone on deck. Take a look up there the next time you’re on deck.”

  “Perhaps I shall.” Her voice was low again, almost subdued.

  Althea judged it was best to leave her alone. She had seen this before, in new sailors. Either Amber would adapt to shipboard life, or she’d crack. Somehow, Althea could not imagine her going to pieces. She had an advantage over most new hands in that she had not come to the sea to make an exciting new life for herself. The adventurers fared the worst: they woke up on the fifth day to realize that the monotonous food, enforced companionship and general squalor of the crew quarters were the norm of the glorious new life they had embarked upon. Those were the ones who not only broke, but often took others with them.

  Althea closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Soon enough she’d have to be out on deck again and she had problems of her own to wrestle. The weather had been fair and the Paragon was sailing as well as any ordinary ship would have. The ship had not been jolly, but he had not descended into one of his morose moods, either. For those blessings, she thanked Sa. The other side of the coin was that she was having problems with the crew. In fact, she was having the very kind of problems that Brashen had predicted she would, damn him. Somehow, that made it impossible to go to him for advice. She had been so cocky, back on the beach. She had been sure she could handle herself and the men under her command. Now her crew seemed bent on proving the opposite.

  Not all of them, to be fair, she reminded herself. Most, she thought, would have fallen into line well enough, if not for Haff. He bucked her at every opportunity. Worse, he was charismatic. The others easily fell in with his attitude. He was handsome, clean and engaging. He always had a cheery word or a jest for his shipmates. He sprang to it readily when another man was in trouble. He was the ideal shipmate, well liked by the rest of the crew. His own natural leadership, she decided wearily, was exactly why he was always at odds with her. Her sex was the rest of the issue. He seemed to have no problems taking orders from Brashen or Lavoy. That was another reason why she could not take her grievances to them. This was something she’d have to unknot for herself.

  If the man had been openly insubordinate, she could have dealt with it openly. But he defied her subtly and made her appear incompetent to her crew. She imagined herself making that complaint to Brashen and winced. Haff was clever. If she was paired with him, hauling on a line, he held back his strength, forcing her to work to the limits of hers. The one time she had told him to put his back into it, he had looked shocked at her rebuke. The other men had glanced at them in surprise. Paired with anyone else, Haff always did more than his share. It made her look weak.

  She was not as strong as the men she worked alongside. She could not change that. Nevertheless, damn him, she did her share, and it humiliated her when he made the others think she could not keep up. When she set him to a task on his own, he did it swiftly and well. He had an air of rakish showmanship that turned the simplest job aloft into a feat. Disdain for her command and a certain relish of risk: uncomfortably, she recalled a young sailor named Devon who had shared those traits and how she had admired him. No wonder her father had gotten rid of him.

  Haff’s other trick was to defer to her as a woman rather than as the mate in command. He would make a sly show of stepping aside to allow her to precede him, or offering her a rope or tool as if it were a cup of tea. This last brought snickers from the other men, and today Lop had been fool enough to imitate it. He had been clumsily obvious as he bobbed his head obsequiously to her. Their positions had been right and she had delivered a substantial kick to his butt that had sent him down the companionway ahead of her. There had been a general laugh of support for her, ruined when some faceless wag called, “No luck, Lop. She likes Haff better’n you.” From the corner of her eye, she had seen Haff grin broadly at the remark and waggle his tongue. She had pretended not to have seen, simply because there was no good way to deal with it. She thought she had pulled it off until she saw the look on Clef’s face. Disappointment was writ large on his face. He had turned aside from her, shamed by her shame.

  That as much as anything had convinced her she had to act the next time Haff stepped out of line. The problem was, she still had no idea what to do. Second mate was a hard position to hold down. She was both of the crew and above them. Neither officer nor honest seaman, she had to walk this line alone.

  “What would you like to do about Haff?” Amber asked her quietly from the bottom bunk.

  “It spooks me when you do that,” Althea complained.

  “I’ve explained it before. It’s an obvious trick, used at every fair you’ve ever been to. You’ve been shifting about up there as if your bunk is full of ants. I simply picked the most likely cause of your anxiety.”

  “Right,” Althea replied skeptically. “To answer your question, I’d like to kick him in the balls.”

  “Exactly the wrong tack,” Amber told her in a superior way. “Every man that witnessed it would wince and imagine himself in Haff’s place. It would be seen as a whore’s trick, a woman hitting a man where he is most vulnerable. You can’t be seen that way. You have to be perceived as a mate giving an uppity hand a take-down.”

  “Suggestions?” Althea asked warily. It was unnerving to have Amber cut so swiftly to the heart of a problem.

  “Prove you’re better than he is, that you deserve to be second mate. That’s his real problem, you know. He thinks that if you stepped aside and became a passenger, he’d step up into your spot.”

  “And he would,” Althea conceded. “He’s a competent sailor and a natural leader. He’d be a good second, or even a first.”

  “Well, there’s your other option. Step aside and let him be second.”

  “No. That’s my spot,” Althea growled.

  “Then defend it,” Amber suggested. “But because you’re already on top, you have to fight fair. You have to show him up. Wait for your moment, watch for it, then seize it. It has to be real. The rest of the crew has to have no doubt. Prove you’re a better sailor than he is, that you deserve what you’ve got.” Althea heard Amber shift in her own bunk.

  Althea lay still, pondering a disturbing idea. Was she better than Haff? Did she deserve to be mate over him? Why shouldn’t he take the position from her? Althea closed her eyes. That was something she’d have to sleep on.

  With a muttered oath, Amber kicked at her footboard, then turned her pillow over. She settled down, only to shift again an instant later.

  “I haven’t your gift. Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?” Althea called down.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Amber complained. “No one can.”

  “Try me,” Althea challenged her.

 
Amber took a long breath and sighed it out. “I’m wondering why you aren’t a nine-fingered slave-boy. I’m wondering how Paragon can be both a frightened boy and a cruel-hearted man. I’m wondering if I should be aboard this ship at all, or if I was supposed to stay in Bingtown and watch over Malta.”

  “Malta?” Althea asked incredulously. “What does Malta have to do with any of this?”

  “That,” Amber pointed out wearily, “is exactly what I would love to know.”

  “SOMETHING IS WRONG, SIR! WITH DIVVYTOWN, I MEAN.”

  Gankis stood framed in Kennit’s stateroom door. The old pirate looked more distressed than Kennit had ever seen him. He had taken off his hat and stood wringing it. Kennit felt his stomach turn with a sudden premonition. He didn’t let it show on his face.

  He raised one eyebrow queryingly. “Gankis, there are many things wrong with Divvytown. Which particular one has brought you to my door?”

  “Brig sent me, sir, to tell you the smell is bad. The smell of Divvytown, that is. Well, it’s always bad, coming into Divvytown, but now it’s real bad. Like wet ashes—”

  There. Like an icy finger in the small of his back. The moment the old hand mentioned it, Kennit was aware of it. It was faint inside the closed cabin, but there. It was the old smell of disaster, one he had not scented in a long time. Odd, how a smell brought memories back sharper than any other prod to the senses. Screaming in the night, and flowing blood, both slick and sticky. Flames, lifting to the sky. Nothing quite like the smell of burned houses, mixed with death.

  “Thank you, Gankis. Tell Brig I’ll be up shortly.”

  The door shut behind the sailor. He had been very troubled. Divvytown was as close to a homeport as this crew had. They all knew what the smell meant, but Gankis hadn’t been able to bring himself to say it. Divvytown had been raided, probably by slavers. It was not an unusual event in a pirate town. Years ago, under the old Satrap, there had been fleets of raiding ships that had cruised these waters just for that purpose. They had found and wiped out a great many of the old pirate strongholds. Divvytown had weathered those years, undiscovered. In the lax years of the old Satrap’s dying reign and Cosgo’s incompetent one, the pirate towns had been undisturbed. They had learned both carelessness and prosperity. He had tried to warn them, but no one in Divvytown would listen to him.

  “The circle is closing.”

  He glanced down at the charm on his wrist. The be-damned thing was more nuisance than luck-piece anymore. It spoke only when it suited it, and then it mouthed nothing but threats, warnings and bleak prophecies. He wished he had never had it created but he could scarcely get rid of it. There was far too much of himself in it to trust it if it fell into other hands. Likewise, to destroy a living sculpture of one’s own face must invite a like destruction to oneself. So he continued to tolerate the little wizardwood charm. Someday, perhaps, it might be useful. Perhaps.

  “I said, the circle closes. Do you not take my meaning? Or are you growing deaf?”

  “I was ignoring you,” Kennit said pleasantly. He glanced out the window of his stateroom. The Divvytown harbor was coming into sight. Several masts stuck up from the water. Beyond them, the town had burned. The jungly forest beyond the town showed signs of scorching. Divvytown’s docks had survived as freestanding platforms that pointed at the shore with charred-off beams. Kennit felt a pang of regret. He had come back here, bringing his richest trove ever, in the expectation that Sincure Faldin could dispose of it at a tidy profit. No doubt, he had had his throat slit and his daughters and wife were dragged off for slaves. It was all damnably inconvenient.

  “The circle,” the charm went on inexorably, “seems to be composed of several elements. A pirate captain. A liveship for the taking. A burned town. A captive boy, family to the ship. Those were the elements of the first cycle. And now, what do we have here? A pirate captain. A liveship for the taking. A captive boy, family to the ship. And a burned town.”

  “Your analogy breaks down, charm. The elements are out of order.” Kennit moved to his mirror, then leaned on his crutch as he made a final adjustment to the curled ends of his mustache.

  “I still find the coincidence compelling. What other elements could we add? Ah, how about a father held in chains?”

  Kennit twisted his wrist so that the charm faced him. “Or a woman with her tongue cut out? I could arrange one of those, as well.”

  The tiny face narrowed its eyes at him. “It goes around, you fool. It goes around. Do you think that, once you have set the grindstone in motion, you can escape your ultimate fate? It was destined for you, years ago, when you chose to follow in Igrot’s footsteps. You will die Igrot’s death.”

  He slammed the charm facedown on his table. “I will not hear that name from you again! Do you understand me?”

  He looked at the charm again. It smiled up at him serenely. On the back of his hand, blood spread under the surface of his skin. He tugged on his shirt cuff to conceal both the charm and the bruise with a fall of lace. He left his cabin.

  The stench was much stronger on deck. The swampy harbor of Divvytown had always had a stink of its own. Now the smells of burned homes and death joined it. An uncommon silence had fallen over his crew. The Vivacia moved like a ghost ship, pushed slowly by a faint wind over the sluggish water. No one cried out, nor whispered or even moaned. The terrible silence of acceptance weighed the ship down. Even the figurehead was silent. Behind them, in their wake, the Marietta came in a similar pall.

  Kennit’s eyes went to Wintrow, standing on the foredeck of the Vivacia. He could almost feel the numbness they shared. Etta was beside him, gripping the rail and leaning forward as if she were the ship’s figurehead. Her face was frozen in a strange grimace of disbelief.

  The destruction was uneven. Three walls of a warehouse stood, like hands cupped around the destruction within. A single wall of Bettel’s elegant bagnio still stood. Here and there, isolated hovels had failed to catch well enough to burn. The soggy ground the town was founded on had saved these few places.

  “There’s no point in tying up here,” Kennit observed to Brig. The young first mate of the Vivacia had drifted up wordlessly to his side. “Bring her about and let’s find another port.”

  “Wait, sir! Look! There’s someone. Look there!” Gankis raised his voice boldly. The scrawny old man had climbed the rigging, the better to look down on the town’s destruction.

  “I see nothing,” Kennit declared, but an instant later, he did. They came drifting in from the jungle, in ones and twos. The door of one hovel was flung open. A man stood in the open door, holding a sword defiantly. His head was bound in a dirty brown bandage.

  They tied up to the skeletal pilings that were the remnants of the main dock. Kennit rode in the bow of the ship’s boat as it carried him ashore. Sorcor in the Marietta’s boat kept pace with him. Both Etta and the boy had insisted on accompanying him. Grudgingly, he had said that the whole crew might have a brief shore time, provided a skeleton crew always manned the ship. Every man aboard seemed intent on getting ashore, to prove the destruction to himself. Kennit would have been content simply to leave. The burned town unsettled him. He told himself there was no telling what the desperate survivors might do.

  The Divvytown survivors had gathered into a crowd before either gig touched the shore. They stood like ragged, silent ghosts, waiting for the pirates to land. Their silence seemed ominous to Kennit, as did the way he felt every pair of eyes follow him. The boat nudged suddenly into the mucky shoreline. He sat still, his hands gripping his crutch as the crew jumped out and dragged the boat further up. He did not like this one bit. The shining muck of the beach was black, with a thin oily overlay of greenish algae. His crutch and his peg were bound to sink into the muck as soon as he got out of the boat. He was going to look very awkward. Worse, he would be vulnerable if the crowd decided to rush him. He remained seated, staring over the crowd and waiting for some definite sign of their temperament.

  Then, from the Mar
ietta’s boat, he heard Sorcor exclaim, “Alyssum! You’re alive!” The burly pirate was instantly over the side. He sloshed through the water and muck up to the waiting crowd. It parted before his charge. He seized a shrinking girl in his arms and swept her to his barrel chest. It took Kennit a moment to recognize her. The bedraggled creature had been much more fetching when Sincure Faldin had presented her and her sister Lily as prospective brides for Kennit and Sorcor. He recalled that Sorcor had seemed infatuated with the girls, but he had never suspected that he had continued the courtship. Sorcor stood gripping Alyssum Faldin now like a bear with a calf in its hug. She had wrapped her pale arms around the pirate’s thick neck and was holding on to him. Amazing. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but Kennit was willing to suppose they indicated joy. Otherwise, she would most likely be screaming as well. So the girl was glad to see him. Kennit decided it was safe to get out of the boat.

  “Give me your arm,” he told Wintrow. The boy looked pale. It would be good to give him something to do.

  “The whole town is gone,” he said stupidly as he climbed over the side and held out his arm to the pirate.

  “Some might think that an improvement,” the pirate captain observed. He stood in the boat, regarding the filthy water with distaste. Then he stepped over the side, peg first. As he had feared, it plunged into the soft muck. Only the boy’s shoulder saved him from going knee deep, and he still nearly lost his balance. Then Etta was there, gripping his other arm and steadying him as he clambered out. They slogged up the mucky shore until they reached firmer ground. He spotted a rock protruding from the muck and chose that as a stopping place. He planted his peg firmly atop it and looked around.

  The devastation had been thorough. The new growth of jungle in the scorched areas told him that the raid had likely been weeks ago, but there was no sign that anyone had tried to rebuild. They were right. It was pointless. Once the slavers had discovered a settlement, they would return again and again until they had harvested every person there. Divvytown, one of the oldest of the pirate settlements, was dead. He shook his head to himself. “I don’t know how many times I told them they needed to put up two watchtowers and some ballista. Even one tower with a watchman would have given them enough warning that they could have fled. But no one would listen to me. All they could worry about was who would pay for it.”