by Robin Hobb
“Oh, ho. Getting a bit snippy, are we?” Torg's heavy boot nudged him painfully. He was still bruised from an earlier kick.
“No, sir,” Wintrow answered reflexively. It was getting easier, sometimes, to simply be subservient. When his father had first given him over to this brute, he had tried to speak to the man as if he had a mind. He had rapidly learned that any words Torg didn't understand he interpreted as mockery, and that explanations were only seen as feeble excuses. The less said, the fewer bruises. Even if it meant agreeing with statements he normally disagreed with. He tried not to see it as an eroding of his dignity and ethics. Survival, he told himself. It was simple survival until he could get away.
He dared to venture a question. “What ports shall we be stopping in?”
If there were one anywhere on the peninsula of Marrow, he'd be off the ship there, somehow. He didn't care how far he had to walk, or if he had to beg his way across the entire peninsula, he'd get back to his monastery. When he told his tale there, they'd listen to him. They'd change his name and place him elsewhere, where his father could never find him again.
“Nowhere near Marrow,” Torg told him with vicious delight. “If you want to get back to your priesting, boy, you're going to have to swim. ” The second mate laughed aloud, and Wintrow saw how he had been set up to ask that question. It disturbed him that even Torg's slow wit could know so clearly where his heart was. Did he dream on it too much, did it show in his every action? He had begun to think it was the only way for him to stay sane. He constantly planned ways to slip away from the ship. Every time they latched him into the chain locker for the night, he would wait until the footsteps had died away and then try the door. He wished he had not been so impatient when he first was dragged aboard the ship. His clumsy attempts to leave had alerted both captain and crew to his intent, and Kyle had made it well known both to him and the crew that any man who let him leave the ship would pay heavily for it. He was never left alone, and those who worked alongside him resented that they could not trust him, but must guard him as well as work.
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Now Torg made a great show of stretching his muscles. He lifted a booted foot to tap Wintrow's spine again. “Got to go, boys. Work to do. Mild, you're the nanny. See pretty boy here keeps busy. ” With a final painful nudge, Torg lumbered away down the deck. Neither boy looked up to watch him go. But when he was out of earshot, Mild observed calmly, “Someone will kill him someday and tip him over the side and no one will be the wiser. ” The young sailor's hands never paused in their work as he imparted this information to Wintrow. “Maybe it will be me,” he added pleasantly.
The youth's calm advocation of murder chilled Wintrow. Much as he disliked Torg, as difficult as it was for him not to hate the man, he had never considered killing him. That Mild had was disconcerting. “Don't let someone like Torg distort your life and focus,” he suggested quietly. “Even to think of killing for the sake of vengeance bends the spirit. We cannot know why Sa permits such men as Torg to have power over others, but we can deny him the power to distort our spirits. Yield him obedience where we must, but do not . . . ”
“I didn't ask for a sermon,” Mild protested irritably. He flung down the piece of line he'd been working on in disgust. “Who do you think you are? Why should you be telling me how to think or live? Don't you ever just talk? Try it sometime. Just say out loud, I'd really love to kill that dog-pronging bastard. ' You'd be surprised what a relief it is. ” He turned his face away from Wintrow and spoke aloud in an apparent aside to a mast. “Dung. You try to talk to him like he's a person and he acts like you're on your knees begging his advice. ”
Wintrow felt a moment of outrage, followed by a rush of embarrassment. “I didn't mean it like that. . . . ” He started to say he didn't think he was any better than Mild, but the lie died on his lips. He forced himself to speak truth. “No. I never talk without thinking first. I've been schooled to avoid careless words. And in the monastery, if we see or hear someone putting himself on a destructive path, then we speak out to each other. But to help each other, not to . . . ”
“Well, you're not in a monastery anymore. You're here. When are you going to get that through your thick head and start acting like a sailor? You know, it's painful to watch how you let them all push you around. Get some gumption and stand up to them instead of preaching Sa all the time. Take a swing at Torg. Sure, you'll get a beating for it. But Torg is a bigger coward than you are. If he thinks there's even a chance you're going to lay for him with a marline spike, he'll back off of you. Don't you see that?”
Wintrow tried for dignity. “If he makes me behave like he does, then he's truly won. Don't you see that?”
“No. All I see is that you're so afraid of a beating you won't even admit you're afraid of it. It's just like your shirt the other day, when Torg put it up the mast to taunt you. You should have known you'd have to go get it yourself, so you should have just done it, instead of waiting until you were forced to do it. That made you lose to him twice, don't you see?”
“I don't see how I lost at all. It was a cruel joke, not worthy of men,” Wintrow replied quietly.
Mild lost his temper for an instant. “There. That's what you do that I hate. You know what I mean, but you try to talk about it a whole different way. It isn't about what is 'worthy of men. ' Here and now, it's about you and Torg. The only way you could have won that round was pretending that you didn't give a damn, that climbing the mast to get your shirt back wasn't anything. Instead, you got sunburned sitting around acting too holy to go get your shirt. . . . ” Mild sputtered off into silence, obviously frustrated by Wintrow's lack of response. He took a breath, tried again. “Don't you get it at all? The worst was him forcing you to climb the mast ahead of him. That was when you really lost. The whole crew thinks you've got no spine now. That you're a coward. ” Mild shook his head in disgust. “It's bad enough you look like a little kid. Do you have to act like one all the time?”
The sailor rose in disgust and stalked away. Wintrow sat staring down at the heap of rope. The other boy's words had rattled him more than he liked to admit. He had pointed out, too clearly, that Wintrow now lived and moved in a different world. He and Mild were probably of an age, but Mild had taken up this trade of his own inclination, three years ago. He was a sailor to the bone now, and no longer the ship's boy since Wintrow had come aboard. No longer a boy at all in appearance. He was hard-muscled and agile. He was a full head taller than Wintrow as well, and the hair on his cheeks was starting to darken into proper whiskers. Wintrow knew that his slight build and boyish appearance were not faults, were not something he could change even if he saw them as faults. But somehow it had been easier in the monastery, where one and all agreed that each would grow in his own time and way.
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Sa'Greb would never be taller than a lad, and his short stocky limbs would have made him the butt of all jokes had he remained in his home village. But in the monastery he was respected for the verses he wrote. No one thought of him as “too short”, he was simply Sa'Greb. And the kind of cruel pranks that were the ordinary day to day of this ship would never have been expected nor tolerated there. The younger boys teased and shoved one another when they first arrived, but those with a penchant for bullying or cruelty were swiftly returned to their parents. Those attributes had no place among the servants of Sa.
He suddenly missed the monastery with a sharp ache. He forced the pain away before it could bring tears smarting to his eyes. No tears aboard this ship; no sense in letting anyone see what they could only view as a weakness. In his own way, Mild was right. He was trapped aboard the Vivacia, either until he could make his escape or until his fifteenth birthday. What would Berandol have counseled him? Why, to make the best of his time here. If sailor he must be, then he were wiser to learn it swiftly. And if he were forced to be a part of this crew for . . . however long it would be . . . then he
must begin to form alliances, at least.
It would help, he reflected, if he had had the vaguest idea of how one made friends with someone one's own age, but with whom one had next to nothing in common. He took up a worn piece of line and began to pick it apart as he pondered this very thing. From behind him, Vivacia spoke quietly. “I thought your words had merit. ”
Wonderful. A soulless wooden ship, animated by a force that might or might not be of Sa, found his words inspiring. Almost as soon as he had the unworthy thought, Wintrow squelched it. But not before he sensed a vibration of pain from the ship. Had not he just been telling himself he needed allies? And here he was viciously turning on the only true ally he had. “I am sorry,” he said quietly, knowing he scarcely needed to speak the words aloud. “It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else. ”
“I've seen it before,” Vivacia agreed listlessly. “And you are not alone in your bitterness. The whole crew is in turmoil. Scarcely a soul aboard feels content with his lot. ”
He nodded to her observation. “There has been too much change, too fast. Too many men dismissed, others put on lesser wage because of their age. Too many new hands aboard, trying to discover where they fit into the order of things. It will take time before they feel they are all part of the same crew. ”
“If ever,” Vivacia said with small hope. “There is Vestrit's Old Crew, and Kyle's Men and the New Hands. So they seem to think of themselves, and so they behave. I feel . . . divided against myself. It is hard to trust, hard to relax and give control to . . . the captain. ” She hesitated on the tide, as if she herself did not yet fully recognize Kyle in that position.
Wintrow nodded again, silently. He had felt the tensions himself. Some of the men Kyle had let go had been acrimonious, and at least two others had quit in protest. The latest disturbance had been when Kyle had demanded that one older man who was quitting return to him the gold earring that Captain Vestrit had given him for his long service aboard the Vivacia. The earring was shaped like Vivacia's figurehead and marked him as a valued member of her crew. The old man had thrown it over the side rather than surrender it to Kyle. Then he had stalked off down the dock, his sea-bag over his bony shoulder. Wintrow had sensed that the old man had little to go to; it would be hard to prove himself on board a new ship, competing with younger, more agile hands.
“He didn't really throw it into the sea. ” Vivacia's voice was little more than a whisper.
Wintrow was instantly curious. “He didn't? How do you know?” He stood and went to the railing to look down at the figurehead. She smiled up at him.
“Because he came back later that night and gave it to me. He said we had been so long together, if he could not die aboard my decks, he wished me to have at least a token of his years. ”
Wintrow felt himself suddenly deeply moved. The old sailor had given back to the ship what was surely a valuable piece of jewelry, as gold alone. Given it freely.
“What did you do with it?”
She looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I did not know what to do with it. But he told me to swallow it. He said that many of the liveships do that. Not commonly, but with tokens that are of great significance. The ships swallow them and thus carry the memory of the man who gave it for as many years as they live. ” She smiled at Wintrow's astonished look. “So I did. It was not hard, although it felt strange. And I am . . . aware of it, in an odd way. But you know, it felt like the right thing to do. ”
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“I am sure it was,” Wintrow replied. And wondered why he was so sure.
The evening wind was welcome after the heat of the day. Even the ordinary ships seemed to speak softly to one another as they creaked gently beside the docks. The skies were clear, promising a fine day tomorrow. Althea stood silently in Vivacia's shadow and waited. She wondered if she were out of her mind, to fix her heart on an impossible goal and then depend on a man's angry words as a path to it. But what else did she have? Only Kyle's impulsive oath, and her nephew's sense of fair play. Only an idiot would believe those things might be enough. Her mother had tried to seek her out through Vivacia; perhaps that might mean she had an ally at home. Perhaps, but she would not count on it.
She set a hand silently to Vivacia's silvery hull. “Please, Sa,” she prayed, but had no words to follow those. She had seldom prayed. It was not in her nature to depend on anyone else to give her what she wanted. She wondered if the great Mother of All would even hear the words of one who usually ignored her. Then she felt the warm response from Vivacia through the palm of her hand, and wondered if she had truly prayed to Sa at all. Maybe, like most sailors she knew, she believed more in her ship than in any divine providence.
“He's coming,” Vivacia breathed softly to her.
Althea moved a step deeper into her ship's shadow and waited.
She hated sneaking about like this, she hated having brief, clandestine meetings with her ship. But it was her only hope of success. She was sure that if Kyle had any notion of her plans, he'd do anything in his power to thwart her. Yet here she was, about to divulge those plans to Wintrow, and all on the basis of a single look exchanged with him. For a brief moment, she had seen her father's sense of honor in the boy's eyes. Now she was going to stake everything on her belief in him.
“Remember, boy, I'm watching you,” Torg's voice boomed nastily in the stillness. When only silence greeted this announcement, he barked, “Answer me, boy!”
“You didn't ask me a question,” Wintrow pointed out quietly. On the docks below, Althea gave the boy marks for guts, if not wisdom.
“You even try to jump ship tonight, and I'll kick your ass until your backbone splits,” Torg threatened him. “You understand me?”
“I understand you,” Wintrow's slight voice replied wearily. He sounded very young and very tired. Althea heard the slight scuff of bare feet, and then the sound of someone settling wearily to the deck. “I am too tired to think, let alone talk,” the boy said.
“Are you too tired to listen?” the ship asked him gently.
Althea heard the indistinct sounds of a yawn. “Only if you don't mind if I fall asleep in the middle of whatever you want to tell me. ”
“I'm not the one who wishes you to listen,” Vivacia said quietly. “Althea Vestrit waits on the docks below. She is the one with something to say to you. ”
“My Aunt Althea?” the boy asked in surprise. Althea saw his head appear over the railing above her. She stepped silently from the shadows to look up at him. She could see nothing of his face; he was merely a darker silhouette against the evening sky. “Everyone says you just disappeared,” he observed to her quietly.
“Yes. I did,” she admitted to him. She took a deep breath and her first risk. “Wintrow. If I speak frankly with you of what I plan to do, can you keep those plans a secret?”
He asked her a priest's question in reply. “Are you planning on doing something . . . wrong?”
She almost laughed at his tone. “No. I'm not going to kill your father or anything so rash as that. ” She hesitated, trying to measure what little she knew of the boy. Vivacia had assured her that he was trustworthy. She hoped the young ship was right. “I am going to try to out-maneuver him, though. But it won't work if he knows of my plans. So I'm going to ask you to keep my secret. ”
“Why are you telling anyone at all what you plan? A secret is kept best by one,” he pointed out to her.
That, of course, was the crux of it. She took a breath. “Because you are crucial to my plans. Without your promise to aid me, there is no sense in my even acting at all. ”
The boy was silent for a time. “What you saw, that day, when he hit me. It might make you think I hate him, or wish his downfall. I don't. I just want him to keep his promise. ”
“That's exactly what I want, also,” Althea replied quickly. “I'm not
going to ask you to do anything wrong, Wintrow. I promise you that. But before I can say any more, I have to ask you to promise to keep my secret. ”
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It seemed to her that the boy took a very long time considering this. Were all priests so cautious about everything? “I will keep your secret,” he finally said. And she liked that about him. No vows or oaths, just the simple offering of his word. Through the palm of her hand, she felt the Vivacia respond with pleasure to her approval of him. Strange, that that should matter to the ship.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. She took her courage in both hands, and hoped he would not think she was a fool. “Do you remember that day clearly? The day he knocked you down in the dining room?”
“Most of it,” the boy said softly. “The parts when I was conscious, anyway. ”
“Do you remember what your father said? He swore by Sa, and said that if but one reputable captain would vouch for my seamanship, he'd give my ship back to me. Do you remember that?” She held her breath.
“I do,” Wintrow said quietly.
She put both hands to the ship's hull. “And would you swear by Sa that you heard him say those words?”
“No. ”
Althea's dreams crashed down through their straw foundations. She should have known it. How could she ever have thought the boy would stand up to his father in a great matter as this? How could she have been so stupid?