Ship of Magic

by Robin Hobb

  Rodel, however, did not share his skipper's optimism regarding the serpent. The terrified sailor gave a cry of despair and flung himself from the dangling boat back to the ship's deck. Kennit disabled him with a cut to his leg and then put his attention back on the boat. He ignored the cries of the squirming sailor who tried vainly to stem the flow of his blood.

  With a single stride Kennit sprang into the swinging boat. He set the tip of his blade to the captain's throat. “Back,” he suggested with a smile. “Or die here. ”

  The seized-up block-and-tackle suddenly broke free. One end of the suspended boat dropped abruptly, spilling men into the sea even as the serpent once more erupted to the surface. Kennit, lithe and lucky as a cat, sprang clear of the falling boat. One hand caught the railing of the Sicerna, and then the other. He was hauling up his dangling legs when the serpent lifted its head from the water to regard him. Its ruined eye ran ichor and blood. It opened its maw wide and screamed, a sound of fury and despair. Its blinded eye faced towards the men who struggled in the water, while Kennit dangled before the good eye like a fishing lure. Frantically, he swung one leg up over the railing and hooked it there. As softly as a well-trained pet takes a tidbit from its master's fingers, the serpent closed its jaws on his other leg.

  It hurt, it burned like a red-hot leg-iron, and he screamed. Then the pain suddenly flowed away from him. A chill, delightfully numbing, chased the pain away as hot water purges cold from the skin. He felt it flowing up his body. Relief, such relief from the pain. He felt his leg relax with it, and then the numbness was flowing higher. His scream died away to a groan.

  “NO!” The whore shrieked the word as she flew across the deck. Etta must have been watching from the deck of the Marietta. No one blocked her way. The deck was mostly cleared of live men; they had probably fallen back at sight of the serpent rising again. Some impromptu weapon, a boarding ax or a kitchen cleaver, flashed in the sunlight as Etta brandished it. She was screaming, a stream of gutter invective and threats directed toward the serpent that even now was lifting him up. Some reflex made him cling to the ship's railing with all his might. That was not much anymore. Strength had fled him. Whatever venom the serpent had put into his wound was already rendering him helpless. When Etta seized him in a wild embrace that also included the ship's railing, he scarcely felt her grip. “Let him go!” she commanded the serpent. “Let him go, you bitch thing, you slimy sea-worm, you whore's ass! Let him go!”

  The enfeebled serpent tugged on his booted leg, stretching him out over the water. Etta hauled determinedly back. The woman was stronger than he had thought. He saw more than felt the serpent set its teeth more firmly. Like a hot knife through butter, those teeth sheared through flesh and muscle. He had a glimpse of exposed bone, looking oddly honeycombed where the serpent's saliva ate into it. The creature turned its great head like a hooked fish, preparing to give a shake that would either tear him loose from the railing or snatch his leg from his body. Sobbing, Etta raised her weapon. “Damn you!” she screamed, “damn you, damn you, damn you!” Her puny blade fell, but not as Kennit had expected. She did not waste the blow on the serpent's heavily scaled snout. Instead the blade cracked loudly against his weakened bone. She severed his leg just below the serpent's teeth, cutting it off a nice bite as it were. He saw blood gout from the ragged worried stump of his leg as she hauled him hastily backward, crabbing across the deck with him in her grip. He dimly heard the awe-stricken cries of his men as the serpent raised its head still higher, and then suddenly collapsed back into the sea, boneless as a piece of string. It would not rise again. It was dead. And Etta had fed it his leg.

  “Why did you do that?” he demanded of her faintly. “What have I ever done to you that you would chop my leg off?”

  Page 230

 

  “Oh, my darling, oh, my love!” she was caterwauling, even as the darkness swirled around him and took him down.

  The slavemart stank. It was the worst smell that Wintrow had ever encountered. He wondered if the smell of one's own kind in death and disease was naturally more offensive than any other odor. Instinctively, he wished to be away from here. It was a bone-deep revulsion. Despite the misery he saw, his sympathy and outrage were overwhelmed by his disgust. Hurry as he might, he could not seem to find an escape from this section of the city.

  He had seen animals confined in large numbers before, even animals gathered together for slaughter, but their misery had been dumb and uncomprehending. They had chewed their cuds and lashed their tails at flies as they awaited their fates. Animals could be held in pens or yards. They did not need to be secured in both manacles and leg-irons. Nor did animals shout or sob their misery and frustration in words.

  “I can't help you, I can't help you. ” Wintrow heard himself muttering the words aloud and bit down on his tongue. It was true, he assured himself. He could not help them. He could no more break their chains than they could. Even if he had been able to undo their fetters, what then? He could not erase the tattoos from their faces, could not help them flee and escape. Evil as their fates were, it was best if he left each one to face it and make the best he could of it. Some, surely, would find freedom and happiness later in their lives. This extreme of misery could not last forever.

  As if in agreement with that thought, a man passed him trundling a barrow. Three bodies had been dumped in it and, despite their emaciation, the man pushed it with difficulty. A woman trailed after him, weeping disconsolately. “Please, please,” she burst out as they passed Wintrow. “At least let me have his body. What good is it to you? Let me take my son home and bury him. Please, please. ” But the man pushing the barrow paid her no notice. Nor did anyone else in the hurrying, crowded street. Wintrow stared after them, wondering if perhaps the woman was crazy, perhaps it was not her son at all and the man with the barrow knew it. Or perhaps, he reflected, everyone else in the street was crazy, and had just seen a heart-sick mother begging for the dead body of her son, and had done nothing about it. Including himself. Had he so swiftly become inured to human pain? He lifted his eyes and tried to see the street scene afresh.

  It overwhelmed him. In the main part of the street, folk strolled arm in arm, dawdling to look at booths just as they might in any marketplace. They spoke of color and size, of age and sex. But the livestock and goods they perused were human. There were simple coffles standing in courtyards, a string of people chained together, offered in lots or singles, for general work on farms or in town. At the corner of the courtyard, a tattooist plied his trade. He lounged in a chair beside a leather-lined head vise and an immense block of stone with an eye-bolt worked into it. For a reasonable price, the chant rose, a reasonable price, he would mark any newly purchased slave with the buyer's emblem. The boy calling this out was tethered to the stone. He wore only a loincloth, despite the winter day, and his entire body had been lavishly embellished with tattoos as a means of advertising his master's skill. For a reasonable price, a reasonable price.

  There were buildings that housed slaves, their specialties advertised on their swinging signs. Wintrow saw an emblem for carpenters and masons, another for seamstresses, and one that specialized in musicians and dancers. Just as any type of folk might fall into debt, so one might acquire any type of slave. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, Wintrow thought to himself. Tutors and wet nurses and scribes and clerks. Why hire what you could buy outright? That seemed to be the philosophy here in the slavemart, yet Wintrow wondered how those shopping for slaves could not see themselves in their faces, or recognize one's neighbors. No one else seemed disturbed by it. Some might hold a lace kerchief fastidiously to the nose, distressed by the odor. They did not hesitate to demand a slave stand, or walk, or trot in a circle the better to inspect him. Latticed-off areas were provided for the more private inspection of the females for sale. It seemed that, in the eyes of the buyers, a failure of finances instantly changed a man from a friend or neighbor into merchandise.

 
Some, it appeared, were not too badly housed and kept. They were the more valuable slaves, the well-educated and talented and skilled. Some few of those even appeared to take a quiet pride in their own worth, holding themselves with pride and assurance despite being marked with a tattoo across the face. Others were what Wintrow heard referred to as “map-faces,” meaning that the history of their owners could be traced by the progression of different tattoos. Usually such slaves were surly and difficult; tractable slaves often found permanent homes. More than five tattoos usually marked a slave as less than desirable. They were sold more cheaply and treated with casual brutality.

  Page 231

 

  The face tattooing of slaves, once regarded as a barbaric Chalcedean custom, was now the norm in Jamaillia City. It pained Wintrow to see how Jamaillia had not only adopted it, but adapted it. Those marketed as dancers and entertainers often bore only small and pale tattoos, easily masked with make-up so that their status would not disturb the pleasure of those being entertained. While it was illegal still to purchase slaves solely to prostitute them, the more exotic tattoos that marked some of them left no doubt in Wintrow's mind as to what profession they'd been trained to. It was easier, often, to see their tattoos instead of meet their eyes.

  It was while he was passing a street-corner coffle that a slave hailed him. “Please, priest! The comfort of Sa for the dying. ”

  Wintrow halted where he stood, unsure if he were the one addressed. The slave had stepped as far from his coffle as his fetters would allow. He did not look the sort of man who would seek Sa's comfort; tattoos sprawled over his face and down his neck. Nor did he look as if he were dying. He was shirtless and his ribs showed and the fetter on his ankle had chafed the flesh there to running sores, but other than that, he looked tough and vital. He was substantially taller than Wintrow, a man of middle years, his body scarred by heavy use. His stance was that of a survivor. Wintrow glanced past him, to where his owner stood a short way off, haggling with a prospective buyer. The owner, a short man who spun a small club as he talked, caught Wintrow's gaze briefly and scowled in displeasure, but did not leave off his bargaining.

  “You. Aren't you a priest?” The slave asked insistently.

  “I was training to be a priest,” Wintrow admitted, “though I cannot fully claim that tide as yet. ” More decisively he added, “But I am willing to give what comfort I can. ” He eyed the chained slaves and tried to keep suspicion from his voice as he asked, “Who needs such comfort?”

  “She does. ” The man stepped aside. A woman crouched miserably behind him. Wintrow saw then that the other slaves clustered around her, offering her the warmth and scant shelter of their gathered bodies. She was young, surely not more than twenty, and bore no visible injuries. She was the only woman in the group. Her arms were crossed over her belly, her head bowed down on her chest. When she lifted her face to regard him, her blue eyes were dull as river stones. Her skin was very pale and her yellow hair had been chopped into a short brush on her head. The shift she wore was patched and stained. The shirt that shawled her shoulders probably belonged to the man who had summoned Wintrow. Like the man and the other slaves in the coffle, her face was over-written with tattoos. She bore no traces of injury that Wintrow could easily see, nor did she appear frail. On the contrary, she was a well-muscled woman with wide shoulders. Only the lines of pain on her face marked her illness.

  “What ails you?” Wintrow asked, coming closer. In some corner of his soul, he suspected the coffle of slaves were trying to lure him close enough to seize him. As a hostage, perhaps? But no one made any threatening moves. In fact, the slaves closest to the woman turned their backs to her as much as they could, as if to offer this token of privacy.

  “I bleed,” she said quietly. “I bleed and it does not stop, not since I lost the child. ”

  Wintrow crouched down in front of her. He reached out to touch the back of her arm. There was no fever, in fact her skin was chill in the winter sunlight. He gently pinched a fold of her skin, marked how slowly the flesh recovered. She needed water or broth. Fluids. He sensed in her only misery and resignation. It did feel like the acceptance of death. “Bleeding after childbirth is normal, you know. ” He offered her. “And after child loss as well. It should stop soon. ”

  She shook her head. “No. He dosed me too strong, to shake the child loose from me. A pregnant woman can not work as hard, you know. Her belly gets in the way. So they forced the dose down me and I lost the child. A week ago. But still I bleed, and the blood is bright red. ”

  “Even a flow of bright red blood does not mean death. You can recover. Given the proper care, a woman can-”

  Her bitter laugh cut off his words. He had never heard a laugh with so much of a scream in it.

  “You speak of women. I am a slave. No, a woman need not die of this, but I shall. ” She took a breath. “The comfort of Sa. That is all I am asking of you. Please. ” She bowed her head to receive it.

  Perhaps in that moment Wintrow finally grasped what slavery was. He had known it for an evil, been schooled to the wickedness of it since his first days in the monastery. But now he saw it and heard the quiet resignation of despair in this young woman's voice. She did not rail against the master who had stolen her child's life. She spoke of his action as if it were the work of some primal force, a wind storm or river flood. His cruelly and evil did not seem to concern her. Only the end product she spoke of, the bleeding that would not cease, that she expected to succumb to. Wintrow stared at her. She did not have to die. He suspected she knew that as well as he did. If she were given a warm broth, bed and shelter, food and rest, and the herbs that were known to strengthen a woman's parts, she would no doubt recover, to live many years and bear other children. But she would not. She knew it, the other slaves in her coffle knew it and he almost knew it. Almost knowing it was like pressing his hand to the deck to await the knife. Once the reality fell, he could never be the same again. To accept it would be to lose some part of himself.

  Page 232

 

  He stood abruptly, his resolve strong, but when he spoke his words were soft.

  “Wait here and do not lose hope. I will go to Sa's temple and get help. Surely your master can be made to see reason, that you will die without care. ” He offered a bitter smile. “If all else fails, perhaps we can persuade him a live slave is worth more than a dead one. ”

  The man who had first summoned him looked incredulous. “The temple? Small help we shall get there. A dog is a dog, and a slave is a slave. Neither is offered Sa's comfort there. The priests there sing Sa's songs, but dance to the Satrap's piping. As to the man who sells our labor, he does not even own us. All he knows is that he gets a percentage of whatever we earn each day. From that, he feeds and shelters and doses us. The rest goes to our owner. Our broker will not make his piece smaller by trying to save Gala's life. Why should he? It costs him nothing if she dies. ” The man looked down at Wintrow's incomprehension and disbelief. “I was a fool to call to you. ” Bitterness crept into his voice. “The youth in your eyes deceived me. I should have known by your priest's robe that I would find no willing help in you. ” He gripped Wintrow suddenly by the shoulder, a savagely hard pinch. “Give her the comfort of Sa. Or I swear I will break the bones in your collar. ”

  The strength of his clutch left Wintrow assured he could do it. “You do not need to threaten me,” Wintrow gasped. He knew that the words sounded craven. “I am Sa's servant in this. ”

  The man flung him contemptuously on the ground before the woman. “Do it then. And be quick. ” The man lifted a flinty gaze to stare beyond him. The broker and the customer haggled on. The customer's back was turned to the coffle, but the broker faced them. He smiled with his mouth at some jest of his patron and laughed, ha, ha, ha, a mechanical sound, but all the while his clenched fist and the hard look he shot at his coffle promised severe punishment if his bargaining were interrupted. His other han
d tapped a small bat against his leg impatiently.

  “I . . . it cannot be rushed,” Wintrow protested, even as he knelt before the woman and tried to compose his mind.

  For answer, she tottered to her feet. He saw then that her legs were streaked with blood, that the ground beneath her was sodden with it. It had clotted thick on the fetters on her ankles. “Lem?” she said piteously.

  The other slave stepped to her quickly. She leaned on him heavily. Her breath came out a moan.

  “It will have to be rushed,” the man pointed out brusquely.

  Wintrow skipped the prayers. He skipped the preparations, he skipped the soothing words designed to ready her mind and spirit. He simply stood and put his hands on her. He positioned his fingers on the sides of her neck, spreading them until each one found its proper point. “This is not death,” he assured her. “I but free you from the distractions of this world so that your soul may prepare itself for the next. Do you assent to this?”

  She nodded, a slow movement of her head.

  He accepted her consent. He drew a slow, deep, breath, aligning himself with her. He reached inside himself, to the neglected budding of his priesthood. He had never done this by himself. He had never been fully initiated into the mysteries of it. But the mechanics he knew, and those at least he could give her. He noticed in passing that the man stood with his body blocking the broker's view and kept watch over his shoulder. The other slaves clustered close around them, to hide what they did from passing traffic. “Hurry,” Lem urged Wintrow again.

  He pressed lightly on the points his fingers had unerringly chosen. The pressure would banish fear, would block pain while he spoke to her. As long as he pressed, she must listen and believe his words. He gave her body to her first. “To you, now, the beating of your heart, the pumping of air into your lungs. To you the seeing with your eyes, the hearing with your ears, the tasting of your mouth, the feeling of all your flesh. All these things do I trust to your own control now, that you may command them to be or not to be. All these things, I give back to you, that you may prepare yourself for death with a clear mind. The comfort of Sa I offer you, that you may offer it to others. ” He saw a shade of doubt in her eyes still. He helped her realize her own power. “Say to me, 'I feel no cold. ' ”