by Robin Hobb
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He suddenly heard Sa'Adar's voice raised. “There he is, there's our lad. Boy, Wintrow, come here! They've barricaded themselves in there. Any way to smoke the rats out?” He mastered a band of triumphant map-faces outside the door to the officers' quarters in the stern-castle. Despite the storm and the tossing ship, they were still intent on their killing.
“This storm will take us down if I don't get to the wheel!” he shouted at them. He drew his voice from deep within him and tried to sound commanding, like a man. “Stop the killing, or the sea will finish it for all of us! Let the crew come out and man the ship as best they can, I beg you! We're taking on water with every wave!” He caught at the side of the aftercastle ladder as another wave hit. In horror he watched it pour down the open hatches like beer filling a mug. “Shut those hatches down tight!” he bellowed at them. “And put some men on the pumps, or everyone sick or hiding below is going to drown even before the rest of us!” He looked aloft. “We need to take in those sails, give the wind less to push on!”
“I'm not going up there,” one slave declared loudly. “I didn't get out of chains just to kill myself another way!”
“Then you'll die when we all go under!” Wintrow shouted back at him. His voice broke on the words, going up into a boy's shrill timbre. Some of the slaves were making a faint-hearted attempt to shut the hatches, but no one was willing to let loose their secure holds to do so.
“Rocks!” screamed Vivacia. “Rocks! Wintrow, the helm, the helm!”
“Let the crew out. Promise them their lives if they'll save yours!” he roared at Sa'Adar. Then he scrabbled swiftly up the ladder.
Comfrey had died at the wheel, struck from behind. Whoever had killed him had left him as he fell, half tangled in the spokes. Only the weight of his fallen body had kept the rudder from slapping back and forth with every sea. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” Wintrow babbled apologetically as he pulled the lanky body free of its last post. He stepped up to the wheel and seized it, stopping its random turning with a wrench. He drew the deepest breath his lungs would hold. “TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” he bellowed, and prayed his voice would carry the length of the ship through the storm.
“HARD PORT!” Vivacia's cry came back to him. Her voice came not only through the wind but seemed to vibrate into him through his hands. The spokes of the ship's wheel, he realized, were of wizardwood. He set his hands to it more fully. Not sure whether he sinned or not, he reached not for Sa but for oneness with the ship. He abandoned his fear of losing himself in her.
“Steady,” he whispered to her, and felt an almost frantic leaping of connection. With it came her fear, but also her courage. He shared her awareness of the storm and the current. Her wizardwood body became his greater self.
The wheel had been built with the assumption that a grown and well-muscled man would hold it. He had watched the ship steered, and taken a turn or two in milder weather, but never in a blow like this, and never without a man at his shoulder instructing him and catching at the wheel if it looked like it would overpower him. Wintrow put the full weight of his slight body to turning it. He felt every point he gained as a small victory but wondered if the ship could answer the rudder in time. It seemed to him that they hit the next wave more squarely, cutting through it rather than being nudged aside by it. He squinted through the driving rain, but could see nothing but blackness. They could have been out in the middle of the Wild Sea with emptiness all around them. It suddenly struck him as ridiculous; he and the ship were alone in their struggle to save them all. Everyone else on board was too intent on killing one another.
“You have to help me,” he said quietly, forming aloud the words he knew she would sense. “You have to be your own lookout, for both waves and rocks. Reach for me with what you know. ”
In the waist he could hear men shouting to one another. Some of the voices were muffled and he guessed that the slaves negotiated with the captive crew. From the fury in the voices, he doubted if they would agree in time to save the ship. Forget about them, he counseled himself. “It's you and I, my lady,” he said quietly to her. “You and I alone. Let's try to stay alive. ” He gripped the wheel tight in his hands.
He did not know if he felt her answer him or if his own determination lent him new strength. He stood, blinded by both water and darkness, and defied them both. He did not hear Vivacia call out to him again but he seemed to catch a feel for the ship. The sails overhead worked against him, but he could do nothing about them. A different sort of rain suddenly began to fall, just as insistent but lighter somehow. Yet even as the storm abated and the first graying of dawn tinged the sky, the wheel seemed to grow Stiffer and heavier under his hands. “The current has us!” Vivacia's low cry carried back to him. “There are rocks ahead! I know this channel from long ago! We should not have come this way. I cannot stay clear of them by myself!”
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He heard the clank of chain and then the fall of a heavy body to the deck. He spared a glance for a group of men making their way towards him. Several manacled and fettered man were shoved along in their midst. As they reached Wintrow, someone gave the front man a harder push. He went to his knees on the wet deck. Sa'Adar's voice boomed out. “He says he'll steer and steer true if we let him live. ” In a quieter voice he added, “He says we cannot get past those rocks without him. He alone knows this channel. ”
As the man struggled to his feet, Wintrow finally recognized Torg. He could make out little of his features in the dark. His shirt was torn away from his back; the pale rags of it fluttered in the wind. “You,” Torg said. The low laugh he gave was disbelieving. “You did this to us? You?” He shook his head. “I don't believe it. You had the treachery, but not the guts. You stand there and hold the wheel like the ship is yours, but I don't believe you took her. ” Despite his chains and the snarling map-faces surrounding him, he spat to one side. “You didn't have the balls to take her when she was offered to you on a silver platter. ” The furious words poured from him like a pent-up flood. “Oh, yes, I knew all about your father's deal with you. I heard what he said that day. Your father was going to give you the mate's position on her when you turned fifteen. Never mind that I worked like a dog for him for the past seven years. Never mind old Torg. Give the captaincy to Gantry and the mate's position to a pink-cheeked boy. And you'd lord it over me. ”
He laughed. “Well, Gantry's dead, they tell us. And your father's not much better off. ” He crossed his arms on his chest. “You see that island off our starboard side? That's Crooked Island. You should have taken the ship on the other side of it. There's rocks and current ahead. So if you want a man at the helm of this tub, maybe you'd better talk nice to Torg. Maybe you'd better offer him something a bit more than his own life to get your sorry asses out of this fix. ” He smiled a toadish smile, confident suddenly that they needed him, that he could turn the whole situation to his profit. “Maybe you'd better talk nice and fast, for the rocks are just ahead. ” The men behind him, new hands taken on in Jamaillia, cast fearful glances ahead through the darkness. “What should we do?” Sa'Adar asked him. “Can we trust him?” The situation was laughable, it was so horrifying. They were asking him. They were putting the whole ship's survival in his hands. He glanced up at the lightening sky. Aloft were two slaves, struggling vainly to take in sail. Sa have mercy on them all. He tightened his grip on the wheel and looked at Torg's smug face. Was Torg capable of putting the ship on the rocks for the sake of vengeance? Could any man take revenge that far, to throw his own life away with it? The tattoo on Wintrow's face itched. “No,” Wintrow said at last. “I don't trust him. And I'd kill him before I gave him the helm of my ship. ” A map-face shrugged callously. “The useless die. ”
“Wait,” Wintrow cried, but it was too late. In a movement as smooth as a longshoreman pitching bales, the map-face hefted the bulky sailor over his head, and then flung him over the stern with a force that sent the m
ap-face to his knees as well. Torg was gone, as swiftly and simply as that. He hadn't even had time to scream. On his single word not to trust the man, Torg had died. The other sailors had fallen to their knees, crying out and begging him to spare them.
A terrible disgust welled up in him. It was not for the begging men. “Get those chains off them and send them aloft,” he barked at Sa'Adar. “Reef the sails as best you can, and cry back to me if you see rocks. ” It was a stupid order, a useless order. Three men could not sail a ship this size. As Sa'Adar was unlocking their fetters, he heard himself ask, “Where's my father? Is he alive?”
They looked at him blankly, one and all. None of them knew, he realized. He supposed his father had forbidden the crew to speak of him among themselves. “Where's Captain Haven?” he demanded.
“He's down below with his head and ribs busted up,” one of the deckhands volunteered.
Wintrow weighed it up and decided in favor of his ship. He pointed at Sa'Adar. “I need the ship's captain up here. And gently. He's no good to us if he's unconscious. ” And the useless die, he thought to himself as the priest dispatched men to fetch the captain. An overseer's threat to a slave became a credo to live by. To save the crew, he'd have to show the freed slaves their usefulness. “Unchain those two,” he ordered. “Get every live sailor who can move aloft. ”
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A map face shrugged. “There's only these two now. ”
Only two left alive. And his father. Sa forgive him. He looked at the man who had thrown Torg overboard. “You. You threw a sailor overboard, one we might have used. You take his place now. Get aloft, to the look-out's post. Cry down to me what you see. ” He glared around at the others standing around them. It suddenly infuriated him that they would stand about idly. “The rest of you make sure the hatches are down tight now. Get on the pumps, too. I can feel she's too heavy in the water. Sa only knows how much water we took on. ” His voice was quieter but just as hard as he added, “Clear the deck of bodies. And get those collapsed tents tidied away. ”
The first man's eyes went from Wintrow up to the tiny platform at the top of the main mast. “Up there? I can't go up there. ”
The current was like a living thing now, the tide speeding through the narrow channel like a mill race. Wintrow fought the wheel. “Get moving if you want to live,” he barked. “There's no time for your fear. The ship is the only thing that matters now. Save her if you want to save yourselves. ”
“That's the only time you've ever sounded like a son to me. ”
Blood had darkened down the side of Kyle Haven's face. He moved with his body at a twist, trying not to jar the ribs that poked and grated inside him. He was paler than the gray sky overhead. He looked at his son holding the ship's wheel, at the scarred map-faces that lumbered hastily off to do his bidding, at the debris of the insurrection and shook his head slowly. “This is what it took for you to find your manhood?”
“It was never lost,” he said flatly. “You simply couldn't recognize it, because I wasn't you. I wasn't big and strong and harsh. I was me. ”
“You never stepped up to the mark. You never cared about what I could give you. ” Kyle shook his head. “You and this ship. Spoiled children, both of you. ”
Wintrow gripped the wheel tightly. “We don't have time for this. The Vivacia can't steer herself. She's helping me, but I want your eyes, too. I want your knowledge. ” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice. “Advise me, father. ”
“He's truly your father?” Sa'Adar asked in consternation. “He enslaved his own son?”
Neither man answered him. Both peered ahead, into the storm. After a moment, the priest retreated to the stern of the ship, leaving them almost alone.
“What are you going to do with her?” his father demanded suddenly. “Even if you get safely through this channel, you haven't enough good men to sail her. These are treacherous waters, even for an experienced crew. ” He snorted. “You're going to lose her before you even had her. ”
“All I can do is the best I can,” Wintrow said quietly. “I didn't choose this. But I believe Sa will provide. ”
“Sa!” Kyle shook his head in disgust. Then, “Keep her to the center of the channel. No, a couple more points to port. There. Hold her steady. Where's Torg? You should put him aloft to cry out what he sees. ”
Wintrow considered it an instant, combining his father's opinion with what he felt through Vivacia. Then he made the correction. “Torg's dead,” he said after the brief silence. “He was put over the side. Because a slave considered him useless. ” He gestured with his chin to a man who clung, frozen, halfway up the mast. “He was supposed to take the look-out post. ”
An aghast silence followed his words. When his father spoke, his voice was strained.
“All of this . . . ” his father said in a low voice, pitched only for Wintrow's ears. “All of this, just so you could take the ship now, instead of a few years from now?”
The question measured the distance between them for Wintrow. The gulf between them was vast and uncrossable.
“None of this was about any of that. ” A stupid statement. But all the words he could utter in a lifetime would not make his father understand him. The only thing they would ever really share was the ship. “Let's just get her through these rocks,” he suggested. “Let's speak of only that. It's the only thing we can agree on. ”
After a very long time, his father stepped up to stand beside him.
He set one hand lightly to the wheel beside his son's. He glanced up at the rigging, spotted one of his own men. “Calt! Leave off that and get to the look-out's post. ”
His father's eyes roved ahead. “Here we go,” he warned Wintrow softly as the ship suddenly gained speed.
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“You've sold me,” Malta said dully. “You've sold me to a monster, to pay off a ship. So I can be dragged off to some swampy tree-camp to grow warts and make babies while you can all get rich off new trade contracts with the Khuprus family. Don't think I don't know how it works. Usually when a woman is given up to a Rain Wild husband, the family in Bingtown gets fat on the profits. ” They had wakened her early and called her down to the kitchen for this. Breakfast wasn't even ready.
“Malta, that's not how it is,” her mother said in her “let's be reasonable” voice.
At least her grandmother was honest about how she felt. She finished filling the kettle, and then set it on the stove. She bent down and poked up the fire herself. “Actually, you sold yourself,” she said in a deceptively pleasant voice. “For a scarf, a flame jewel and a dream-box. And don't claim you weren't smart enough to know what you were doing. You know a great deal more about everything than you let on. ”
Malta kept silent for a time. Then, “I have the things in my room. I can return them,” she offered gruffly. The flame jewel. She hated to part with the flame jewel. But better that than to be pledged to a toadish Rain Wild man. She thought of the dream of kissing him and shuddered. In reality, behind his veil, his lips would be pebbled with warts. Even the thought of that kiss made her want to spit now. It wasn't fair, to send a dream in which he was so handsome when he was really a toad.
“It's a bit late for that,” her mother said with asperity. “If you had been honest about the dream-box, things might have been mended. No. I take that back. You'd already accepted a scarf and a jewel, to say nothing of giving him a cup you had drunk from. ” She halted a moment, and when she went on her voice was kinder. “Malta. No one is going to force you into a marriage. All we have consented to is that the young man be allowed to see you. You won't be alone with him. Grandmother or I or Rache or Nana will always be there, too. You don't have to be afraid of him. ” She cleared her throat and when she went on her tone was unmistakably cooler. “On the other hand, I will permit no discourtesy. You will never be late, or rude to him. You will treat him as you would any honored visitor
to our home. And that means no wild talk of warts, or swamps, or making babies. ”
Malta got up from the table and went and cut herself a slice of yesterday's bread. “Fine. I won't talk at all,” she offered them. What could they do about that, really? How could they force her to talk to him or be nice to him? She wasn't going to pretend she actually liked him. He'd soon discover she found him disgusting and go away. She wondered if she'd be allowed to keep the scarf and the jewel if he said he didn't want to marry her. It probably wasn't a good time to ask that. But he could have the dream-box back anytime. It had turned an ugly, flat gray color after she had opened it, like ash in a fireplace. It still smelled pretty, but that was small reason to keep it.
“Malta, these are not people we can offend,” her mother pointed out.
She looked very tired and worn of late. There were more lines in her face and she took even less care with her hair than she used to. Soon she would be as sour faced as Grandmother. And Grandmother was frowning now. “It is not a matter of who we can or cannot afford to offend. There are many ways of dealing with an unwelcome suitor. Rudeness is not one of them. Not for our family. ”
“When will my father be home?” Malta asked abruptly. “Do we have any peach preserves anywhere?”
“We don't expect him until late spring,” her mother said wearily. “Why?”
“I just don't think he would make me do this. Pretend to like a man I don't even want to know . . . Isn't there anything good to eat in this house?”
“Put some butter on it instead. And no one asked you to pretend to like him!” Grandmother burst out. “You are not a prostitute, he has not paid you to smile while he leers at you. I am simply saying we expect you to treat him with courtesy. I am sure he will be a complete gentleman. I have Caolwn's word on that, and I have known her a very long time. All you need do is treat him with respect. ” In a lower voice she went on, “I am sure he will quickly decide you are not suitable, and cease his attentions. ” The way she said it, it was insulting. As if Malta weren't worthy of him.