Ship of Magic lt-1

by Robin Hobb

  “I don't understand it,” she said more loudly, although her thickened voice was not more clear. “Why did he do this? Why, after all the years, did he give Vivacia to Keffria and leave me with nothing?”

  She spoke her words to her mother's stern anguish, but it was Kyle who dared to speak. “Maybe he wanted her to be in responsible hands. Maybe he wanted to entrust her to someone who had shown he could be reliable and steady and care for someone besides herself.”

  “I'm not talking to you!” Althea shrieked at him. “Can't you just shut up?” She knew she sounded childish and hysterical and she hated it. But there had just been too much to take today. She had no control left. If he spoke to her again, she would fly at him and claw him to shreds.

  “Be quiet, Kyle,” her mother bade him firmly. “Althea. Compose yourself. This is neither the time nor the place. We will discuss this later, at home, in private. In fact, I need to discuss it with you. I want you to understand your father's intentions. But for now there is his body to dispose of, and the formal presentation of the ship. The Traders and other liveships must be notified of his death, and boats hired to bring them out to witness his burial at sea. And… Althea? Althea, come back here, right now!”

  She had not realized she was striding away until she came to the gangplank and started down it. Somehow she had marched right past her father's body and not even seen it. She did then what she would regret the rest of her life. She walked away from Vivacia. She did not accompany her on her maiden voyage to witness the sinking of her father's body in the waters beyond the harbor. She did not think she could stand to watch his feet bound to the spare anchor and his body swathed in canvas before it was tilted over the side. Ever after, she would wish she had been there, to bid him farewell one final time.

  But at that moment, she only knew she could not abide the sight of Kyle for one more moment, let alone her mother's reasonable tones as she spoke horrible words. She did not look back to see the dismay on the faces of the crew nor how Keffria clung to Kyle's arm to keep him from charging after her to drag her back. At that moment, she knew she could not bear to see Vivacia untied from the dock with Kyle in command of her. She hoped the ship would understand. No. She knew the ship would understand. She had always hated the thought of Kyle commanding the family ship. Now that Vivacia was quickened and aware, she hated it even more. It was worse than leaving a child in the control of a person you despised, but she also knew there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. At least not now.

  The ship's agent had a tiny office right on the docks. He had been somewhat taken aback to find Brashen leaning on his counter, his sea-bag slung over one shoulder.

  “Yes?” he asked in his polished, businesslike way.

  Brashen thought to himself that the man reminded him of a well-educated chipmunk. It was something about the way his beard whiskered his cheeks, and how he sat up so suddenly straight in his chair before he spoke. “I've come for my pay,” he said quietly.

  The man turned to a shelf, considered several books there before taking down a fat ledger. “I'd heard that Captain Vestrit had been brought down to his ship,” he observed carefully as he opened the book flat and ran his finger down a line of names. He looked up and met Brashen's eyes. “You've been with him for a long time. I'd think you want to stay with him to the end.”

  “I did,” Brashen said briefly. “My captain is dead. The Vivacia is Captain Haven's ship now, and we've little liking for one another. I've been cashiered.” He found he could keep his voice as low and pleasant as the chipmunk's.

  The agent looked up with a frown. “But surely his daughter will take it over now? For years, he's been grooming her. The younger one, Althea Vestrit?”

  Brashen gave a brief snort. “You're not the only one surprised that isn't to be so. Including Mistress Vestrit herself, to her shock and grief.” Then, feeling abruptly that he had said too much about another's pain, he added, “I've just come for my pay, sir, not to gossip about my betters. Please pay no mind to an angry man's words.”

  “Well said, and I shall not,” the agent assured him. He straightened from a money box to set three short stacks of coins on the counter before Brashen. Brashen looked at it. It was substantially less than what he'd pulled down when he was first mate under Captain Vestrit. Well, that was how it was.

  He suddenly realized there was one other thing he should ask for. “I'll need a ship's ticket, too,” he added slowly. He'd never thought he'd have to ask for one from the Vivacia. In fact, several years ago, he had thrown away his old ones, convinced he'd never again have to show anyone proof of his capability. Now he wished he'd kept them. They were simple things, tags of leather embossed with the ship's stamp and scored with the sailor's name and sometimes his position, to show he'd satisfactorily performed his duties. A handful of ship's tickets would have made it a lot easier to get another position. But even one from a liveship would carry substantial weight in Bingtown.

  “You have to get that from the captain or mate,” the ship's agent pointed out.

  “Hmf. Small chance of that.” Brashen abruptly felt robbed. All his years of good service to the ship, and these stacks of coins were all he had to show for them.

  The agent cleared his throat suddenly. “It's well known to me, at least, that Captain Vestrit thought highly of you and your work. If you need a recommendation, feel free to refer them to this office. Nyle Hashett. I'll see they get an honest word from me.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Brashen said humbly. It was not a ship's ticket, but it was something. He took a moment to stow the coins — a few in his purse, some in his boot and the rest in the kerchief bound tight to his neck. No sense in letting one pickpocket have them all. Then he shouldered his sea-bag with a grunt and left the office. He had a mental list of what he needed to do. First, find a room at a cheap rooming house. Before this, he'd lived aboard the Vivacia even when she was in port. Now everything he owned was in the bag on his back. Next he'd go to a banker. Captain Vestrit had urged him, often enough, to set aside a few coins each trip. He'd never got around to it. When he'd sailed with Vestrit, his future had seemed assured. Now he abruptly wished he'd taken that advice much sooner. Well, he'd start now, as he could not start sooner, and remember this hard lesson well.

  And then? Well, then he'd allow himself one good night in port before he set himself to looking for a new berth. Some fresh meat and new baked bread, and a night of beer and good companionship at the harbor taverns. Sa knew he'd earned a bit of pleasure for himself on this voyage. He intended to take this night and enjoy it. Tomorrow was soon enough to worry about the rest of his life. He felt a moment's shame at anticipating pleasure while his captain lay dead. But Kyle would never allow him back aboard to pay his last respects. The best he could do for Captain Vestrit's memory was not to be yet another discordant element at his funeral. Let him go to the bottom from a peaceful deck. Tonight Brashen would drink to his memory with every mug he raised. Let that be his own private tribute to the man. Resolutely he turned towards town.

  But as he stepped out of the shady offices of the ship's agent, he spotted Althea storming down the gangplank. He watched her come down the docks, striding along so that her skirts trailed out behind her like shredded sails in a gale. Her face was tear-streaked, her hair disheveled and her eyes hot-black with an anger that was almost frightening. Heads turned to watch her go by. Brashen groaned to himself, then settled his sea-bag more firmly on his shoulder. He'd promised he'd watch over her. With a heartfelt sigh, he followed her.

  Chapter Seven

  Loyalties

  It took the rest of the day to bury his grandfather. Runners were sent throughout the town to advise friends and neighbors, and his death services were cried aloud in the public markets and on the dock. Wintrow had been surprised at the number of folk who came, and how swiftly they gathered. Merchants and sea captains, Old Traders and tradesmen forsook the business of the day and converged on the dock and ship. Those closest to the
family were welcomed aboard Vivacia, while others followed on the vessels of friends. Every liveship currently in the harbor followed Vivacia as she carried her former master out to where he would be surrendered to the sea.

  Wintrow was uncomfortable throughout the whole ceremony. He could not sort out what he felt about any of it. It stirred his pride that so many turned out to honor his grandfather, but it seemed uncouth that so many of them offered first their condolences and then their congratulations on the quickening of the ship. As many who stopped by the body to pay their final respects also stepped forward to the bow of the ship, to greet Vivacia and wish her well. That was where his grandmother stood, not by the body of her dead husband, and only his grandmother seemed to notice his unease. At one point she quietly told him that he had been too long away from Bingtown and its customs. That they congratulated her on the ship did not diminish one whit the grief they felt that Ephron had died. It was simply not the way of Bingtown folk to dwell on the tragic. Why, if the founders of Bingtown had dwelt on their tragedies, they would have drowned in their own tears. He nodded to her explanations, but kept his own private counsels as to what he thought of that.

  He hated standing on the deck next to his grandfather's body, hated the proximity of the other great-sailed ships as they left the harbor together to do homage to his grandfather's burial at sea. It all seemed overly complicated, not to mention dangerous, to have all these ships sail forth, and then drop anchor in a great circle so folk might crowd along their railings and watch Ephron Vestrit's canvas-wrapped corpse slide off a plank and slip beneath the moving waves.

  Afterwards there was some totally incomprehensible ceremony in which Vivacia was presented formally to the other individual liveships. His grandmother had presided quite solemnly. She stood on the foredeck and loudly introduced Vivacia to each ship as it was sailed across her bow. Wintrow stood alongside his scowling father, and wondered at both the smile on the old woman's face and the tears that coursed down it. Clearly, something had been lost when he was born a Haven. Even his mother had looked on glowingly, her younger two children standing at her side and waving to each ship in turn.

  But that had been the larger scope of the ceremonies. Aboard Vivacia, there had been another sort of ritual entirely. Kyle possessed himself of the ship. Even to Wintrow's untrained eyes that was plain. He barked out orders to men decades his senior and cursed them roundly if he thought they did not scamper quickly enough to his will. More than once, he loudly observed to his first mate that he had some changes in mind to make in the way this ship was run. The first time he said those words, something like a grimace of pain crossed Ronica Vestrit's features. Observing her quietly the rest of the afternoon, it had seemed to Wintrow that the old woman grew graver and graver as the day passed, as if her sorrow for her husband's death took root in her and grew with each passing hour.

  He found little to say to anyone and they said even less to him. His mother was occupied with keeping a sharp watch on little Selden, and preventing Malta from even exchanging glances with any of the younger deckhands. His grandmother mostly stood on the foredeck and stared out over the bow. If she spoke at all, it was to the figurehead, and quietly. The very thought of that put a shiver up Wintrow's spine. There was nothing natural about the life that animated that carved artifact, nothing at all of Sa's true spirit in her. While he sensed no evil about her, neither did he sense anything of good. He was glad he had not been the one to insert the peg in her, and avoided the foredeck.

  It was only on the trip home that his father seemed to recall he had an elder son. In a sense, it was his own fault. He heard the mate bark an incomprehensible order at two of the men. In trying to step quickly out of their way, he blundered backwards into the path of a third man he had not even seen. They both went down, Wintrow hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs. In a moment the hand had sprung back to his feet and dashed on to his duties. Wintrow stood up more slowly, rubbing an elbow and gradually remembering how to breathe. When he finally managed to straighten up, he found himself face to face with his father.

  “Look at you,” his father growled, and in some puzzlement Wintrow glanced down at himself, wondering if he had dirt on his clothes. His father gave him a light shove on the shoulder.

  “I don't mean your priest's robes, I mean you. Look at you! A man's years and a boy's body, and the wits of a landsman. You can't even get out of your own way, let alone another man's. Here. Torg. Here! Take him and put him to doing something so he's out of the way at least.”

  Torg was the second mate. He was a brawny man if not tall, with short blond hair and pale gray eyes. His eyebrows were white; it struck Wintrow that his face looked bald, it was composed of so many pale things. Torg's notion of keeping him out of the way was to put him below, coiling lines and hanging chain in the chain locker. The coils that were already there looked just fine to Wintrow, but Torg gruffly told him to coil them up tidy, and not be slack about it. It sounded easier than it was to do, for once disturbed, the coils tangled themselves alarmingly, and seemed reluctant to lay flat again. The thick coarse ropes soon reddened his hands and the coils were much heavier than he had expected them to be. The close air of the chain locker and the lack of any light save a lantern's combined to make him feel queasy. Nevertheless, he kept at it for what seemed like hours. Finally it was Malta who was sent to find him, telling him with some asperity that they were dockside and tied up, if he'd care to come ashore now. It took every fragment of self-control he had to remind himself that he should behave as a future priest of Sa, not an annoyed elder brother.

  Silently he set down the coil of rope he'd been working on. Every piece of rope he'd touched looked less, not more, orderly than when he'd began. Well, Torg could recoil them as he wished, or push the task off on some poor sailor. Wintrow had known it was busy work from the start, though why his father had wished to humiliate and irritate him, he could not fathom. Perhaps it had something to do with his refusal to push in the peg that quickened the ship. His father had said some wild words then. Well, it was over now. His grandfather was dead and consigned to the sea, the family had made plain they wished no comfort from him, and he would go home as soon as he decently could. Tomorrow morning, he decided, would not be too soon.

  He went up on deck and joined his family as they thanked and bid farewell to those mourners who had accompanied them on board the ship. Not a few said their good-byes to the living figurehead as well. The summer dusk was venturing into true night as the last person left. The family stood a bit longer, silent and exhausted, while Kyle gave orders to the mate for the unloading to proceed at earliest daybreak. Then Kyle came to tell the family it was time to go home. Kyle took his mother's arm, and Wintrow his grandmother's. He was silently grateful that there would be a coach awaiting them; he was not sure the old woman could have managed the uphill walk through the dark cobbled streets.

  But as they turned to leave the foredeck, the figurehead spoke up suddenly. “Are you going?” she asked anxiously. “Right now?”

  “I'll be back at first light,” Kyle told her. He spoke as if a deckhand had questioned his judgment.

  “Are all of you going?” the ship asked again. Wintrow was not sure what he responded to. Perhaps it was the note of panic in her voice.

  “You'll be all right,” he told her gently. “You're safe, tied up to the docks here. There's nothing to fear.”

  “I don't want to be alone.” The complaint was a child's, but the voice was that of an uncertain young woman. “Where's Althea? Why isn't she here? She wouldn't leave me all alone.”

  “The mate will sleep aboard, as will half the crew. You won't be alone,” Kyle replied testily. Wintrow could remember that tone from his own childhood. His heart went out to the ship despite his better judgment.

  “It's not the same!” she cried out, even as he heard himself offer, “I could stay aboard if she wished it. For this night, at least.”

  His father scowled as if he had countermand
ed his order, but his grandmother squeezed his arm gently and gave him a smile. “Blood will tell,” she said softly.

  “The boy can't stay,” Kyle announced. “I need to speak to him tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Keffria asked incredulously. “Oh, Kyle, not tonight. Not anything more tonight. We are all too weary and full of sorrow.”

  “I had thought we might all sit down together tonight, and discuss the future,” his father pointed out ponderously. “Weary and sorrowful we may be, but tomorrow will not wait.”

  “Whether tomorrow will wait or not, I shall,” his grandmother cut across the argument. There was a shadow of imperiousness in her voice, and for a moment, he recalled more vividly the woman he had known as a child. Even as his father drew breath to speak, she added, “And if Wintrow would sleep aboard and give comfort to Vivacia as best he can, I would take it as a personal favor.” She turned to the figurehead and added, “I shall need him to escort me to the coach first, though. Will you be all right alone for just a few moments, Vivacia?”

  He had been vaguely aware of how anxiously the ship had been following their conversation. Now a beaming smile broke out over the carved features. “I am certain I shall be just fine, Ronica. Just fine.” She shifted her glance to Wintrow, her gaze diving into his eyes so deeply that it startled him. “When you come back on board, would you sleep up here, on the foredeck, where I can see you?”

  He glanced uncertainly at his father. They seemed to be the only two aware that he had not yet given his permission for this. Wintrow decided to be diplomatic. “If my father permits it,” he concurred cautiously. He still had to look up to his father to meet his eyes, but he forced himself to do it and not to look away.