Ship of Magic lt-1

by Robin Hobb

  He glanced down at himself. He had been undressed and a sheet draped his legs.

  “And where is our boy-captain?” Kennit asked Etta.

  She spun at the sound of his voice and then hurried to his side. “He has gone to tend his father's ribs and head. He said it would not take long, and he wished to have the chamber cleared of clutter before he tried to heal you.” She looked at him and shook her head. “I do not understand how you can trust him. He must know that if you live this ship can never be his. Nor do I understand why you will allow a mere boy to do what you forbade three skilled healers even to think of in Bull Creek.”

  “Because he is a part of my luck,” he said quietly. “The same luck that has given this ship to me so easily. You must see this is the ship I am meant to have. The boy is part and parcel of that.”

  He almost wanted to make her understand. But no one must know of the words the charm had spoken when the boy looked so deeply into his eyes. No one must know of the bond forged between them in that instant, a bond that frightened Kennit as much as it intrigued him. He spoke again to keep her from asking any more questions. “So. We are under weigh all ready?”

  “Sorcor takes us back to Bull Creek. He has put Gory on the wheel and Brig in charge of the deck. We follow the Marietta.”

  “I see.” He smiled to himself. “And what do you think of my liveship?”

  She gave him a bittersweet smile. “She is lovely. And I am already jealous of her.” Etta crossed her arms on her chest and gave him a sideways glance. “I do not think we shall get along easily. She is too strange a thing, neither woman nor wood nor ship. I do not like the pretty words you sprinkle so thickly before her, nor do I like the boy Wintrow.”

  “And as ever, I care little what you like or dislike,” Kennit told her impatiently. “What can I give the ship to win her, save words? She is not a woman in the same way you are.” When the whore still looked sulky, he added savagely, “And were not my leg so painful, I would put you on your back and remind you of what you are to me.”

  Her eyes changed suddenly from black ice to dark fire. “Would that you could,” she said gently, and disgusted him with the warmth of the smile his rebuke earned him.

  Kyle Haven lay on Gantry's bare bunk, facing the bulkhead. All that the ransacking slaves had left of the mate's possessions were scattered on the floor. There was not much. Wintrow stepped over a carved wooden chain and a single discarded sock. All else that had been Gantry's — his books, his clothes, his carving tools — had been taken or left in fragments, either by the slaves in their first rush of plundering, or by the pirates in their far more organized gathering of loot.

  “It's Wintrow, Father,” he told him as he shut the door behind him. It would not latch anymore; during the uprising, someone had kicked it open rather than simply trying the knob. But the door stayed shut, and the two map-faces that Sa'Adar had posted as sentries did not try to open it again.

  The man on the bed did not stir.

  Wintrow set the basin of water and the rags he'd salvaged down on the cracked remains of Gantry's desk and turned to the man in the bed. He hastily set his fingers to the pulsepoint in his throat, and felt his father jolt back to consciousness at his touch. The man shuddered away from him with an incoherent sound, then sat up hastily.

  “It's all right,” Wintrow said comfortingly. “It's only me.”

  His father showed his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “It's only you,” he conceded. “But I'll damn well bet it isn't all right.”

  He looked terrible, worse than he had when the slaves were trying to feed him to the serpent. Old, Wintrow thought to himself. He looks suddenly old. Stubble stood on his cheeks and blood from his head wound was smeared through it. He had come in here intending to clean his father's wounds and bind them. Now he felt himself strangely reluctant to touch the man. It was not dismay at the blood, nor was he too proud to do such tasks. His time in the hold tending the slaves had eroded those things away long ago. This was a reluctance to touch because the man was his father. Touch might affirm that link.

  Wintrow faced what he felt squarely. He wished with all his heart he had no bond to this man.

  “I brought some wash water,” he told him. “Not much. Fresh water supplies are very low just now. Are you hungry? Shall I try to get some hard-tack for you? It's about all that is left.”

  “I'm fine,” his father said flatly, not answering his question. “Don't trouble yourself on my account. You've more important friends to pander to just now.”

  He ignored his father's choice of words. “Kennit's sleeping. If I'm to have any chance of healing him, he'll need all the rest he can get to strengthen him.”

  “So. You'll truly do it. You'll heal the man who's taken your ship from you.”

  “To keep you alive, yes.”

  His father snorted. “Bilge. You'd do it anyway, even if they'd fed me to that snake. It's what you do. Cower before whoever has the power.”

  Wintrow tried to consider it impartially. “You're probably right. But not because he has power. It would have nothing to do with who he is. It's life, father. Sa is life. While life exists, there is always the possibility of improvement. So, as a priest, I have a duty to preserve life. Even his.”

  His father gave a sour laugh. “Even mine, you mean.”

  Wintrow gave a single nod.

  He turned the gashed side of his head toward his son. “May as well get to it, then, priest. As it's all you're good for.”

  He would not be baited. “Let's check your ribs first.”

  “As you will.” Moving stiffly, his father drew off what remained of his shirt. The left side of his chest was black and blue. Wintrow winced at the clear imprint of a boot in his flesh. It had obviously been done after his father was already down. The rags and the water were the only supplies he had; the ship's medicine chest had completely disappeared. Doggedly, he set out to at least bind the ribs enough to give them some support. His father gasped at his touch, but did not jerk away. When Wintrow had tied the final knot, Kyle Haven spoke.

  “You hate me, don't you, boy?”

  “I don't know.” Wintrow dipped a rag and started to dab blood from his face.

  “I do,” his father said after a moment. “It's in your face. You can scarcely stand to be in this room with me, let alone touch me.”

  “You did try to kill me,” Wintrow heard himself say calmly.

  “Yes. I did. I did at that.” His father gave a baffled laugh, then gasped with the pain of it. “Damn me if I know why. But it certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Wintrow sensed he would get no more explanation than that. Perhaps he didn't want one. He was tired of trying to understand his father. He didn't want to hate him. He didn't want to feel anything for him at all. He found himself wishing his father had not existed in his life. “Why did it have to be this way?” he wondered aloud.

  “You chose it,” Kyle Haven asserted. “It didn't have to be this way. If you had just tried it my way… just done as you were told, without question, we'd all be fine. Couldn't you have, just once, trusted that someone else knew what was good for you?”

  Wintrow glanced about the room as if looking about the entire ship. “I don't think any of this was good for anyone,” he observed quietly.

  “Only because you muddled it! You and the ship. If you both had cooperated, we'd be halfway to Chalced by now. And Gantry and Mild and… all of them would still be alive. You're to blame for this, not I! You chose this.”

  Wintrow tried to think of an answer to that, but none came. He began to bind his father's head wound as best as he could.

  They worked her decks well, these brightly clad pirates. Not since Ephron had sailed her had she enjoyed a crew so swiftly responsive to her. She found herself in turn accepting their competent mastery of her sails and rigging in a sort of relief. Under Brig's direction, the former slaves moved in an orderly procession, drawing buckets of water and taking them below to clean her
holds. Others pumped the filthy bilge out while still others worked with scrubbing stones on her deck. No matter how they abraded the blood stains, her wood would never release them. She knew that, but spoke no word of it. In time the humans would see the futility of it and give it up. The spilled food had been gathered and restowed. Some few worked at removing the chains and fetters that festooned her holds. Slowly they were restoring her to herself. It was the closest she had felt to content since the day she had been quickened.

  Content. And there was something else she felt, something unsettling. Something much more fascinating than contentment.

  She extended her awareness. In the mate's cabin, Kyle Haven sat on the edge of the narrow bunk while his son silently washed the blood from the gash on his head. His ribs were already wrapped.

  There was a quiet in the room that went beyond silence, as if they did not even share a language. The silence ached. She pulled away from it.

  In the captain's salon, the pirate dozed restlessly. She was not aware of him as keenly as she was of Wintrow. But she could sense the heat of his fever, feel the uneven rhythm of his breathing. Like a moth drawn to a candleflame, she approached him. Kennit. She tried the name on her tongue. A wicked man. And dangerous. A charming, wicked and dangerous man. She did not think she liked his woman. But Kennit himself… He had said he would win her to him. He could not, of course. He was not family. But she found that there was great pleasure in anticipating his attempts. My lady of wood and wind, he had called her. My beauty. My swift one. Such silly things for a man to say to a ship. She smoothed her hair back from her face and took a deep breath.

  Perhaps Wintrow had been right. Perhaps it was time she discovered what she wanted for herself.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  She Who Remembers

  “I was wrong. It is not She Who Remembers. Come away.”

  “But… I do not understand,” Shreever pleaded. She had a great gash down her shoulder where the white serpent had attacked her with his teeth. With his teeth, as if he were a shark instead of serpent. A thick green ichor was already closing the wound, but it stung sharply as she hurried to keep pace with Maulkin. Behind them, Sessurea trailed, as puzzled as she was.

  “I do not understand either.” Maulkin's mane streamed behind him in the speed of his flowing. Behind them the white serpent still trumpeted mindlessly, gorging endlessly. Faint as old memories, the scent of blood wafted through the atmosphere. “I recall her scent. I have no doubt of her fragrance. But that… thing… is not She Who Remembers.”

  Sessurea lashed his tail suddenly to draw even with them. “The white serpent,” he asked suddenly, dread in his voice. “What was wrong with him?”

  “Nothing,” Maulkin said in a terribly soft voice. “I fear nothing was wrong with him, except that he is further along in the passage we all make now. Soon, I fear, we shall all be just like him.”

  “I don't understand,” Shreever said again. But a cold dread was welling up in her, a sense that she would understand, if she chose to.

  “He has forgotten. That is all.” Maulkin's voice was devoid of any emotion.

  “Forgotten… what?” Sessurea asked.

  “Everything,” Maulkin said. His mane suddenly drooped, his colors dulled. “Everything except feeding, and shedding and growing. All else, all that is real and significant, he has forgotten. As I fear we all shall forget, if She Who Remembers does not manifest herself to us soon.” He turned abruptly, wrapping them both in his coiling embrace. They did not struggle, but took comfort in it. His touch sharpened their memories and cognizance. Together they settled slowly to the soft muck, sinking into it still entwined. “My tangle,” he said fondly, and with a pang Shreever knew the truth of it. These three were all that was left of Maulkin's tangle.

  They relaxed in their leader's embrace. Soon only their heads remained above the muck. They relaxed, their gills moved in unison. Slowly, comfortingly, Maulkin spoke the holy lore to them.

  “After the first birth, we were Masters. We grew, we learned, we experienced. And all that we learned, we shared with one another, so that wisdom ever grew greater. But no bodies are made to last forever. So the time of mating came, and essences were exchanged and mixed and deposited. Our old bodies we laid down forever, knowing we would take up new ones, as new beings. And we did. Small and new we emerged. We fed, we shed, and we grew. But we did not all remember. Only some. Some guarded for us the memories of all. And when the time was right, those who remembered called to us with their fragrances. They led us back, and gave us our memories. And we emerged again as Masters, to roam both Plenty and Lack, amassing still more wisdom and experience, to mingle it yet again at the time of mating.”

  He paused in the familiar tale. “I do not recall, now, how many times that has come to pass,” he confessed. “Cycle after cycle, we have survived. But this last time of shedding and growing… has not it been the longest ever? Do not more and more of us forget that we are meant to be Masters? I fear we decline, my tangle. Did I not once, long ago, recall far more than I do today? Did not you?”

  His questions probed the uneasy place in Shreever's heart. She tangled her ruff against his, daring the toxins that she might feel the sting of his memories and beings. Her thoughts came sharper to her.

  “Once, I remembered far more,” she admitted. “Sometimes, I think all I remember clearly now is that you are the one to follow. The one with true memories.”

  His trumpeting was deep and soft as he spoke. “If She Who Remembers does not come to us soon, even I may forget that.”

  “Remember this, then, above all else. That we must continue to seek She Who Remembers.”

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