Ship of Magic (10 page)

“You needn't give me a history lesson, Ronica Vestrit.” Davad rebuked her mildly. He helped himself to another biscuit. “Need I remind you that my family came here in the same expedition? The Restarts are as much Traders as the Vestrits. I know what those lands mean.”

“Then how can you even bring such an offer here?” she demanded hotly.

“Because half of Bingtown knows how desperate things have become for you. Look here, woman. You haven't the capital to hire the workers to farm those lands properly. Fullerjon does. And buying them would increase his land ownership to the point where he'd be qualified to petition for a seat on the Bingtown Council. Between the two of us, I think that's all he's really after anyway. It needn't be your bottom lands, though that is what he'd like. Offer him something else; he'll probably buy it from you.” Davad leaned back with a dissatisfied look on his face. “Sell him the wheat fields. You can't work them properly anyway.”

“And he can gain a seat on the Bingtown Council. So he can vote to bring slaves to Bingtown. And work the lands I've sold him with slaves and sell the grain he grows cheaper than I can compete with. Or you, for that matter, or any other honest Trader. Davad Restart, use your mind. This offer not only asks me to betray the Vestrit family, but all of us. We've enough greedy little merchants on the Bingtown Council already. The Old Trader Council is barely able to keep them in check. I shan't be the one to sell land and a council seat to another latecomer upstart.”

Davad started to speak, then visibly controlled himself. He folded his small hands on his lap. “It's going to happen, Ronica.” She heard true regret in his voice. “The days of the Old Traders are fading. The wars and the pirates bit into us too deeply. And now that the wars are mostly over, these merchants have come, swarming over us like fleas on a dying rabbit. They'll suck us dry. We need their money in order to recover, so they force us to sell cheap what cost us so dear in blood and children.” For a moment his voice faltered. Ronica suddenly recalled that the year of the Blood Plague had carried off all his children as well as left him a widower. He had never remarried.

“It's going to happen, Ronica,” he repeated. “And those of us who survive will be the ones who have learned to adapt. When our families first settled Bingtown, they were poor and hungry and oh so adaptable. We've lost that. We've become what we fled. Fat and traditionalist and desperate to hang on to our monopolies. The only reason we despise the new merchants who have started moving in is that they remind us so much of ourselves. Or rather of our great-great-grandparents, and the tales we've heard of them.”

For a moment, Ronica almost felt inclined to agree with him. Then she felt a rush of anger. “They are nothing like the original Traders! They were wolves, these are eye-picking carrion birds! When the first Carrock set foot on this shore, he risked everything. He sold all he had for his ship-share, and mortgaged half of whatever he might gain for the next twenty years to the Satrap. And for what? For a grant of land and a guarantee of a share in the monopoly. What land? Why, whatever acreage he could claim. What monopoly? Why, on whatever goods he might discover that would be worth trading in. And where was this wonderful bargain granted to him? On a stretch of coast that for hundreds of years had been known as the Cursed Shores, a place where even the gods themselves did not claim dominion. And what did they find here? Diseases unknown before, strangeness that drove men mad overnight, and the doom that half our children are born not quite human.”

Davad suddenly went pale and made shushing motions with his hands. But Ronica was relentless. “Do you know what it does to a woman, Davad, to carry something inside her for nine months, not knowing if it's the child and heir they've been praying for, or if it's a malformed monster that her husband must strangle with his own hands? Or something in between? You must know what it does to a man. As I recall, your Dorill was pregnant three times yet you only had two children.”

“And the Blood Plague carried them all off,” Davad admitted brokenly. He suddenly lowered his face into his hands and Ronica was sorry, sorry for all she had said, and sorry for this pathetic shell of a man who had no wife to tell him to relace his tunic and scold the tailor for badly fitting trousers. She was sorry for all of them, born in Bingtown to die in Bingtown, and in between to carry on the curse-plagued bargain their forebears had struck. Perhaps the worst part of that bargain was that one and all, they had come to love Bingtown and the surrounding green hills and valleys. Verdant as a jungle, soil black and rich in the hand, crystal water in the streams, and abundant game in the forests, it offered them wealth beyond the dreams of the sea-weary and draggled immigrants who had first been brave enough to anchor in the Bingtown harbor. In the end, the real contract had been made, not with the Satrap who nominally claimed these shores, but with the land itself. Beauty and fertility balanced with disease and death.

And something more, she admitted to herself. There was something in calling oneself a Bingtown Trader, in not only braving all the strangeness that came down the Rain Wild River, but claiming it for one's own. The first Traders had tried to establish their settlement at the mouth of the Rain Wild River itself. They had built their homes on the river's edge, using the roots of the stilt-trees as foundations for their cottages, and stringing bridges from home to home. The rising and falling river had rushed by beneath their floors and the wild storm winds had rocked their tree houses at night. Sometimes the very earth itself would heave and tremble, and then the river might suddenly run milky white and deadly, for a day or a month.

For two years the settlers had abided there, despite insects and fevers and the swift river that devoured anything that fell into it. Yet it had not been those hardships, but the strangeness that had finally driven them away. The little company of Traders had been pushed south by death and disease and the odd panics that might strike a woman as she kneaded the bread, the furies of self-destruction that could come on a man gathering wood and send him leaping into the river. Of 307 households that had been the original Traders, sixty-two families had survived that first three years. Even now, from Bingtown to the mouth of the Rain Wild River there stretched a trail of abandoned townsites that marked the path of their attempts at settlement. Finally, here in Bingtown, on the shores of Trader Bay, they had found a tolerable distance from the Rain Wild River and all that flowed down it. Of those families that had chosen to remain as settlers on the Rain Wild River, the less said the better. The Rain Wild Traders were kin and a necessary part of all Bingtown was. She acknowledged that. Still.

“Davad?” She reached across Ephron to touch their old friend's arm gently. “I'm sorry. I spoke too roughly, of things better left unmentioned.”

“It's all right,” he lied into his hands. He lifted a pale face to meet her eyes. “What we Traders do not speak of amongst ourselves is common talk among these newcomers. Have not you noticed how few bring their wives and daughters with them? They do not come here to settle. They will buy land, yes, and sit on the Council and wring wealth out of Bingtown, but in between they will sail back to Jamaillia. That is where they will wed and keep their wives, where their children will be born, that is where they will go to spend their aging years and send but a son or two here to manage things.” He snorted disdainfully. “The Three-Ships Immigrants I could respect. They came here, and when we honestly told them what price this sanctuary would cost them, they still stayed. But this wave of newcomers arrive hoping only to reap the harvest we have watered with our blood.”

“The Satrap is as much to blame as they are,” Ronica agreed. “He has broken the word that was given to us by Esclepius, his forebear. It was sworn to us that he would make no more grants of land to newcomers, save that our Council approved it. The Three-Ships Immigrants came with empty hands, but willing backs, and they have become a part of us. But this latest wave come clutching land grants and claim their leffers with no regard for who or what they harm. Felco Treeves claimed his land on the hillsides above Trader Drur's beer valley, and put cattle to graze on it. Now Drur's springs that flowed so clear are yellow as cow's piss, and his beer is scarcely drinkable. And when Trudo Fells came, he claimed as his own the forest where all had been free to cut firewood and oak for furniture, and . . .”

“I know, I know it all,” Davad cut in wearily. “Ronica, there is naught but bitterness in chewing these thoughts again. And there is no good in pretending that things will go back to how they once were. They will not. This is but the first wave of change. We can either ride over the wave or be swamped by it. Don't you think the Satrap will sell other grants of lands, once it is seen that these newcomers prosper? More will come. The only way to deal with them is to adapt to them. Learn from them, if we must—and take up their ways where we must.”

“Aye.” Ephron's voice was like a rusted hinge breaking free. “We can learn to like slavery so well that we do not care when our grandchildren may become slaves because of a year's debts mounting too high. And as for the sea serpents that the slaveships lure into our waters, chumming them along with the bodies they throw overboard, well, we can welcome them right into Trader Bay and never need the boneyard again.”

It was a long speech for a sick man. He stopped to breathe. At the first sign of his wakening, Ronica had arisen to fetch the poppy milk. She drew the stopper from the heavy brown bottle, but Ephron slowly shook his head. “Not yet,” he told her. He breathed for a moment before he repeated, “Not just yet.” He turned his weary gaze to Davad, whose tactless dismay at Ephron's weakness was writ large on his face. Ephron gave a feeble cough.

Davad bent his face into an attempt at a smile. “It's good to see you awake, Ephron. I hope our conversation didn't disturb you.”

For a moment or two Ephron just stared at the man. Then, with the casual rudeness of the truly ill, he ignored him. His dull eyes focused on his wife. “Any word of the
Vivacia
?” he asked. He asked the question as a starving man might ask for food.

Ronica shook her head reluctantly as she set the poppy milk down. “But she should not be much longer. We have had word from the monastery that Wintrow is on his way home to us.” She offered these last words brightly, but Ephron only turned his head slowly against the pillow.

“What will he do? Look solemn and beg an offering for his monastery before he leaves? I gave up on that boy when his mother sacrificed him to Sa.” Ephron closed his eyes and breathed for a time. He did not open his eyes before he spoke again. “Damn that Kyle. He should have been back weeks ago . . . unless he's taken her to the bottom, and Althea, too. I knew I should have put the ship in Brashen's hands. Kyle's a good enough captain, but it takes Trader blood to truly feel the ways of a liveship.”

Ronica felt the blush rise in her cheeks. It shamed her to have her husband speak so of their son-in-law in Davad's presence. “Are you hungry, Ephron? Or thirsty?” she asked to change the subject.

“Neither.” He coughed. “I'm dying. And I'd like my damn ship here so I can die on her decks and quicken her, so my whole damn life won't have been for nothing. That's not much to ask for, is it? That the dream that I was born to fulfill should be played out as I've always planned it?” He took a ragged breath. “The poppy, Ronica. The poppy now.”

She measured the syrupy medicine into a spoon. She held it to Ephron's mouth and he swallowed it with no complaint. Afterwards he took a breath and motioned at his water jug. He drank from the cup in small sips, then lay back against his pillows with a wheezing sigh. Already the lines on his forehead were loosening, his mouth getting slacker. His eyes wandered to Davad, but it was not to him he spoke.

“Don't sell anything, my love. Bide your time as best you can. Let me but die on the decks of my ship, and I'll see the
Vivacia
serves you well. She and I will cut the waves as no ship ever has before, swift and true. You'll lack for nothing, Ronica. I promise you. Just stay your course, and all will go well.”

His voice was winding down, going deeper and slower on each word. She held her own breath as he took another gulp of air. “Hold your course,” he repeated, but she did not think he spoke to her. Perhaps the poppy had already carried his dreaming mind back to the deck of his beloved ship.

She felt the hated tears rising and fought them back. They struggled against her determination, choking her until the pain in her throat almost stopped her breath. She gave a sideways glance at Davad. He hadn't the courtesy to turn his stare away, but at least he had the grace to be uncomfortable. “His ship,” she found herself saying bitterly. “Always his damn ship; that was all he ever cared about.” She wondered why she would rather that Davad believed she cried over that instead of Ephron's death. She sniffed, horribly loud, then gave in and found her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

“I should be going,” Davad realized belatedly.

“Must you?” Ronica heard herself replying reflexively. She found the discipline appropriate to her position. “Thank you so much for dropping in. Let me at least walk you to the door,” she added, before Davad could change his mind about leaving.

She rose and tugged a light cover up over Ephron. He muttered something about the topsail. Davad took her arm as they left the sickroom, and she forced herself to tolerate that courtesy. She blinked as she left the dimness of the sickroom behind her. She had always been proud of her bright and airy home; now the clear sunlight that flooded in the generous windows seemed harsh and glaring. She averted her eyes from the atrium as they passed it. Once it had been her pride and joy; now, bereft of her attentions, it was a desolate wasteland of browning vines and sprawling, straggling plant life. She tried to promise herself that after Ephron was finished dying, she'd have time to attend to it once again, but suddenly that thought seemed vile and traitorous, as if she were hoping her husband would soon die so she could take care of her garden.