Ship of Magic (39 page)

Perhaps he did not grasp all that it meant to have married into a Trader family. Perhaps he did not grasp that they protected as well as profited from the Rain Wild River and all it brought down with its waters.

For a brief instant she saw her husband as a stranger, as, perhaps, a threat. Not an evil, malevolent threat, but part of a storm or immense tide that, soulless, still crushes and destroys all in its path.

“Kyle is a good man,” she said to her mother. But her mother had left the room soundlessly, and her own words fell lifeless in the uncaring air.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NEGOTIATIONS

“WE SAIL TOMORROW MORNING.” TORG DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO
mask the enjoyment he took from imparting these tidings.

Wintrow refused to look up from his work. The man's words were neither a question nor an order. He was not required to reply.

“Yep. We sail from here. Last you'll see of Bingtown for a time. We've got seven ports between here and Jamaillia. First three are in Chalced. Going to get rid of those comfer nuts. I could have told him they wouldn't sell in Bingtown, but then, no one asked me.” Torg rolled his shoulders and grinned in self-satisfaction. He seemed to think that his captain's poor decision proved that Torg was a wiser man. Wintrow saw no such connection.

“Captain's going to build up a bit of a cash pot, is what I hear, and have all the more to spend on slaves in Jamaillia. We'll take on a nice haul of them, boy.” He licked his lips. “Now, that's what I look forward to, especially as he'll be listening to my advice once we reach Jamaillia. That's a market I know. Yea. I know prime slave-flesh when I see it, and I'll be holding out for the best. Maybe I'll even get some skinny little girls for you to fancy. What do you think of that, laddie?”

Questions had to be answered, if one didn't want a boot in the small of one's back. “I think that slavery is immoral and illegal. And that it isn't appropriate for us to be discussing the captain's plans.” He kept his eyes on his work. It was a pile of old line. His task was to untangle it, salvage what was good, and render the rest down into fibers that could either be re-twisted into line or used as chinking as needed. His hands had become as rough as the hemp he handled. When he looked at them, it was hard to recall they had once been the hands of an artist with a fine touch for glass. Across from him on the foredeck, Mild was working on his side of the pile. He envied the young sailor the agility of his callused hands. When Mild took up a piece of rope and gave it a shake, it seemed to magically untangle itself. No matter how Wintrow tried to coil a piece of line, it still always wanted to twist in the other direction.

“Oh, ho. Getting a bit snippy, are we?” Torg's heavy boot nudged him painfully. He was still bruised from an earlier kick.

“No, sir,” Wintrow answered reflexively. It was getting easier, sometimes, to simply be subservient. When his father had first given him over to this brute, he had tried to speak to the man as if he had a mind. He had rapidly learned that any words Torg didn't understand he interpreted as mockery, and that explanations were only seen as feeble excuses. The less said, the fewer bruises. Even if it meant agreeing with statements he normally disagreed with. He tried not to see it as an eroding of his dignity and ethics. Survival, he told himself. It was simple survival until he could get away.

He dared to venture a question. “What ports shall we be stopping in?”

If there were one anywhere on the peninsula of Marrow, he'd be off the ship there, somehow. He didn't care how far he had to walk, or if he had to beg his way across the entire peninsula, he'd get back to his monastery. When he told his tale there, they'd listen to him. They'd change his name and place him elsewhere, where his father could never find him again.

“Nowhere near Marrow,” Torg told him with vicious delight. “If you want to get back to your priesting, boy, you're going to have to swim.” The second mate laughed aloud, and Wintrow saw how he had been set up to ask that question. It disturbed him that even Torg's slow wit could know so clearly where his heart was. Did he dream on it too much, did it show in his every action? He had begun to think it was the only way for him to stay sane. He constantly planned ways to slip away from the ship. Every time they latched him into the chain locker for the night, he would wait until the footsteps had died away and then try the door. He wished he had not been so impatient when he first was dragged aboard the ship. His clumsy attempts to leave had alerted both captain and crew to his intent, and Kyle had made it well known both to him and the crew that any man who let him leave the ship would pay heavily for it. He was never left alone, and those who worked alongside him resented that they could not trust him, but must guard him as well as work.

Now Torg made a great show of stretching his muscles. He lifted a booted foot to tap Wintrow's spine again. “Got to go, boys. Work to do. Mild, you're the nanny. See pretty boy here keeps busy.” With a final painful nudge, Torg lumbered away down the deck. Neither boy looked up to watch him go. But when he was out of earshot, Mild observed calmly, “Someone will kill him someday and tip him over the side and no one will be the wiser.” The young sailor's hands never paused in their work as he imparted this information to Wintrow. “Maybe it will be me,” he added pleasantly.

The youth's calm advocation of murder chilled Wintrow. Much as he disliked Torg, as difficult as it was for him not to hate the man, he had never considered killing him. That Mild had was disconcerting. “Don't let someone like Torg distort your life and focus,” he suggested quietly. “Even to think of killing for the sake of vengeance bends the spirit. We cannot know why Sa permits such men as Torg to have power over others, but we can deny him the power to distort our spirits. Yield him obedience where we must, but do not . . .”

“I didn't ask for a sermon,” Mild protested irritably. He flung down the piece of line he'd been working on in disgust. “Who do you think you are? Why should you be telling me how to think or live? Don't you ever just talk? Try it sometime. Just say out loud, “I'd really love to kill that dog-pronging bastard.' You'd be surprised what a relief it is.” He turned his face away from Wintrow and spoke aloud in an apparent aside to a mast. “Dung. You try to talk to him like he's a person and he acts like you're on your knees begging his advice.”

Wintrow felt a moment of outrage, followed by a rush of embarrassment. “I didn't mean it like that . . .” He started to say he didn't think he was any better than Mild, but the lie died on his lips. He forced himself to speak truth. “No. I never talk without thinking first. I've been schooled to avoid careless words. And in the monastery, if we see or hear someone putting himself on a destructive path, then we speak out to each other. But to help each other, not to . . .”

“Well, you're not in a monastery anymore. You're here. When are you going to get that through your thick head and start acting like a sailor? You know, it's painful to watch how you let them all push you around. Get some gumption and stand up to them instead of preaching Sa all the time. Take a swing at Torg. Sure, you'll get a beating for it. But Torg is a bigger coward than you are. If he thinks there's even a chance you're going to lay for him with a marline spike, he'll back off of you. Don't you see that?”

Wintrow tried for dignity. “If he makes me behave like he does, then he's truly won. Don't you see that?”

“No. All I see is that you're so afraid of a beating you won't even admit you're afraid of it. It's just like your shirt the other day, when Torg put it up the mast to taunt you. You should have known you'd have to go get it yourself, so you should have just done it, instead of waiting until you were forced to do it. That made you lose to him twice, don't you see?”

“I don't see how I lost at all. It was a cruel joke, not worthy of men,” Wintrow replied quietly.

Mild lost his temper for an instant. “There. That's what you do that I hate. You know what I mean, but you try to talk about it a whole different way. It isn't about what is “worthy of men.' Here and now, it's about you and Torg. The only way you could have won that round was pretending that you didn't give a damn, that climbing the mast to get your shirt back wasn't anything. Instead, you got sunburned sitting around acting too holy to go get your shirt . . .” Mild sputtered off into silence, obviously frustrated by Wintrow's lack of response. He took a breath, tried again. “Don't you get it at all? The worst was him forcing you to climb the mast ahead of him. That was when you really lost. The whole crew thinks you've got no spine now. That you're a coward.” Mild shook his head in disgust. “It's bad enough you look like a little kid. Do you have to act like one all the time?”

The sailor rose in disgust and stalked away. Wintrow sat staring down at the heap of rope. The other boy's words had rattled him more than he liked to admit. He had pointed out, too clearly, that Wintrow now lived and moved in a different world. He and Mild were probably of an age, but Mild had taken up this trade of his own inclination, three years ago. He was a sailor to the bone now, and no longer the ship's boy since Wintrow had come aboard. No longer a boy at all in appearance. He was hard-muscled and agile. He was a full head taller than Wintrow as well, and the hair on his cheeks was starting to darken into proper whiskers. Wintrow knew that his slight build and boyish appearance were not faults, were not something he could change even if he saw them as faults. But somehow it had been easier in the monastery, where one and all agreed that each would grow in his own time and way.

Sa'Greb would never be taller than a lad, and his short stocky limbs would have made him the butt of all jokes had he remained in his home village. But in the monastery he was respected for the verses he wrote. No one thought of him as “too short”, he was simply Sa'Greb. And the kind of cruel pranks that were the ordinary day to day of this ship would never have been expected nor tolerated there. The younger boys teased and shoved one another when they first arrived, but those with a penchant for bullying or cruelty were swiftly returned to their parents. Those attributes had no place among the servants of Sa.

He suddenly missed the monastery with a sharp ache. He forced the pain away before it could bring tears smarting to his eyes. No tears aboard this ship; no sense in letting anyone see what they could only view as a weakness. In his own way, Mild was right. He was trapped aboard the
Vivacia,
either until he could make his escape or until his fifteenth birthday. What would Berandol have counseled him? Why, to make the best of his time here. If sailor he must be, then he were wiser to learn it swiftly. And if he were forced to be a part of this crew for . . . however long it would be . . . then he must begin to form alliances, at least.

It would help, he reflected, if he had had the vaguest idea of how one made friends with someone one's own age, but with whom one had next to nothing in common. He took up a worn piece of line and began to pick it apart as he pondered this very thing. From behind him, Vivacia spoke quietly. “I thought your words had merit.”

Wonderful. A soulless wooden ship, animated by a force that might or might not be of Sa, found his words inspiring. Almost as soon as he had the unworthy thought, Wintrow squelched it. But not before he sensed a vibration of pain from the ship. Had not he just been telling himself he needed allies? And here he was viciously turning on the only true ally he had. “I am sorry,” he said quietly, knowing he scarcely needed to speak the words aloud. “It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.”

“I've seen it before,” Vivacia agreed listlessly. “And you are not alone in your bitterness. The whole crew is in turmoil. Scarcely a soul aboard feels content with his lot.”

He nodded to her observation. “There has been too much change, too fast. Too many men dismissed, others put on lesser wage because of their age. Too many new hands aboard, trying to discover where they fit into the order of things. It will take time before they feel they are all part of the same crew.”

“If ever,” Vivacia said with small hope. “There is Vestrit's Old Crew, and Kyle's Men and the New Hands. So they seem to think of themselves, and so they behave. I feel . . . divided against myself. It is hard to trust, hard to relax and give control to . . . the captain.” She hesitated on the title, as if she herself did not yet fully recognize Kyle in that position.

Wintrow nodded again, silently. He had felt the tensions himself. Some of the men Kyle had let go had been acrimonious, and at least two others had quit in protest. The latest disturbance had been when Kyle had demanded that one older man who was quitting return to him the gold earring that Captain Vestrit had given him for his long service aboard the
Vivacia.
The earring was shaped like Vivacia's figurehead and marked him as a valued member of her crew. The old man had thrown it over the side rather than surrender it to Kyle. Then he had stalked off down the dock, his sea-bag over his bony shoulder. Wintrow had sensed that the old man had little to go to; it would be hard to prove himself on board a new ship, competing with younger, more agile hands.

“He didn't really throw it into the sea.” Vivacia's voice was little more than a whisper.

Wintrow was instantly curious. “He didn't? How do you know?” He stood and went to the railing to look down at the figurehead. She smiled up at him.

“Because he came back later that night and gave it to me. He said we had been so long together, if he could not die aboard my decks, he wished me to have at least a token of his years.”

Wintrow felt himself suddenly deeply moved. The old sailor had given back to the ship what was surely a valuable piece of jewelry, as gold alone. Given it freely.

“What did you do with it?”

She looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I did not know what to do with it. But he told me to swallow it. He said that many of the liveships do that. Not commonly, but with tokens that are of great significance. The ships swallow them and thus carry the memory of the man who gave it for as many years as they live.” She smiled at Wintrow's astonished look. “So I did. It was not hard, although it felt strange. And I am . . . aware of it, in an odd way. But you know, it felt like the right thing to do.”

“I am sure it was,” Wintrow replied. And wondered why he was so sure.

THE EVENING WIND WAS WELCOME AFTER THE HEAT OF THE DAY.
Even the ordinary ships seemed to speak softly to one another as they creaked gently beside the docks. The skies were clear, promising a fine day tomorrow. Althea stood silently in Vivacia's shadow and waited. She wondered if she were out of her mind, to fix her heart on an impossible goal and then depend on a man's angry words as a path to it. But what else did she have? Only Kyle's impulsive oath, and her nephew's sense of fair play. Only an idiot would believe those things might be enough. Her mother had tried to seek her out through Vivacia; perhaps that might mean she had an ally at home. Perhaps, but she would not count on it.