The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  It had been stripped, save for the painting of the Vivacia. The sight of the empty shelves near wrenched her heart from her chest. All her possessions had been neatly and tightly stowed in several open crates in the room. Planking, nails and a hammer were on the deck. This, then, had been the task Brashen had been called away from. She sat down on the ticking mattress on her bunk and stared at the crates. Some industrious creature inside her wanted to crouch down and hammer the planks into place. Defiance bid her unpack her things and put them in their rightful places. She was caught between these things, and did nothing for a time.

  Then with a shocking suddenness, grief throttled her. Her sobs could not come up, she couldn’t even take a breath for the tightness in her throat. Her need to cry was a terrible squeezing pain that literally suffocated her. She sat on her bunk, mouth open and strangling. When she finally got a breath of air into her lungs, she could only sob. Tears streamed down her face, and she had no handkerchief, nothing but her sleeve or her skirts, and what kind of a terrible heartless person was she that she could even think of handkerchiefs at a time like this? She leaned her head into her hands and finally allowed herself simply to weep.

  They moved off, clucking and muttering to one another like a flock of chickens. Wintrow was forced to trail after them. He didn’t know what else to do. He had been in Bingtown for five days now, and still had no idea why they had summoned him home. His grandfather was dying; of course he knew that, but he could scarcely see what they expected him to do about it, or even how they expected him to react.

  Dying, the old man was even more daunting than he had been in life. When Wintrow had been a boy, it had been the sheer force of the man’s life-strength that had cowed him. Now it was the blackness of dwindling death that seeped out from him and emptied its darkness into the room. On the ship home, Wintrow had made a strong resolve that he would get to know something of his grandfather before the old man died. But it was too late for that. In these last weeks, all that Ephron Vestrit possessed of himself had been focused into keeping a grip on life. He had held on grimly to every breath, and it was not for the sake of his grandson’s presence. No. He awaited only the return of his ship.

  Not that Wintrow had had much time with his grandfather. When he had first arrived, his mother had scarcely given him time to wash the dust of travel from his face and hands before she ushered him in and presented him. Disoriented after his sea voyage and the rattling trip through the hot and bustling city streets, he had barely been able to grasp that this short, dark-haired woman was the Mama he had once looked up to. The room she hurried him into had been curtained against the day’s heat and light. Inside was a woman in a chair beside a bed. The room smelled sour and close, and it was all he could do to stand still when the woman rose and embraced him. She clutched at his arm as soon as his mother released her grip on him, and pulled him towards the bedside.

  ‘Ephron,’ she had said quietly. ‘Ephron, Wintrow is here.’

  And in the bed, a shape stirred and coughed and then mumbled what might have been an acknowledgement. He stood there, shackled by his grandmother’s grip on his wrist, and only belatedly offered a ‘Hello, Grandfather. I’ve come home to visit.’

  If the old man had heard him at all, he hadn’t bothered with a reply. After a few moments, his grandfather had coughed again and then queried hoarsely, ‘Ship?’

  ‘No. Not yet,’ his grandmother replied gently.

  They had stood there a while longer. Then, when the old man made no more movement and took no further notice of them, his grandmother said, ‘I think he wants to rest now, Wintrow. I’ll send for you later when he’s feeling a bit better.’

  That time had not come. Now his father was home, and the news of Ephron Vestrit’s imminent death seemed to be all his mind could grasp. He had glanced at Wintrow over his mother’s shoulder as he embraced her. His eyes widened briefly and he nodded at his eldest son, but then his Mother Keffria began to pour out her torrent of bad news and all their complications. Wintrow stood apart, like a stranger, as first his sister Malta and then his younger brother Selden welcomed their father with a hug. At last there had been a pause in Keffria’s lament, and he stepped forward, to first bow and then grip hands with his father.

  ‘So. My son the priest,’ his father greeted him, and Wintrow could still not decide if there had been a breath of derision in those words. The next did not surprise him. ‘Your little sister is taller than you are. And why are you wearing a robe like a woman?’

  ‘Kyle!’ his mother rebuked her husband, but he had turned away from Wintrow without awaiting a reply.

  Now, following his aunt’s departure, he trailed into the house behind them. The adults were already discussing the best ways of moving Ephron down to the ship, and what must be taken or brought down later. The children, Malta and Selden, followed, trying vainly to ask a string of questions of their mother and continually being shushed by their grandmother. And Wintrow trailed after all, feeling neither adult nor child, nor truly a part of this emotional carnival. On the journey here, he had realized he did not know what to expect. And ever since he had arrived, that feeling had increased. For the first day, most of his conversations had been with his mother, and had consisted of either her exclamations over how thin he was, or fond remembrances and reminiscing that inevitably began with, ‘I don’t suppose you remember this, but…’ Malta, once so close to him as to seem almost his shadow, now resented him for coming home and claiming any of their mother’s attention. She did not speak to him but about him, making stinging observations when their mother was out of earshot, ostensibly to the servants or Selden. It did not help that at twelve she was taller than he was, and already looking more like a woman than he did a man. No one would have suspected he was the elder. Selden, scarcely more than a baby when he had left, now dismissed him as a visiting relative, one scarcely worth getting to know, as he would doubtless soon be leaving. Wintrow fervently hoped Selden was right. He knew it was not worthy to long for his grandfather to die and simply get it over with so he could return to his monastery and his life, but he also knew that to deny the thought would only be another sort of lie.

  They all halted in a cluster outside the dying man’s room. Here they lowered their voices, as if discussing secrets, as if his death must not be mentioned aloud. It made no sense to Wintrow. Surely this was what the old man had been longing for. He forced himself to focus on what was being said.

  ‘I think it best to say nothing at all about any of it,’ his grandmother was saying to his father. She had hold of the door knob but was not turning it. She almost appeared to be barring him from the room. From his father’s furrowed brow, it was plain that Kyle Haven did not agree with his motherin-law. But Mother had hold of his arm and was looking up at him beseechingly and nodding like a toy.

  ‘It would only upset him,’ she interjected.

  ‘And to no purpose,’ his grandmother went on, as if they shared a mind. ‘It has taken me weeks to talk him around to our way of seeing things. He has agreed, but grudgingly. Any complaints now would but reopen the discussion. And when he is weary and in pain, he can be surprisingly stubborn.’

  She paused and both women looked up at his father as if commanding his assent. He did not even nod. At last he conceded, resentfully, ‘I shall not bring it up immediately. Let us get him down to the ship first. That is the most important thing.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Grandmother Vestrit agreed, and finally opened the door. They entered. But when Malta and Selden tried to follow, she stepped briskly to block them. ‘You children run and have Nana pack a change of clothes for you. Malta, you dash down to Cook and tell her that she’ll need to pack a food hamper for us to take, and then make arrangements for meals to be sent down to us.’ His grandmother was silent when she looked at Wintrow, as if momentarily puzzled as to what to do with him. Then she nodded at him briskly. ‘Wintrow, you’ll need a change of clothes as well. We’ll be living aboard the ship now until… Oh, dear.
’

  Colour suddenly fled from her face. Bleak realization flooded it. Wintrow had seen that look before. Many a time had he gone out with the healers when they were summoned, and many a time there was little or nothing their herbs and tonics and touches could do for the dying. At those times, it was what he could do for the grieving survivors that mattered most. Her hands rose like talons to clutch at the neck of her gown and her mouth contorted as if with pain. He felt a welling of genuine sympathy for the woman. ‘Oh, Grandmother,’ he sighed and reached towards her. But as he stepped forward to embrace her and with a touch draw off some of her grief, she stepped back. She patted at him with hands that all but pushed him away. ‘No, no, I’m fine, dear. Don’t let Grandma upset you. You just go get your things so you’re ready to go when we are.’

  Then she shut the door in his face. For a time he stood staring at it in disbelief. When he did step back from it, he found Malta and Selden regarding him. ‘So,’ he said dully. Then, in a desperation he did not quite understand himself, he reached after some feeling of kinship with his siblings. He met their gazes openly. ‘Our grandfather is dying,’ he said solemnly.

  ‘He’s been doing it all summer,’ Malta replied disdainfully. She shook her head over Wintrow’s witlessness, then dismissed him by turning away. ‘Come, Selden. I’ll ask Nana to pack your things.’ Without a glance, she led the boy off and left Wintrow standing there.

  Briefly, he tried to tell himself he should not feel hurt. His parents had not meant to diminish him by their exclusion of him and his sister was under the stress of grief. Then he recognized the lie and turned to embrace what he felt and thus understand it. His mother and grandmother were preoccupied. His father and his sister had both deliberately attempted to wound him, and he had let them succeed. But these things that had happened, and these feelings he now experienced were not faults to be conquered. He could not deny the feelings, nor should he try to change them. ‘Accept and grow,’ he reminded himself, and felt the pain ease. Wintrow went to pack a change of clothes.

  Brashen stared down at Althea in disbelief. This was the last thing he needed today, he thought inanely, and then hung onto the anger in that thought to keep the panic from his mind. He pushed the door shut and then knelt on the floor by Althea. He had entered her cabin when she had completely refused to answer his raps and then his loud knocking on her door. When he had angrily thrust the unlocked door open and strode in, he expected her to hiss and spit at him. Instead he found her sprawled on the floor of her cabin, looking for all the world like one of the fainting heroines in a penny-theatre play. Except instead of falling gracefully with her hands to cushion her face, Althea lay with her hands almost clutching at the deck, as if she strove to dig her fingers into it.

  She was breathing. He hesitated, then shook her shoulder gently. ‘Mistress,’ he began gently, then, in annoyance, ‘Althea. Wake up!’

  She moaned softly but did not stir. He glared at her. He should yell for the ship’s doctor, except he shared her feelings about having anyone make a fuss. He knew she would rather not be seen like this. At least, that had been true of the old Althea. This fainting and sprawling on the deck was as unlike her as her moping in the cabin had been on the long voyage home. Nor did he like her pallor and the bony look to her face. He glanced about the stripped cabin, then scooped her up and deposited her on the bare mattress on the bunk. ‘Althea?’ he demanded again, and this time her eyelids twitched, then opened.

  ‘When the wind fills your sails, you can cut the water like a hot knife through butter,’ she told him with a gentle smile. Her eyes were distant, transfigured, as they looked into his. He almost smiled back at her, drawn into the sudden intimacy of her soft words. Then he caught himself.

  ‘Did you faint?’ he asked her bluntly.

  Abruptly her eyes snapped into wariness. ‘I… no, not exactly. I just couldn’t stand… ’ She let her words trail off as she pushed herself up from the bed. She staggered a step, but even as he reached for her arm she steadied herself against a bulkhead. She gazed at the wall as if it presented some perfect view. ‘Have you readied a place for him?’ she asked huskily.

  He nodded. She nodded in unison with him, and he made bold to say, ‘Althea. I grieve with you. He was very important to me.’

  ‘He’s not dead yet,’ she snapped. She smeared her hands over her face and pushed her hair back. Then, as if she thought that restored her bedraggled appearance, she stalked past him, out the cabin door. After a moment he followed her. Typical Althea. She had no concept that any other person beside herself truly existed. She had dismissed his pain at what was happening as if he had offered the words out of idle courtesy. He wondered if she had ever stopped to think at all what her father’s death meant to him or to any of the crew. Captain Vestrit was as openhanded and fair a man as skippered a ship out of Bingtown. He wondered if Althea had any idea how rare it was for a captain to actually care about the wellbeing of his crew. No. Of course she couldn’t. She’d never shipped aboard a boat where the rations were weevily bread and sticky salt pork almost turned poison. She’d never seen a man near beaten to death by the mate’s fists simply because he hadn’t moved fast enough to a command. True enough that Captain Vestrit never tolerated slackness in any man, but he’d simply be rid of him at the next port of call; he’d never resorted to brutality. And he knew his men. They weren’t whoever happened to be standing about on the docks when he needed a crew, they were men he had trained and tried and knew to their cores.

  These men had known their captain, too, and had believed in him. Brashen knew of some who had turned down higher positions on other vessels simply to remain with Vestrit. Some of the sailors, by Bingtown standards, were too old to work a deck, but Ephron had kept them on for the experience of their years, and chose carefully the young, strong sailors he put alongside to learn from them. He had entrusted his ship to them, and they had entrusted their future to him. Now that the Vivacia was about to become hers, he hoped to Sa she’d have the morals and the sense to keep them on and do right by them. A lot of the older hands had no home save the Vivacia.

  Brashen was one of them.

  6

  THE QUICKENING OF THE VIVACIA

  THEY BROUGHT HIM ABOARD on a litter. That was what made Brashen’s heart clench and sudden tears burn his eyes. In the moment that he beheld the limp form beneath the linen sheet, he grasped the full truth. His captain was coming back aboard to die. His secret hope that Ephron Vestrit was not truly that badly off, that somehow the sea air and the deck of his own ship would miraculously revive him was only a silly child’s dream.

  He stood back respectfully as Kyle supervised the men who carried his fatherin-law up the gangplank. They set his litter under the canopy Brashen had improvised from canvas. Althea, as pale as if she were carved of ivory, stood there to receive him. The family trailed after him like lost sheep, to take up places around Ephron Vestrit’s litter as if they were guests and he were a laden table. His wife and elder daughter looked both panicky and devastated. The children, including an older boy, looked mostly confused. Kyle stood back from them all, a look of disapproval on his face as if he were studying a poorly-repaired sail or a badly-loaded cargo. After a few minutes, Althea seemed to break loose of her stupor. She left quietly, returning with a pitcher of water and a cup. She knelt on the deck beside her father and offered him a drink.

  In the first hint of motion that Brashen had seen from him, Ephron turned his head and managed to sip some water. Then, with a vague motion of one skeletal hand, he reminded them that he must be lifted from the pallet and placed on the deck of his ship. Brashen found himself starting forward to that gesture, as he had so often sprung to obey his captain. He was briefly aware of Kyle’s scowl before he crouched by Captain Vestrit’s pallet.

  ‘If I may, sir,’ he said softly, and waited for the half nod of both recognition and permission that he was given. Althea was suddenly beside him, slipping her arms under her father’s bony legs as B
rashen himself took the bulk of the old man’s weight. Not that there was much weight to him, or even that he was all that old, Brashen reminded himself as he eased the emaciated body down to the bare planks of the deck. Instead of frowning at the hardness of the deck, the captain sighed as if some great pain had suddenly eased. His eyes flicked open and found Althea. A trace of their old spark was there as he quietly commanded her, ‘Althea. The figurehead peg.’

  Her eyes widened for an instant in a sort of horror. Then she squared her shoulders and rose to obey him. Pinched white lines formed around her mouth as she left her father’s side. Instinctively Brashen began to withdraw. Captain Vestrit would not have asked for the figurehead’s peg if he had not felt death was very near. This was a time for him to be alone with his family. But as Brashen drew back, he felt his wrist suddenly seized in a surprisingly tight grip. The captain’s long fingers dug into the flesh of his arm, and drew him back, closer. The smell of death was strong on him, but Brashen did not flinch as he lowered his head to catch his words.

  ‘Go with her, son. She’ll need your help. Stand by her through this.’ His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  Brashen nodded that he understood and Captain Vestrit released him. But as Brashen rocked back onto his heels to stand, the dying man spoke again. ‘You’ve been a good sailor, Brashen.’ He now spoke clearly and surprisingly loudly, as if he desired not just his family, but everyone to hear his words. He dragged in a breath. ‘I’ve no complaint against you nor your work.’ Another breath. ‘Could I but live to sail again, you’d be my choice for first mate.’ His voice failed on the last words, coming out as a wheeze. His eyes left Brashen’s face suddenly, to turn unerringly to where Kyle stood and glowered. He struggled, then drew in a whistling breath. ‘But I shan’t sail again. The Vivacia will never again be mine.’ His lips were going blue. He found no more air, struggle as he might. His hand knotted in a fist, made a sudden, violent gesture that would have been meaningless to any other. But Brashen leaped to his feet and dashed forward to find Althea and hurry her back to him.