by Robin Hobb
The secret of the figurehead peg was not widely known. Ephron had entrusted it to Brashen shortly after he had made him first mate. Concealed in the tumbling locks of the figurehead’s hair was a catch that would release a long smooth peg of the silky grey wood that comprised her. It was not a necessity, but it was believed that if the dying person grasped this peg as his life departed, more of his wisdom and essence would be imparted to the ship. Ephron had shown it to Brashen and illustrated how it worked, so that if some ship’s disaster felled him, Brashen might bring him the peg in his last moments. It was a duty Brashen had fervently hoped never to perform.
He found Althea dangling all but upside-down from the bowsprit as she tried to tug the peg loose from its setting. Without a word he followed her out, grasped her around the hips and lowered her to where she might reach it more easily. ‘Thanks,’ she grunted as she pulled it free. He lifted her effortlessly and set her back on her feet on the deck. She raced back to her father, the precious peg clutched tightly in her fist. Brashen was right behind her.
They were not a moment too soon. Ephron Vestrit’s death was not to be a pleasant one. Instead of closing his eyes and going in peace, he fought it as he had fought everything in life that opposed him. Althea offered him the peg and he gripped it as if it would save him. ‘Drowning,’ he strangled out. ‘Drowning on a dry deck.’
For a time the strange tableau held. Althea and her father gripped either end of the peg. Tears ran freely down her ravaged face. Her hair, gone wild about her face, clung to her damp cheeks. Her eyes were wide open, focused and caring as she stared down into the depths of her father’s mirroring black eyes. She knew there was nothing she could do for him, but she did not flinch away.
Ephron’s free hand scrabbled against the deck as if trying to find a grip on the smoothly sanded planks. He managed to draw in another choking, gurgling breath. A bloody froth was beginning to form at the corners of his mouth. Other family members clustered around them. The older sister clung tightly to her mother, wordless in grief, but the mother spoke in a low voice into her hair as she embraced her. The girl child wept, caught in a sort of terror, and clutched at her confused smaller brother. The older grandson stood back and apart from his family, face pale and set as one who endures pain. Kyle stood, arms crossed on his chest, at the dying man’s feet. Brashen had no idea what thoughts passed behind that still countenance. A second circle had also formed, at a respectful distance outside the canopy. The still-faced crew had gathered, hats in hands, to witness their captain’s passing.
‘Althea!’ the captain’s wife called out suddenly to her daughter. At the same time she thrust her older daughter forward, toward their father. ‘You must,’ she said in an odd, low voice. ‘You know you must.’ There was an odd purposefulness to her voice, as if she forced herself to some very unpleasant duty. The look on the older daughter’s face — Keffria, that was her name — seemed to combine shame with defiance. Keffria dropped to her knees suddenly beside her sister. She reached out a pale, trembling hand. Brashen thought she would touch her father. Instead she resolutely grasped the peg between Althea’s hand and her father’s. Even as Keffria made her unmistakable claim to the ship by grasping the peg above Althea’s hand, her mother affirmed it for her.
‘Althea. Let go of the peg. The ship is your sister’s, by right of her birth order. And by your father’s will.’ The mother’s voice shook as she said the words, but she said them clearly.
Althea looked up in disbelief, her eyes tracing up the arm from the hand that gripped the peg to her sister’s face. ‘Keffria?’ she asked in confusion. ‘You can’t mean it!’
Uncertainty spread over the older woman’s face. She glanced up at the mother. ‘She does!’ Ronica Vestrit declared, almost savagely. ‘It’s how it has to be, Althea. It’s how it must be, for all our sakes.’
‘Papa?’ Althea asked brokenly.
Her father’s dark eyes had never left her face. His mouth opened, moved, and he spoke a last phrase, ‘… let go…’
Brashen had once worked on a ship where the mate was a bit too free with his marlinspike. Mostly he used it to bludgeon fellows from behind, sailors he felt were not paying sufficient attention to their tasks. More than once, Brashen had been unwilling witness to the look on a man’s face as the tool connected with the back of his skull. He knew the look a man wore at that moment when pain registered as unconsciousness. That was how Althea looked at the uttering of her father’s words. Her grip on the peg laxed, her hand fell away from it to clutch instead at her father’s thin arm. That she held to, as a sailor clings to wreckage in a storm-tossed sea. She did not look again at her mother or her sister. She only gripped her father’s arm as he gaped and gasped like a fish out of water.
‘Papa,’ she whispered again. His back arched, his chest swelling high with his effort to find air. He rolled his head, turning his face to find hers before he suddenly collapsed back to the deck. The long struggle was over. The light of life and struggle suddenly left his eyes. His body settled bonelessly against the deck as if he were melting into the wood. His hand fell from the peg. As her sister Keffria stood, Althea collapsed forward. She put her head on her father’s chest and wailed shamelessly and hopelessly.
She did not see what Brashen did. Keffria stood and surrendered the peg to her waiting husband. In disbelief, Brashen watched Kyle accept it. He walked away from them all, carrying the precious peg as if he truly had a right to it. For an instant, Brashen nearly followed him. Then he decided it was something he’d just as soon not witness. Peg or no, the ship would quicken. Brashen thought he already felt a difference about her; the use of a peg would only hasten the process. But the promise he had given his captain now had a different shade of meaning for him.
‘Go with her, son. She’ll need your help. Stand by her through this.’ Captain Vestrit had not been speaking about the peg, or his death. Brashen’s heart sank as he tried to decide exactly what he had promised to do.
When Althea felt hands grip her shoulders, she tugged away from them. She didn’t care who it was. In the space of a few moments, she had lost her father and the Vivacia. It would have been simpler to lose her life. She still could not grasp either fact. It was not fair, she thought inanely. Only one unthinkable thing should happen at a time. If the events had only happened one at a time, she could have thought of a way to deal with them. But whenever she tried to think of her father’s death, at the moment of realizing it, the loss of the ship would suddenly loom up in her mind. Yet she could not think about that, not here by her father’s dead body. For then she would have to wonder how this father she had worshipped could have betrayed her so completely. As devastating as her pain was, she feared even to consider her anger. If she let her anger take her over, it might completely consume her, leaving nothing but blowing ash.
The hands came back, settling on her bowed shoulders and grasping them firmly. ‘Go away, Brashen,’ she said with no strength. But she no longer had the will to shrug his grip away. The warmth and steadiness of his hands on her shoulders were too much like her father’s steady clasp. Sometimes her father would come up on deck while she was on wheel watch. He could move as silently as a ghost when he wanted to; his whole crew knew that, and knew, too, that one could never know when he would silently appear, never interfering in a man’s work but checking the task with a knowing eye and giving a silent nod of approval. She would be standing at the wheel, both hands on it and holding a steady course, and she wouldn’t even know he was there until she felt the firm, approving grip of his hands on her shoulders. Then he might drift off, or he might stand beside her and have a pipe while he watched the night and the water and his daughter steering his ship through both.
Somehow that memory gave her strength. The sharp edges of her grief settled into a dull, throbbing lump of pain. She straightened up, squaring her shoulders. She didn’t understand anything; not how he could have died and left her, and certainly not how he could have taken her ship fro
m her and given it to her sister. ‘But, you know, there were a lot of times when he barked orders, and I couldn’t fathom the sense of them. But if I simply jumped up and obeyed, it always came right. It always came right.’
She turned, expecting to confront Brashen. Instead it was Wintrow who stood behind her.
It surprised her, and that made her almost angry. Who was he, to touch her so familiarly, let alone to give her a pale ghost of her father’s smile and say quietly, ‘I am sure it will be so again, Aunt Althea. For it is not only your father’s will that we accept tragedy and disappointment in our lives, but Sa’s will also. If we endure what he sends us cheerfully, it never fails that he will reward us.’
‘Stuff it,’ she snarled in a low and savage voice. How dare he puke out platitudes at her just now, this son of Kyle’s that stood to gain all she had lost! No doubt he could endure that fate quite easily. The look of shock on his boy’s face almost made her laugh out loud. His hands dropped clear of her and he took a step backwards.
‘Althea!’ her mother gasped in shock and rebuke.
Althea dragged her sleeve across her wet face and returned her mother’s glare. ‘Don’t think I don’t know whose idea it was that Keffria inherit the ship,’ she warned her heatedly.
‘Oh, Althea!’ Keffria cried out, and the pain in her voice sounded almost real. The grief and dismay on her sister’s face nearly melted her. Once they had been so close…
But then Kyle strode into their midst, announcing angrily, ‘Something’s wrong. The peg won’t go into the figurehead.’
Everyone turned to stare at him. The impatient irritation in his voice was too much at odds with the pathetic body stretched on the deck before them. For a moment the silence held, then even Kyle had the grace to look abashed. He stood holding the silver-grey peg and glancing about as if his eyes could find nowhere to rest. Althea took a long shuddering breath, but before she could speak, she heard Brashen’s voice, dripping sarcasm.
‘Perhaps you do not know that only a blood-family member may quicken a liveship?’
It was as if he stood in an open field in a storm and called the lightning down on himself. Anger convulsed Kyle’s face, and he went redder than Althea had ever seen him.
‘What gives you the right to speak here, dog? I’ll see you off this ship!’
‘That you will,’ Brashen affirmed calmly. ‘But not before I’ve done my last duty to my captain. He spoke clearly enough, for a dying man. “Stand by her through this,” he said to me. I do not doubt that you heard him. And I shall. Give the peg to Althea. The quickening of the ship at least belongs to her.’
He never knows when to shut up. That had always been her father’s strongest criticism of his young first mate, but when he had said it, an awed admiration had always crept into his voice. Althea had never understood it before. Now she did. He stood there, ragged as any deckhand was at the end of a long voyage, and spoke back to the man who had commanded the ship and likely would again. He heard himself publicly dismissed, and did not even flinch. She knew Kyle would never concede to his demand; she did not even let her heart yearn for it. But in making that demand, he suddenly gave her a glimpse of what her father had seen in him.
Kyle stood glowering. His eyes went around the circle of mourners, but Althea knew he was just as aware of the outer circle of crewmembers, and even of the folk who had come down to the docks to see a liveship quicken. In the end, he decided to ignore Brashen’s words.
‘Wintrow!’ he commanded in a voice that snapped like a lash. ‘Take the peg and quicken the ship.’
All eyes swung to the boy. His face blanched and his eyes became huge. His mouth shook and then he firmed his lips. He took a deep breath. ‘It is not my right.’
He did not speak loudly, but his young voice carried well.
‘Damn it, are you not as much Vestrit as Haven? It is your right, the ship shall be yours some day. Take the peg and quicken it.’
The boy looked at him without comprehension. When he spoke, his voice teetered and then cracked high on the words. ‘I was given to be a priest of Sa. A priest can own nothing.’
A vein began to pound in Kyle’s temple. ‘Sa be damned. Your mother gave you, not I. And I hereby take you back. Now take this peg and quicken the ship!’ As he spoke, he had stepped forwards, to seize his eldest by the shoulder. The boy tried not to cower away from him, but his distress was plain. Even Keffria and Ronica looked shocked by Kyle’s blasphemy, as well they might be. Althea’s grief seemed to have stepped back from her, leaving her numbed but oddly sensitized. She watched these strangers who shouted and squabbled with one another while an unburied man slowly stiffened at their feet. A great clarity seemed to have come into her mind. She knew, with abrupt certainty, that Kefffia had known nothing of Kyle’s intentions regarding Wintrow. The boy obviously had not; the shock on his face was too great as he stood staring in confusion at the silky grey peg his father thrust into his hands.
‘Now!’ Kyle commanded, and as if the boy were five instead of on the brink of manhood, he turned him and propelled him down the deck. The others drifted after him like wreckage bobbing in a ship’s wake. Althea watched them go. Then she crouched down, to clasp in her own her father’s cooling hand. ‘I am glad you are not here to see this,’ she told him gently. She tried unsuccessfully to close the lids of his staring eyes. After several attempts, she gave up and left him staring up at the canvas canopy.
‘Althea. Get up.’
‘Why?’ She did not even turn to Brashen’s command.
‘Because…’ he paused, fumbling, then went on, ‘because they can take the ownership of the ship from you, but that does not excuse you from what you owe the ship. Your father asked me to help you through this. He would not want the Vivacia to quicken and see only strangers’ faces.’
‘Kyle will be there,’ she said dully. The hurt was coming back. Brashen’s blunt words had wakened it again.
‘She will not know him. He is not the blood of her family. Come.’
She looked down at the still body. Death was working swiftly, sinking her father’s features into lines and planes he had never worn in life. ‘I don’t want to leave him here alone.’
‘Althea. That’s not the captain, it’s just his body. He’s gone. But the Vivacia is still here. Come. You know you have to do this; do it well.’ He leaned down, putting his face near her ear. ‘Head up, girl. The crew is watching.’
She rose reluctantly to his last words. She looked down at her father’s sagging face and tried to meet his eyes one last time. But he was looking past her now, looking into the infinite. She squared her shoulders and held up her head. Very well, then.
Brashen offered his arm, as if he were escorting her into Bingtown’s Presentation Ball. Without thinking, she placed her hand lightly on his forearm as she had been schooled and allowed him to guide her to the bow of the ship. Something about the formality of his walking her there restored her. As she drew near and overheard Kyle’s savagely low tones of anger, it touched a spark off in her as if it were flint against steel. He was berating Wintrow.
‘It’s simple, boy. There’s the hole, there’s the peg, here’s the catch. Push the catch to one side and shove the peg in the hole and release the catch. That’s all. I’ll hold onto you. You needn’t fear that you’ll fall into the bay, if that’s what’s cowing you.’
The boy’s voice rose in reply, too high still, but gentle, not weak. ‘Father. I did not say I could not. I said I would not. I do not feel it is my right, nor proper as a servant of Sa for me to make this claim.’ Only a slight tremor at the end of this speech revealed how difficult it was for the boy to keep his aplomb.
‘You’ll do as I damned well tell you,’ Kyle growled. Althea saw his hand lift in the familiar threat of a blow, and heard Keffria gasp out, ‘Oh, Kyle, no!’
In two strides, Althea was suddenly between Kyle and the boy. ‘This is not a fitting way for any of us to behave on the day of my father’s death. Nor is
it a proper way to treat the Vivacia. Peg or no, she is quickening. Would you have her awaken to quarrelling voices and discord?’
And Kyle’s answer betrayed his total ignorance of all a liveship was. ‘I’d have it awaken in any way it can be managed.’
Althea took breath for an angry retort, but then heard Brashen’s whisper of awe. ‘Oh, look at her!’
All eyes swung to the figurehead. From the foredeck, Althea could not see that much of her face, but she could see the paint flaking away from the wizardwood carving. The locks of hair shone raven under the peeling gilt paint, and the sanded flesh had begun to flush pink. The silken fine grain of the wizardwood still remained, and always would, nor would the wood ever be as soft and yielding as human flesh. Yet it was unmistakable that life now pulsed through the figurehead, and to Althea’s heightened awareness, the entire ship rode differently on the quiet waves of the harbour. She felt as she imagined a mother must feel the first time she beholds the life that has grown within her.
‘Give me the peg,’ she heard herself say quietly. ‘I’ll quicken the ship.’
‘Why?’ Kyle asked suspiciously, but Ronica intervened.
‘Give her the peg, Kyle,’ she commanded him quietly. ‘She’ll do it because she loves the Vivacia.’
Later Althea would recall her mother’s words, and they would rouse hate in her to a white-hot heat. Her mother had known all she felt, and still she had taken the ship from her. But at that moment, she only knew that it pained her to see the Vivacia caught between wood and life, suspended so uncomfortably. She could see the distrust on Kyle’s face as he grudgingly offered her the peg. What did he think she would do, throw it overboard? She took it from him and bellied out on the bowsprit to reach the figurehead. She was just a trifle short of being able to reach it safely. She hitched herself forward another notch, teetering dangerously in her awkward skirts, and still could not quite reach.
