by Robin Hobb
Keffria took up her teacup and held it firmly in both hands. Sometimes when she had to correct her husband, it made her nervous and her hands trembled. Kyle disliked that. ‘The Ingleby farm is Mother’s, Kyle. It was part of her bridal portion. And the tenants are her old nanny and her husband. They are getting on in years, and Mother had always promised Tetna that she would be provided for, so—’
Kyle set his own cup down so firmly the tea sloshed out onto the white cloth. He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘And that is just the type of reasoning that will bring us all down. I have nothing against charity, Keffria, or loyalty. But if she must take care of some doddering old couple, have her bring them here and put them up in the servant’s wing and give them whatever tasks they can still manage. No doubt they’d be more useful here, as well as more comfortable. There is no reason to waste a whole farm on them.’
‘Tetna grew up there —’ Keffria began again, then jumped and gasped as Kyle’s calloused palm struck the table in front of him.
‘And I grew up in Frommers, but no one will give me a house there when I am old and we are destitute because we managed our wealth poorly. Keffria. Be silent a moment and let me finish what I am trying to say to you. I know it is your mother’s. I know you have no direct say in what she does with it. I merely desire that you pass on to her my advice. And with it, the warning that no more monies will be forthcoming to support it from your father’s estate. If she cannot force it to yield enough money to keep up the repairs to it, then she will have to let it decay. But no more good money thrown after bad. That’s all.’ He turned suddenly in his chair and pointed an accusing finger at the door. ‘You. Malta. Are you eavesdropping on your elders? If you want to act like a spying serving girl, I can see that you have the chores of one as well.’
Malta peered around the corner of the door into the room. She looked appropriately daunted. ‘I beg your pardon, Papa. I wanted to wait until you and Mama had finished speaking, so that I could talk to you.’
Kyle gave a long-suffering sigh, and rolled his eyes at his wife. ‘The children must be taught not to interrupt, Keffria. Come in, Malta, as you cannot seem to wait in a patient and seemly way. What do you want?’
Malta edged into the room, then, at a scowl from her father, hastened forward to stand before him. She bounced a curtsey at him and avoided her mother’s eyes as she announced, ‘The Summer Ball is past, now. We had to miss it, I understand that. But Harvest Offering is seventy-two days from now.’
‘And?’
‘I wish to go.’
Her father shook his head in exasperation. ‘You will go. You’ve gone since you were six. Everyone goes who is of a Trader family. Save those like me, who must sail. I doubt I shall return in time to attend. But you know you’ll go. Why do you bother me like this?’
Malta stole a glance at her mother’s disapproving face and then looked up earnestly at her father. ‘Mother said we might not go this year. Because of mourning Grandfather, you know.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And she said that even if we did go, I was still not old enough for a proper ballgown. Oh, Papa, I do not want to go to the Harvest Offering in a little girl’s frock. Delo Trell, who is the same age as I, is wearing a ballgown this year.’
‘Delo Trell is eleven months older than you.’ Keffria cut in. She could feel the heat in her cheeks, that her daughter dared bring this to her father as if it were a grievance. ‘And if she attends the Harvest Offering in a gown, I shall be very surprised. I myself was not presented at the Offering as a woman until I was fifteen, nearly sixteen. And we are in mourning. Nothing is expected of us this year. It is not fitting!!…’
‘It could be a dark gown. Carissa Krev was at the Ball only two months after her own mother died.’
Keffria spoke firmly. ‘We will go only if your grandmother sees fit to go. I doubt that she will. And if we go, you will dress as is appropriate for a girl of your age.’
‘You dress me like a child!’ Malta cried out. Her voice was tragic with pain. ‘I’m not a little girl any more. Oh, Papa, she makes me wear my skirts half up my shin, with ruffles on the bottom, as if she fears I shall run and play through puddles. And she makes me plait my hair as if I were seven, and puts bows on my collars and lets me wear only flowers, no jewellery and—’
‘Enough,’ Keffria warned her daughter, but to her surprise her husband laughed aloud.
‘Come here, Malta. No, wipe your tears and come here. So,’ he went on when his daughter had come close enough to be pulled onto his lap. He looked down into her face. ‘You think you are old enough to dress as a woman, now. Next you’ll be wanting young men to come calling.’
‘Papa, I’ll be thirteen by then,’ Malta began but he shushed her.
He looked over his daughter’s head at his wife. ‘If you all go,’ he began carefully, ‘would there be so much harm in letting her have a proper gown?’
‘She’s but a girl!’ Keffria protested in dismay.
‘Is she?’ Kyle asked. His voice was warm with pride. ‘Look at your daughter, Keffria. If she is a little girl, she’s a well-fleshed one. My mother always said, “A boy is a man when he proves himself to be one, but a girl is a woman when she desires to be one.’” He stroked Malta’s plaited hair and the girl beamed up at him. She gave her mother a pleading look.
Keffria tried to conceal her shock that her husband would side with her daughter against her. ‘Kyle. Malta. It is simply not seemly.’
‘What is unseemly about it? What will it hurt? This year, next year, what difference does it make when she graduates to long skirts, so long as she wears them well and they look becoming on her?’
‘She is only twelve,’ Keffria said faintly.
‘Nearly thirteen.’ Malta sensed her advantage and pressed it. ‘Oh, please, Mama, say yes! Say I may go to the Offering and have a proper gown this year!’
‘No.’ Keffria was determined to stand her ground. ‘We shall go only if your grandmother does. Otherwise, it would be scandalous. On that I am firm.’
‘But if we do go?’ Malta wheedled. She turned to her father again. ‘Oh, Papa, say I may have a proper dress if Mama allows me to go to the Gathering.’
Kyle gave his daughter a hug. ‘It seems a fair compromise,’ he suggested to Keffria. To Malta he added, ‘You shall go to the Ball only if your grandmother does. And no teasing or nagging about it. But if she goes, then so you shall, and you shall have a proper gown.’
‘Oh, thank you, Papa,’ Malta breathed as if he had granted her a lifelong wish.
Something so like anger that it dizzied her coursed through Keffria’s blood. ‘And now, Malta, you may go. I wish to speak to your father. And as you believe you are old enough to dress like a woman, you shall show me you have the skills of one. Finish the embroidery that has been on your loom for three weeks now.’
‘But that will take me all day!’ Malta protested in anguish. ‘I wanted to call on Carissa, and see if she could go with me to Weaver Street, to look at cloth…’ Her voice dwindled off as she saw the look on her mother’s face. Without another word, she turned and scampered from the room.
As soon as she was out of sight, her father let out a burst of laughter. There was nothing, Keffria thought, that he could have done that would have affronted her more. But when he caught sight of her face, instead of realizing his error, he but laughed the louder. ‘If you could see your face,’ he managed at last. ‘So angry to have your daughter get around you! But what can I do about it? You know she has always been my pet. Besides. What harm, truly, can it do?’
‘It can attract to her an attention that she has not been taught to deal with as of yet. Kyle, when a woman goes to the Harvest Offering in her first ballgown, it is more than an extra length of cloth to her skirts. It is an announcement that she is presented to Bingtown as a woman of her family. And that says she is of a courtable age, that her family will consider offers for her hand.’
‘So?’ Kyle demanded uncomfortably. ‘We do not have to say yes.�
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‘She will be invited to dance,’ Keffria went on inexorably. ‘Not by the boys her age, with whom she has danced before. For they will still be seen as boys. She will be seen as a young woman. She will be dancing with men, both young and old. Not only is she still an indifferent dancer, but she has not been taught the skills of conversing with men, nor how to deal with attentions that are… unwanted. She may invite improper advances without being aware she is allowing them. Worse, a nervous smile or a silly giggle may make it seem she is encouraging them. I wish you had spoken to me before you had allowed her this.’
In the blink of an eye, Kyle went from discomfort to irritation. He stood abruptly, flinging his napkin to the table. ‘I see. Perhaps I should simply live aboard the ship, to avoid inconveniencing you while you determine the fate of our family! You seem to forget that Malta is my daughter as well as yours. If she is twelve and has not yet been taught dancing and manners, perhaps you should rebuke yourself for that! First you sent my son off to be a priest, now you behave as if I shall have no say in how my daughter is raised either.’
Keffria was already on her feet, grasping at his sleeve. ‘Kyle! Please! Come back, sit down. That is not what I meant. Of course I want you to help raise our children. It is simply that we must be careful with Malta’s reputation, if we want her to be seen as a properly-raised young woman.’
But Kyle was not to be appeased. ‘Then I suggest you see to her manners and her dancing lessons, instead of sending her off to work embroidery. As for me, I have a ship to attend to. And a young man to straighten out. And that through a decision I had no say in at all.’ He shook her off as if shooing away a fly and stormed from the room. Keffria was left standing with her hand clutched over her mouth.
After a time, she sank slowly back into her chair. She took a deep breath, and then lifted her hands to her throbbing temples. Her eyes were scratchy with unshed tears. So much tension, so many quarrels lately. It seemed as if there was never a moment of peace in the house. She longed suddenly to return to the days when her father was a healthy man, and he and Althea sailed while she and her mother stayed at home and cared for the house and children. Then when Kyle had come into port, it had been like a holiday. He had been the captain of the Daring in those days. All had spoken well of him, how handsome, how dashing he looked. During his days at home they had spent them either dallying late in their bedchamber or strolling arm in arm about Bingtown. His sea-chest had always brimmed with prizes for her and the children, and he had made her always feel like a newly-wed bride. Ever since he had taken over the Vivacia, he had become so serious. And so, so… she tried to think of a word. ‘Grasping’ came to mind, but she rejected it. He was simply a man in charge, she decided to herself. And with her father’s death, he had extended that to everything; not just the family ship, but the household, the holdings, the children, and even, she thought woefully, her sister and her mother.
They used to talk late at night, long conversations about nothing. Kyle had liked to open the draperies and let the moonlight stream in across their curtained bed. He had spoken of the fury of the storms he had seen, and the beauty of the full sails when the wind was right, as he had touched her with hands and eyes that said he found her as fascinating as the sea. Now he spoke of little, save what cargo he had sold and what goods he’d taken on. Over and over again, he reminded her that the foundering or the thriving of the Vestrit family fortunes rested on his shoulders now. Over and over again he vowed to her that he would show the Bingtown Traders a thing or two about sagacious management and shrewd trading. The nights they spent together brought her neither release nor rest. The days in port he spent with his ship. And now, she admitted bitterly, what she was looking forward to was his sailing. When he left, she could at least reclaim some of the peace of regular days and routines.
She looked up at the sound of footsteps, both hoping and dreading that they heralded her husband’s return. Instead her mother drifted into the room. She looked at Keffria and the remnants of food on the breakfast table as if they were less than shadows. Then her eyes roamed the room as if looking for something else. Or someone else. ‘Good morning, Mother,’ Keffria said.
‘Good morning,’ Ronica replied listlessly. ‘I heard Kyle leave.’
‘So you came down,’ Keffria supplied bitterly. ‘Mother, it pains me that you avoid him. There are things that must be discussed, that must be decided…’
Her mother’s smile was tight. ‘And while Kyle is present, that is impossible. Keffria, I am too tired and too grieved to speak tactfully. Your husband leaves no room for discussion. There is no point to my trading words with him, for we do not agree, and he will admit to no reason save his own.’ She shook her head. ‘It seems I have but two thoughts these days. I can grieve for your father, or rebuke myself for the muddle I have made of what he entrusted to me.’
Despite her own recent anger with Kyle, the words stung Keffria. When she replied, it was in a low voice, freighted with hurt. ‘He is a good man, Mother. He only does what he believes is best for all of us.’
‘That may be true, but it’s of little comfort, Keffria.’ Ronica shook her head to herself. ‘Your father and I certainly believed he was a good man, or we would never have consented to your wedding him. But at that time, we could not have foreseen even half of what has come to pass. You might have been better off wedded to a man of Trader stock. We all might have been better off, had you married someone more familiar with our ways.’ Her mother came and seated herself at the table, moving like an old woman, slowly and stiffly. She turned her face away from the bright summer morning flooding the room with light as if her eyes hurt her. ‘Look at what we have come to, through Kyle’s doing what he believes is good for us all. Althea is still missing. And young Wintrow is carried off against his will to the ship. That’s not good. Not for the boy nor for the ship. If Kyle truly understood all that a liveship is, I don’t think he’d have the boy aboard a new ship while he’s so agitated and unhappy. From all I’ve heard, the first few months that a ship is quickened are crucial. Calm is what she needs, and confidence in her master, not coercion and quarrelling. As for his idea of using her as a slaver… it makes me ill. Simply ill.’ She lifted her head and her gaze pinned Keffria in her place. ‘It shames me that you can allow your son to endure all he must see if he travels aboard a slave ship. How can you allow him to see that, let alone be a part of it? What do you think he must become to survive it?’
Her words wakened nameless dread in Keffria, but she clenched her hands under the table and sought to still them. ‘Kyle says he will not be harsh with Wintrow. As for the slaves, as he has pointed out to me, to make them suffer needlessly would only be to damage a valuable cargo. I did speak to him, I did, of all I have heard of slave ships. And he promised me that the Vivacia would not become some stinking death-hole.’
‘Even should Kyle treat Wintrow as gently as a girl child, he will suffer from what he sees on a slave ship. The necessary crowding, the deaths, the savage discipline to keep such a cargo under control… it’s wrong. It’s wrong, and we both know it.’ Her mother’s voice brooked no opposition.
‘But we have a slave right here in the house. Rache, that Davad lent you while Papa was so ill.’
‘It’s wrong,’ Ronica Vestrit repeated in a low voice. ‘I realized that, and I wanted to send her back to Davad. But when I tried to send her home, she fell to her knees and begged me not to. She’ll bring a good price in Chalced, she knows that, for she has a bit of learning. Her husband was already sent that way, for being a debtor. They came from Jamaillia, you know. And when they fell into debt and could not find a way out of it, both she and her husband and son were sent to the slave-block. Her husband was a well educated man, and he brought a goodly price. But she and her small son were sold cheaply, to one of Davad’s agents.’ Ronica Vestrit’s voice thickened. ‘She told me about her journey here. Her little boy did not survive it. Yet I do not think Davad Restart is a cruel man, at least not
intentionally. Nor is he so poor a Trader as to intentionally damage a valuable cargo.’ Her mother’s voice had remained curiously flat through this telling. When she mimicked Kyle’s words back to her in that same tone, it made Keffria’s skin prickle.
‘I think I had grown immune to death. In the years since your brothers died of the plague, I had pushed it aside as something I had endured and had done with. Now your father has gone, and it has reminded me of how sudden and how permanent is that moment of ending. Hard enough to deal with it when it is delivered by disease. But Rache’s boy died because his little belly could not tolerate the tossing motion in the crowded, airless hold. He could not keep down the coarse bread and stagnant water the crew fed them. She had to watch her little boy die.’
Her mother lifted her eyes to meet Keffria’s and there was torment there. ‘I asked Rache, why did not you cry out to the crew when they came to feed you? Surely they could have given you a bit of time on the deck in the fresh wind, a little food that your boy could tolerate. She told me she did. That she begged and pleaded each time they came near to pass out the food or haul the buckets away. But the sailors behaved as if they could not hear her. She was not” the only one aboard begging for mercy. Chained beside her, grown men and young women died as uselessly as her boy had. When they came and took the man next to her and her child away, they lugged him off like a meal sack. She knew they would throw his body to the serpents that followed the ship. And it made her mad. Oddly enough, her insanity was what saved her. For when she began to cry out, begging the serpents to break in the hull of the ship and devour her as well, when she began to call on Sa to send winds and tides to smash the ship on the rocks, her ranting moved the sailors as her pleas had not. They did not want this woman who cared so little for life as to call down death upon them all. She was beaten, but she would not be silenced. And when the ship docked briefly in Bingtown, she was put off, for the sailors vowed that the last storm they had endured was of her calling, and they’d sail no further with her aboard. Davad had to take receipt of her; she was cargo he owned. But as he could not call her a slave in Bingtown, he took her as indentured servant. And when he grew apprehensive of her stares, for she blames him for her boy’s death, he sent her here to wait upon us. So you see, his gift to us in our time of need had more of fear in it than charity. And I mistrust that that is what Davad himself has become; a man governed more by fear than charity.’
