The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  ‘Well. I am glad that the loss of my leg proved entertaining for so many.’

  ‘Now that’s not it, sir,’ Sorcor began hastily, but Kennit waved him to silence.

  ‘My liveship,’ he announced.

  ‘Oh, Sar,’ Sorcor groaned.

  ‘Did we not have an agreement?’ Kennit asked him. ‘I believe we’ve just captured and liberated a slaveship. As I recall, it is now my turn to go after a liveship.’

  Sorcor scratched at his beard. ‘That weren’t quite the agreement, sir. It was that if we saw a slaver, we went after her. And then the next liveship we saw, we’d go after. But you’re talking about hunting a liveship, or laying in wait for one.’

  ‘It all amounts to the same thing,’ Kennit dismissed his objection.

  ‘No, begging your pardon, sir, but it don’t. I’ve been giving it some thought, sir. Maybe we ought to lay off both for a time. Just go back to pirating like we used to. Go after some fat merchant-ships, like we used to do. Get us some money, have some good times. Stay away from slavers and serpents for a while.’ Sorcor’s thick fingers fumbled with the gilt buttons on his vest as he offered this. ‘You’ve shown me life can be different than what I thought. For both of us. You got yourself a nice woman. She makes a real difference around here. I see now what you were trying to get me to understand. If we went back to Divvytown with a good haul, well, like Sincure Faldin was saying about being respectable and settled and all…’

  ‘Once we have a liveship under us, you can have your choice of virgins, Sorcor,’ Kennit promised him. ‘A new one each week, if that is what pleases you. But first, my liveship. Now. If we can assume that anything we learned from the Sicerna’s crew is true, then it is likely we still have at least one liveship south of us still. Come and look at the chart with me. It seems to me that luck has placed us in a fine position. To the south of us, here, we have Hawser Channel. A nasty bit of water at any time, but especially at the change of tides. Any ship going north has to go through it. Do you see?’

  ‘I see,’ Sorcor conceded grudgingly.

  Kennit ignored his reluctance. ‘Now, in Hawser Channel we have Crooked Island. The good passage is to the east of the island. It’s shallow in a few spots, but the shoals don’t shift much. To the west of the island is a different story. The current runs strong, especially at the tide changes. Close to the island we have shoals that constantly form and reform. To the west we have the aptly-named Damned Rocks.’ He paused. ‘Do you recall them?’

  Sorcor frowned. ‘I’ll never forget them. You took us in there that one time the Satrap’s galley got after us. Current caught us and we shot through there like an arrow. Took me three days to believe I came out of it alive.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Kennit concurred. ‘A much swifter passage than if we had gone to the east of Crooked Island.’

  ‘So?’ Sorcor asked warily.

  ‘So? So we anchor here. A beautiful view of the approach to Hawser Channel. Once we see the liveship enter the channel, we take the west passage. As the liveship emerges, there we are, waiting for her, anchored in mid-channel. The east passage still has a respectable current. The liveship will have no choice but to run aground in the shoal here.’ He lifted his eyes from the chart to meet Sorcor’s solemn look with a grin. ‘And she is ours. With minimum damage, if any.’

  ‘Unless she simply rams us,’ Sorcor pointed out sourly.

  ‘Oh, she won’t,’ Kennit assured him. ‘Even if she did, we’d still just board her and take her anyway.’

  ‘And lose the Marietta?’ Sorcor was horrified.

  ‘And gain a liveship!’

  ‘This is not a good idea. A hundred things could go wrong,’ Sorcor objected. ‘We could be smashed to bits on the Damned Rocks. That’s not a piece of water I’d ever willingly run again. Or if her draught is shallower than ours, we might take all those risks and she might still just slip past us quick-like while we were still anchored. Or…’

  He meant it. He actually meant it, he wasn’t going to go along with the idea. How dare he? He’d be nothing without Kennit. Nothing at all. A moment before, he’d been swearing he owed all he was to his captain, and now he would deny him his chance at a liveship.

  A sudden change in tactics occurred to Kennit.

  He lifted a hand to stem the mate’s wotds. ‘Sorcor. Do you care for me at all?’ he asked with disarming directness.

  That stopped his words, as Kennit had known it would. The man almost blushed. He opened his mouth and then stammered, ‘Well, Captain, we’ve sailed together for a time now. And I can’t recall a man who’s treated me fairer, or been more…’

  Kennit shook his head and turned aside from him as if moved. ‘No one else is going to help me with this, Sorcor. There’s no one I trust as I do you. Since I was a boy, I’ve dreamed of a liveship. I always believed that some day I’d walk the deck of one, and she’d be mine. And —’ He shook his head and let his voice thicken. ‘Sometimes a man fears he may see the end sooner than he’d believed. This leg… if what they say is true for me…’ He turned back to Sorcor, opened his blue eyes wide to meet Sorcor’s dark ones. ‘This may be my last chance,’ he said simply.

  ‘Oh, sir, don’t talk like that!’ Tears actually started to the scarred mate’s eyes. Kennit bit his lip hard to keep the grin away. He leaned closer to the chart table to hide his face. It was a mistake, for his crutch slipped. He caught at the table edge, but the tip of his rotten stump still touched the floor. He cried out with the agony of it and would have fallen if Sorcor had not caught him.

  ‘Easy. I’ve got you. Easy now.’

  ‘Sorcor,’ he said faintly. He regained his grip on the chart table, and leaned hard on his arms to keep from collapsing. ‘Can you do this for me?’ He lifted his head. He was shaking now, he could feel it. It was the strain of standing on one leg. He wasn’t accustomed to it, that was all. He didn’t truly believe he’d die of this. He’d heal, he always healed, no matter how badly he was injured. He could do nothing about the grimace of pain that twisted his face or the sweat that had started fresh on his face. Use it. ‘Can you give me this last chance at it?’

  ‘I can do it, sir.’ Dumb faith vied with heartbreak in Sorcor’s eyes. ‘I’ll get your liveship for you. You’ll walk her decks. Trust me,’ he begged Kennit.

  Despite his pain, Kennit laughed in his throat. He changed it to a cough. Trust him. ‘What choice do I have?’ he asked himself bitterly. Somehow the words slipped out aloud. He swung his gaze to where Sorcor regarded him worriedly. He forced a sick smile to his lips, warmth to his voice. He shook his head at himself. ‘All these years, Sorcor, who else have I ever trusted? I have no choice but to put the burden once more upon our friendship.’

  He reached for his crutch. He took hold of it, but realized he did not have the strength to hold it firmly. The healing of his stump was drawing off every bit of strength he had. He blinked his heavy eyes. ‘I shall have to ask for your help to reach my bed as well. My strength deserts me.’

  ‘Captain,’ Sorcor said. The grovelling affection of a dog was in the word. Kennit stored the thought away to consider when he felt better. Somehow asking Sorcor’s aid had made the man more dependent on his approval than ever. He had chosen his first mate well, he decided. Were he in Sorcor’s position, he would have instinctively grasped that now was his best opportunity to seize full power. Luckily for Kennit, Sorcor was slower-witted than he.

  Sorcor stooped awkwardly and actually lifted Kennit bodily to carry him back to his bed. The abrupt movement stirred his pain to a new intensity. Kennit clutched at Sorcor’s shoulders and his brain swam dizzily. For an instant he was overwhelmed by an ancient memory of his father; black whiskers and whisky-breath and sailor-stink, whirling and laughing in a drunken dance with the boy Kennit in his arms. A time both terrifying and happy. Sorcor set him down gently on his bunk. ‘I’ll send Etta in, shall I?’

  Kennit nodded feebly. He reached after the memory of his father, but the chimera danced and
mocked him from his shadowy childhood. Instead another face smiled down on him, sardonic and elegant. ‘A likely urchin. Perhaps something useful can be made of him.’ He tossed his head against his pillow, shaking the memory from his mind. The door closed behind the first mate.

  ‘You don’t deserve these people,’ a small voice said quietly. ‘Why they love you is beyond me. I would tell you that I would rejoice in your downfall the day they find you out, save that is also the day their hearts will break. By what luck do you deserve the loyalty of such folk?’

  Wearily he lifted his wrist. The little face, strapped so tightly over his pulse point, glared up at him. He snorted a brief laugh at its indignant expression. ‘By my luck. By the luck in my name and the luck in my blood, I deserve them.’ Then he laughed again, this time at himself. ‘The loyalty of a whore and a brigand. Such wealth.’

  ‘Your leg is rotting,’ the little face said with sudden malignancy. ‘Rotting up the bone. It will stink and drip and burn the life from your flesh. Because you lack the courage to cut your own foulness from your body.’ It sneered a grin at him. ‘Do you wit my parable, Kennit?’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said heavily. He had begun to sweat again. Sweating in his nice clean shirt, in his fresh clean bed. Sweating like a stinking old drunk. ‘If I am evil, what shall we say of you? You are part and parcel of me.’

  ‘This piece of wood had a great heart once,’ the charm declared. ‘You have put your face upon me and your voice comes from my mouth. I am bound to you. But wood remembers. I am not you, Kennit. And I swear I shall not become you.’

  ‘No one… asked you… to.’ His breath was coming harder. He closed his eyes and sank away.

  30

  DEFIANCE AND ALLIANCE

  HER FIRST SLAVE DEATH happened in the early afternoon. The loading had gone slowly and poorly. A wind from the east had churned up a nasty chop in the water while the building clouds on the horizon promised yet another winter storm by morning. The coffles of slaves were being ferried out to where Vivacia was anchored, and the slaves were being prodded up the rope ladder hung over her side. Some of the slaves were in poor condition; others were afraid of the ladder, or simply awkward getting from the rocking boat to the ladder on the side of the rocking ship. But the man who died, died because he wanted to. He was halfway up the ladder, climbing awkwardly because his legs were still fettered together. He suddenly laughed out loud. ‘Guess I’ll take the short road instead of the long one,’ he sang out. He stepped away from the ladder and let go. He dropped like an arrow into the sea, the weight of chain on his ankles pulling him straight down. He could not have saved himself even if he had changed his mind.

  In the dark waters far below her hull, a knot of serpents suddenly uncoiled. She sensed their lashing struggle for a share of the meat. The salt of a man’s blood flavoured the seawater briefly as it washed against her hull. Her horror was all the deeper that the men on her decks suspected nothing. ‘There are serpents below!’ she called back to them, but they ignored her just as they ignored the pleas of the slaves.

  After that, an angry Torg had the slaves roped together. This made it even more awkward for them to climb aboard, but he seemed to take some vengeful delight in reminding them that any man who jumped would have to answer to the rest of his coffle. No one else tried it, and Torg congratulated himself on his slyness.

  Inside her holds, it was even worse. The slaves breathed out misery, until a miasma of unhappiness filled her from within. They were packed like fish in a barrel, and fastened to one another as well, so that they could not even shift without the cooperation of their chain-mates. The holds were dark with their fear; they pissed it out with their urine, wept it out with their tears until Vivacia felt saturated with human wretchedness.

  In the chain locker, vibrating in harmony with her and adding his own special note to the woe, was Wintrow. Wintrow who had abandoned her was once again aboard her. He sprawled in the dark on the deck, ankles and wrists still weighted with chains, face pocked and stained with her image. He did not weep or moan, nor did he sleep. He simply stared into the blackness and felt. He shared her awareness of the slaves and their misery.

  Like the beating of a heart she did not have, Wintrow thrummed with the slaves’ despair. He knew the entire gauntlet of their despondency, from the half-wit who could not comprehend the change in his life to the ageing sculptor whose early works still decorated the Satrap’s personal quarters. In the lowest and darkest of her holds, scarcely above the bilge, was a layer of those least valuable. Map-faces, little more than human ballast they were, and the survivors would be sold for whatever they might bring in Chalced. In a safe, dry hold that had oftimes held bales of silk or casks of wine, artisans huddled. To these were given the comfort of a layer of straw and enough chain to stand upright, if they took turns at it. Kyle had not secured as many of these as he had hoped for. The bulk of his cargo in the main hold were simple labourers and tradesmen, journeymen fallen on hard times, smiths and vineyard-dressers and lacemakers, plunged into debt by illness or addiction or poor judgement, and now paying the forfeit of their debts with their own flesh.

  And in the forecastle were men with a different sort of pain. Some of the crew had had reservations about the captain’s plan from the beginning. Others had given it no thought, had assisted in installing the chains and eye-bolts as if they were just another kind of netting to restrain cargo. But in the past two days, it had all become real. Slaves were coming aboard, men and women and some half-grown children. All were tattooed. Some wore their fetters with experience and others still stared and struggled against the chains that bound them. None had travelled in the cargo hold of a ship before; slaves that left Jamaillia went to Chalced. None ever came back. And each man in the crew was learning, some painfully, not to look at eyes or faces and not to heed voices that pleaded or cursed or ranted. Cargo. Stock. Bleating sheep shoved into pens until the pens would hold no more. Each man was coming to terms with it in his own way, was inventing other ways of seeing tattooed humans, other words to associate with them. Comfrey’s joshing manner had vanished on the first day of loading. Mild, in his effort to find the relief of levity somewhere, made jokes that were not funny, that were sand in the wounds of an abraded conscience. Gantry held his peace and did his work, but knew that once this trip was up, he would not sail on a slaver again. Only Torg seemed to find contentment and satisfaction. In the depths of his greasy little soul, he was now living the cherished fantasy of his youth. He walked down the lines of his lashed-down cargo, savouring the confinement that finally made him feel free. He had already marked for himself those in need of his attentions, those who would benefit from his extra ‘discipline’. Torg, Vivacia reflected, was a piece of carrion that, overturned, now showed its working maggots to the daylight.

  She and Wintrow echoed one another’s misery. And working inside her despair was the deep conviction that this never could have happened to her if her family had only been true to her. If one of her true blood had captained this ship, that captain would have had to share what she was feeling. She knew Ephron Vestrit would never have exposed her to this. Althea would have been incapable of it. But Kyle Haven heeded her not. If he had any misgivings, he had not shared them with anyone. The only emotion Wintrow recognized from his father was a cold, burning anger that bordered on a hatred for his own flesh and blood. Vivacia suspected that Kyle saw them as a double-pronged problem: the ship that would not heed his wishes because of a boy that would not be what his father commanded him to be. She feared that Kyle was determined to break one or the other of them. And both, if he could.

  She had kept her silence. Kyle had not brought Wintrow forward last night when he had hauled him on board. He had thrown Wintrow into his old confinement and then came forward himself to brag of his son’s capture. In a voice pitched to carry to every man working on deck, he recounted to her how he had found his son a slave, and bought him for the ship. Once they were underway, he’d have the boy brought
to her, and she might command him as she pleased — for his father, by Sa’s damned eyes, was through with him.

  His monologue lengthened, measured against her silent outward stare. Kyle’s voice rose until his fury had him practically spitting. A shift of the breeze brought her the whisky of his breath. So. That was a new vice for Kyle Haven, coming aboard her drunk. She would not reply to him. He saw her and Wintrow as but parts of a machine, a block-and-tackle that, once joined a certain way, must then work a certain way. Had they been a fiddle and bow, she reflected, he would have smashed them together over and over again, demanding that they make music.

  ‘I’ve bought you the damned worthless boy!’ he finished his rant at her. ‘That was what you wanted, that’s what you’ve got. He’s marked as yours, he’s yours for every day left in his miserable, useless life.’ He spun and started to stride away, then turned back suddenly to growl at her back, ‘And you’d damned well better be content with him. For it’s the last time I’ll try to please you.’

  It was only in that instant that she finally heard the jealousy in his voice. Once he had coveted her, a beautiful, expensive ship, the rarest kind of a ship. A man with a ship such as her became a member of that elite brotherhood of those who captained liveships and traded in the exotic goods of the Rain Wild River and became the envy of any man who captained anything else. He had known her value, he had desired her and courted her. When he eliminated Althea, he thought he had vanquished every rival for her. But in the end, his attentions had not been enough for her. She had turned from him to a worthless twig of a boy who did not grasp her value. Like a spurned lover, Kyle’s dream of truly possessing her was crumbling. The shards of it held only the bitter dregs of hatred.

  Well, it was mutual, she told herself coldly.

  More difficult to name was the emotion she now felt toward Wintrow. Perhaps, she thought, it was not so different from what Kyle felt for her.