The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  Fighting, she suddenly knew, to separate her emotions from Paragon’s.

  She turned back towards the prisoner and the figurehead, a fraction of an instant too late. Lavoy had hauled the pirate to his feet, and was holding him against the railing. The threats were twin; that Lavoy would simply push him overboard, bound as he was, or that the mate would strike him. The man’s face was reddened on one cheek; there had been at least one blow. Amber had hold of Lavoy’s drawn-back arm. She suddenly looked surprisingly tall. For a woman so willowy to have the strength to hold Lavoy’s arm back surprised Althea. Amber’s expression seemed to have turned Lavoy to stone. The look on Lavoy’s face was not fear; whatever he saw in Amber’s eyes moved him beyond fear. Too late, Althea saw the real threat.

  Paragon had twisted to his full limit. His hand reached, groping blindly.

  ‘No!’ Althea cried, but the big wooden fingers had found the prisoner. Paragon plucked him easily from Lavoy’s grip. The pirate screamed and Amber’s shout of ‘Oh, Paragon, no, no, no!’ cut through his cries.

  Paragon turned away from them, clenching the pirate in his hands before him. He hunched his shoulders over the stolen prisoner like a child devouring a stolen sweetmeat. He was fiercely muttering something to the hapless man as he shook him back and forth like a rag doll, but all Althea could hear was Amber’s pleading, ‘Paragon. Please, Paragon.’

  ‘Ship! Return that man to the deck at once!’ Brashen roared. The snap of ultimate command was in his voice but Paragon did not even flinch. Althea found herself clutching the railing in both hands as she leaned forwards desperately. ‘No!’ she begged the ship, but if the figurehead heard her, he gave no sign. Near her, Lavoy watched, his teeth white in a gritted grimace, his eyes strangely avid. Paragon darted his face down close to the man he clutched tight in both hands. For one horrific instant, Althea feared he would bite his head off. Instead, he froze as if listening intently. Then, ‘No!’ he shrieked. ‘Kennit never said that! He never said he always dreamed of having his own liveship. You lie! You lie!’ He shook the man back and forth. Althea heard the snapping of bones. The man screamed, and Paragon suddenly flung him away. His body cartwheeled in the bright sunlight, then bit into the flashing sea abruptly. There was a slap of flesh against water. Then he was gone. The chains on his ankles pulled what was left of him down.

  Althea stared dully at the spot where he had vanished. He had done it. Paragon had killed again.

  ‘Oh, ship,’ Brashen groaned deep beside her.

  Paragon swivelled his head to stare at them blindly. He curled his fists and held them in towards his chest as if that would hide his deed. His voice was that of a frightened and defiant boy as he declared, ‘I made him tell. Divvytown. We’ll find Kennit in Divvytown. He always liked Divvytown.’ He scowled blindly at the silence of the folk gathered on the foredeck. ‘Well, that was what you wanted, wasn’t it? To find out where Kennit was? That’s all I did. I made him talk.’

  ‘That you did, laddie,’ Lavoy observed gruffly. Even he seemed daunted by Paragon’s action. He shook his head slowly. In a quiet voice, pitched only for the humans, he added, ‘I didn’t believe he’d do it.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Amber contradicted him flatly. She stared at Lavoy with eyes that seared. ‘That was why you put the man within Paragon’s reach. So he could take him. Because you wanted him dead, like the other prisoners.’ Amber turned her head suddenly, to stare at the Tattooed ones of the crew who stood silently watching. ‘You were in on it. You knew what he would do, but you did nothing. That’s what he’s brought out in you. The worst of what slavery could have done to you.’ Her glance snapped back to the mate. ‘You’re a monster, Lavoy. Not just for what you did to that man, but for what you’ve wakened in the ship. You’re trying to make him a brute like yourself.’

  With a jerk of his head, Paragon turned his maimed face away from Amber’s words. ‘So you don’t like me any more. Well, I don’t care. If I have to be weak so you can like me, then I don’t need you to like me. So there.’ For him to revert to such childishness immediately after he had brutally killed a man paralysed Althea with horror. What was this ship?

  Amber didn’t reply with words. Instead, she sank slowly down until her brow rested on her hands as they gripped the railing. Althea did not know if she mourned or prayed. She clung tight to the wizardwood as if she could pour herself into it.

  ‘I did nothing!’ Lavoy protested. His words sounded cowardly to Althea. He looked at his Tattooed crew as he spoke. ‘Everyone saw what happened. None of it was my doing. The ship took it into his own hands, in more ways than one.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Brashen ordered all of them. ‘Just shut up.’ He paced a quick turn on the deck. His eyes travelled over the silently gathered crew on the foredeck. His eyes seemed to linger on Clef. The white-faced boy had both his hands clasped over his mouth. His eyes were bright with tears.

  When Brashen spoke again, his voice was devoid of any emotion. ‘We’ll be making for Divvytown, with all speed. The performance of this crew during the attack was abysmal. There will be additional drill, for officers as well as crew. I will have each man knowing his place and duty, and acting promptly on that knowledge.’ He let his eyes rove over them again. He looked older and wearier than Althea had ever seen him. He turned back to the figurehead.

  ‘Paragon, your punishment for disobeying my orders is isolation. No one is to speak to the ship without my leave. No one!’ he repeated as Amber took a breath to protest. ‘No one is even to be on this foredeck unless duty demands it. Now clear it, all of you, and get back to your tasks. Now.’

  Brashen stood silent on the foredeck as his crew silently ebbed away, back to deck or bunk as their watches commanded. Althea, too, walked away from him. Right now, she did not know him at all. How could he have let all that happen? Didn’t he see what Lavoy was, what he was doing to the ship?

  Brashen hurt. It wasn’t just the long gash down his ribs, though Sa knew that it burned and stung. His jaws, his back, and his gut ached with tension. Even his face hurt, but he could not remember how to relax those muscles. Althea had looked at him with absolute loathing; he could not fathom why. His liveship, his pride, his Paragon had killed with a bestial savagery that sickened him; he had not thought the ship capable of such a thing. He was almost certain now that Lavoy was lining up not just men, but the ship himself to support the mate in a mutiny. Amber was right, though he wished she had not spoken it aloud. For reasons he did not completely grasp, Lavoy had seen to it that all their prisoners died. It was overwhelming to him. Yet he must deal with all that, and never show, not even by the twitch of a facial muscle, that it bothered him. He was the captain. This was the price. Just when he most wanted to confront Lavoy, or take Althea in his arms, or demand that Paragon explain to him what had just happened, instead he had to square his shoulders and stand straight. Keep his dignity. For the sake of his crew and his command, he must feel nothing.

  He stood on the foredeck and watched them all obey him. Lavoy went with a resentful, backwards glance. Althea moved awkwardly, her spirit broken. He hoped the other women would have the sense to give her some privacy for a time. Amber was the last to leave the foredeck. She paused beside him, as if she would speak. He met her eyes and silently shook his head. Paragon must not think that anyone opposed Brashen’s order to isolate him. He must feel the disapproval was universal. As soon as Amber was off the deck, Brashen followed her. He spoke no parting word to the ship. He wondered if Paragon even noticed it.

  Paragon surreptitiously wiped his hands again down the bow. Blood was such clinging stuff. So clinging, and so rich with memories. He fought against absorbing the man he had killed, but in the end, the blood had its way. It soaked into his wizardwood hands, rich, red, and fraught with emotions. Terror and pain were the strongest. Well, how had the man expected to die, once he took up piracy? He’d brought it on himself. It was not Paragon’s fault. The man should have talked when Lavoy told him to. Then Lavoy wou
ld have killed him gently.

  Besides, the pirate had lied. He had said that Kennit loved Vivacia, that he often said he’d always wanted a liveship for his very own. Worse, he said that Vivacia had bonded to Kennit. She could not. She was not his family. So the man had lied and he had died.

  Brashen was very angry with him. It was Brashen’s own fault he was angry, because Brashen could not understand a simple thing like killing someone who had lied to you. There were many things, he was discovering, that Brashen did not understand. But Lavoy did. Lavoy came to him and talked to him, and told him sea tales and called him laddie. And he understood. He understood that Paragon had to be as he was, that everything he had ever done, he’d had to do. Lavoy told him he had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to regret. He agreed that people had pushed Paragon into everything he had ever done. Brashen and Althea and Amber all wanted him to be like them. They wanted him to pretend he had no past. No pasts at all. Be how they wanted him to be, or they wouldn’t like him. But he couldn’t. There were too many feelings inside him that he knew they wouldn’t like. That didn’t mean he could stop feeling them. Too many voices, telling him his bad memories over and over and over, but in tiny little voices he could not quite hear. Tiny little blood voices, whimpering from the past. What was he supposed to do about them? They were never silent, not really. He had learned to ignore them, but that didn’t make them go away. But even they were not as bad as the other parts of himself.

  He wiped his hands again down his hull. So no one was supposed to talk to him now. He didn’t care. He didn’t have to talk. He could go years without talking or even moving. He’d done it before. He doubted that Lavoy would obey that order anyway. He listened to the barefoot thundering of footsteps on his deck as men raced to one of Lavoy’s orders. He let the other part of himself grow stronger. Did they really think they could punish him and still expect him to sail blithely to Divvytown for them? They’d see. He crossed his arms on his chest and sailed blindly on.

  10

  TRUCES

  AUTUMN RAIN WAS pattering against the windows of Ronica’s bedroom. She lay still for a time, listening to it. The fire had burned low during the night. The chill in the room contrasted almost pleasantly with how warm she was beneath the blankets. She didn’t want to get up, not just yet. Lying in a soft bed, between clean linens and under a warm quilt, she could pretend. She could go back to an earlier time, and fantasize that any day now the Vivacia would dock. She would meet Ephron as he came striding down the wharf. His dark eyes would widen at the sight of her. The strength of his first hug had always surprised her. Her captain would catch her up in his arms and hold her tight as if he would never let go of her again.

  Never again.

  Despair washed through her. By an effort of will, she let it pass. She had survived this grief; from time to time, it still ambushed her with its pain, but when it did, she reminded herself that she had survived it. Nevertheless, she found herself irretrievably awake. It was very early, the clouded dawn barely touching her windows.

  What had wakened her?

  She had fleeting memories of horseshoes clattering on the drive, and the sound of a door flung open. Had a messenger come? It was the only reason for such sounds so early in the morning. She rose, dressed hastily without disturbing Rache, slipped out into the dim hallways of the quiet house and padded softly down the stairs.

  She found herself smiling grimly. Malta would be proud of her. She had learned that the edges of the stairs were less likely to creak, and how to stand perfectly motionless in the shadows while others passed unnoticing. Sometimes she would sit in the study and pretend to doze, to encourage the servants to gossip where she might overhear them. She had found a pleasant spot under the study window where she could feign absorption in her needlework, until the worsening autumn weather had put an end to that ruse.

  She reached the ground floor and stole quietly through the hall until she was outside Davad’s study. The door was shut but not quite latched. Stepping close, she put her ear to the crack. She could just discern a man’s voice. Roed Caern? Certainly, he and the Companion had been keeping very close company of late. Scarcely a day went by when he was not closeted with her. Initially, Ronica had blamed that on his involvement in Davad’s death. However, everyone else seemed to regard that as resolved now. What else had brought him to Serilla’s door at such an hour and in such haste?

  The Bingtown Council’s consideration of Davad’s death was concluded. Serilla had proclaimed that by the Satrap’s authority, she found Davad’s death due to misadventure and that no one was responsible. The Satrapy, she announced, had decided there was not enough evidence to prove Davad a traitor to Jamaillia. For this reason, his niece would inherit his estate, but Companion Serilla would continue to occupy Restart Hall. His niece, would, of course, be suitably compensated for her continued hospitality, in a timely fashion, after all civil unrest had been resolved. Serilla had made a great performance of this pronouncement. She had summoned the heads of the Council to Davad’s study, fed them well on delicacies and wine from Davad’s cellar, and then read her conclusion aloud from a scroll. Ronica had been present, as had Davad’s niece, a quiet, self-possessed young woman who had listened without comment. At the close of the proceedings, the niece had told the Council that she was satisfied. She had glanced at Roed as she spoke. Davad’s niece had had little reason to be fond of her uncle, but Ronica still wondered if the woman’s response had been purchased or coerced by Roed. The Council had then declared that if the heir was satisfied, they were content also.

  No one except Ronica seemed to recall that it left the blemishes on her family’s reputation intact. No one else had frowned at the idea that Davad’s supposed treason had been to Jamaillia rather than to Bingtown. It left Ronica feeling oddly isolated, as if the rules of the world had shifted subtly and left her behind. Ronica had expected Serilla to turn her out of the house as soon as the Council agreed to her findings. Instead, the woman had emphatically encouraged Ronica to stay. She had been overly gracious and condescending as she said she was sure Ronica could help her in her efforts to reunite Bingtown. Ronica doubted her sincerity. The real reason for Serilla’s continued hospitality was what Ronica hoped to discover. So far, that secret had eluded her.

  She held her breath and strove to catch every word. The Companion was speaking now. ‘Escaped? The message said escaped?’

  Roed’s reply was surly. ‘It didn’t need to. Only so many words will fit on a message scroll on a bird’s leg. He is gone, Companion Kekki is gone and that girl with them. If we are lucky, they all drowned in the river. But remember the girl is Bingtown-raised, and the daughter of a seafaring family. Chances are she knew her way around a boat.’ He paused. ‘That they were last seen in a small boat cries to me of conspiracy. Does not it all seem a bit strange to you? The girl went into the buried city and got them out, in the midst of the worst earthquake that Trehaug has suffered in years. No one sees them leave, until they are later seen from the dragon in a small boat.’

  ‘What does that mean, “from the dragon”?’ Serilla demanded, interrupting.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Roed declared impatiently. ‘I’ve never been to Trehaug. I imagine it must be some tower or bridge. What does it matter? The Satrap is out of our control. Anything can happen.’

  ‘I’d like to read that part of the message for myself.’ The Companion’s voice sounded very tentative. Ronica frowned. The messages came to Roed before they reached her?

  ‘You can’t. I destroyed it as soon as I’d read it. There is no sense in taking the chance that this information will reach others in Bingtown any sooner than it must. Be assured this will not be our secret for long. Many Traders keep close ties with their Rain Wild kin. Other birds will carry this news. That is why we must act swiftly and decisively, before others clamour to have a say in what we do.’

  ‘I just don’t understand. Why has it come to this?’ The Companion sounded distraught. ‘They promised to
make him comfortable and safe there. When he left here, I had convinced him it was the wisest course for his own welfare. What would change his mind? Why would he flee? What does he want?’

  Ronica heard Roed’s snort of laughter. ‘The Satrap may be a young man, but he is not a fool. The same mistake is often made of me. Not years, but the heritage of power is what suits a man to take command. The Satrap was born to power, Companion. I know you claim he does not pay attention to the undercurrents of politics, but he cannot be blind to your quest for influence. Perhaps he fears what you are doing right now: taking over for him, speaking with his voice, making his decisions here in Bingtown. From what I have seen and what you have said, your words are not what I expect the Satrap would truly say. Let us abandon all pretences. You know he has abused his power over us. I know what you hope. You would like to take his power as your own, and rule us better than he did.’

  Ronica heard Roed’s boots on the floor as he paced about the room. She drew back a little from the door. The Companion was silent.

  Roed’s voice had lost its charm when he spoke again. ‘Let us be frank. We have a common interest, you and I. We both seek to see Bingtown restored to itself. All about us, folk prate wildly of independence for Bingtown, or sharing power with the New Traders. Neither plan can possibly work. Bingtown needs to keep its ties with Jamaillia for us to prosper in trade. For the same reason, the New Traders must be forced out of Bingtown. You represent to me the ideal; if you remain in Bingtown, speaking with the Satrap’s voice, you can secure both goals for us. But if the Satrap perishes, with him goes your source of power. Worse, if the Satrap returns uncontrolled, your voice is drowned in his. My plan is simple in form if not execution. We must regain control of the Satrap again. Once we have him, we force him to cede power over Bingtown to you. You could reduce our taxes, get the Chalcedeans out of our harbours, and confiscate the New Traders’ holdings. We have the most obvious bargaining chip of all. We offer the Satrap his life in return for these concessions. Once he has put them down on paper, we keep him here in honour. Then, if the threatened Jamaillian fleet appears, we still have our game chip. We show him to them, to prove there is nothing for them to avenge. Eventually, we will send him safely back to Jamaillia. It all makes sense, does it not?’