by Robin Hobb
When Kennit came to the ship's railing, he didn't pause. His peg hit the deck, his foot the railing and he flung himself out. With a leap that would have shamed a tiger, he sprang after the departing ship. Althea expected him to fall between the vessels but he hit the other deck and rolled. A bare handful of his men followed him. One fell short, yelling as he plummeted into the water.
She could not see what became of Kennit after that. Too many men converged on the outnumbered pirate king and his men. Etta screamed in rage and gathered herself. Wintrow tackled her to keep her from flinging herself after Kennit. The gap between the ships had widened to an impossible leap. Jeering laughter and triumphant calls rose stingingly from the other ship as it pulled steadily away from the Vivacia. Two men held the pale Satrap aloft and shook him mockingly at Vivacia's crew.
Etta pushed savagely free of Wintrow. In her despair and anger, she turned on him. "You fool! We cannot let them have him. They'll kill him. You know that."
"I don't intend to let them keep him. But your drowning just now would not save him," he retorted angrily. His voice deepened in command. "Jola! They've taken Kennit! Vivacia! After them, they've taken Kennit, we must pursue!"
Vivacia took up the cry. "Up anchor! Put on sail! We must go after them, they've taken Kennit."
"No!" Althea groaned, low. "Let him go, let them have him." But she knew the ship would not. She could feel Vivacia's anxiety, pulsing up through her wood. The ship loved him and she would have him back, no matter the cost. Althea looked across the water at the Jamaillian fleet spread before them. If Vivacia challenged them, she had no chance, even if the Marietta and the Motley backed her. It would not be swift, it would be bloody with more men dying on Vivacia's decks and in the end, her ship would be in Jamaillian hands. It was a lost cause already, but she knew that the ship would pursue it. She would be borne along with her to face a savage end.
Then a voice reached her, booming across the water and setting the hair on the back of her neck on end. "Halloo the Vivacia! Who has taken Kennit?"
She turned slowly as a chill raced over her. It was a voice from the grave. Paragon's voice reached across the water as no man's could do. She looked at him, and then looked again. It was not Paragon. The battered liveship with its makeshift rigging bore Paragon's nameplate, but the figurehead was an open-countenanced young man, beardless, with his hair bound back in a warrior's tail. Then she had a glimpse of a golden woman standing on the deck just back of the figurehead, waving both her arms in a wild greeting. For an instant, all other thoughts and fears were suspended as she watched them come on. She could not see Brashen; there was no way to be sure he was alive, too, but she suddenly felt he must be. Paragon's eyes were closed and he sailed with his hands stretched blindly before him. That wrung her heart. It was as they had feared. Amber had recarved him, but it had not restored his sight. A white serpent cut the water before his bow.
"They're alive!" Jek was suddenly beside her, jumping up and down and pounding her on the back with a bloody fist. It was unnerving yet wonderful to be snatched off her feet and whirled around by the larger woman as Jek gave a howl of joy.
"Ho, Paragon!" Vivacia cried in despair, "There, that ship, he's on board her. They'll kill him, Paragon, they'll kill him!" She pointed frantically and uselessly across the water. Her own anchor was just rising from the muck.
Her cry carried to the Marietta and the Motley as well. Althea saw them divert in their courses toward Vivacia to pursue the one Jamaillian ship that was fleeing for the shelter of its fleet.
But Paragon was already underway and the will of a liveship propelled him as much as the wind in his sails. He gathered speed unnaturally. Even the crew of the Vivacia, familiar with the ways of liveships, cried out in wonder as he swept past. Althea had a glimpse of Brashen running down Paragon's decks with Clef at his heels. At the sight of him, her heart sprang to life in her chest. Then Paragon had swept by them, showing Vivacia his stern. She stood staring, stunned with joy.
The beleaguered crew of the Vivacia had sprung to at the news that their captain was taken. Every man who could move sprang to hoist the anchor and raise the sails. For the time being, they ignored the bodies that littered the deck. The wounded that could staggered to their feet to help run the ship. Malta, unharmed but obviously shaken, wandered, stricken, through the tangled dead. Wintrow had taken command away from the rattled Jola. Etta seemed to be everywhere, lending a hand and shouting for speed at every task.
"Althea!" Jek shouted, breaking her from her trance. "Get moving!" Jek had already joined the men at the anchor.
"After him!" Althea joined her shouts to Wintrow's. "Paragon must not face them alone!"
Before the anchor was completely out of the water, Vivacia was gathering momentum.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Rescues
"I don't care about Kennit!" Brashen roared. "Go back for Althea!"
"She is safe where she is for now!" Paragon shouted defiantly. "I must have Kennit back. I need him."
Brashen clenched his teeth. So close, for an instant, and then they had swept past. The need to see Althea and know she was safe hollowed him, but the headstrong ship seemed intent on bearing them to their deaths. Every time Brashen began to trust Paragon, he dashed his hopes again. He defied both rudder and orders, arrowing after the fleeing Jamaillian ship. The white serpent leapt and dove in their bow wave like a dolphin. On the foredeck, Mother leaned on the railing as if she could push the ship to go faster. Amber stood straight and tall, the wind whipping her hair. Her eyes were wide as if she listened to distant music. "At least slow down," Brashen begged. "Let the other ships pull even with us. We don't need to face the whole Jamaillian fleet alone."
But Paragon rushed blindly ahead. Brashen surmised that somehow the white serpent guided him. "I can't delay. They'll kill him, Brashen. They might be killing him right now. He must not die without me."
That had an ominous tone. Brashen suddenly felt a light touch on his wrist. He glanced down to find Kennit's mother standing beside him. Her pale eyes locked with his dark ones and spoke all the words her tongue could no longer say. The eloquence of that appeal could not be refused. Brashen shook his head, not at her but at his own foolishness. "Go then!" he suddenly shouted at the ship. "Fling yourself forward blindly. Satisfy whatever madness drives you once and for all."
"As I must!" Paragon flung back at him.
"As must we all," Amber agreed quietly.
Brashen rounded on her, glad of a new target. "I suppose this is the destiny you bespoke," he challenged Amber in frustration.
She gave him an ethereal smile. "Oh, yes indeed," she promised him. "And not just Paragon's. Mine. And yours." She flung an arm wide. "And all the world's."
Kennit had never been in a worse place. Crutchless, weaponless, he sat on the deck while working sailors moved matter-of-factly past him. The few men who had boarded with him were bloody corpses. Pointless to take satisfaction in the Jamaillians they had taken with them. The Satrap was a crumpled heap behind him. He was uninjured but swooned. Kennit himself was battered, but as yet unbloodied.
He sat on the open deck near the house of the ship. He had to look up at his guards. He refused to do so. He'd had enough of their sneering faces and mocking grins. They'd taken much pleasure in snatching his crutch away and letting him fall. His ribs ached from their boots. The sudden change in his fortunes dazed him as much as his injuries. Where had his good luck vanished? How could this have happened to him, King Kennit of the Pirate Isles? But a moment ago, he'd held the Satrap of all Jamaillia captive and had the signed treaty that recognized him as King of the Pirate Isles. He had felt his destiny, had briefly touched it. Now this. He had not been so helpless and defeated since he was a boy. He pushed the thought aside. None of this would have happened if Wintrow and Etta had followed him, as they should have. Their courage and faith in his luck should have matched his own. He'd tell them so when they rescued him.
Behind him, h
e felt the Satrap stirring from his dead faint. He moaned faintly. Kennit elbowed him unobtrusively. "Quiet," he said in a low voice. "Sit up. Try to look competent. The more weakness you admit, the more they'll hurt you. I need you in one piece."
The Lord High Satrap of all Jamaillia sat up, sniffled and looked fearfully around. On the deck, men thundered past them, intent on wringing yet more speed out of the ship. Two men guarded them, one with a long knife, the other with a nasty short club. Kennit's left arm was near numb from his last encounter with it.
"I am lost. All is lost." The Satrap rocked himself.
"Stop it!" Kennit hissed. In a low voice he continued, "While you whine and moan, you are not thinking. Look around us. Now, more than ever, you must be the Satrap of all Jamaillia. Look like a king if you wish to be treated as one. Sit up. Be alert and outraged. Behave as if you have the power to kill them all."
Kennit himself had already followed his own advice. If the Jamaillians had taken the Satrap to be rid of him, he reasoned, they would have killed him outright. That they both still lived meant that the Satrap had some living value to them. And if he did, and if the Satrap felt some small measure of gratitude to Kennit, perhaps he might preserve the pirate's life as well. Kennit gathered strength into his voice. He poured conviction into his whisper. "They shall not emerge unscathed from this treatment of us. Even now, my ships pursue us. Look at our captors, and think only of how you will kill them."
"Slowly," the Satrap said in a voice that still shook slightly. "Slowly they will die," he said more firmly, "with much time to regret their stupidity." He managed to sit up. He wrapped the scarlet cloak more closely about himself and glared at their guards. Anger, Kennit reflected, suited him. It drove the fear and childishness from his face. "My own nobles turned on me. They will pay for their treason. They, and their families. I will tear down their mansions, I will cut their forests, I will burn their fields. To the tenth generation, they will suffer for this. I know their names."
A guard had overheard him. He gave the Satrap a disdainful shove with his foot. "Shut up. You'll be dead before the day is out. I heard them say. They just want to do it where they all can witness it. Binding by blood, they call it." He grinned, showing a sailor's teeth. "You, too, 'King' Kennit. Maybe they'll let me do it. I lost two shipmates to them damn serpents of yours."
"Kennit!"
The roar was the voice of the wind itself, the cry of an outraged god. The taunting guard spun around to look aft. A terrible shiver ran over Kennit. He did not have to look. It was the voice of his dead ship, calling him to join it. He struggled to stand, but without his crutch, it was hard. "Help me up!" he commanded the Satrap. At any other time the royal youth would probably have disdained such a command, but the sound of the pirate's name still lingered in everyone's ears. He stood quickly and extended a hand to the pirate. Even the men on deck had slowed in their appointed tasks to look back. A look of horror dawned on some faces. Kennit hauled himself to a standing position by the Satrap's slender shoulder and stared wildly about for the ghost ship.
He found it, coming up swift on their starboard.
Impossibly, it was Paragon, transfigured in death to a youth. A ghostly white serpent gamboled before the ship. More swift than the wind, unnaturally fleet, the liveship drew alongside. Completing the nightmare, his mother stood on the foredeck, her white hair streaming in the wind. She saw him. She reached a beseeching hand toward him. A golden goddess stood beside her, and a dead man commanded the crew. Kennit's tongue clove for an instant to the roof of his mouth. The ghosts of his past came on, impossibly swift, drawing abreast of the Jamaillian ship and then veering toward it. "Kennit!" the voice thundered again. "I come for you!" Paragon put cold fury in his voice. "Yield Kennit to me! I command it! He is mine!"
"Yield!" Vivacia's voice cracked the sky, coming from the port side of the ship. Kennit's view of her was blocked, but he knew she was close. His heart lifted painfully in his chest. She could save him. "Yield, Jamaillian ship, or we take you to the bottom!"
The Jamaillian ship had nowhere to go. Despite her master's frantic commands to spill wind from her sails, he could not slow her fast enough. The Paragon cut recklessly toward her bow. The Jamaillian ship veered, but it was not enough. With a terrible splintering sound followed by the groans of stressed timbers, she caromed at an angle against Paragon. His wizardwood absorbed her impact, but splinters flew from the Jamaillian ship. The Jamaillian ship slewed around, all control lost. Overhead, canvas flapped wildly. Suddenly, there was another grinding impact as the Vivacia pressed up against her other side. It was a reckless maneuver, one that could take all three ships down. The halted momentum of the ships swung them all in a slowly turning circle. Sailors on every deck roared in dismay. Overhead, rigging threatened to tangle. To either side, the Marietta and the Motley swept past, to hold off approaching Jamaillian vessels.
The deck under Kennit was still shuddering from the impacts when grapples from both liveships seized onto it. Boarders from both sides leapt over the railings. The clash of fighting rose around them, supplemented with the wild shouts of the liveships themselves. Even the serpent added his trumpeting. Their captors were suddenly intent on defending their own lives.
"Satrap! We must try to get to the Vivacia." Kennit kept his firm grip on the Satrap's shoulder and shouted by his ear. "I'll guide you there," he asserted, lest his living crutch try to go on his own.
"Kill them!" The Jamaillian captain's roar cut through the sounds of battle. It was the furious cry of a desperate man. "By Lord Criath's order, they must not be taken alive. Kill the Satrap and the pirate king. Don't let them escape!"
Bodies still cluttered Vivacia's deck, the blood beading and running over the sealed wood. Walking was slippery. The frantically scrambling sailors, the outstretched, pleading hands of the injured and the increased shifting of the deck made Malta's journey to where Reyn had fallen a nightmare. She felt she moved sluggishly, alone, through chaos and insanity, to the end of the world. Pirates darted past her to Wintrow's shouted commands. She did not even hear them. Reyn had come all this way, seeking her, and she had been too cowardly to give him even a word. She had dreaded the pain of his rejection so much that she had not had the courage to thank him. Now she feared she sought for a dead man.
He lay facedown. She had to pull another body off his. The man on top of him was heavy. She tugged at him hopelessly while all around her the world went on a mad quest to save Kennit. No one, not her brother, not her aunt, came to her aid. She sobbed breathlessly, fearfully as she worked. She heard the two liveships shouting to one another. Rushing sailors dodged around her, heedless of her toil. She fell to her knees in the blood, braced a shoulder against the dead man's bulk, and shoved him off Reyn.
The revealed carnage left her gasping. Blood soaked his garments and pooled around his body. He sprawled in it, horribly still. "Oh, Reyn. Oh, my love." She squeezed out the hoarse words that had lived unacknowledged in her heart since their first dream-box sharing. Heedless of the blood, she bent to embrace him. He was still warm. "Never to be," she moaned, rocking. "Never to be." It was like losing her home and her family all over again. In his arms, she suddenly knew, was the only place where she could have been Malta again. With him died her youth, her beauty, her dreams.
Tenderly, as if he could still feel pain, she turned him over. She would see his face one last time, look into his copper eyes even if he did not look back at her. It would be all she would ever have of him.
Her hands were thick with his blood as she untucked the veil from the throat of his shirt. She used both hands to lift it up and away from his face. It peeled away, leaving a latticework of blood inked on his slack face. Tenderly she wiped it away with the hem of her cloak. She bent down and kissed his still mouth, lips to lips, no dream, no veil between them. Dimly she was aware that the shouting world of sail and battle went on around them. She did not care. Her life had stopped here. She traced the scaled line of his brow, the pebbled
skin like a finely wrought chain under her fingertip. "Reyn," she said quietly. "Oh, my Reyn."
His eyes opened to slits. Copper glints shone. Transfixed, she stared, as he blinked twice, then opened his eyes. He squinted up at her. He gave a gasp of pain, his right hand going to the wet sleeve on his left arm. "I'm hurt," he said dazedly.
She bent closer over him. Her heart thundered in her ears. She scarcely heard her own words. "Reyn. Lie still. You're bleeding badly. Let me see to you." With a competence she did not feel, she began to undo his shirt. She would not dare to hope, she hoped for nothing, no, she did not even dare to pray, not that he would live, not that he would love her. Such hopes were too big. Her shaking hands could not unfasten the buttons.
She tore the shirt and spread it wide, expecting ruin within. "You're whole!" she exclaimed. "Praise Sa for life!" She ran a wondering hand down his smooth bronze chest. The scaling on it rippled under her hand and glinted in the pale winter sunlight.
"Malta?" He squinted, as if finally able to see who knelt over him. In his bloody right hand he caught both of hers and held her touch away from him as his eyes fixed on her brow. His eyes widened and he dropped her hands. Shame and pain scorched Malta, but she did not look away from him. As if he could not resist the impulse, he lifted a hand. But he did not touch her cheek as she had hoped. Instead, his fingers went straight to her bulging scar and traced it through her hair. Tears burned her eyes.
