Ship of Magic lt-1

by Robin Hobb

  “You can ask me a question.”

  “No. Still not enough.”

  “Well, what do you want then?”

  Althea shook the dice box thoughtfully.

  Despite the time of year, the day was almost warm, an effect of the hot swamps to the west of them. All this stretch of coast was swamp and tussocky islands and shifting sand bars that changed seasonally. The hot water that mingled with the brine here was terrible for ordinary ships; sea-worms and other pests throve in it. But it wouldn't bother the Ophelia's wizardwood hull. An occasional whiff of sulfur was the only price they had to pay for it. The wind stirred the tendrils of hair that had pulled free of Althea's queue and warmed the ache of hard work from her joints. Despite her tide of “extra” hand, Tenira had found plenty to keep her busy. But he was a fair man and Ophelia was a beautiful and sweet-tempered ship. And Althea suddenly realized just how content she had been the last week or so.

  “I know what I want,” she said quietly. “But I'm not sure even you can give it to me.”

  “You think very loud. Has anyone ever told you that? I think I like you almost as much as you like me.” Ophelia's voice was warm with affection. “You want me to ask Tenira to keep you on, don't you?”

  “There's more than that. I'd want him to know what I am, and still be willing to let me work for him.”

  “Ouch,” Ophelia complained mockingly. “That is a high stake. And of course I couldn't promise it, only that I'd try for it.” She winked at Althea. “Shake the box, girl.”

  Ophelia won the first round easily.

  “So. Ask your question,” Althea said quietly.

  “Not yet. I want to know how many questions I have, before I start.”

  The next two rounds went to her as swiftly as the first. Althea still could not see how she was cheating; the figurehead's large hands all but overlapped on the dice box.

  “Well,” Ophelia purred as she handed the box to Althea for her to inspect her final winning throw. “Three questions. Let me see.” She deliberated a moment. “What is your full true name?”

  Althea sighed. “Althea Vestrit.” She spoke very softly, knowing the ship would nonetheless hear her.

  “No-o-o!” Ophelia breathed out in scandalized delight. “You are a Vestrit! A girl from an Old Trader family runs off to sea, and leaves her own liveship behind. Oh, how could you, you wicked thing, you heartless girl! Have you any idea what you put the Vivacia through? And her just a little slip of a thing, barely quickened and you leave her next to alone in the world! Heartless, wicked… tell me why, quickly, quickly, or I shall die of suspense!”

  “It was not my choice.” Althea took a breath. “I was forced off my family ship,” she said quietly, and suddenly it all came back, the grief at her father's death, her outrage at her disinheritance, her hatred of Kyle. Without thinking, she reached up to put her palm flat against the great hand that Ophelia reached down to her in sympathy. Like a floodgate opening, she felt the sudden outflow of her feelings and thoughts. She took a long shuddering breath. She had not realized how much she had missed simply being able to share with someone.

  The words spilled from her. Ophelia's features grew first agitated, then sympathetic as she listened to Althea's tale of her wrongs.

  “Oh, my dear, my dear. How tragic! But why didn't you come to us? Why did you let them part you?”

  “Come to who?” Althea asked dazedly.

  “Why, the liveships. It was all the talk of Bingtown harbor, when you disappeared and Haven took Vivacia over. More than a few of us were upset by it. We had always assumed you would take the Vivacia over when your father's time was done. And she was so upset, poor thing. We could scarcely get a word out of her. Then that boy, um, Wintrow, came aboard, and we were so relieved for her. But even then she didn't seem truly content. And if Wintrow was brought aboard against his will, why, then, that explains so much! But I still don't see why you didn't come to us.”

  “I never thought of it,” Althea admitted. “It seemed a family thing. Besides. I don't understand. What could the other liveships have done?”

  “You give us very little credit, darling. There is much we could have done, but the final threat was that we would have refused to sail. All of us. Until the Vivacia was given a willing family member.”

  Althea was shocked. After a moment she managed, “You would have done that, for us?”

  “Althea, honey, it would be for all of us. Perhaps you are too young to remember, but once there was a liveship called the Paragon. He was similarly abused, and driven mad by the abuse.” Ophelia closed her eyes and shook her head. “At that time, we did not act. By our failure to aid one of our own, he was irreparably damaged. No liveship passes in or out of Bingtown harbor without seeing him, pulled out of the water and chained down, abandoned to his madness Ships talk, Althea. Oh, we gossip just as much as sailors, and no one gossips like sailors. The pact was made long ago. If we had but known, we would have spoken up for you. And if speaking did not work, then, yes, we would have refused to sail. There are not so many liveships that we can afford to ignore one of our own.”

  “I had no idea,” Althea said quietly.

  “Yes, well, and perhaps I have spoken too freely. You understand that if such a pact were well known, it might be… misconstrued. We are not mutinous by nature, nor would we ever enact such a rebellion if it were not needed. But neither would we stand by and see one of our own abused again.” The drawling accents of a bawd had fallen from her voice. Althea now heard just as clearly the utterance of a Bingtown matriarch.

  “Is it too late to ask for help?”

  “Well, we're a long way from home. It's going to take rime. Trust me to pass the word to other liveships as I encounter them. Don't you try to speak for yourself. We can't do much until the Vivacia herself comes into Bingtown harbor again. Oh, I do hope I'm there. I wouldn't miss this for the world. At that time, I — or one of us, I do hope I get to be the one — will ask her for her side of your story. If she feels as aggrieved as you do, and I am sure she will, for I can read you almost as clearly as my own kin, then we will act. There are always one or two liveships in Bingtown harbor. We will speak to our families, and as other ships come in, they will join us, petitioning their families to speak to the Vestrits as well. The concept, you see, is that we pressure our own families to put pressure on your family. The ultimate pressure, of course, would be if we all refused to sail. It is, frankly, a stance we hope we shall never have to take. But we will if we have to.”

  Althea was silent for a long time.

  “What are you thinking?” Ophelia asked her at last.

  “That I have wasted the better part of a year, away from my own ship. I have learned a great many things, and I do believe I am a better sailor than I was. But that I will never be able to regain the wonder of those first months of her life. You are right, Ophelia. Heartless and wicked. Or maybe just stupid and cowardly. I don't know how I could have left her alone to deal with Kyle.”

  “We all make mistakes, my dear,” Ophelia assured her gently. “I wish all of them could be righted as easily as this. Of course we will get you back on board your own ship. Of course we will.”

  “I don't know how to thank you.” It was like being able to take a deep breath again, or to stand up straight after bearing a heavy burden for a long time. She had never grasped that liveships might share such feelings for one another. Her individual bond with Vivacia had been all she had perceived. She had never paused to think that in time her ship might develop friendships with others like her. That she and Vivacia might have allies beyond each other.

  Ophelia gave her throaty bawd's chuckle. “Well, you still have to answer one question for me.”

  Althea shook her head and smiled. “You have asked me far more than three questions.”

  “I think not!” Ophelia declared haughtily. “I recall only that I asked you your name. The rest just all came out freely. You spilled your guts, girl.”

  “Wel
l, perhaps I did. No, wait. I clearly recall that you asked me why I hadn't come to the liveships for help.”

  “That was not a question, that was just a conversational gambit. But even if I give you that, you still owe me a question.”

  Althea was inclined to feel generous. “Ask away, then.”

  Ophelia smiled, and a bright spark of mischief came into her eyes. For a second she bit the tip of her tongue between her white teeth. Then she asked quickly, “Who is that dark-eyed man who gives you such… stimulating dreams?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Storm

  “Let's try this,” Wintrow suggested. He pushed her fetter as far up her skinny shank as it would go.

  He took a strip of rag and lightly wrapped it around the girl's raw ankle. Then he slid her fetter back over the top of it. “Is that better?”

  She didn't speak. The moment he took his hand away, she began working her ankle against the fetter again.

  “No, no,” he said quietly. He touched her ankle and she stopped. But she did not speak and she did not look at him. She never did. A day or so more, and she'd be permanently crippled. He had no herbs or oils, no real medicines or bandaging. All he had was seawater and rags. And she was gradually scoring her own tendons. She seemed unable to stop herself from working against the fetter.

  “Give it up,” a voice from the darkness suggested sourly. “She's crazy. She don't know what she's doing, and she's going to die before we get to Chalced anyway. You washing her and bandaging her is only going to make it take longer. Let her go, if that's her only way out of here.”

  Wintrow lifted up his candle and peered into the gloom. He could not decide who had spoken. In this part of the hold, he couldn't even stand up straight. The slaves chained here were even more restricted. Yet the rolling of the Vivacia as she cut through the heavy seas kept them in constant motion, flesh against wood. They averted their eyes from his dim candlelight, blinking as if they stared at the sun. He scooted farther down the line, trying to avoid the worst of the filth. Most of the slaves were silent and impassive to his passage, all of their strength invested in endurance. He saw a man half sitting up in his chains, blinking as he tried to meet Wintrow's eyes. “Can I help you?” he asked quietly.

  “Do you have the key to these things?” one man to the side of him answered sarcastically, while another one demanded, “How come you get to move about?”

  “So that I can keep you alive,” Wintrow answered evasively. He was a coward. He feared that if they knew he was the captain's son, they'd try to kill him. “I've a bucket of seawater and rags, if you want to wash yourself.”

  “Give me the rag,” the first man commanded him gruffly. Wintrow sopped it in water and passed it to him. Wintrow had expected him to wipe his face and hands. So many slaves seemed to take comfort from that bare ritual of cleanliness. Instead he shifted as far as he could to put the rag against the bared shoulder of an inert man next to him. “Here you go, rat-bait,” he said, almost jokingly. He sponged tenderly at a raw and swollen lump on the man's shoulder. The man made no response.

  “Rat-bait here got bitten hard a few nights ago. I caught the rat and we shared it. But he ain't been feeling well since.” His eyes met Wintrow's for a glancing moment. “Think you could get him moved out of here?” he asked in a more genteel tone. “If he's got to die in chains, at least let him die in the light and air, on deck.”

  “It's night, right now,” Wintrow heard himself say. Foolish words.

  “Is it?” the man asked in wonder. “Still. The cool air.”

  “I'll ask,” Wintrow said uncomfortably, but he wasn't sure he truly would. The crew left Wintrow to himself. He ate apart from them, he slept apart from them. Some of the men he had known earlier in the voyage would watch him sometimes, their faces a mixture of pity and disgust at what he had become. The newer hands picked up in Jamaillia treated him as they would any slave. If he came near them, they complained of his stench and kicked or pushed him away. No. The less attention he got from the crew, the simpler his life was. He had come to think of the deck and the rigging as “outside.” Here “inside” was his new world. It was a place of thick smells, of chains caked with filth and humans meshed in them. The times when he went on deck to refill his bucket were like trips to a foreign world. There men moved freely, they shouted and sometimes laughed, and the wind and rain and sun touched their faces and bared arms. Never before had such things seemed so wondrous to Wintrow. He could have stayed abovedeck, he could have insinuated himself back into the routine as ship's boy. But he did not. Having been belowdecks, he could not forget or ignore what was there. So each day he rose as the sun went down, filled his bucket and got his washed-out rags, and went down into the slave holds. He offered them the small comfort of washing with seawater. Fresh water would have been far better, but there was precious little of that to spare. Seawater was better than nothing. He cleaned sores they could not reach. He did not get to every slave, every day. There were far too many of them for that. But he did what he could, and when he curled up to sleep by day, he slept deeply.

  He touched the leg of the inert man. His skin was hot. It would not be long.

  “Would you damp this again, please?”

  Something in the man's tones and accent were oddly familiar. Wintrow pondered it as he sloshed the rag in the small amount of seawater remaining in his bucket. There was no pretending the rag and water were clean anymore. Only wet. The man took it, and wiped the brow and face of his neighbor. He folded the rag anew, and wiped his own face and hands. “My thanks to you,” he said as he handed the rag back.

  With a shivering up his back, Wintrow caught it. “You come from Marrow, don't you? Near Kelpiton Monastery?”

  The man smiled oddly, as if Wintrow's words both warmed and pained him. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, I do.” In a lower voice, he amended it to, “I did. Before I was sent to Jamaillia.”

  “I was there, at Kelpiton!” Wintrow whispered, but he felt the words as a cry. “I lived in the monastery, I was to be a priest. I worked in the orchards, sometimes.” He moistened the rag and handed it back again.

  “Ah, the orchards.” The man's voice went far as he gently wiped his companion's hands. “In the spring, when the trees blossomed, they were like fountains of flowers. White and pink, the fragrance like a blessing.”

  “You could hear the bees, but it was as if the trees themselves were humming. Then, a week later when the blossoms fell, the ground was pink and white with them”

  “And the trees fogged with green as the first leaves came out,” the other man whispered. “Sa save me,” he moaned suddenly. “Are you a demon come to torment me, or a messenger-spirit?”

  “Neither,” Wintrow said. He suddenly felt ashamed. “I'm only a boy with a bucket of water and a rag “

  “Not a priest of Sa?”

  “Not any longer.”

  “The road to the priesthood may wander, but once upon it, no man leaves it.” The slave's voice had taken on a teaching cadence, and Wintrow knew he heard ancient scripture.

  “But I have been taken away from the priesthood.”

  “No man can be taken away, no man can leave it. All lives lead towards Sa. All are called to a priesthood.”

  Some moments later, Wintrow realized he was sitting very still in the dark, breathing. The candle had guttered out, and he had not been aware of it. His mind had followed the man's words, questioning, wondering. All men called to a priesthood. Even Torg, even Kyle Haven? Not all calls were heeded, not all doors were opened.

  He did not need to tell the other man he was back. He was aware of him. “Go, priest of Sa,” the man said quietly in the darkness. “Work the small mercies you can, plead for us, beg comfort for us. And when you have the chance to do more, Sa will give you the courage. I know he will.” Wintrow felt the rag pressed back into his hand.

  “You were a priest, too,” Wintrow asked softly.

  “I am a priest. One who would not sway to false
doctrine. No man is born to be a slave. That, I believe, is what Sa would never permit.” He cleared his throat and asked quietly, “Do you believe that?”

  “Of course.”

  In a conspiratorial voice, the man observed, “They bring us food and water but once a day. Other than that, and you, no one comes near us. If I had anything metal, I could work at these chains. It need not be a tool that would be missed. Anything metal you could find in any moment you are unwatched.”

  “But… even if you were out of your chains, what could you do? One man against so many?”

  “If I can sever the long chain, many of us could move.”

  “But what would you do?” Wintrow asked in a sort of horror.

  “I don't know. I'd trust to Sa. He brought you to me, didn't he?” He seemed to hear the boy's hesitation. “Don't think about it. Don't plan it. Don't worry. Sa will put opportunity in your path, and you will see it and act.” He paused. “I only ask that you beg that Kelo here be allowed to die on deck. If you dare.”

  “I dare,” Wintrow heard himself reply. Despite the darkness and stench all around him, he felt as if a tiny light had been rekindled inside him. He would dare. He would ask. What could they do to him for asking? Nothing worse than what they'd already done. His courage, he thought wonderingly. He'd found his courage again.

  He groped for his bucket and rag in the darkness. “I have to go. But I will come back.”

  “I know you will,” the other man replied quietly.

  “So. You wanted to see me?”

  “Something's wrong. Something is very wrong.”

  “What?” Gantry demanded wearily. “Is it the serpents again? I've tried, Vivacia. Sa knows I've tried to drive them off. But throwing rocks at them in the morning does me no good if I have to dump bodies over the side in the afternoon. I can't make them go away. You'll have to just ignore them.”

  “They whisper to me,” she confided uneasily.

  “The serpents talk to you?”

  “No. Not all of them. But the white one,” she turned to look at him and her eyes were tormented. “Without words, without sound. He whispers to me, and he urges… unspeakable things.”