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There were things the boy had said to her, over the past few days, words he had spoken in anger and frustration and misery.

A part of her recognized such words for what they were: Wintrow railed against his fate, not her.

Yet she could not seem to let go of them, and they cut her like hooks whenever she allowed herself to think of them.

He had reviled her yesterday morning after a particularly bad night’s watch, telling her that Sa had no part in her being and she partook nothing of his divine force, but was only a simulacrum of life and spirit, created by men for the serving of their own greed.

The words had shocked and horrified her, but even worse was when Kyle had strode up from behind the boy and knocked him flat to the deck in fury that he would so goad her.

Even the kinder men among the crew had spoken ill of Wintrow after that, saying the boy was sure to curse their luck with his evil words.

Kyle had seemed ignorant that she would feel the blow he had struck Wintrow as keenly as the boy himself had.

Nor had he paused to think that perhaps that was not the way to help Wintrow develop kindly feelings toward her.

Instead Kyle ordered the lad below to the extra chores he hated most. She was left alone to mull over the boy’s poisonous words and wonder if they were not, after all, absolutely true.

The boy made her think. He made her think of things no other Vestrit had ever considered while on her decks.

Half his life, she reflected, seemed to be considering how he saw that life in respect to the existence of others.

She had known of Sa, for all the other Vestrits had revered him in a cursory way.

But none of them had pondered the existence of the divine, nor thought to see the reflection of divinity in life around them.

None of them had believed so firmly that there was goodness and honour inherent in every man’s breast, nor cherished the idea that every being had some special destiny to fulfil, that there was some need in the world that only that life lived correctly could satisfy.

Hence none of them had been so bitterly disappointed as Wintrow had been in his everyday dealings with his fellows.

‘I think they’re going to have to cut my finger off.’ He spoke hesitantly and softly, as if his voicing of the fear might make it a reality.

Vivacia held her tongue. It was the first time since the accident that he had initiated a conversation. She suddenly recognized the deep fear he had been hiding behind his harsh words to her. She would listen and let him share with her whatever he could.

‘I think it’s more than broken. I think the joint is crushed.

’ Simple words, but she felt the cold dread coiled beneath them.

He took a breath and faced the actuality he’d been denying.

‘I think I’ve known it since it happened.

Still I kept hoping… But my whole hand has been swelling since this morning.

And it feels wet inside the bandaging.’ His voice went smaller.

‘So stupid. I’ve cared for others’ injuries before, not as a healer, but I know how to clean a wound and change a dressing.

But this, my own hand… I haven’t been able to muster the courage to look at it since last night. ’ He paused. She heard him swallow.

‘Isn’t it odd?’ he went on in a higher, strained voice.

‘I was there once when Sa’Garit cut a man’s leg off.

It had to be done. It was so obvious to all of us.

But the man kept saying, “no, no, let’s wait a bit longer, perhaps it will get better,” when hour by hour, we could see it getting worse.

Finally his wife persuaded him to let us do what had to be done.

I wondered, then, why he had kept putting it off, instead of simply getting it over with.

Why cling to a rotting hunk of flesh and bone, simply because it used to be a useful part of your body? ’

His voice suddenly closed itself off. He curled forward over his hand again. And now she could sense the throbbing of his pain, the beat, beat, beat in his hand that echoed every pulse of his body’s heart.

‘Did I ever really look at my hands before, really think about them? A priest’s hands…

one always hears about a priest’s hands.

All my life, I had perfect hands. Ten fingers, all working and nimble…

I used to create stained-glass windows. Did you know that, Vivacia?

I used to sit and plunge myself so deeply into my work…

my hands would move of their own accord, it almost seemed. And now…’

He fell silent again. Vivacia dared to speak. ‘A lot of sailors lose fingers. Or whole limbs. Yet those sailors still…’

‘I’m not a sailor. I’m a priest. I was to be a priest!

Until my father condemned me to this. He’s destroying me.

He deliberately seeks to destroy me. He and his men make mock of my belief, when I try to hold to my ideals they use them against me.

I cannot withstand what he is doing to me, what they are all doing to me. They are destroying…’

‘Yet those sailors still remain who they are, lost limbs or not.’ Vivacia continued implacably.

‘You are not a finger, Wintrow. You’re a man.

You cut your hair, your nails, and you are still Wintrow and a man.

And if you are a priest, then you will remain one, nine fingers or ten.

If you must lose a finger, then you must lose a finger.

But do not use it as an excuse to stop being yourself.

’ She paused, almost savouring the boy’s astonished silence.

‘I know little of your Sa, Wintrow. But I know much of the Vestrits. What you are born to be, you will be, whether it be priest or sailor. So step up and be it. Let them do nothing to you. Be the one who shapes yourself. Be who you are, and eventually all will have to recognize who you are, whether they are willing to admit it or not. And if your will is that you will shape yourself in Sa’s image, then do so. Without whimpering.’

‘Ship.’ He spoke the word softly, but it was almost like a benediction.

He placed his good hand flat on her planking.

After a moment’s hesitation, he placed his injured hand, palm down, beside it.

For the first time since Althea had left the ship, she felt one of her own deliberately reach towards her for strength.

She doubted that he knew that was what he did; perhaps as he bowed his head and spoke soft words, he thought he prayed to Sa.

But no matter who he addressed his plea for strength to, she was the one who answered it.

‘Wintrow,’ she said quietly, when his soft words were finished. ‘Go to your father now and tell him it must be done. And demand that it be done here, beside me. In my name, if they will not heed your wish.’

She had feared he would hesitate. Instead he rose gracefully. Without a word to anyone else he made his way to the captain’s gallery, where he rapped smartly on the door with his good hand.

‘Enter,’ Kyle replied.

She could not see all that went on within herself, but she was aware of it in a way humans had never given her a word for.

So she knew the thundering of Wintrow’s heart, and sensed too the small leap of triumph he felt when his father looked up from his bills of lading to startle at the sight of his son standing so boldly before him.

‘What do you do here?’ Kyle demanded harshly. ‘You’re the ship’s boy, no more than that. Don’t bring your whining to me.’

Wintrow stood quietly until his father was finished. Then in an even voice he spoke. ‘I need this finger cut off. It was crushed, and now it’s infected. I can tell already it won’t get better.’ He took a small, swift breath. ‘I’d like it done while it’s only the finger and not the whole hand.’

When Kyle finally replied, his voice was thick and uncertain. ‘You are sure of this? Did the mate tell you so? He does the doctoring aboard the ship.’

‘It scarcely needs a doctor’s eye. See for yourself.

’ With a casualness Vivacia was sure Wintrow did not feel, he began to unwind the crusted bandaging.

His father made a small sound. ‘The smell is bad, also,’ Wintrow confirmed, still in that easy voice.

‘The sooner you cut it off for me, the better.’

His father rose, scraping his chair back over the deck. ‘I’ll get the mate for you. Sit down, son.’

‘I’d rather you did it, sir, if it’s all the same to you. And up on deck, by the figurehead.’ She could almost feel Wintrow’s calculated glance about the room. ‘No sense in bleeding in your stateroom,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

‘I can’t… I’ve never…’

‘I can show you where to cut, sir. It’s not that different from boning out a fowl for the pot.

It’s just a matter of cutting out the joint.

That’s another thing they taught me in the monastery.

Sometimes it surprised me, how much cooking had in common with medicine.

The herbs, the knowledge of… meat. The knives. ’