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Then in the next instant he did something she did not understand.

He left himself. He was not gone from his body, but in some strange way he was apart from it.

It was almost as if he had joined her and looked through her eyes at the slender boy kneeling so still upon the foredeck.

His hair had pulled free from his sailor’s queue.

A few strands danced on his forehead, others stuck to it with sweat.

But his black eyes were calm, his mouth relaxed as he watched the shining blade come down to his hand.

Somewhere there was great pain, but Wintrow and Vivacia watched the mate lean on the blade to force it into the boy’s flesh.

Bright red blood welled. Clean blood, Wintrow observed somewhere.

The colour is good, a thick deep red. But he spoke no word and the sound of the mate swallowing as he worked was almost as loud as the shuddering breath Kyle drew in as the blade sank deep into the boy’s knuckle.

Gantry was good at this; the fine point of the blade slipped into the splice of the joint.

As it severed it, Wintrow could feel the sound it made.

It was a white pain, shooting up his finger bone, travelling swift and hot through his arm and into his spine.

Ignore it, he commanded himself savagely.

In a willing of strength unlike anything Vivacia had ever witnessed before, he kept the muscles of his arm slack.

He did not allow himself to flinch or pull away.

His only concession was to grip hard the wrist of his right hand with his left, as if he could strangle the coursing of the pain up his arm.

Blood flowed freely now, puddling between his thumb and middle finger.

It felt hot on Vivacia’s planking. It soaked into the wizardwood and she drew it in, cherishing this closeness, the salt and copper of it.

The mate was true to Wintrow’s wishes. There was a tiny crunch as the last gristle parted under the pressure of the blade, and then he drew the knife carefully across to sever the last bit of skin.

The finger rested on her deck now, a separate thing, a piece of meat.

Wintrow reached down carefully with his left hand to pick up his own severed finger and set it aside.

With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he pinched the skin together over the place where his right forefinger had been.

‘Stitch it shut,’ he told the mate calmly as his own blood welled and dripped. ‘Not too tight; just enough to hold the skin together without the thread cutting into it. Your smallest needle and the finest gut you have.’

Wintrow’s father coughed and turned away.

He walked stiffly to the railing, to stand and stare out at the passing islands as if they held some deep and sudden fascination for him.

Wintrow appeared not to notice, but Gantry darted a single glance at his captain.

Then he folded his lips, swallowed hard himself, and took up the needle.

The boy held his own flesh together as the mate stitched it and knotted the gut thread.

Wintrow set his bloodied left hand flat to the deck, bracing himself as the mate bandaged the place where the finger had been.

And the whole time he gave no sign, by word or movement, that he felt any pain at all.

He might have been patching canvas, Vivacia thought.

No. He was aware, somewhere, of the pain.

His body was aware, for the sweat had flowed down the channel of his spine and his shirt was mired in it, clinging to him.

He felt the pain, somewhere, but he had disconnected his mind from it.

It had become only his body’s insistent signal to him that something was wrong, just as hunger or thirst was a signal.

A signal that one could ignore when one must.

Oh. I see. She did not, quite, but was moved at what he was sharing with her.

When the bandaging was done, he rocked back on his heels but was wise enough not to try to stand.

No sense in tempting fate right now. He had come too far to spoil it with a faint.

Instead he took the cup of brandy that Mild poured for him with shaking hands.

He drank it down in three slow swallows, not tossing it back but drinking as one drank water when very thirsty.

The glass was bloodied with his fingerprints when he handed it back to Mild.

He looked around himself. Slowly he called his awareness back into his body.

He clenched his teeth against the white wave of pain from his hand.

Black dots swam for an instant before his eyes.

He blinked them away, focusing for a time on the two bloody handprints he had left on Vivacia’s deck.

The blood had soaked deep into the wizardwood.

They both knew that no amount of sanding would ever erase those twin marks.

Slowly he lifted his gaze and looked around.

Gantry was cleaning the knife on a rag. He returned the boy’s gaze, his brow furrowed but a small smile on his face.

He gave him the smallest of nods. Mild’s face was still pale, his eyes huge. Kyle gazed out over the rail.

‘I’m not a coward.’ He didn’t speak loud, but his voice carried. His father turned slowly to the challenging words. ‘I’m not a coward,’ Wintrow repeated more loudly. ‘I’m not big. I don’t claim to be strong. But I’m neither a weakling nor a coward. I can accept pain. When it’s necessary.’

A strange odd light had come into Kyle’s eyes. The beginnings of a smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. ‘You are a Haven,’ he pointed out with quiet pride.

Wintrow met his gaze. There was neither defiance nor the will to injure, but the words were clear.

‘I’m a Vestrit.’ He looked down to the bloody handprints on Vivacia’s deck, to the severed forefinger that still rested there.

‘You’ve made me a Vestrit.’ He smiled without joy or mirth.

‘What did my grandmother say to me? “Blood will tell”. Yes.’ He stooped to the deck and picked up his own severed finger.

He considered it carefully for a moment, then held it out to his father.

‘This finger will never wear a priest’s signet,’ he said.

To some he might have sounded drunken, but to Vivacia his voice was broken with sorrow.

‘Will you take it, sir? As a token of your victory?’

Captain Kyle’s fair face darkened with the blood of anger.

Vivacia suspected he was close to hating his own flesh and blood at that moment.

Wintrow stepped lightly toward him, a very strange light in his eyes.

Vivacia tried to understand what was happening to the boy.

Something was changing inside him, an uncoiling of strength was filling him.

He met his father’s gaze squarely, yet in his own voice was nothing of anger, nor even pain as he stepped forward boldly, to a place close enough to invite his father to strike him. Or embrace him.

But Kyle Haven moved not at all. His stillness was a denial, of all the boy was, of all he did. Wintrow knew in that instant that he would never please his father, that his father had never even desired to be pleased by him. He had only wanted to master him. And now he knew he would not.

‘No, sir? Ah, well.’ With a casualness that could not have been faked, Wintrow walked to the bow of the ship.

For a moment he made a show of studying the finger he held in his hand.

The nail, torn and dirtied in his work, the mangled flesh and crushed bone of it.

Then he flipped the small piece of flesh overboard as if it were nothing at all, had never been connected to him in any way.

There he remained, not leaning on the railing but standing straight beside her.

He looked far ahead to a distant horizon.

To a future he had been promised that now seemed far further than days or distance could make it.

He swayed very slightly on his feet. No one else moved or spoke.

Even the captain was still, his eyes fastened to his son as if their gaze could pierce him. Cords of muscle stood out on his neck.

Gantry spoke. ‘Mild. Take him below. See him to his berth. Check on him at each bell. Come to me if he runs a high fever or is delirious.’ He rolled up his tools and tied the canvas round them.

He opened a wooden case and sorted through some bottles and packets in it.

He did not even look up as he added quietly, ‘You others should find your duties before I find them for you.’

It was enough of a threat. The men dispersed.

His words had been simple, the commands well within the range of his duties as mate.

But no one could miss that in a very evasive way, Gantry had come between the captain and his son.

He had done it as smoothly as he might for any other man aboard who had brought himself too sharply to the captain’s attention.

It was not an unheard of thing for the mate to do; he’d done it often enough before when Kyle had first taken over the Vivacia.

But never before had he interfered between the captain and his son.

That he had done so now marked his acceptance of Wintrow as a genuine member of the crew, rather than as the captain’s spoiled son, brought along for the sake of his discipline.

Mild made himself small and unnoticed as he waited. After a time, Captain Kyle turned without a word and stalked aft. Mild watched him go for a time, then jerked his eyes away, as if it were somehow shameful to watch his captain retreat to his own quarters.