Page 111

‘And Mild,’ Gantry suddenly went on, as if there had been no pause.

‘Assist Wintrow in moving his gear and bedding to the forecastle. He’ll bunk with the rest of the men.

Once he’s settled, give him this. No more than a spoonful and bring the rest back to me right away.

It’s laudanum,’ he added, raising his voice for Wintrow’s benefit.

‘I want him to sleep. It’ll speed the healing.

’ He handed the boy the fat brown bottle, then rose and tucked the rest of his supplies under his arm.

With no more than that, Gantry turned and walked away.

‘Yessir,’ Mild agreed. He moved up shyly to Wintrow’s side. When the other boy did not deign to notice him, he nerved himself to tug at Wintrow’s sleeve. ‘You heard what the mate said,’ he reminded him awkwardly.

‘I’d rather stay here.’ Wintrow’s voice had gone drifting and dreamy. The pain, Vivacia realized, must be paid for sooner or later. He had kept his body from reacting to it at the time, but the price now was complete exhaustion.

‘I know,’ Mild said, almost kindly. ‘But it was an order.’

Wintrow sighed heavily and turned. ‘I know.’ With the docility of weariness, he followed the other boy below.

A short time later Vivacia was aware that Gantry had gone back to take the wheel himself.

It was something he did when he was disturbed and wanted time to think.

He was not, she thought to herself, a bad mate.

Brashen had been better, but Brashen had been with her longer.

His touch on the wheel was sure and steady, reassuring but not distrustful of her.

She looked down furtively and opened her hand.

The finger lay in her palm. She did not think anyone had seen her catch it.

She could not have explained why she had done so, save that it had been a part of Wintrow, and she was unwilling to lose even so small a fragment of him.

It was so tiny compared to her own larger-than-life digits.

A thin, jointed rod of bone, coated with flesh and skin, and at the end of it, the finely-ridged nail.

Even crushed and bloody, it fascinated her with its delicacy and detail.

She compared it to her own hand. Her carver had done a competent job, with her joints and nails and even the tendons on the back of her hand.

But there was no fine pattern of follicles on the back of her fingers, no tiny hairs, no whorling prints on the pads of her fingers.

She bore, she decided regretfully, only a passing resemblance to a true creature of flesh and blood.

For a time longer she examined her treasure.

Then she glanced furtively aft before she lifted it to her lips.

She could not throw it away and she had no place to keep it, save one.

She placed it in her mouth and swallowed.

It tasted like his blood had smelled; of salts and copper and in an odd way, like the sea itself.

She swallowed it down, to become part of herself.

She wondered what would become of it, deep inside her wizardwood gullet.

Then she felt it being absorbed, in much the same way the deck-planks had soaked up his blood.

She had never eaten anything meat before. She had never known hunger or thirst. Yet in the taking of Wintrow’s severed flesh into herself, she satisfied some longing that had gone nameless before. ‘We are one, now,’ she whispered to herself.

In a bunk in the forecastle, Wintrow turned over restlessly.

The laudanum could soften but not still the throbbing in his hand.

His flesh felt hot and dry, tight over the bones of his face and arm.

‘To be one with Sa,’ he said in a small cracked voice.

The priest’s ultimate goal. ‘I shall be one with Sa,’ he repeated more firmly. ‘It is my destiny.’

Vivacia had not the heart to contradict him.

It was raining, the relentless pelting rain that was the hallmark of winter in Bingtown.

It ran down his carved locks and dripped from his beard onto his bare chest. Paragon crossed his arms on his chest, and then shook his head, sending heavy drops flying.

Cold. Cold was mostly something he remembered from sensations humans had stored for him.

Wood cannot get cold, he told himself. I’m not cold.

No. It was not a matter of temperature, it was just the annoying sensation of water trickling over him.

He wiped a hand over his brow and shook the water from it.

‘I thought you said it was dead.’ A husky contralto voice spoke unnervingly near him. That was another problem with rain; the sound of it filled his ears, numbing them to important sounds like footsteps on wet sand.

‘Who’s there?’ he demanded. His voice sounded angry. Anger was a better thing to show humans than fear. Fear only made them bolder.

No one replied. He hadn’t expected anyone to answer, really.

They could see that he was blind. They’d probably creep about and he’d never know where they were until the rock hit.

He put all his concentration into listening for stealthy footsteps.

But when the second voice spoke, it was not far from where the first had originated.

He recognized it right away by the Jamaillian accent. Mingsley.

‘I thought it was. It never moved nor spoke at all the last time I was here. Dav — my intermediary assured me that it was alive still, but I doubted him. Well. This puts a whole new slant on this.’ He cleared his throat.

‘The Ludlucks have been reluctant to deal, and now I see why. I thought I was bidding on dead wood. My offer was far too low. I shall have to approach them again.’

‘I think I’ve changed my mind.’ The woman’s voice was low. Paragon couldn’t decide what emotion she was repressing. Disgust? Fear? He could not be sure. ‘I don’t think I want anything to do with this.’

‘But you seemed so intrigued earlier,’ Mingsley objected. ‘Don’t be squeamish now. So the figurehead is alive. That only increases our possibilities.’

‘I am intrigued by wizardwood,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘Someone brought me a tiny piece to work on once. The customer wanted me to carve it into the shape of a bird. I told him, as I tell you, that the work I do is determined by the wood I am given, not by any whim of my own or the customers. The man urged me to try. But when I took the wood from him, it felt… evil. If you could steep wood with an emotion, I’d say that one was pure malice.

I couldn’t bear to even touch it, let alone carve it. I told him to take it away.’

Mingsley chuckled as if the woman had told an amusing story.

‘I’ve found,’ he said loftily, as if speaking in generalities, ‘that the finely-tuned sensibilities of an artist are best soothed with the lovely sound of coins being stacked. I am sure we can get past your reservations. And I can promise you that the money from this would be incredible. Look at what your work brings in now, using ordinary wood. If you fashioned beads from wizardwood, we could ask… whatever we wanted. Literally. What we would be offering buyers has never been available to them before. We’re two of a kind in this.

Outsiders, seeing what all the insiders have missed. ’

‘Two of a kind? I am not at all sure we can even talk.’ There was no compromise to the woman’s tone, but Mingsley seemed deaf to it.

‘Look at it,’ he gloated. ‘Fine straight grain. Silvery colour. Plank after plank and I haven’t spotted a single knot.

Not one! Wood like that, you can do anything with it.

Even if we remove the figurehead, have you restore it, and sell it separately, there is still enough wizardwood in this hulk to found an industry.

Not just your beads and charms; we have to think bigger than that.

Chairs and bedsteads and tables, all elaborately carved.

Ah! Cradles. Imagine the status of that, rocking your first-born to sleep in a cradle all carved from wizardwood.

Or,’ the man’s voice suddenly grew even more enthused, ‘perhaps you might carve the headboard of the cradle with women’s faces.

We could find out how to quicken them, teach them to sing lullabies, and we’d have a cradle that could sing a child to sleep! ’

‘The thought makes my blood cold,’ the woman said.

‘You fear this wood then?’ Mingsley gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Don’t succumb to Bingtown superstition.’

‘I don’t fear wood,’ the woman snapped back.

‘I fear people like you. You charge into things blindly. Stop and think. The Bingtown Traders are the most astute merchants and traders this part of the world has ever seen. There must be a reason why they do not traffic in this wood. You’ve seen for yourself that the figurehead lives.

But you don’t ask how or why! You simply want to make tables and chairs of the same substance.

And finally, you stand before a living being and blithely speak of chopping up his body to make furniture. ’

Mingsley made an odd sound. ‘We have no real assurances that this is a live being,’ he said tolerantly. ‘So it moved and it spoke. Once. Jumping jacks on sticks move, as do puppets on strings. Parrots talk. Shall we give them all the status of a human?’ His tone was amused.