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‘And now you are willing to spout whatever nonsense you must to get me to do your will. I’ve been down to the North wall where the liveships tie up.

As have you, I’ll wager. The ships I saw there are clearly alive, clearly individuals.

Mingsley. You can lie to yourself and convince yourself of anything you wish.

But don’t expect me to accept your excuses and half-truths as reasons I should work for you.

No. I was intrigued when you told me there was a dead liveship here, one whose wood could be salvaged.

But even that was a lie. There is no point to me standing out here in the rain with you any longer.

I’ve decided this is wrong. I won’t do it. ’

Paragon heard her striding away, heard Mingsley call after her, ‘You’re stupid. You’re walking away from more money than you can even imagine.’

Her footsteps halted. Paragon strained his ears. Would she come back? Her voice alone came, pitched in a normal tone but carrying clearly. ‘Somehow,’ she said coldly, ‘you have confused profitable and not profitable with right and wrong. I, however, have not.’

Then he could hear her walking away again. She strode like an angry man. The rain began to pelt even harder; the drops would have stung human flesh. He heard Mingsley grunt with distaste at the new downpour.

‘Artistic temperament,’ he scoffed to himself. ‘She’ll be back.’ A pause. Then, ‘Ship. You, ship. Are you truly alive?’

Paragon chose not to reply.

‘It’s not smart to ignore me. It’s only a matter of time before I own you. It’s in your own best interests to tell me what I need to know. Are you separate from the ship, or truly a part of it?’

Paragon faced the pounding rain and did not reply.

‘Would it kill you if I cut you free of your ship?’ Mingsley asked in a low voice. ‘For that is what I intend to do.’

Paragon did not know the answer to that. Instead, he invited Mingsley, ‘Why don’t you come close enough to try?’

After a short time, he heard the man leave.

He waited there, in the stinging rain. When he heard her speak again, he did not start. He did turn his head slowly, to hear her better.

‘Ship? Ship, may I come closer?’

‘My name is Paragon.’

‘Paragon, may I come closer?’

He considered it. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me your name?’ he finally countered.

A short hesitation. ‘I am called Amber.’

‘But that is not your name.’

‘I’ve had a number of names,’ she said after a time. ‘This is the one that suits me best, here and now.’

She could, he reflected, simply have lied to him and said it was her name.

But she had not. He extended an open hand toward the sound of her voice.

‘Amber,’ he accepted her. It was a challenge, too.

He knew how huge his hand was in comparison to a human’s.

Once his fingers closed around her hand, he’d be able to jerk her arm out if its socket. If he chose to.

He listened to her breathe, to the sound of the rain pocking the packed sand of the beach. Abruptly she took two quick steps towards him and set her gloved left hand in his. He closed his immense fingers over her small ones. ‘Paragon,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Why did you come back?’

She laughed nervously. ‘As Mingsley put it, I am intrigued by you.’ When he made no reply to that, she went on, ‘I have always been more curious than wise. Yet any wisdom I have ever gained has come to me from my curiosity. So I have never learned to turn away from it.’

‘I see. Will you tell me about yourself? As you see, I am blind.’

‘I see that only too well.’ There was pity and regret in her voice. ‘Mingsley called you ugly. But whoever shaped your brow and jaw, your lips and nose was a master carver. I wish I could have seen your eyes. What kind of a person could destroy such art?’

Her words moved him, but they also nudged him toward a thing he could not, would not recall. Gruffly he replied, ‘Such compliments! Are they meant to distract my mind from the fact that you have not answered my request?’ He released her hand.

‘No. Not at all. I am… Amber. I carve wood. I make jewellery from it, beads and ornaments, combs and rings. Sometimes larger pieces, such as bowls and goblets… even chairs and cradles. But not many of those. My talent seems strongest on smaller work. May I touch your face?’

The question came so swiftly that he found himself nodding before he had considered. ‘Why?’ he asked belatedly.

He felt her come closer to him. The scant warmth of her body interceded with the chill of the rain. He felt her fingers brush the edge of his beard. It was a very slight touch and yet he shivered to it. The reaction was too human. Had he been able to draw back, he would have.

‘I cannot reach you. Could you… would you lift me up?’

The vast trust she offered made him forget she had not answered his first question. ‘I could crush you in my hands,’ he reminded her.

‘But you will not,’ she told him confidently. ‘Please.’

The urgency in her plea frightened him. ‘Why do you think I would not? I’ve killed before, you know! Whole crews of men! All of Bingtown knows that. Who are you not to fear me?’

For answer, she set her bare wet hand to the skin of his arm.

She flowed through his grain; the warmth of her shot through him the way the heat of a woman’s hand on a man’s thigh can inflame his whole body.

Both ways, he suddenly knew, the flow was both ways, he was within her flesh as much as she was within his timbers.

Her humanity sang in him. He wallowed in her senses.

Rain had soaked her hair and clothes to her body.

Her skin was cold, but her body warmed itself from within.

He felt the sigh of air in her lungs like wind against his sails had been, the rush of blood through her flesh almost like the sea water thrilling past his hull.

‘You are more than wood!’ she cried aloud.

Discovery was in her voice and he knew the sudden terror of betrayal.

She was inside him, seeing too much, knowing too much.

All the things he had set aside from himself, she was awakening.

He did not mean to push her so hard, but she cried out as she fell on the wet sand and rocky beach.

He heard her gasping for breath as the rain fell all around them.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked gruffly after a time. Things were calming inside him.

‘No,’ she spoke quietly. Then, before he could apologize, ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Despite everything, I expected you to be… wood. I’ve a gift for wood.

When I touch it, I know it, I know how its grain bends, where it runs fine or coarse…

I thought I could touch you and guess how your eyes had been.

I touched you, thinking to find only wood.

I should not have been so… forgive me. Please. ’

‘It’s all right,’ he replied gravely. ‘I did not mean to push you away so abruptly. I did not intend that you should fall.’

‘No, it was my own fault. And you were right to push me away. I…’ She halted again and for a time the only sounds were the rain. The shush of the waves came louder now. The tide had turned and the water was venturing closer. ‘Please, may we begin again?’ she suddenly asked.

‘If you wish,’ he said awkwardly. This woman…

he did not understand this woman at all.

So quickly she had trusted him, and now so swiftly she moved towards friendship.

He was not accustomed to things like this happening, let alone happening so quickly.

It frightened him. But more frightening was the thought that she might go away and not come back.

He searched himself for some trust of his own to offer her.

‘Would you like to come in, out of the rain?’ he invited her.

‘I’m at a terrible list, and it’s no warmer within than without, but at least you’d be out of the rain. ’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d like that. I’d like that a great deal.’