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Some five hundred years ago, most of Jamaillia had burned to the ground.

The Satrap of that time had then decreed that his royal city would be rebuilt more magnificently than ever, and that all of the buildings should be of stone so that such a disaster could never befall Jamaillia again.

He called together his finest architects and artists and stonemasons, and with their aid and three decades of work, the Court of the Satrap was raised.

The next to highest white spire that pointed to the sky denoted the residence of the Satrap.

The only spire that soared higher was that of the Satrap’s Temple to Sa, where the Satrap and his Companions worshipped.

For a time Wintrow gazed at it, filled with awe and wonder.

To be sent to dwell in the monastery that served that temple was the highest honour a priest could aspire to.

The library alone filled seventeen chambers, and there were three scribing chambers where twenty priests were constantly employed in renewing or copying the scrolls and books.

Wintrow thought of the amassed learning there and awe filled him.

Then bitterness came to darken his soul.

So, too, had Cress seemed fair and bright, but it had still been a city of greedy, grasping men.

He turned his back on it and slid down to sit flat on the deck.

‘It’s all a trick,’ he observed. ‘All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, “See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbours or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it any more.

” It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves. ’

Vivacia spoke softly. If he had been standing, he might not have heard the words.

But he was sitting, his palms flat to her deck, and so they rang through his soul.

‘Perhaps men are a trick Sa played on this world. “All other things I shall make vast and beautiful and true to themselves,” perhaps he said. “Men alone shall be capable of being petty and vicious and self-destructive. And for my cruellest trick of all, I shall put among them men capable of seeing these things in themselves.” Do you suppose that is what Sa did?’

‘That is blasphemy,’ Wintrow said fervently.

‘Is it? Then how do you explain it? All the ugliness and viciousness that is the province of humanity, whence comes it?’

‘Not from Sa. From ignorance of Sa. From separation from Sa. Time and again I have seen children brought to the monastery, boys and girls with no hint as to why they are there. Angry and afraid, many of them, at being sent forth from their homes at such a tender age. Within weeks, they blossom, they open to Sa’s light and glory.

In every single child, there is at least a spark of it.

Not all stay; some are sent home, not all are suited to a life of service.

But all of them are suited to being creations of light and thought and love. All of them.’

‘Mm,’ the ship mused. ‘Wintrow, it is good to hear you speak as yourself again.’

He permitted himself a small, bitter smile and rubbed at the knot of white flesh where his finger had been. It had become a habit, a small one that annoyed him whenever he became aware of it. As now. He folded his hands abruptly and asked, ‘Do I pity myself that much? And is it so obvious to all?’

‘I am probably more sensitized to it than anyone else could be. Still. It is nice to jolt you out of it now and then.’ Vivacia paused. ‘Will you be going ashore, do you think?’

‘I doubt it.’ Wintrow tried to keep the sulkiness from his voice. ‘I haven’t touched shore since I “shamed” my father in Cress.’

‘I know,’ the ship replied needlessly. ‘But, Wintrow, if you do go ashore, be careful of yourself.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. I think it is what your great-great-grandmother would have called a premonition.’

Vivacia sounded so unlike herself that Wintrow stood up and peered over the bow railing at her.

She was looking up at him. Every time he thought he had become accustomed to her, there would be a moment like this.

The light was unusually clear today, what Wintrow always thought of as an artist’s light.

Perhaps that accounted for how luminous she appeared to him.

The green of her eyes, the rich gloss of her ebony hair, even her fine-grained skin shone with the best aspects of both polished wood and healthy flesh.

She flushed pink to have him stare at her so, and in response to that he felt again the sudden collision of his love for her and his total benightedness as to what she truly was.

It rocked him, as it always did. How could he feel this…

passion, if he dared to use that word, for a creation of wood and magic?

His love had no logical roots he could find…

there was no prospect of marriage and children to share, no hunger for physical satiation in one another, there was no long history of shared experience to account for the warmth and intimacy he felt with her. It made no sense.

‘Is it so abhorrent to you?’ she asked him in a whisper.

‘It isn’t you,’ he tried to explain. ‘It is that this feeling is so unnatural. It is like something imposed on me rather than something I truly feel. Like a magic spell,’ he added reluctantly.

The followers of Sa did not deny the reality of magic.

Wintrow had even seen it done, on rare occasions, small spells to cleanse a wound or spark a fire.

But those were acts of a trained will coupled with a gift to have a physical effect.

This sudden rush of emotion, triggered, as much as he could determine, solely by prolonged association, seemed to him something else entirely.

He liked Vivacia. He knew that, it made sense to him.

He had many reasons to like the ship: she was beautiful and kind and sympathetic to him.

She had intelligence, and watching her use that intelligence as she built chains of thought was a pleasure.

She was like an untrained acolyte, open and willing to any teaching.

Who would not like such a being? Logic told him he should like the ship, and he did.

But that was separate from the wave of almost painful emotion that would sweep through him at odd moments like this.

He would perceive her as more important than home and family, more important than his life at the monastery.

At such moments, he could imagine no better end to his life than to fling himself flat upon her decks and be absorbed into her.

But no. The goal of a life lived well was to become one with Sa.

‘You fear that I subvert the place of your god in your heart.’

‘I think that is almost what I fear,’ he agreed with her reluctantly.

‘At the same time, I do not think it is something that you, as Vivacia, impose upon me. I think it has to do with what a liveship is.’ He sighed.

‘If anyone consigned me to this, it was my own family, my great-great-grandmother when she saw fit to commission the building of a liveship. You and I, we are like buds grafted onto a tree. We can grow true to ourselves, but only so much as our roots will allow us.’

The wind gusted up suddenly, as if welcoming the ship into the harbour.

Wintrow stood and stretched. He was more aware of the differences in his body these days.

He did not think he was getting any taller, but his muscles were definitely harder than they had been.

A glimpse in a looking-glass the other day had shown him the roundness gone from his face.

Changes. A leaner, fitter body and nine fingers to his hands.

But it was still not enough changes to suit his father.

When his fever had finally gone down and his hand was healing well, his father had summoned him.

Not to tell him he’d been pleased by Wintrow’s show of bravery or even to ask how his hand was.

Not even to say he’d noticed his improved skills as a seaman.

No. Only to tell him how stupid he had been, that he had had the chance in Cress to win the crew’s approval and be seen as truly a part of them. And he had let it go by.

‘It was a sham,’ he’d told his father. ‘The whole set-up with the bear and the man who won were just a lure. I knew that right away.’

‘I know that!’ his father had declared impatiently.

‘That’s not the point. You didn’t have to win, you idiot.

Only to show them you have spunk. You thought to prove your courage by standing silent while Gantry cut off your finger.

I know you did, don’t deny it. Instead you only showed yourself as some sort of…

religious freak. When they expected guts, you showed yourself a coward.

And when any normal man would have cried out and cursed, you behaved like a fanatic.

At the rate you’re going, you’ll never win this crew.

You’ll never be part of them, let alone a leader they respect.

Oh, they may pretend to accept you, but it won’t be real.

They’ll just be waiting for you to let your guard down, so they can really put it to you.

And you know something? That’s what you’ve earned from them.

And damn me if I don’t hope you get it!’