Page 122 of The Liveship Traders Trilogy

His father’s words still echoed through him.

In the long days that had passed since then, he had thought he sensed a grudging acceptance by the crew.

Mild, as swift to forgive as he was to take offence, had been most quick to resume a tolerant attitude towards him.

But Wintrow could no longer relax and accept it.

Sometimes, at night, when he tried to reach for his old meditative states, he could convince himself that the situation was contrived.

His father had poisoned his attitude toward the other crew members.

His father did not wish to see them accept him; therefore he would see to it, however he could, that Wintrow remained an outcast. And that, he told himself as he painstakingly traced the convoluted logic of such insanity, was why he must never trust completely to the crew’s acceptance and friendship.

Because if he did, his father would find some way to turn them against him.

‘Every day,’ he said quietly, ‘it becomes harder for me to know who I am. My father plants doubts and suspicions in me, the coarseness of life aboard this ship accustoms me to casual cruelty amongst my fellows and even you, even the hours I spend with you are shaping me, carrying me away from my priesthood. Toward something else. Something I don’t think I want to be. ’

These words were hard for him to speak. They hurt him as much as they hurt her. That was the only thing that let her keep silent.

‘I don’t think I can stand it much longer,’ he warned her.

‘Something will have to give way. And I fear it will be me.’ He met her eyes unflinchingly.

‘I’ve just been living from day to day. Waiting for something or someone else to change the situation.

’ His eyes studied her face, looking for a reaction to his next words, ‘I think I need to make a real decision. I believe I need to take action on my own.’

He waited for her to say something, but she could think of no words. What was he hinting he might do? What could the boy do against his father’s dominance?

‘Hey, Wintrow! Lend a hand!’ someone shouted down to the deck.

The call back to drudgery. ‘I have to go,’ he told Vivacia. He took a deep breath. ‘Right or wrong, I’ve come to love you. But —’ He shook his head, suddenly wordless.

‘Wintrow! Now!’

Like a well-trained dog, he sprang to obey.

She watched him scamper up the rigging with familiar ease.

That facility told as much as his words did of his love for her.

He still complained, and often. He still suffered the torments of a divided heart.

But when he gave words to his unhappiness they could discuss it and both learn more of one another in the process.

He thought now that he could not bear it, but she knew the truth.

Inside him was strength, and he would bear up despite unhappiness.

Eventually they would be whole, the both of them.

All that they needed was time. She had known ever since that first night together that he was truly destined to be aboard her.

It was not easy for him to accept. He had struggled long against the idea.

But even in his defiant words today, she sensed a pending resolution to that struggle. Her patience would be rewarded.

She looked about the harbour with new eyes.

In many ways, Wintrow was absolutely correct about the city’s underlying corruption.

Not that she would want to reinforce that with the boy.

He needed no help from her to be gloomy.

Better for Wintrow that he focus his thoughts on what was clean and good about Jamaillia.

The harbour was lovely in the winter sunlight.

She did and yet did not recall it all. Ephron’s memory of it was a man’s view, not a ship’s.

He had focused on the docks and merchants awaiting his trade goods, and the architectural wonder of the city above them.

Ephron could never have noticed the curling tendrils of filthy water bleeding into the harbour from the city’s sewers.

Nor could he have smelt with every pore of his hull the underlying stench of serpent.

Her eyes skimmed the placid waters but there was no sight of the cunning, evil creatures.

They were below, worming about in the soft mud of the harbour.

Some foreboding made her swing her gaze to the section of the harbour where the slavers anchored.

Their foul stench came to her in hints on the wind.

The smell of serpent was mixed with that of death and faeces.

That was where the creatures coiled thickest, over there beneath those miserable ships.

Once she was unloaded and refitted for her new trade, she would be anchored alongside them, taking on her own load of misery and despair.

Vivacia crossed her arms and held herself.

Despite the sunny day, she shivered. Serpents.

Ronica sat in the study that had once been Ephron’s and was now slowly becoming hers.

It was in this room that she felt closest to him still, and in this room that she missed him most. In the months since his death, she had gradually cleared away the litter of his life, replacing it with the untidy scattering of her own bits of papers and trifles.

Yet Ephron was still there in the bones of the room.

The massive desk was far too large for her, and sitting in his chair made her feel like a small child.

Oddities and ornaments of his far-ranging voyages characterized this room.

A massive sea-washed vertebra from some immense sea creature served as a footstool, while one wall shelf was devoted to carved figurines, seashells, and strange body ornaments from distant folk.

It was an odd intimacy to have her ledgers scattered across the polished slab of his desk top, to have her tea cup and discarded knitting draped on the arm of his chair by his fireplace.

As she often did when perplexed, she had come here to think and try to decide what Ephron would have counselled her.

She was curled on the divan on the opposite side of the fireplace, her slippers discarded on the floor.

She wore a soft woollen robe, well worn from two years’ use.

It was as comfortable as her seat. She had built the fire herself, and kindled it and watched it burn through its climax.

Now the wood was settling, glowing against itself, and she was relaxed and warm but seemed no closer to an answer of any kind.

She had just decided that Ephron would have shrugged his shoulders and delegated the problem back to her when she heard a tap at the heavy wood-panelled door.

‘Yes?’

She had expected Rache, but it was Keffria who entered. She wore a nightrobe and her heavy hair was braided and coiled as for sleep, but she carried a tray with a steaming pot and heavy mugs on it. Ronica smelled coffee and cinnamon.

‘I had given up on your coming.’

Keffria didn’t directly answer that. ‘I decided that as long as I couldn’t sleep, I might as well be really awake. Coffee?’

‘Actually, that would be good.’

This was the sort of peace they had found, mother and daughter.

They talked past one another, asking no questions save regarding food or some other trifle.

Keffria and Ronica both avoided anything that might lead to a confrontation.

Earlier, when Keffria had not come as invited, Ronica had assumed that was why.

Bitterly she had reflected that Kyle had taken both her daughters from her: driven the one away and walled the other up.

But now she was here, and Ronica found herself suddenly determined to regain at least something of her daughter.

As she took the steaming mug from Keffria, she said, ‘I was impressed by you today. Proud.’

A bitter smile twisted Keffria’s face. ‘Oh, I was too. I single-handedly triumphed in defeating the conniving plot of a sly thirteen year old girl.’ She sat down in her father’s chair, kicked off her slippers and curled her feet up under her. ‘Rather a hollow victory, Mother.’

‘I raised two daughters,’ Ronica pointed out gently. ‘I know how painful victory can be sometimes.’

‘Not over me,’ Keffria said dully. There was self-loathing in her tone as she added, ‘I don’t think I ever gave you and father a sleepless night. I was a model child, never challenging anything you told me, keeping all the rules, and earning the rewards of such virtue. Or so I thought.’

‘You were my easy daughter,’ Ronica conceded. ‘Perhaps because of that, I undervalued you. Overlooked you.’ She shook her head to herself. ‘But in those days, Althea worried me so that I seldom had a moment to think of what was going right…’

Keffria exhaled sharply. ‘And you didn’t know the half of what she was doing!

As her sister, I… but in all the years, it hasn’t changed.

She still worries us, both of us. When she was a little girl, her wilfulness and naughtiness always made her papa’s favourite.

And now that he has gone, she has disappeared, and so managed to capture your heart as well, simply by being absent. ’

‘Keffria!’ Ronica rebuked her for the heartless words. Her sister was missing, and all she could be was jealous of Ronica worrying about her? But after a moment, Ronica asked hesitantly, ‘You truly feel that I give no thoughts to you, simply because Althea is gone?’