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But she wouldn’t do it. No. Brashen would not be a good idea.

If she went to meet him, he would think that meant she was going to bed him again.

She deliberately considered that idea. She felt a slow stirring of interest. She gave a snort of disgust and forced herself to truly consider it.

The sounds from upstairs seemed suddenly both degrading and silly.

No. She wasn’t really interested in doing that with anyone, let alone Brashen.

Because if they did, that would be the worst idea of all, because sooner or later one or the other of them, or both of them, would be back in Bingtown.

Bedding Brashen on the ship had not been a good idea.

They had both been tired and half-drunk, to say nothing of the cindin.

That was the only reason it had happened.

But if she went to meet him tonight and it happened again, then he might think it meant something.

And if they encountered one another in Bingtown…

well, what happened on the ship was one thing, but in Bingtown it would be quite another.

Bingtown was home. So. She would not go to meet him and she would not bed him. That was all quite decided with her.

So the only question that remained was what she was going to do with the rest of the evening, and the night to follow.

She held up her mug to get a tavern maid’s attention.

As the girl filled it, Althea pasted a sickly grin on her face.

‘I’m more tired than I thought,’ she said artlessly.

‘Can you recommend a quiet rooming house or inn? One where I can get a bath as well?’

The girl scratched the back of her neck vigorously. ‘You can get a room here, but it’s not quiet. Still, there’s a bath-house down the street.’

Watching the girl scratch, Althea decided that even if the tavern were silent, she wouldn’t want to sleep in one of their beds. She hoped to get rid of any vermin she’d acquired on the ship, not invite more. ‘A quiet place?’ she asked the girl again.

The girl shrugged. ‘The Gilded Horse, if you don’t mind paying well for what you get. They’ve got musicians there, too, and a woman who sings. And little fireplaces in the best rooms, I’ve heard. Windows in some of the rooms, too.’

Ah. The Gilded Horse. Dinner with her father there, roast pork and peas. She’d given him a funny little wax monkey she’d bought in a shop, and he’d told her about buying twenty casks of fine oil. A different lifetime. Althea’s life, not Athel’s.

‘No. Sounds too expensive. Somewhere cheap and quiet.’

She frowned. ‘Don’t know. Not many places in this part of town are quiet. Most sailors, they don’t want quiet, you know.’ She looked at Althea as if she were a bit strange. ‘There’s the Red Eaves. Don’t know if they have baths there, but it’s quiet. Quiet as a tomb, I heard.’

‘I heard of that place earlier,’ Althea said quickly. ‘Anywhere else?’

‘That’s it. Like I said, quiet isn’t what most sailors come to town to find.’ The girl looked at her oddly. ‘How many places do you need to hear about?’ she asked, and then took the coin for the beer she had poured and sauntered off.

‘Good question,’ Althea conceded. She took a slow drink of her beer.

A man who smelled badly of vomit sat down heavily next to her.

Evening was coming on and the tavern was starting to fill up.

The man belched powerfully and the smell that wafted toward her made her wince.

He grinned at her discomfiture and leaned confidentially closer.

‘See her?’ he demanded of Althea as he pointed to a sallow-faced woman wiping a table.

‘I did her three times. Three times, and she only charged me for the once.’ He leaned back companionably against the wall and grinned at her.

Two of his top teeth were broken off crookedly.

‘You ought to give her a go, boy. She’d teach you a few things, I’d wager. ’ He winked broadly.

‘I’m sure you’d win that wager,’ Althea agreed amiably.

She drank off the last of her beer and rose.

She took up her sea-bag again. Outside it had begun to rain.

A wind was sweeping in with it, and it promised heavier rainfall soon.

She decided to do the simplest thing. She’d find a room that suited her, pay for it, and get a good night’s sleep.

Tomorrow was soon enough to think of something significant to do.

Such as find a shipboard job that would take her back to Bingtown as swiftly as possible.

Bingtown. It was home. It would also mark the end of her dream of recovering Vivacia. She pushed that thought aside.

By the time it was fully dark, she had sampled six different rooming houses.

Almost all the rooms were over taverns or taprooms. Every one of them had been noisy and smoky, some with whores on the premises for the convenience of those staying there.

The one she settled on was no different from the others, save that there had just been a brawl there.

The city guard had come, temporarily driving out the more lively customers.

Those who remained after the brawl seemed either worn out or sodden.

There were three musicians in a corner and now that the paying customers were mostly dispersed, they were playing for themselves.

They talked and laughed softly, and occasionally stopped in mid-piece to go back and try something a different way.

Althea sat close enough to listen in on their intimacy and far enough away not to intrude.

She envied them. Would she ever have friends like that?

She had enjoyed her sailing years aboard ship with her father, but there had been a price.

Her father had been her only real friend.

The captain and owner’s daughter could never fully share the deep friendships of the forecastle crew.

When she was at home, it was much the same.

She had long ago lost touch with the little girls she had played with as a child.

Married by now, most of them, she thought.

Probably to the little boys they had spied on and giggled about.

And here she was, in ragged sailor-boy togs in a foreign port in a run-down tavern.

And alone. With no prospects save crawling home with her tail between her legs.

And getting more maudlin every minute. Time to go to bed. Right after this last mug, it would be time to go up to the room she had secured for the night.

Brashen walked in the door. His gaze swept the room and settled on her immediately.

For a frozen instant he just stood where he was.

She knew by his stance that he was angry.

He’d been in a fight, too. The redness under his left eye would be a black eye before morning.

But she doubted that was what he was still angry about.

There was a tightness to his wide shoulders under his clean, striped shirt, and small sparks deep in his dark eyes.

There was no reason for her to feel guilty or ashamed.

She hadn’t promised to meet him, she’d only said she might.

So the sudden shrinking she felt surprised her.

He strode across the tavern and glanced about to find an unbroken chair.

There wasn’t one, and he had to sit on the end of het bench.

He leaned forward to speak to her and his words were clipped.

‘You could have simply said no. You didn’t have to leave me sitting and worrying about you.’

She drummed her fingers lightly on the table. For a few seconds she watched them and then looked up to meet his eyes. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she reminded him. ‘Didn’t think as you’d worry about the likes of me.’

She saw his eyes dart to the musicians, who were paying no attention to them at all.

‘I see,’ he said levelly. His eyes said much more.

She’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t really thought about that aspect of it at all.

He got up and walked away. She expected he would leave, but instead he interrupted the tavern keeper who was sweeping up broken crockery.

Brashen brought his own mug of beer back to the table and resumed his seat.

He didn’t give her a chance to speak at all.

‘I got worried. So I went back to the ship. I asked the mate if he knew where you’d gone. ’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Oh. What he said about you was not…’ His words trailed off and he touched the darkening bruise on his face. ‘I won’t be sailing aboard the Reaper again,’ he said abruptly. He glared at her as if it were her fault. ‘Why were you so stupid as to tell them your real name?’

‘The mate told you about it?’ she asked in reply. Unbelievably, her mood dropped yet another notch. If he was talking about it, it was going to lessen her chances of getting aboard another ship as a boy. Despair hit her like green water.

‘No. The captain. After the mate escorted me in there and they demanded to know if I had known you were a woman.’

‘And you told them you had?’ Worse and worse. Now they would be convinced she had whored herself out to buy Brashen’s silence.

‘There seemed little point in lying.’

She didn’t want to know the rest, about who had hit whom first and when. None of it seemed to matter any more. She just shook her head.

But Brashen wasn’t going to let it be. He took a gulp of his beer, then demanded, ‘Why did you give them your real name? How could you expect to sail again on a ticket that had your real name on it?’ He was incredulous at her stupidity.

‘On Vivacia,’ she said faintly. ‘I expected to use it to sail on Vivacia. As her captain and owner.’

‘How?’ he asked suspiciously.