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And she told him. The whole story, and even as she spoke of Kyle’s careless oath and her hopes of using it against him, even as Brashen shook his head at her foolish plan, she wondered why she was telling him.

What was it about him that had her spilling her guts to him, about things that were none of his business?

He left a small space of silence at the end of her story.

Then he shook his head yet again. ‘Kyle would never keep his word on a chance oath like that. You’d have to take it to Traders’ Council.

And even with your mother and your nephew speaking in your behalf, I doubt they’d take you seriously.

People say things, in the heat of anger…

If the Traders’ Council started forcing every man who swore an oath in anger to live up to them, half of Bingtown would be murdered.

’ He shrugged. ‘On the other hand, it doesn’t surprise me that you’d try.

I always thought that, sooner or later, you’d try to take the Vivacia back from Kyle. But not like that.’

‘How, then?’ she asked him testily. ‘Sneak aboard and cut his throat while he’s asleep?’

‘Ah. So that occurred to you, too,’ he observed dryly.

She found herself grinning in spite of herself.

‘Almost immediately,’ she admitted. Then her smile faded.

‘I have to take the Vivacia back. Even though I now know I’m not really ready to captain her.

No, don’t laugh at me. I may be thick, but I do learn.

She’s mine, in a way no other ship ever could be.

But the law is against me and my family is against me.

One or the other, I might fight. But together…

’ Her voice died away and she sat still and silent for a time.

‘I spend a lot of time not thinking about her, Brashen.’

‘Me, too,’ he commiserated. He probably meant the remark in sympathy, but she bristled to it.

How could he say that? Vivacia wasn’t his family ship.

How could he possibly feel about her as Althea did?

The silence stretched between them. A group of sailors came in the door and claimed an adjacent table.

She looked at Brashen and could think of nothing to say.

The door opened again and three longshoremen came in.

They began calling for beer before they were even seated.

The musicians glanced about as if awakening, and then launched into a full rendition of the bawdy little tune they’d been tinkering with.

Soon it would be a noisy, crowded room again.

Brashen drew circles on the table with the dampness from his mug. ‘So. What will you do now?’

There. The very question that had been stabbing her all day. ‘I guess I’ll go home,’ she said quietly. ‘Just as you told me to do months ago.’

‘Why?’

‘Because maybe you were right. Maybe I’d better go and mend things there as best I can, and get on with my life.’

‘Your life doesn’t have to be there,’ he said quietly.

‘There are a lot of other ships in the harbour, going to a lot of other places.’ He was too off-handedly casual as he offered, ‘We could go north. Like I told you. Up in the Six Duchies, they don’t care if you’re a man or a woman, so long as you can do the work.

So they’re not that civilized. Couldn’t be much worse than life on board the Reaper. ’

She shook her head at him wordlessly. Talking about it made her feel worse, not better.

She said the words anyway. ‘Vivacia docks in Bingtown. If nothing else, I could see her sometimes.’ She smiled in an awful way.

‘And Kyle is older than I am. I’ll probably outlive him, and if I’m on good terms with my nephew, maybe he’ll let his crazy old aunt sail with him sometimes. ’

Brashen looked horrified. ‘You can’t mean that!’ he declared. ‘Spend your life waiting for someone else to die!’

‘Of course not. It was a joke.’ But it hadn’t been. ‘This has been a horrible day,’ she announced abruptly. ‘I’m ending it. Good night. I’m going up to bed.’

‘Why?’ he asked quietly.

‘Because I’m tired, stupid.’ It was suddenly more true than it had ever been in her life. She was tired to her bones, and deeper. Tired of everything.

The patience in his voice was stretched thin as he said, ‘No. Not that. Why didn’t you come to meet me?’

‘Because I didn’t want to bed you,’ she said flatly. Even too tired to be polite any more.

He managed to look affronted. ‘I only invited you to share a meal with me.’

‘But bed was what you had in mind.’

He teetered on the edge of a lie, but his honesty won out. ‘I thought about it, yes. You didn’t seem to think it went so badly last time…’

She didn’t want to be reminded. It was embarrassing that she had enjoyed what they had done, and all the more so because he knew she had enjoyed it. At the time. ‘And last time, I also told you it couldn’t happen again.’

‘I thought you meant on the ship.’

‘I meant anywhere. Brashen… We were cold and tired, we’d been drinking, there was the cindin.’ She halted, but could find no graceful words. ‘That’s all it was.’

His hand moved on the table top. She knew then just how badly he wanted to touch her, to take her hand. She put her hands under the table and gripped them tightly together.

‘You’re certain of that?’ His words probed his pain.

‘Aren’t you?’ She met his eyes squarely, defying the tenderness there.

He looked aside before she did. ‘Well’ He took a deep breath, and then a long drink from his mug. He leaned towards her on one elbow and tried for a convincing grin as he suggested, ‘I could buy the cindin if you wanted to supply the beer.’

She smiled back at him. ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied quietly.

He shrugged one shoulder. ‘If I buy the beer as well?’ The smile was fading from his face.

‘Brashen.’ She shook her head. ‘When you get right down to it,’ she pointed out reasonably, ‘we hardly even know one another. We have nothing in common, we aren’t—’

‘All right,’ he cut her off gruffly. ‘All right, you’ve convinced me. It was all a bad idea. But you can’t blame a man for trying.’ He drank the last of his beer and stood up. ‘I’ll be going then. Can I offer you a last piece of advice?’

‘Certainly.’ She braced herself for some tender admonition to take care of herself, or be wary.

Instead he said, ‘Take a bath. You smell pretty bad.’ Then he left, sauntering across the room and not even looking back from the door.

If he had stopped at the door to grin and wave, it would have dispersed the insult.

Instead, she was left feeling affronted.

Just because she had refused him, he had insulted her.

As if to pretend he had never wanted her, because she was not perfumed and prettied up.

It certainly hadn’t bothered him the last time, and as she recalled, he had smelled none too fresh himself.

The gall of the man. She lifted her mug.

‘Beer!’ she called to the sour innkeeper.

***

Brashen hunched his shoulders to the dirty rain that was driving down.

As he walked back to the Red Eaves he carefully thought about nothing.

He stopped once to buy a stick of coarse cindin from a street corner vendor miserable in the rain, and then walked on.

When he reached the doors of the Red Eaves he found them barred for the night.

He pounded on them, unreasonably angry at being shut out in the rain.

Above his head, a window opened. The landlord stuck his head out. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded.

‘Me. Brashen. Let me in.’

‘You left the washing room a mess. You didn’t scrub out the trough. And you left the towels in a heap.’

He stared up at the window in consternation. ‘Let me in,’ he repeated. ‘It’s raining!’

‘You are not a tidy person!’ the innkeeper shouted down at him.

‘But I paid for a room!’

For an answer, his duffel bag came flying out the window.

It landed in the muddy streets with a splat that spattered Brashen as well.

‘Hey!’ he shouted, but the window above him shut firmly.

For a time he knocked and then kicked at the barred door.

Then he shouted curses up at the closed window.

He was throwing great handfuls of greasy mud up at it when the city guards came by and laughingly told him to move along.

Evidently it was a situation they had seen before, and more than once.

He slung his filthy sea-bag over his shoulder and strode off into the night to find a tavern.