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As if awakening from a nightmare, all purpose and understanding of what he was doing suddenly left Kyle. He looked at the boy he gripped without any clear idea of what his intent had been. Strength suddenly forsook him. He let Wintrow fall to the deck at his feet.

Chest heaving, Gantry turned to Kyle. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What set this off?’

Vivacia was now uttering short panting shrieks, answered by incoherent cries from the slaves in the hold.

Wintrow still sprawled where Kyle had dropped him.

Gantry took two steps and looked down on the boy, then looked up at Kyle incredulously.

‘You did this?’ he asked. ‘Why? The boy is knocked senseless.’

Kyle merely stared at him, speechless. Gantry shook his head and then glanced up at the sky as if imploring help from above.

‘Quieten down!’ he snapped at the figurehead.

‘And I’ll see to him. But quieten down, you’re upsetting everyone.

Mild! Mild, I want the medicine chest. And tell Torg I want the keys to these stupid chains, too.

Easy. Easy, my lady, we’ll soon have things put as right as I can make them.

Please. Calm down. It’s gone now, and I’ll see to the boy.

’ To a gaping sailor he shouted, ‘Evans. Go below, wake my watch. Have them go among the slaves and calm them, tell them there’s nothing to fear. ’

‘I touched it,’ Kyle heard Vivacia tell Gantry breathlessly. ‘I hit it, and when I hit it, it knew me. Only I wasn’t me!’

‘It’s going to be all right,’ Gantry repeated doggedly.

The ship lurched again as Vivacia leaned far down to scrub her hands in the sea. She was still making small, frightened sounds.

Kyle forced himself to look down at his son.

Wintrow was out cold. He massaged the puffy knuckles of his right hand and abruptly knew how hard he’d hit the boy.

Hard enough to loosen teeth at least, possibly enough to break his face.

Damn. He’d been going to feed the boy to the serpent.

His own son. He knew he’d struck Wintrow, he recalled doing it.

What he could not recall was why. What had goaded him into it?

‘He’s all right,’ he told Gantry gruffly. ‘More than likely he’s faking it.’

‘More than likely,’ Gantry agreed sarcastically. He took a breath as if to speak, then suddenly seemed to change his mind. A moment later he said in a low voice, ‘Sir, we should make some sort of a weapon. A pike or a spear. Something. For that monster.’

‘We’d probably just make it angry,’ Kyle said uneasily. ‘Serpents follow slavers all the time. I’ve never heard of them attacking the ship itself. It will be content with the dead slaves.’

Gantry looked at him as if he hadn’t heard him correctly.

‘What if we don’t have any?’ he said, speaking very clearly.

‘What if we’re as smart and good as you said we’d be, and we don’t kill half of them off on the way?

What if it gets hungry? And what if the ship just doesn’t like it?

Shouldn’t we try to get rid of it for her?

’ Belatedly his eyes roved over the idle sailors that were gathering to overhear this exchange.

‘Get back to your tasks!’ he barked at them harshly.

‘If any man has nothing to do, let me know. I’ll find him something.

’ As the sailors dispersed, he swung his attention back to Wintrow.

‘I think he’s just stunned,’ he muttered.

‘Mild!’ he bellowed again, just as the young sailor bounded up with keys in hand and the medicine box under his arm.

Wintrow was stirring, and Gantry helped him sit up.

He sat, hands braced wide on the deck behind him, and watched dazedly as Gantry unfastened the shackles on Wintrow’s feet.

‘This is stupid,’ the man hissed angrily.

He glared at the oozing sores on Wintrow’s ankles, then barked an order over his shoulder.

‘Mild, haul him up a bucket of saltwater.’ He turned his attention back to the boy before him.

‘Wintrow, wash those out well with saltwater and then bandage them. Nothing like seawater for healing a cut. Leaves a good, tough scar. I should know, I got enough of them.’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

‘And wash yourself while you’re at it. Those chained below have an excuse for stinking. You don’t.’

Gantry glanced up at Kyle, who still stood over them.

He met his captain’s eyes and dared to shake his head in disapproval.

Kyle tightened his jaw but said nothing.

Then Gantry stood and walked away from them, to where he could look down at Vivacia.

She had craned her head over her shoulder to watch what was going on.

Her eyes were very wide and she clutched her hands together at her breast. ‘Now,’ he said levelly.

‘I’ve had enough of this. Exactly what is it that you want to make you behave? ’

Confronted so baldly, Vivacia almost recoiled from him. She was silent.

‘Well?’ Gantry demanded, indignation slipping into his voice. ‘You’ve tried the patience of every man aboard you. Just what in Sa’s name do you want to make you happy? Music? Company? What?’

‘I want…’ She paused and seemed to lose her thought. ‘I touched it, Gantry. I touched it. And it knew me and it said I wasn’t Vivacia nor was I of the Vestrits. It said I belonged to them.’ She was babbling now, Kyle thought in disgust. Babbling like an idiot.

‘Vivacia,’ Gantry told her sternly. ‘Serpents don’t talk. It said nothing, it just frightened you. It rattled us all, but it’s over. No one’s badly hurt. But you could have hurt us, with your wild behaviour and—’

She didn’t seem to be listening. Vivacia furrowed her wooden brow and frowned, then seemed to recall his first question. ‘What I want is to go back to the way it was before.’ It was a desperate plea.

‘Before what?’ Gantry demanded in despair.

Kyle knew the man was already defeated. No sense in asking the ship what she wanted, she always wanted what no one could give her.

She was spoiled, that was all, a spoiled female with vast ideas of her own importance.

Trying to please her was the wrong tack.

The more Gantry catered to her, the more she’d bully them all.

It was the nature of women. Why hadn’t they carved a man for a figurehead? A man could have understood reason.

‘Before Kyle,’ Vivacia said slowly. She turned to glare at him. ‘I want Ephron Vestrit back at the helm. And Althea on board. And Brashen.’ She lifted her hands to cover her face and turned away from them. ‘I want to be sure of who I am again.’ Her voice shook like a child’s.

‘I can’t give you that. No man can give you that.’ Gantry shook his head. ‘Come, ship. We’re doing our best. Wintrow’s out of the chains. I can’t force him to be happy. I can’t force the slaves to be happy. I’m doing the best I can.’ The man was close to pleading.

Vivacia shook her head slowly. ‘I just can’t go on like this,’ she said, and there were tears in her muffled voice. ‘I feel it all, you know. I feel it all.’

‘Bilge,’ Kyle growled. Enough of this. He mastered the disgust he felt for his own unbridled anger.

So he’d lost his temper. Well, Sa knew he’d been pushed hard enough lately.

It was time to let them all know he’d tolerate no more nonsense.

He stepped up to the railing beside his mate.

‘Gantry, don’t encourage her to whine. Don’t encourage her to be childish.

’ He looked down on Vivacia and their eyes met.

‘Ship. You’ll sail. That’s all there is to it.

You can sail willing or sail like a cow-hide raft, but we’ll sail you.

I don’t give a rat’s arse for whether you’re happy or not.

We’ve got a task to do and we’ll do it. If you don’t like having a hold full of slaves, why then, sail faster, damn you.

The sooner we get to Chalced the sooner we’re rid of them.

As for Wintrow, there’s no making him happy.

He didn’t want to behave as my son, he didn’t want to be the ship’s boy.

He made himself a slave. So that is what he is now.

That’s your likeness needled into his face.

He’s yours, to do with as you will and you’re welcome to him.

If he doesn’t please you, you can throw him over the side for all I care. ’

Kyle stopped. He was out of breath and they were all staring at him.

He didn’t like the look on Gantry’s face.

He was staring at Kyle as if he were mad.

There was a deep uneasiness behind his eyes.

Kyle didn’t like it. ‘Gantry. Take the watch,’ he snapped at him.

He glanced aloft. ‘Get her canvas up, every scrap of it, and see the men scramble lively. Move this tub along. If a seagull farts near us, I want the wind from it caught.’ He strode off to go back to his cabin.

He’d bought incense in Jamaillia City, on the advice of one of the experienced slaver captains.

He’d burn that and get away from the stink of slaves for a time.

He’d get away from all of them for a time.

The ship had returned to near calm. A slave-ship was never completely peaceful.

Always, there were cries from somewhere in the hold.

People cried out for water, for air, begging voices rose, pleading for the simple light of day.

Fights broke out amongst the slaves. It was astounding, how much damage two closely-chained men could work upon each other.

The cramped quarters and the stench, the stingy rations of ship’s bread and water made them turn on one another like rats in a rain barrel.