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‘Touch him and you all die!’ Vivacia’s tone was no longer that of a frightened child, but that of an outraged matriarch.

Even anchored and grappled as she was, she contrived to put a rock in her decks.

‘Doubt it not!’ she roared out suddenly.

‘You have soaked me with your filth, and I have not complained. You have spilled blood on my decks, blood and deaths I must carry with me for ever, and I have not stirred against you. But harm Wintrow and my vengeance will know no end. No end save your deaths!’

The rocking increased, a marked motion that the Marietta did not match.

The anchor rope creaked complainingly. Most unnerving for Wintrow, the distant serpents lashed the surface of the sea, trumpeting questioningly.

The ugly heads swayed back and forth, mouths gaping as if awaiting food.

A smaller one darted forwards suddenly, to dare an attack at the white one, who screamed and slashed at it with myriad teeth.

Cries of fear arose from Vivacia’s deck as slaves retreated from the railings and from the foredeck, to pack themselves tightly together.

From the questioning tones of the cries, Wintrow surmised that few of them had any understanding of what the liveship was.

Suddenly a woman broke free of the pirate group, to race across the deck and then swarm up onto the foredeck.

Wintrow had never seen anything like her.

She was tall and lean, her hair cropped close.

The rich fabric of her skirts and loose shirt were soaked to her, as if she had stood watch on deck all night, yet she looked no more bedraggled than would a wet tigress.

She landed with a thud before him. ‘Come down,’ she said to him, and her eyes made it more a command than her voice did.

‘Come down to him now. Don’t make him wait. ’

He did not answer her. Instead he spoke to the ship. ‘Don’t fear,’ he told her.

‘We are not the ones who need to fear,’ Vivacia replied.

He had the satisfaction of seeing the woman’s face go blank with astonishment.

It was one thing to hear the liveship speak, another to stand close enough to see the angry glints in her eyes.

She glowered scornfully at the woman on her deck.

The Vivacia gave a sudden shake to her head that tossed her carved tresses back from her face.

It was a womanly display, a challenge from one man’s female to another.

The woman brushed back from her brow the short black strands that had fallen over her forehead and returned the figurehead’s stare.

For an instant it shocked Wintrow that the two could look so different and yet so frighteningly alike.

Wintrow did not wait any longer. He leaped lightly from the foredeck to the waist of the ship. Head up, he strode across the deck to confront the pirates. He did not even look at Sa’Adar. The more he saw of the man, the less he thought of him as a priest.

The pirate chief was a large, well-muscled man.

Dark eyes glinted above the burn scar on his cheek.

A former slave himself, then. His unruly hair was caught back in a queue and further confined in a bright gold kerchief.

Like his woman, his opulent clothing was soaked to him.

A man who worked his own deck, then, Wintrow thought, and felt a grudging respect for that.

He met the man’s gaze. ‘I am Wintrow Vestrit, of the Bingtown Trader Vestrits. You stand on the decks of the liveship Vivacia, also of the Vestrit Family.’

But it was a tall pale man next to the scarred man who replied to him. ‘I am Captain Kennit. You address my esteemed first mate, Sorcor. And the ship that was yours is now mine.’

Wintrow looked him up and down, shocked beyond speech.

Numbed as his nose was to the stench of humans, this man reeked of disease.

He glanced down to where Kennit’s leg stopped, and took note of the crutch he leaned on, on the swollen leg that distended the fabric of his trousers as a sausage stuffs a casing.

When he met Kennit’s pale eyes, he noted how large and fever-bright they were, how the man’s flesh clung to his skull.

When Wintrow replied, he spoke gently to the dying man.

‘This ship can never be yours. She is a liveship. She can only belong to one of the Vestrit family.’

Kennit made a brief motion of his hand to indicate Kyle. ‘Yet this man claims he is the owner.’ Wintrow’s father yet managed to stand, and almost straight. Neither fear nor his physical pain did he permit to show. He was a man who waited now. Kyle spoke not a word to his son.

Wintrow shaped his words with care. ‘He “owns” her, yes, in the sense that one can own a thing. But she is mine. I do not claim to own her, any more than a father can claim to own his child.’

Captain Kennit looked him up and down disdainfully. ‘You look a bit young of a pup to be claiming any kind of a child. And by the mark on your face, I would say the ship owned you. I take it your father married into a Trader family, then, but you are blood of that line.’

‘I am a Vestrit by blood, yes.’ Wintrow kept his voice even.

‘Ah.’ Again the small gesture of his hand toward Kyle. ‘Then we don’t need your father. Only you.’ Kennit turned back to Sa’Adar. ‘That one you may have, as you requested. And those other two.’

There was a splash, and a trumpeting from one of the serpents.

Wintrow looked starboard just in time to see two map-faces tip the other Jamaillian sailor over the edge.

He went screaming until the white serpent cut his cry short with a snap.

Wintrow’s own cry of ‘Wait!’ went unheeded.

Vivacia gave a wordless cry of horror, and flailed at the serpents, but could not reach them.

Map-faces were laying hold of his father.

He sprang, not towards them, but at Sa’Adar.

He gripped the man by the front of his shirt.

‘You promised them they would live! If they worked the ship for you through the storm, you promised them they would live!’

Sa’Adar shrugged and smiled down at him. ‘It’s not my will, boy, but that of Captain Kennit. He does not have to keep my word for me.’

‘You spin your word so thin, I doubt anyone could be bound by it,’ Wintrow cried furiously. He whirled on the men who had seized his father. ‘Set him free.’

They paid no attention to him as they forced his struggling father to the rail.

Physically, Wintrow had no chance against them.

He turned back to Captain Kennit, speaking quickly.

‘Set him free! You have seen how the ship is about the serpents! If you throw one of her own to them, she will be greatly angered.’

‘No doubt,’ the pirate captain replied lazily. ‘But he isn’t truly one of her own. So she’ll get over it.’

‘I won’t,’ Wintrow told him furiously. ‘And you will soon discover that if you cut one of us, we both bleed.’ His father was struggling, but wordlessly and without much strength.

Beside the ship, the white serpent trumpeted eagerly.

Wintrow knew he had not the strength to prevail against those two men, let alone however many would muster to Kennit’s command.

Kennit, however, was another matter. Swift as a snake striking, Wintrow seized the pirate captain by his shirt front.

He jerked him forward, so that his crutch fell to the deck and he must depend on Wintrow or fall also.

The sudden motion wrung a low cry of pain from the man. The mate sprang forwards with a snarl.

‘Back!’ Wintrow warned him. ‘And stop those men. Or I’ll kick him in that leg and spatter his rotten flesh all over the deck.’

‘Wait! Release him!’ The command came not from Sorcor, but the woman.

The men halted uncertainly, looking from her to Sa’Adar.

Wintrow did not waste time speaking to them.

Kennit was all but fainting in Wintrow’s grasp.

Wintrow gave him another shake and growled up into the man’s face.

‘You burn with fever and you stink of decay. As you stand here, on the one leg left to you, you may kill both my father and myself. But if you do, you will not possess my ship for more than a handful of days before you follow us down. And whoever you leave behind upon the Vivacia’s decks will perish, too.

The ship will see to that. So I suggest we find a bargain between us. ’

Captain Kennit lifted his hands slowly, to clutch at Wintrow’s wrists with both of his own.

The boy didn’t care. At the moment, he had it within his power to cause the man incredible pain, perhaps enough pain to kill him with the shock of it.

The deep lines in the pirate’s face told Wintrow that he, too, knew that.

Beads of pain sweat shone on the pirate’s brow.

For a scant moment, Wintrow’s eyes were caught by the odd wrist-brooch the man wore.

A tiny face, like to the pirate’s own, grinned up at him gleefully.

It unsettled him. He looked up again at the man’s face, met his eyes and stared deep into their coldness.

They returned his gaze and seemed to look deep into the core of him. He refused to be cowed.

‘Well? What say you?’ Wintrow demanded, with the barest hint of a shake. ‘Do we bargain?’

The pirate’s mouth scarcely moved as, in the softest whisper imaginable, Wintrow heard him say, ‘A likely urchin. Perhaps something useful can be made of him.’

‘What?’ Wintrow demanded furiously. Savage anger rose in him at the man’s mockery.