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Brashen winced at those memories. Now he had come full circle and could only marvel at how a few clusters of outlaw settlements had apparently grown into a network of towns.

When he had been mate on the Vivacia, Brashen had listened sceptically to tales of permanent pirate settlements built on pilings or far up the brackish rivers and lagoons.

Since he had begun sailing on the Springeve, he had gradually formed a different picture of these shifting islands and the bustling settlements that clung to their unreliable shores.

Some were still little more than places where two ships might stop to trade goods, but others boasted houses with paint on their boards, and little shops along their muddy streets.

The slave trade had swelled the population, and widened its variety.

Artisans and educated slaves who had escaped Jamaillian owners rubbed elbows with criminals who had fled the Satrap’s justice.

Some residents had families. Women and children now formed a minor part of the population.

Many of the escaped slaves were obviously trying to re-establish the lives stolen from them.

They added a note of desperate civilization to the renegade towns.

Captain Finney seemed to rely solely on his memory to navigate the treacherous channels, tides and currents that brought them to each hamlet.

Unerringly he guided the Springeve from town to town.

Brashen suspected he had private charts that he consulted, but so far, he had not seen fit to give his mate so much as a glimpse of them.

Such a lack of trust, Brashen reflected, as he watched the merchant’s sons through narrowed eyes, almost demanded treachery in return.

At least, he suspected that Finney would see the careful inking of shorelines and soundings that Brashen had marked onto the canvas scraps under his bunk as treachery.

A good part of Finney’s value as captain depended on his arcane knowledge of the Pirate Isles.

He would see Brashen’s careful hoard as a theft of his hard-won knowledge.

Brashen saw them as the only long-term benefit he might carry away from this voyage.

Money and cindin were all very well, but they were too soon gone.

If fortune forced him into this trade, he would not sail as a mate forever.

‘Hey. Brash. Over here. What do you think of this?’

He glanced away from the boys to the new selection of merchandise Finney was considering.

Finney was holding up an illustrated scroll.

Brashen recognized it as a copy of the Contradictions of Sa.

The qualities of the parchment made him suspect it was a good one.

Too familiar a knowledge of such things might indicate to Finney that he was not illiterate.

He gave a shrug. ‘Lots of pretty colours and fancy birds.’

‘What do you think it’s worth?’

Brashen shrugged. ‘To whom?’

Finney narrowed his eyes. ‘In a Bingtown shop, say.’

‘I’ve seen them there. Never wanted to buy one, myself.’

Sincure Faldin rolled his eyes at the sailor’s ignorance.

‘I might take it.’ Finney began to rummage through the rest of the goods. ‘Set it aside for now. What is this?’ There was a trace of amused annoyance in Finney’s voice. ‘It’s broken. You know I trade only in the finest merchandise. Take it away.’

‘Only the frame is damaged, no doubt in the haste of, er, salvaging it. The canvas is intact and quite valuable, I am told. It appears to be the work of a noted Bingtown artist. But that is not the only thing that makes it exceedingly valuable.’ His voice hinted of a great secret to share.

Finney pretended disinterest. ‘Oh, very well, I shall look at it. A ship. Now that’s original. A ship under sail on a pretty day. Take it away, Sincure Faldin.’

The merchant continued to hold the painting proudly.

‘I think you shall regret it if you let this get by you, Captain Finney. It was painted by Pappas. I am told he accepts few commissions, and that all of his canvases go dearly. However, as I told you, this is even more unique. It is a portrait of a liveship. It was taken from a liveship.’

Brashen felt an odd little sideways wrench in his gut. Althea had commissioned a portrait of Vivacia from Pappas. He didn’t want to look. He had to. Foolish not to, it could not be what he feared, no pirate vessel could ever overtake the Vivacia.

It was.

He stared, sickened, at the familiar painting.

It had hung in Althea Vestrit’s stateroom on the Vivacia.

The lovely rosewood frame was splintered where someone had hastily pried it free from the wall instead of unfastening it.

Vivacia as she had been before she was quickened was the subject.

In the painting, the figurehead’s features were still, her hair yellow.

Her graceful hull cut through the painted waves.

The artist’s skill was such that Brashen could almost see the clouds scudding across the sky.

The last time he had seen that painting, it had still been securely fastened to a bulkhead.

Had Althea left it there when she left the ship?

Had it been taken from the ship by pirates, or somehow stolen from the Vestrit family home?

The second possibility did not make sense.

No thief would steal such a thing in Bingtown and then bring it to the Pirate Isles to sell it.

The best prices for art were in Chalced and Jamaillia.

Logic told him that the painting had been taken off the Vivacia.

Yet, he could not believe pirates could have overtaken the sprightly little liveship.

Even before she had quickened, Ephron Vestrit had been able to show her heels to anything that even considered pursuing her.

Quickened and willing, nothing should have been able to catch her.

‘You know the ship, Brash?’ Finney asked in a soft, friendly voice.

The captain had caught him staring at the painting.

He tried to make his look of dismay seem one of puzzlement.

He knit his brows deeper. ‘Pappas. I was looking at that name, thinking I knew it. Pappas, Pappas…naw. Pappay. That was the fellow’s name.

Terrible cheat at cards, but a good hand aloft.

’ He gave Finney a shrug and a half-hearted grin. He wondered if he had fooled him.

‘It’s a liveship, out of Bingtown. Surely, you know her. Liveships are not that common.’ Finney pressed.

Brashen took a step closer, peered at the painting, then shrugged. ‘They’re not that common, true. But they tie up at a different dock from the common ships. They keep to themselves, and idlers aren’t too welcome there. Traders can be a snooty lot.’

‘I thought you were Trader born.’ Now both of them were looking at him.

Brashen spat out a laugh. ‘Even Traders have poor relatives. My third cousin is the real Trader. I’m just a shirttail relative, and not a welcome sight on the family’s doorstep. Sorry. What’s her nameplate say?’

‘Vivacia,’ Finney said. ‘I thought that was a ship you’d served on. Didn’t you say as much to the agent back in Candletown?’

Brashen cursed his cindin-fogged memories of that meeting.

He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘No. I told him I was mate on the Vicious Vixen. She was out of a Six Duchies harbour, not Bingtown. Not a bad vessel, if you like living with a bunch of barbarians who think fish-head stew is a real treat. I didn’t. ’

Finney and Faldin both chuckled dutifully.

It wasn’t much of a jest but it was enough to turn the topic.

Faldin flourished the painting a final time; Finney dismissed it with a headshake.

Faldin made a great show of carefully re-wrapping the painting, as if to emphasize the value that Finney was missing.

Finney was already poking through the rest of the scrolls.

Brashen tried to resume his watchful air, but he felt sick.

The splintered frame indicated the painting had been taken hastily.

Had she been sinking as the framed painting was torn off the wall?

One of Faldin’s boys, passing near him, shot him a fearful glance.

Brashen realized he was glaring at no one, and rearranged his face.

Some of the men he had worked with aboard the Vivacia had been his comrades for years.

Their faces rose in his memory: Grig, who could splice line faster than most men could lie, and Comfrey the prankster, and a half dozen others with whom he had shared the forecastle.

The ship’s boy, Mild, had had the makings of a top-notch sailor, if his love for mischief hadn’t killed him first. He hoped they had had the good sense to turn pirate when they were offered that option.

His need to ask the merchant what he knew of the liveship burned inside him.

Was there a way to be curious without betraying himself? Brashen suddenly didn’t care.

‘Where did you get the picture of the liveship, anyway?’ he asked.

The other two men turned to stare at him.

‘Why do you care?’ Captain Finney asked. His voice was not casual.

Sincure Faldin broke in, obviously still hoping to dispose of the painting.

‘The painting comes from the ship herself. Rarely is a liveship ever captured: this authentic memento of such an event is among the rarest of the rare.’ As he re-pitched the desirability of the painting, he had snatched it up and was once more freeing it of its shroud.