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‘This is my last warning to you.’ Sa’Adar came very close to him, his breath hot and rancid in Wintrow’s face.

‘It is your last chance to redeem yourself from your past errors and put your feet on the true path to glory. Your father must be delivered to judgement. If you are the instrument of that, your own part in the transgressions can be forgiven. I myself will judge it is so. Then this ship must be surrendered to those who rightfully claim her. Make Kennit see that. He is a sick man. He cannot withstand us. We rose and unseated one despot. Does he believe we cannot do it again?’

‘I believe that if I spoke such words to him, it would be death for you. Death for myself as well. Sa’Adar, be content with what he has given you: a new chance at life.

Seize it and go on.’ Wintrow tried to writhe away, but the man only tightened his grip.

He bared his teeth in a snarl. Wintrow felt his self-control slipping.

‘Now get your hands off me and let me go.’ Suddenly, vividly, he was recalling this man in the hold of the Vivacia.

Freed of his chains, his first act had been to take Gantry’s life.

Gantry had been a good man, in his way. A better man than Sa’Adar had ever shown himself to Wintrow.

‘I warn you ‘ the erstwhile priest of Sa began, but Wintrow’s pent grief and banked anger suddenly overwhelmed him. He shoved the wooden tray hard into the man’s gut.

Taken by surprise, Sa’Adar staggered back, gasping for air.

A part of Wintrow knew it was enough. He could have walked away.

He was shocked when he dropped the tray, to drive two more blows into the man’s chest. In detachment, he saw his right, and then his left fist connect.

They were body punches, connecting with satisfyingly solid sounds.

Even so, Wintrow was amazed to see the taller man give ground, stumbling back against the wall and sliding partially down it.

It shocked him to discover his own physical strength.

Worse, it felt good to knock the man down.

He gritted his teeth, resisting the impulse to kick him.

‘Leave me alone,’ he warned Sa’Adar in a low growl. ‘Don’t talk to me again or I’ll kill you.’

The shaken man coughed as he clambered up the wall. Puffing, he pointed a finger at Wintrow. ‘See what you’ve become! It’s the voice of this unnatural ship, using you as a mouthpiece! Break free, boy, before you are damned forever!’

Wintrow turned on his heel and strode away. He left the tray and crockery where it had fallen. It was the first time in his life he had fled from the truth.

Kennit shifted in his bedding. He was damnably tired of being confined to his bunk, but both Wintrow and Etta had convinced him that he must endure it a bit longer.

He frowned at himself in a bedside mirror, then set his razor aside.

His freshly-trimmed moustache and beard improved his appearance, but the swarthiness of his skin had turned sallow and the flesh had fallen away from his cheeks.

He practised his hard stare at the mirror.

‘I look cadaverous,’ he said aloud to the empty room.

Even his voice sounded hollow. He set the mirror aside with a sharp clack.

The action focused his attention on his hands.

Veins and tendons stood out on their backs in sharp relief.

When he turned them over, the palms looked soft as tallow.

He made a fist and gave a snort of disdain at the result.

It looked like a knot tied in a piece of old string.

The wizardwood talisman, once strapped tightly to his pulse point, now dangled about his wrist. The silvery wood had gone grey and checked as if it, too, suffered from his lack of vitality.

Kennit’s lips tightened in a bare smile.

Good. It should have brought him luck and instead it had served him this.

Let the charm share his fate. He tapped at it with his fingernail.

‘Nothing to say?’ he jeered at it. It was impassive.

Kennit snatched up the mirror again and peered into it.

His leg was healing; they all told him he would live.

What was the good of that if he could no longer command respect from his crew?

He had become a withered scarecrow of a man.

His haggard reflection reminded himself of a street beggar in Divvytown.

He slammed the mirror down again on the bedside table, half daring himself to break it.

The ornate frame and heavy glass defied him.

He flung the covers back from his legs and glared down at his stump.

It lay on the creamy linen like a badly stuffed sausage, slightly withered at the end.

He poked it savagely with a finger. The pain had receded substantially, leaving behind an obnoxious sensation between a tingle and an itch.

He lifted it from the bed. It looked ridiculous, a seal’s flipper, not a man’s leg.

Total despair washed over him. He imagined drawing cold saltwater into his mouth and nose, pulling icy death into him, refusing to choke or splutter. It would be quick.

The passion of his despair retreated abruptly, stranding him in helplessness.

He did not even have the wherewithal to take his own life.

Long before he managed to drag himself to the ship’s railing Etta would clutch at him, whining and imploring and bearing him back to this bed.

Perhaps that had always been her aim in maiming him.

Yes. She had chopped off his leg and fed it to the sea serpent so that she could finally master him.

She intended to keep him here as her pet while she secretly undermined his command and became the true captain of the ship.

Teeth clenched, fists knotted, the anger that rushed through him was intoxicating in its fierceness.

He tried to feed on it, imagining in detail how she had probably planned it for months.

Her eventual goal was to keep the liveship for herself, of course.

Sorcor was probably involved in it as well.

He would have to be very careful to conceal from them that he suspected. If they knew, they’d

Ridiculous. It was ridiculous and silly, the product of his long convalescence.

Such thoughts were unworthy of him. If he must put such intensity of feeling into something, then let him put it into regaining his health.

Etta might be lacking in many things, including breeding and courtesy, but she was certainly not plotting against him.

If he was tired of his bed, he should tell them so.

It was a fine spring day. He could be assisted to the foredeck.

She would love to see his face again. It had been so long since they had talked.

Kennit had dim, resentful memories of his mother’s gentle hands carefully unfolding his chubby fingers from some forbidden object he had managed to possess.

So had she spoken to him then, softly and reasonably as she took the gleaming wood and shining metal of the knife away.

He recalled he had not succumbed to her gentleness but had screamed his displeasure.

He felt the same defiance now. He did not want to be reasonable, he did not want to be consoled with something else.

He wanted his fury to be justified and proven.

But Vivacia was inside him, weaving herself through his being.

He was too weakened to resist her as she took his angry suspicions and set them out of his reach.

He was left with a sourceless dissatisfaction that made his head ache.

He blinked the sting of tears from his eyes.

Weepy, like a woman, he jeered at himself.

Someone tapped at his door. He took his hands away from his face. He flipped the blankets back over the remains of his legs. A moment, to compose himself. He cleared his throat. ‘Enter.’

He had expected Etta. Instead, it was the boy. He stood uncertainly in the door. The dim companionway framed him and the light from the stern windows fell on his face. His tattoo was hidden in shadow. His face was unflawed and open. ‘Captain Kennit?’ he queried in a low voice. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘Not at all. Come in.’ He could not say why the sight of Wintrow was like balm to his spirit.

Perhaps it had to do with the ship’s feelings.

The boy’s appearance had improved since he had been in Kennit’s care.

He smiled at the youth as he approached the bed, and had the pleasure of seeing the boy shyly return it.

His coarse black hair was sleeked back from his face and bound into the traditional seaman’s queue.

The clothing Etta had sewn suited him well.

The loose white shirt, a bit large for him, was tucked into his dark blue trousers.

He was small for his age, a lean and supple youth.

Wind and sun had weathered the boy’s face.

The warm colour of his skin, his white teeth and dark eyes, the dark trousers merging into the darkness of the corridor behind him: it was all a chance composition of perfect light and shadow.

Even the hesitant, questioning look on his face was perfect as he emerged from dimness into the muted light of the chamber.

Another step carried Wintrow further into the room.

The tattoo on his face was suddenly not only visible; it was an indelible flaw, a stain on the boy’s innocence.

The pirate could see the torment in the boy’s eyes, and sensed a misery in him.

Kennit knew a moment of rage. ‘Why?’ he demanded suddenly.

‘Why were you marked like that? What possible excuse did he have?’