Page 241

The boy’s hand flew to his cheek. A flickering show of emotions rushed across his face: shame, anger, confusion and then impassivity.

His voice was even and low. ‘I suppose he thought it would teach me something. Perhaps it was his revenge because I had not been the son he wished me to be. Perhaps it was his way of repairing that. He made me a slave instead of his son. Or…it could have been something else. He was, I think, jealous of my bond with the ship. When he marked my face with hers, it was his way of saying we were welcome to one another, because we had rejected him. Maybe.’

It was enlightening to watch Wintrow’s face as he spoke.

The careful words could not completely disguise the pain.

The boy’s floundering attempts at an explanation revealed that it was a question he had agonized over often.

Kennit suspected that none of the possible answers satisfied him.

It was obvious his father had never bothered to explain it.

The boy advanced to his bedside. ‘I need to look at your stump now,’ he said.

Blunt, this boy was. He didn’t call it a leg, or an injury.

It was a stump and that was what he called it.

He didn’t mince his way past Kennit’s feelings.

That integrity was oddly comforting. The boy would not lie to him.

‘You say you had rejected your father. Is that how you still feel about him?’ Kennit could not say why the boy’s answer would be so important to him.

A shadow crossed the boy’s face. For a moment, Kennit thought Wintrow would lie to him.

But the hopelessness of truth was in his voice when he spoke.

‘He is my father.’ The words were almost a cry of protest. ‘I owe him the duty of a son. Sa commands us to respect our parents and exult over any goodness we find in them. But in truth, I wish ‘ His voice dropped lower as if to speak the thought shamed him. ‘I wish he were out of my life. Not dead, no, I don’t wish that,’ he added hastily as he met Kennit’s intent stare.

‘I just wish he were somewhere else. Somewhere safe but…’ his voice faltered guiltily.

‘Where I just didn’t have to deal with him any more,’ he finished in a near whisper.

‘Where I didn’t have to feel diminished each time he looked at me. ’

‘I can arrange that,’ Kennit answered him easily. The stricken look on the boy’s face plainly wondered what wish he had just been granted. He started to speak, then apparently decided that keeping silent was safer.

‘Does the tattoo bother you?’ he heard himself ask as Wintrow turned the blankets back. The boy-priest bent over Kennit’s leg, his hands hovering above the stump. Kennit could almost feel a tickling ghost-touch on his flesh.

‘A moment,’ Wintrow requested quietly. ‘Let me try this.’

Kennit waited expectantly for him to do something.

Instead, Wintrow became absolutely still.

He held his hands fractionally above Kennit’s stump, so close he could feel the warmth of the boy’s palms. The gaze of his eyes was focused on the backs of his own hands.

The tip of his tongue crept out of his mouth and he bit it in his concentration.

His breath moved in and out of him so silently, it was as if he did not breathe at all.

The pupils of his eyes grew large, almost erasing the colour.

His hands trembled slightly as in vast effort.

After a few moments, the boy drew a sharp breath in.

He lifted his eyes to give Kennit a dazed glance and shrugged in disappointment.

He sighed. ‘I suppose I’m doing it wrong.

You should have felt something.’ He frowned to himself, then remembered Kennit’s question about his tattoo.

He answered as if they were discussing the weather.

‘When I think of it. I wish it were not there. However, it is there, and will be there the rest of my life. The sooner I accept it as part of my face, the wiser I will be.’

‘Wiser how?’ Kennit pressed him.

Wintrow smiled, thinly at first, but as he spoke it grew more genuine.

‘It was said often at my monastery, “The wise man takes the shortest path to peace with himself.” Acceptance of what is, that is the shortest path.’ As he spoke the final words, his hands came to rest on Kennit’s stump in a light but firm grip. ‘Does this hurt?’

Warmth started at the boy’s hands and shot out from them.

A jolt of heat went up Kennit’s spine. The pirate was struck dumb.

Wintrow’s words seemed to echo through his bones.

Acceptance of what is. That is the shortest path to peace with yourself.

This is wisdom. Does it hurt? Does wisdom hurt?

Does peace hurt? Does acceptance hurt? His skin tightened and tingled all over his body.

Kennit gasped for breath. He could not answer.

He was suffused with the boy’s simple faith.

It rushed through him, warm and reassuring.

Of course, he was right. Acceptance. He could not doubt or deny it.

What had he been thinking? Whence the weakness that had made him falter?

His earlier thoughts of drowning himself were suddenly abhorrent, the self-pitying whining of a weakling.

He was meant to go on, he was destined to go on.

His luck had not failed him when the serpent took his leg.

His luck had sustained him; his leg was all it had taken.

Wintrow took his hands away. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked worriedly. The words seemed unnaturally loud to Kennit’s renewed senses.

‘You’ve healed me,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

‘I’m healed.’ He dragged himself to a sitting position.

He looked down at his leg, almost expecting to find it restored.

It was not, it was a stump, and there was still a pang of loss at beholding it.

But that was all. The shape of his body had changed.

Once he had been young and beardless, and now he was not.

Once he had walked upon two legs; now he would learn to get about on one. That was all. A change. To be accepted.

Quick as a cat’s pounce, he seized the boy by his shoulders and jerked him near.

Wintrow cried out and braced his hands on the bunk to keep from falling.

Kennit captured the boy’s head between his hands.

For an instant, Wintrow struggled. Then his eyes locked with Kennit’s.

He stared, his gaze going wider and wider.

Kennit smiled at him. He smoothed one long thumb across the boy’s tattoo.

‘Wipe it away,’ he commanded him. ‘On your face, it goes no deeper than your skin. You do not need to bear it on your soul.’ For five breaths more Kennit held him, until he saw a sort of wonder cross Wintrow’s features.

Kennit placed a kiss on his brow, then released him.

As Wintrow drew back, Kennit sat all the way up. He swung his leg off the bed.

‘I’m tired of lying here. I need to be up and about. Look at me. I’m wasted to a shadow of myself. I need wind in my face, and plenty of food and drink. I need to command on my own deck again. Most of all, I need to discover what I can and cannot do. Sorcor made me a crutch. Is it still about?’

Wintrow had staggered back from the bedside. He looked shocked at the change in the man. ‘I…I believe it is,’ he stuttered.

‘Good. Lay out some clothes for me and help me dress. No. Lay out clothes for me and leave me to dress myself while you go to the galley. Bring me back a proper meal. If Etta is about, send her to me. She can fetch me bathing water. Be quick, now. The day is half spent as it is.’

It brought him great satisfaction to see Wintrow hasten to obey his commands.

The boy knew how to take an order; now, that was a useful thing in a pretty lad, and no mistake.

He did not know his way about Kennit’s possessions.

Etta was better at matching up his clothes, but what Wintrow had set out was serviceable enough.

There would be plenty of time to educate his eye for dress.

When Wintrow had bowed his way out of the room, Kennit turned his attention to educating himself.

His shirt was not too difficult, but it displeased him to see how his chest and arms had dwindled.

He refused to dwell on it. The trousers were more of a challenge.

Even standing on his leg and leaning on the bed, it was awkward.

The fabric hung up on his stump and rubbed against the new skin unpleasantly.

He told himself he would soon build a callus.

The empty trouser leg flapped in a ghastly way; Etta would have to pin that for him, or better yet, sew it.

The leg was gone. There was little sense in pretending otherwise.

He grinned wryly as he struggled with a single stocking and boot.

Why should half as much work take twice as long?

His body kept overbalancing and teetering on the edge of the bed.

He was just finishing when Etta entered the room.

She gave a start at the sight of him sitting jauntily on the edge of the bed.

Her gaze turned reproachful. ‘I would have helped you with all that.’ She set a basin and a jug of hot water down on the stand by his bed.

The scarlet blouse she wore picked up the red of her lips.

Her skirts were black silk and shifted with her hips, rustling invitingly when she walked.

‘I didn’t need help,’ he retorted. ‘Save with this trouser leg. You should have sewn them up for me. I intend to be out of bed today. Where is my razor? Do you know where my crutch is?’