Page 302 of The Liveship Traders Trilogy

He groped towards the obstacle.

Amber’s comforting voice reached his ears. ‘It’s the barge, Paragon. We’re alongside the work barge and they’re making you fast to it. You’ll be safe here.’

Paragon wasn’t so sure. He was still taking on water and settling lower. ‘How deep is it here?’ he asked nervously.

Brashen’s jubilant voice sounded as if he were standing alongside Amber.

‘Deep enough to float you. Not so deep that if you go down we’ll lose you.

Not that we’d let you go down. We may have to beach you again to work on your port side.

For now, don’t worry. It’s all under control.

’ The speed with which he hastened away seemed to belie his words.

For a time, Paragon listened. There were voices and hurrying footsteps inside him, running feet across his deck.

On the barge beside him, the work crew was congratulating one another on their work and speculating on how many repairs he was going to need.

However, those were not the things he heard.

Instead, he listened to the slap of the waves against his hull and the sound of his wood creaking and settling, even the sounds his hull made rubbing against the bumpers on the barge.

Everything was suddenly eerily familiar and yet strange.

The smells seemed sharper out here, the cries of the sea birds louder.

He rose and fell with the waves. The gentle rocking was soothing, but it was also the stuff of his nightmares.

‘Well,’ he said aloud, but quietly. ‘I’m afloat again.

I guess that makes me a ship and not a hulk. ’

‘I guess,’ Amber agreed easily. She had been so still and silent, he had almost forgotten her.

Unlike all other people he had ever known, she sometimes became transparent to his senses.

He knew, without even reaching, where Brashen and Althea were.

A moment’s reflection, and he could locate every nameless worker on his deck or in his holds.

But Amber was different. She seemed, he thought to himself, more contained and isolated than any other human he had ever known.

Sometimes he suspected it was deliberate; that she only shared herself when she chose to, and then only in a limited way.

Not unlike myself, he reflected, and then frowned at the thought.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked quickly.

‘Not yet,’ he replied in a sour voice.

She laughed lightly, as if he jested. ‘So. Are you glad to be a ship again?’

‘Glad or sorry, it makes little difference. You will do with me as you want to, and my feelings about it will not matter to anyone.’ He paused. ‘I admit, I did not believe you. I did not think I would float again. Not that I particularly wanted to float again.’

‘Paragon, your feelings matter. Somehow, I do not believe that you truly wanted to remain on that beach forever. You once told me, quite angrily, that you are a ship and a ship is meant to sail. I suspect that even if you do not enjoy this at first, it will be good for you. All living things need to grow. You were not growing, abandoned there on the beach. You were close to giving up and believing yourself a failure.’ Her voice was affectionate.

Suddenly he could not stand that. Did they think they could force him to do something, and then pretend it was for his own good?

He laughed harshly. ‘On the contrary. I knew I had succeeded. I’d killed them all, every one of them who tried to oppose me. You are the ones who refuse to believe me a success. If you did, you’d have the good sense to fear me.’

An instant of horrified silence followed his words. He felt her let go of his railing and stand up straight. ‘Paragon. When you speak like that, I refuse to stand and listen to you.’ Her voice held no hint of what she was thinking.

‘Oh. I see. Then you are afraid?’ he asked her wickedly.

But she had turned and resolutely walked away. She made no reply at all.

He didn’t care. So he had hurt her feelings. So what? No one cared anything about his feelings. No one ever asked him what he wanted to do.

‘Why’re you like that?’

He had known Clef was there. The boy had come out to the barge with the beach crew. He didn’t startle. For a time, he didn’t even reply.

‘Why’re you like that?’ the boy persisted.

‘Like what?’ Paragon finally asked in annoyance.

‘Ya’know. Allus mad. Or crazy fightin’. Say’n stuff ta be mean.’

‘How else do you expect me to be?’ Paragon retorted. ‘Joyous that they’ve dragged me out here? All excited to go off on a hare-brained rescue mission with them?’

He felt the boy’s shrug. ‘Ya could be.’

‘I could be?’ Paragon snorted. ‘I’d like to know how.’

‘S’easy. Ya decide t’be.’

‘You decide to be happy? I should just forget everything that has been done to me, and be happy? Tra-la-la-la? Like that?’

‘Ya could.’ He heard the boy’s nails against his scalp. ‘Lookit me. I coulda hated ever’one o’ ‘em. I decided t’be happy. Decided ta take what I could get. Make a life outer it.’ A pause. ‘S’not like I’m gonna get another life. Gotta make this’n work.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Paragon snapped.

‘Could be,’ Clef insisted. ‘In’t no harder than decidin’ t’be mad allus.’

The boy sauntered away slowly. His bare feet scuffed lightly on the deck. ‘But it’s a lot funner,’ he called back over his shoulder.

Water streamed down the inside planking.

The canvas was sucked into place and the flow was slowing.

The caulkers were working swiftly and efficiently, with more skill than Althea had expected from them.

The men on the pumps concerned her. They were tiring.

She had gone to find Brashen, to ask him if he had replacements for them.

She ran into him as he came down a ladder.

Behind him were several burly men from the barge.

Before she could even speak, he tossed his head at them.

‘The shore crew is on the barge now. They’re to spell your men on the pumps. How are we holding?’

‘We’re keeping up with it, and even gaining a little.

The wood is swelling fast, but wizardwood does that.

If he were any other liveship, I’d say he could apply himself a bit and close up half the leaks.

But with Paragon, I fear even to ask him.

’ She took a breath, waited until the pump crew was out of earshot, then added very softly, ‘For fear he would do exactly the opposite. How is he?’

Brashen scratched at his beard thoughtfully.

‘I don’t know. When we were getting him off the beach, he was yelling out suggestions and commands as if he were eager to be afloat again.

But like you, I’m afraid to assume that is so.

Sometimes all it takes to plunge him into a foul temper is to assume that he is in a good mood. ’

‘I know what you mean.’ She met his eyes, commiserating.

‘Brashen, what have we let ourselves in for this time? While he was on the beach, and he was our only hope, it seemed a viable plan. But now that we are out here…do you realize how completely we are in his power? He holds our lives in his hands.’

For a moment, the sailor looked very tired.

His shoulders sank in discouragement. Then he drew in a deep breath.

‘Don’t stop believing in him now, Althea, or we are all lost. Don’t show him any sign of fear or doubt.

Paragon is more child than man. When I give Clef an order, I don’t watch him to see if he’ll obey.

I’d never let him believe he had more power over me than I had over him.

Boys can’t deal with that. They’ll keep groping for the limits until they find them.

They only feel safe when they know where the boundaries are. ’

She tried to smile at him. ‘You speak from experience?’

The smile he returned her was a sickly one. ‘By the time I found the boundaries, I had fallen off the edge of the world. I won’t let that happen to Paragon.’ He stood still for a moment, and she thought he might say more to her. Then he shrugged his shoulders, turned and hastened after the pumpers.

It reminded her she had work of her own.

She moved swiftly through the ship, checking on the workers caulking the hull.

Mostly, they were reinforcing and tightening work that had been done while the Paragon was on shore.

In a few places, they were even removing oakum to allow the planks to swell shut.

Like most Rain Wild ships, Paragon had been well and tightly constructed, his planking built to withstand the seething water of the Rain Wild River, as well as the vagaries of ocean waves.

The workmanship had withstood even the neglect of thirty years.

The grey wizardwood planks actually seemed to recall how they had been fitted together.

Perhaps, she dared to hope, Paragon was cooperating after all.

A liveship could do much to maintain himself, if he chose to do so.

It seemed strange to move through the ship.

It was the first time in all the years she had known him that his decks were level under her feet.

Satisfied that her work crew was well occupied, she made a quick tour of the ship.

The galley was a mess. The stove had broken loose of its stovepipe and slid across the small room, trailing soot.

Like as not, it would have to be repaired if not replaced.

The master stateroom had suffered likewise.

Amber’s chests of belongings had spilled.

A vial of scent had fallen and smashed, leaving the room reeking of lilac.

As Althea stood looking about, the future became real to her.

Amber would have to move her things out of here, and assume the humbler quarters befitting the ship’s carpenter.

Then Brashen would move in.