Page 39 of The Liveship Traders Trilogy

He squared his shoulders. He knew how they saw him.

The captain’s son, a boy, a runt, sent off to live in a monastery, to be raised to believe in goodness and kindness.

He knew there were many who saw that as a weakness, who saw the priests and priestesses of Sa as sexless ninnies who spent their lives wandering about prating that the world could be a beautiful, peaceful place.

Wintrow had seen the other side of a priest’s life.

He had tended priests brought back to the monastery, priests maimed by the cruelty they had fought against, or dying of the plagues they had contracted when they nursed other victims. A clear voice and a steady eye, he counselled himself.

He draped the offending blanket over one arm and picked his way carefully towards the afterdeck where a single night-lantern was burning.

Three men sat in the circle of dim light, a scatter of gaming pegs on the deck.

Wintrow smelled the harsh edge of cheap spirits, and frowned to himself.

The tiny flame of outrage inside him flared brighter.

As if possessed by his grandfather’s anma, he stepped boldly into the circle of their lantern.

Throwing the blanket to the deck, he asked bluntly, ‘And when did the night watch on board this ship begin drinking on duty?’

There was a general recoil from his direction until the three saw who had spoken.

‘It’s the boy-priest,’ one sneered, and sank back down into his sprawl.

Again the flash of anger ignited in him. ‘It’s also Wintrow Haven of Vestrit lineage, and on board this ship, the watch neither drinks nor games. The watch watches!’

All three men lumbered to their feet. They towered over him and all were brawnier, with the hard muscles of grown men. One had the grace to look shamed, but the other two were the worse for drink and unrepentant.

‘Watches what?’ a black-bearded fellow demanded insolently. ‘Watches while Kyle takes over the old man’s ship, and replaces her crew with his cronies? Watches while all the years we worked, and worked damned loyal, go over the side and mean naught?’

The second man took up the first’s litany. ‘Shall we watch while a Haven steals the ship that should be run by a Vestrit? Althea might be a snotty little vixen, but she’s Vestrit to the bone. Should be her that has this ship, woman or no.’

A thousand possible replies raced through Wintrow’s mind. He chose as he thought best. ‘None of that has anything to do with drinking on watch. It’s a poor way to honour Ephron Vestrit’s memory.’

The last statement seemed to have more effect on them than anything else he had said. The shame-faced man stepped forwards. ‘I’m the one that’s been assigned the watch, and I ain’t been drinking. They was just keeping me company and talking.’

Wintrow could think of nothing to say to that, so he only nodded gravely. Then his eyes fell on the discarded blanket and he recalled his original mission. ‘Where’s the second mate? Torg?’

The black-bearded man gave a snort of disdain. ‘He’s too busy moving his gear into Althea’s cabin to pay attention to anything else.’

Wintrow gave a short nod to that and let it pass without comment. He did not address any particular man as he added to the night, ‘I do not think I should have been able to board Vivacia unchallenged, even in our home port.’

The watch-man looked at him oddly. ‘The ship’s quickened now. She’d be swift to sing out if any stranger tried to board her.’

‘Are you sure she knows she is to do that if a stranger comes aboard?’

The incredulous look on the watch-man’s face grew. ‘How could she not know? What Captain Vestrit and his father and his grandmother knew of shipboard life, she knows.’ He looked aside and shook his head slightly as he added, ‘I thought all Vestrits would know that about a liveship.’

‘Thank you,’ Wintrow said, ignoring the last bit of the man’s comment. ‘I’ll be seeking Torg now. Carry on.’

He stooped and swept up the discarded blanket.

He walked carefully as he left the dim circle of light, letting his eyes adjust to the deepening darkness.

He found the door to Althea’s cabin standing ajar, light spilling out onto the deck.

Those of her boxes that had not already been carted off were stacked unceremoniously to one side.

The mate was engaged in judiciously arranging his own possessions.

Wintrow rapped loudly on the opened door, and tried not to take pleasure in the way Torg started almost guiltily.

‘What?’ the man demanded, rounding on him.

‘My father said to see you to get a blanket,’ Wintrow stated quietly.

‘Looks to me like you’ve got one,’ Torg observed. He could not quite hide the glint of his amusement. ‘Or does the priest-boy think it’s not good enough for him?’

Wintrow let the offending blanket drop to the deck. ‘This won’t do,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s filthy. I’ve no objection to worn, or patched, but no man should willingly endure filth.’

Torg scarcely gave it a glance. ‘If it’s filthy, then wash it.’ He made a show of returning to his stowing of his goods.

Wintrow refused to be cowed. ‘I should not need to point out that there is no time for the blanket to dry,’ he observed blandly. ‘I am simply asking you to do as my father commanded. I’ve come aboard for the night, and I need a blanket.’

‘I’ve done as your father commanded, and you have one.’ The cruel amusement in Torg’s voice was less veiled now. Wintrow found himself responding to that rather than to the man’s words.

‘Why does it amuse you to be discourteous?’ he asked Torg, his curiosity genuine. ‘How could it be more trouble to you to provide me with a clean blanket than to give me a filthy rag and force me to beg for what I need?’

The honesty of the question caught the mate off-guard.

He stared at Wintrow, speechless. Like many casually cruel men, he had never truly considered why he behaved as he did.

It was sufficient for him that he could.

Quite likely, he had been a bully from his childhood days, and would be until he was disposed of in a canvas shroud.

For the first time, Wintrow took physical stock of the man.

All his fate was writ large upon him. He had small round eyes, blue as a white pig’s.

The skin underneath the roundness of his chin had already began to sag into a pouch.

The kerchief knotted about his neck was anciently soiled, and the collar of his blue-and-white striped shirt showed an interior band of brown.

It was not the dirt and sweat of honest toil, but the grime of slothfulness.

The man did not care to keep himself tidy.

It already showed in the way his possessions were strewn about the cabin.

In a fortnight, it would be a reeking sty of unwashed garments and scattered food scraps.

In that instant, Wintrow decided to give up the argument.

He’d sleep in his clothes on the deck and be uncomfortable, but he would survive it.

He judged there was no point to further bickering with this man; he’d never grasp just how distasteful Wintrow found the soiled blanket, nor how insulting.

Wintrow rebuked himself for not looking more closely at the man before; it might have saved them both a lot of useless chafing.

‘Never mind,’ he said casually and abruptly. He turned away. He blinked his eyes a few times to let them adjust and then began to pick his way forward. He heard the mate come to the door of the cabin to stare after him.

‘Puppy will probably complain to his daddy, I don’t doubt,’ Torg called mockingly after him. ‘But I think he’ll find his father expects a man to be tougher than to snivel over a few spots on a blanket.’

Perhaps, Wintrow conceded, that was true. He wouldn’t bother complaining to his father to find out. Pointless to complain about one night’s discomfort. His silence seemed to bother Torg.

‘You think you’ll get me in trouble with your whining, don’t you? Well, you won’t! I know your father better than that.’

Wintrow didn’t even bother to reply to the man’s threatening taunt.

At the moment of deciding not to argue further, he had given up all emotional investment in the situation.

He had withdrawn his anma into himself as he had been taught to do, divesting it of his anger and offence as he did so.

It was not that these emotions were unworthy or inappropriate; it was simply that they were wasted upon the man.

He swept his mind clean of reactions to the filthy blanket.

By the time he reached the foredeck, he had regained not just calmness, but wholeness.

He leaned against the rail and looked out across the water.

There were other ships anchored out in the harbour.

Lights shone yellow from these vessels. He examined them.

His own ignorance surprised him. The ships were foreign objects to him, the son of many generations of Traders and sailors.

Most of them were trading vessels, interspersed with a few fishing or slaughter-ships.

The Traders were transom-sterned for the most part, with after-castles that sometimes reached almost to the mainmasts.

Two or three masts reached toward the rising moon from each vessel.

Along the shore, the night market was in full blossom of sound and light.

Now that the heat of the day was past, open cook-fires flared in the night as the drippings of meat sizzled into them.

An errant breeze brought the scent of the spiced meat and even the baking bread in the outdoor ovens.

Sound, too, ventured boldly over the water in isolated snippets, a high laugh, a burst of song, a shriek.

The moving waters caught the lights of the market and the ships and made of them rippling streamers of reflection.

‘Yet there is a peace to all of it,’ Wintrow said aloud.