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Keffria heaved a sigh and settled closer against him.

Every word he said made sense. That was one of the reasons she had married him; his ability to think things through so carefully and logically had made her feel so safe.

That was one thing she had been certain of when she wed; that she did not want to live her life tied to a man as impulsive and fanciful as her father had been.

She had seen what it had done to her mother, how it had aged her far beyond her years.

Other Trader matrons lived sedate lives of ease, tending their rose gardens and grand-babies, while her own mother had each day arisen to face a man’s load of decisions and work.

It was not just the accounts and the laborious working out of agreements with fellow Traders.

Often as not her mother had been out on the fields on horseback, checking for herself that what her overseers said was true.

Ever since Keffria could remember, she had hated the season of the mafe harvest. When she was tiny, all she had known was that it meant her mother was already gone when she awakened, and that she might see her for an hour before bedtime, or not at all that day.

As she grew older, there had been a few years when her mother had insistently dragged her along to the hot fields and the long rows of prickly dark green bushes heavy with ripening beans.

She had forced her to learn how the beans were harvested, what the pests that plagued them looked like, and which diseased bushes must be pulled up immediately and burned and which must be painstakingly doused with a strong tea made from leaf mould and horse manure.

Keffria had hated it. As soon as she was old enough to be concerned with her hair and skin, she had rebelled and refused to be tormented any longer.

That, she recalled, was the same year that she resolved she would never marry a man who would go to sea and leave her with such burdens.

She would find a man willing to fulfil a man’s role, to take care of her and keep her safe and defend their door from all troubles and worries.

‘And then I went and married a sailor,’ she said aloud.

The fondness in her voice made it a compliment.

‘Um?’ The sleepy question came from deep within his chest. She set a hand on its paleness in the moonlight, enjoyed the contrast of her olive skin against his whiteness.

‘I just wish you weren’t gone so much,’ she said softly. ‘Now that Papa is dead, you’re the man of our family. If you’re not around…’

‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve thought of that, I’ve worried about that. Why else do you think I must insist I take Wintrow on the ship with me? It’s time he stepped forward as a man of this family, and took on his share of the responsibilities.’

‘But… his priesthood,’ Keffria objected in a tiny voice. It was very hard for her to disagree with her husband, but in this one area, he had always before let her have her way. She could scarcely grasp that he might change his mind now.

‘You know I never approved of that nonsense,’ he said quietly as if in answer to her thought.

‘Offering our first-born son to the service of Sa… that’s a fine thing for the rich folk of Jamaillia to do.

Shows off their wealth, that they can offer up the labour of a son and think nothing of it.

That’s not the case with us, dear. But I knew you wanted it, and I tried to let you have it.

We sent the boy off to the monastery. And if your father had lived for another handful of years, they could have kept him.

But he didn’t. Selden’s too young to sail.

The plain and simple truth of it is that this family needs Wintrow a lot more than some monastery in Jamaillia.

Sa provides, you always say. Well, look at it this way.

He provided us with a son, thirteen years ago. And now we need him.’

‘But we promised him,’ she said in a small voice.

Inside her was a sort of agony. It had meant so much to her that Wintrow was a priest, offered up to Sa.

Not all boys who were offered were accepted.

Some were returned to their parents with the thanks of the monastery, but a polite letter explaining their sons were not truly suitable for the priesthood.

Wintrow had not been returned. No, he had been cherished from the very beginning, advancing swiftly to his novice’s brown robe, transferred from the outlying monastery at Kall to Kelpiton monastery on the Marrow peninsula.

The priests did not often send reports, but those she had received had been glowing.

She kept them, tied with the gilt ribbons that had originally bound them, in the corner of her clothing chest.

‘You promised him,’ Kyle pointed out. ‘Not I. Here. Let me up.’ He disentangled himself from her arms and bedding to rise. His body was like carved ivory in the moonlight. He groped at the foot of the bed for his night robe and then dragged it on over his head.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked quietly. She knew her comment had displeased him, but he had never left her bed to sleep elsewhere before.

He knew her so well. As if sensing her worry, he reached down to smooth her hair back from her face.

‘I’ll be back. I’m just going to go check Althea’s room, and see if she’s in yet.

’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe her foolishness.

I hope she doesn’t make a spectacle of herself in Bingtown tonight.

When she has a few drinks, she’s capable of saying almost anything.

Scandal is the last thing we need right now.

The family must be seen as stable and united until we get these financial problems under control.

Any wild talk from Althea, and we could find our creditors panicking, thinking they should get what they can out of us while we’ve got it.

Ah, well. We’ve had enough worries and grief for tonight.

Try to go to sleep. I’ll be back in a few moments either way. ’

For a long moment, Brashen feared she was going to refuse his offer of escort.

Althea wove slightly on her feet as she blearily appraised him.

He returned her gaze evenly. Sa, she was a sight!

Her hair had come loose and sprawled across her brow and shoulders.

Her face was smeared with the day’s dust and her own tears.

Only her dress marked her as a woman of quality, and its dishevelled condition made it look like someone else’s cast-off.

Right now, he thought sourly, she looked more like a doxie looking for a tumble than the proud daughter of a Bingtown Trader family.

If she attempted to walk home alone, anything might befall her in the wildness of the night market.

But in another moment she sighed loudly.

‘Aye,’ she said, and with another heavy sigh she took his offered arm.

She leaned on him heavily, and he was glad he had jettisoned his sea-bag earlier in the day.

The tavern keep holding it for him knew him well, and he had parted with several small coins to ensure its safety.

He did not like to think of how much more coin he had spent following her from tavern to tavern.

More than he had meant to, true, but not as much as he would have ordinarily spent on a night out on the town.

He was still almost sober, he reflected.

This had been the most depressing first night back in home port that he had ever spent.

Well, it was nearly over. All he had to do was get her safely home, and then the few hours between the stars and dawn would be his to spend as he wished.

He looked up and down the street. It was ill-lit with widely spaced torches and all but deserted at this hour.

Those who were still capable of drinking were within the taverns, and everyone else in this quarter would be passed out somewhere.

Nevertheless, there would be a few rogues who’d lurk down this way, hoping for a drunken sailor’s last coin.

He’d be wise to go carefully, especially with Althea in tow.

‘This way,’ he told her and attempted to lead her at a brisk pace, but she almost immediately stumbled. ‘Are you that drunk?’ he asked her in annoyance before he could curb his tongue.

‘Yes,’ she admitted with a small belch. She stooped so abruptly that he thought she was going to fold up on the boardwalk.

Instead she tore off first one and then another heeled and ribboned shoe.

‘And these damned things don’t help a bit.

’ She stood and flung them both out into the dark street.

Straightening, she turned back to him and took his arm firmly. ‘Now let’s go.’

She made her way much better barefoot, he had to admit.

He grinned at himself in the darkness. Even after all the years of doing for himself, there was still some of the strait-laced Trell in him.

He’d felt a shudder of horror at the impropriety of a Trader’s daughter going barefoot through the town.

Well, given the rest of her condition, he doubted it would be the first thing anyone noticed.

Not that he intended to troll her through the market as she was; he’d keep to the less-travelled streets and hope they met no one who could recognize them in the darkness.

That much he owed to the memory of Ephron Vestrit.

But as they came to an intersection, she tugged at his arm and tried to turn toward the bright streets of the night market. ‘I’m hungry,’ she announced, and she sounded both surprised and annoyed, as if it were his fault.

‘Too bad. I’m broke,’ he lied succinctly and tried to draw her away.

She stared at him suspiciously. ‘You drank all your pay that fast? Sa’s ass, man, I knew you were a sot in port, but I didn’t think even you could go through coin that fast.’

‘I spent it on whores,’ he embellished irritably.