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‘I wish we didn’t. You know, I like this town and I like these people.

In spite of every reason that I shouldn’t, I do.

I wish we could just be here, on our own like this.

I wish this were our real life. Almost, I feel like I belong here.

I’ll bet Bingtown was like this, a hundred years ago.

The rawness, the energy, the acceptance of folk for who they are; it draws me like a candle draws a moth.

Sa forgive me, Brashen, but I wish I could kick over every responsibility to my name and just be a pirate. ’

He looked at her in astonished silence. Then he grinned. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ he cautioned her.

It was a strange afternoon. The role she played felt more natural than reality.

They bought oil for the ship’s lanterns and arranged to have it sent down to the dock.

At another merchant’s, Althea selected herbs and potents to restock Paragon’s medicine chest. Impulsively, Brashen tugged her inside a dry goods store and bought her a brightly coloured scarf.

She bound her hair back with it, and he added hoop earrings embellished with jade and garnet beads.

‘You have to look the part,’ he muttered in her ear as he fastened the catch of a necklace.

In the clouded mirror the shopkeeper offered, she caught a glimpse of a different Althea, a side of herself she had never permitted into the daylight.

Behind her, Brashen bent to kiss the side of her neck.

When he glanced up, their eyes met in the mirror.

Time rocked around her, and she saw the wild, runaway Bingtown boy and the wilful virago that had scandalized her mother.

A likely pair; piracy and adventure had always been their destiny.

Her heart beat faster. Her only regret for this moment was that it was a sham.

She leaned back against him to admire the glittering necklace on her throat.

They watched themselves in the mirror as she turned her head and kissed him.

At each place they went, one or the other would turn the conversation to Kennit or his liveship.

They gathered nuggets of information about him, both useful and trivial.

Like legends; each teller added personal embellishments to their stories of Kennit.

His boy-priest had cut off his mangled leg, and Kennit had endured it without making a sound.

No, he had laughed aloud in the face of his pain, and bedded his woman scarce an hour later.

No, it was the boy’s doing: the pirate-king’s prophet had prayed and Sa himself had simply healed Kennit’s stump.

He was beloved of Sa; all knew that. When evil men had tried to rape Kennit’s woman, right here in Divvytown, the god had protected her until Kennit appeared to slay a dozen men single-handedly and carry her off from her imprisonment.

Etta had lived in a whorehouse, but kept herself only for Kennit.

It was a love story to make the most hardened cutthroat weep.

In late afternoon, they stopped to buy fish chowder and fresh baked bread.

There they first heard how the boy-priest had stood his ground between Kennit and most of Divvytown, and prophesied that Kennit would someday be their king.

Those who had doubted the boy’s words had fallen to his flashing blade.

Althea’s astonishment must have flattered the fish vendor, for he told the tale thrice more, with more details each time.

At the last telling, the man added, ‘And well the poor lad knew about slavery, for his own father had made him a slave, yes and tattooed his own ship’s likeness onto the boy’s face.

I’ve heard it said that when Kennit freed the liveship and the boy, he won both their hearts at once. ’

Althea found herself speechless. Wintrow? Kyle had done that to Wintrow, his own son, her nephew?

Brashen choked slightly on his chowder, but managed to ask, ‘And what fate did Kennit mete out to so cruel a father?’

The man shrugged callously. ‘What he deserved, no doubt. Over the side to the serpents with the rest. So he does with the full crew of every slaver he takes.’ He raised an eyebrow at Brashen. ‘I thought everyone knew that.’

‘But not the boy?’ Althea asked softly.

‘The boy weren’t crew. I told you. He was a slave on the ship.’

‘Ah.’ She looked at Brashen. ‘That would make sense.’ The ship turning on Kyle and accepting Kennit made sense now. The pirate had rescued and protected Wintrow. Of course, the ship would be loyal to Kennit now.

So. Where did that leave her? For one treacherous instant, she wondered if she were free.

If Vivacia were happy with Wintrow aboard her, if she was content with Kennit and her life of piracy, did Althea have the right to ‘rescue’ her from it?

Could she just go home now and tell her mother and sister that she had failed, that she had never found their family ship?

For an instant, she teetered on a wilder decision.

Did she, really, have to go home at all?

Could not she and Brashen and Paragon simply go on as they had begun?

Then she thought of Vivacia, quickening under her hands as she slipped the final peg into the figurehead, the peg her father had filled with his anma as he died.

That was hers. Not Wintrow’s, certainly not Kennit’s.

Vivacia was her ship, in a way no one else could claim.

If the earlier gossip she had heard was true at all, if Bingtown were in some sort of upheaval, then her family needed their liveship more than ever.

Althea would reclaim her. The ship would learn to love her again, Wintrow would be reunited with his family.

She found she blamed Kyle more than Kennit for the deaths of Vivacia’s crewmen.

Loyalty to her family had kept those men aboard Vivacia; Kyle’s betrayal of her father’s ethics had killed them.

She could not mourn Kyle at all; he had caused her and her family too much pain.

The only sympathy she felt was for Keffria.

Better she mourn her husband’s death Althea thought grimly, than to mourn a long life with him.

Time had become a slippery creature that writhed in Paragon’s grip.

Did he rest at anchor in Divvytown’s harbour, or did his outstretched wings send him sliding aloft on an updraught?

Did he wait for young Kennit to return, desperately hoping the boy would be unhurt this time, or did he expect Althea and Brashen to return and lead him to his vengeance?

The placid motion of the lagoon water, the dwindling patter of the evening rain, the smells and sounds of Divvytown, the guarded quiet of his crew all plunged him into a state of suspension almost like sleep.

Deep in his hold, in the darkness, where the curve of the bow made a cramped space beneath the deck, was the blood place.

It was too small for a man to stand or even creep, but a small, battered boy could shelter there, rolled in a tight ball while his blood dripped onto Paragon’s wizardwood, and they shared their misery.

There Kennit could brace himself and snatch briefly at sleep, knowing no one could come upon him unaware.

Whenever Igrot began to bellow for him, Paragon would wake him.

Quick as a rabbit, he would pop out of his hiding place and present himself, choosing to leave his sanctuary and face Igrot rather than risk the searching crew discovering his refuge.

Sometimes Kennit slept there. He would press his small hands against the great wizardwood beams that ran the length of the ship, and Paragon would watch over him while sharing his dreams.

And his nightmares.

During those times, Paragon had discovered his unique ability.

He could take away the pain and the nightmares and even the bad memories.

Not completely, of course. To take all the memory away would have left the boy a fool.

But he could absorb the pain just as he absorbed the blood from his beatings.

He could dim the agony and soften the edges of Kennit’s recall.

All that he could do for the boy. It demanded that he keep for himself all he took away from Kennit.

The sharp humiliation and indignity, the stabbing pain and stunned bewilderment and the scorching hatred all became Paragon’s, to keep hidden forever deep inside him.

To Kennit he left only his icy cold resolve that he would escape, that he would leave it all behind and that someday his own exploits would forever blot from the memory of the world all trace of Igrot.

Someday, Kennit resolved, he would restore all that Igrot had broken and destroyed.

He would make it as if the evil old pirate had never been.

No one would even recall his name. Everything Igrot had ever dirtied would be hidden away or silenced.

Even Kennit’s family liveship.

That was how it was supposed to have been.

The admission disturbed ancient pain, shifting it like unsecured cargo pounding him during a storm.

The depth of his failure overwhelmed him.

He had betrayed his family, he had betrayed the last true-hearted member of his blood.

He had tried to be loyal, he had tried to stay dead, but then the serpents had come, prodding and nosing at him, speaking to him without words, confusing him as to who he was and where his loyalties should lie.

They had frightened him, and in his fear he had forgotten his promises, forgotten his duty, forgotten everything except his need for his family to comfort and reassure him.

He had gone home. Slowly, through the seasons, he had drifted, following friendly currents, until he had returned, a derelict, to the shores of Bingtown.