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He shook his head. ‘No, Etta. I have no beliefs, either way.

I am simply saying that you should not lock your dreams onto a child or a man.

Who loves you or who you love is not as significant as who you are.

Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.

‘I am not Sa. I lack his almighty wisdom. But I think you are more likely to find Etta’s destiny in Etta, rather than hoping Kennit will impregnate you with it.’

Anger writhed over her face. Then she sat still, anger still glinting in her eyes, but with it a careful consideration of his words.

Finally, she observed gruffly, ‘It’s hard to take offence at your saying that I might be important for myself.

’ Her eyes met his squarely. ‘I might consider it a compliment. Except that it’s hard to believe you are sincere, when you obviously don’t believe the same is true of yourself. ’

She continued into his stunned silence, ‘You haven’t lost your belief in Sa.

You’ve lost your belief in yourself. You speak to me of measuring myself by my significance to Kennit.

But you do the same. You evaluate your purpose in terms of Vivacia or Kennit.

Pick up your own life, Wintrow, and be responsible for it.

Then, perhaps, you may be significant to them. ’

Like a key turning in a rusty lock. That was the sensation inside him.

Or perhaps like a wound that bleeds anew past a closed crust, he thought wryly.

He sifted her words, searching for a flaw in her logic, for a trick in her wording.

There was none. She was right. Somehow, sometime, he had abdicated responsibility for his life.

His hard-won meditations, the fruit of another lifetime of studying and Berandol’s guidance, had become platitudes he mouthed without applying them to himself.

He suddenly recalled a callow boy telling his tutor that he dreaded the sea voyage home, because he would have to be among common men rather than thoughtful acolytes like himself.

What had he said to Berandol? ‘Good enough men, but not like us.’ Then, he had despised the sort of life where simply getting from day to day prevented a man from ever taking stock of himself.

Berandol had hinted to him then that a time out in the world might change his image of folk who laboured every day for their bread.

Had it? Or had it changed his image of acolytes who spent so much time in self-examination that they never truly experienced life?

He had been plunged into the world of ships and sailing against his will.

He had never truly embraced it, or accepted all it might offer him.

He looked back now, and saw a pattern of resistance in all he had done.

He had set his will against his father, battled Torg simply to survive, and resisted the ship’s efforts to bond with him.

He had allied with the slaves, but kept his guard up against them as soon as they became freed men.

When Kennit came aboard, he had resolved to maintain his claim upon Vivacia despite the pirate’s efforts to win her.

And all the while he had simmered in self-pity.

He had longed for his monastery and promised himself that at the first opportunity he would become that Wintrow again.

Even after he had resolved to accept the life Sa had given him and find purpose in it, even then he had held back.

Layer upon layer of self-deceit, he now saw, layer upon layer of resistance to Sa’s will. He had not embraced his own destiny. He had grudgingly accepted it, taking only what was forced upon him and welcomed only what he found acceptable, rather than encompassing all in his priesthood.

Something. Something there, an idea, an illumination trembling at the edge of his mind. A revelation waiting to unfold. He let the focus of his eyes soften, and his breathing eased into a deeper, slower rhythm.

Etta set aside her sewing. She gathered the game pieces and returned them to their box. ‘I think we have finished with games for a time,’ she said quietly.

He nodded. His thoughts claimed him, and he scarcely noticed when she left the room.

She Who Remembers recognized him. The two-legs Wintrow stood on the ship’s deck and looked down at the serpents who gambolled alongside in the moonlight.

She was surprised he had lived. When she had nudged him aboard the ship, she had intended only that he die among his own kind.

So he had survived. When he set his hands on the ship’s railing, She Who Remembers sensed Bolt’s reaction.

It was not a physical shaking, but a trembling of her being.

A faint scent of fear tinged the water. Bolt feared this two-legs?

Mystified, the serpent drew closer. Bolt had begun as a dragon; that much She Who Remembers recognized.

But no matter how vigorously Bolt might deny it, she was no longer a dragon nor was she a serpent.

She was a hybrid, her human sensibilities blending with her dragon essence, and all encompassed in her ship form.

She Who Remembers dived beneath the water, and aligned herself with the ship’s silvery keel.

Here she could feel most strongly the dragon’s presence.

Almost immediately she sensed that the ship did not wish her to be there but She Who Remembers felt no compunction about remaining.

Her duty was to the tangle of serpents she had awakened.

If the ship was a danger to them, she would discover it.

She was only mildly surprised when Maulkin the Gold joined her there.

He did not bother to hide his intentions.

‘I will know more,’ he told her. A slight lifting of his ruff indicated the ship they paced.

‘She tells us to be patient, that she is here to protect us and guide us home. She seems to know much of what has happened in the years since dragons filled the skies, but I sense that she withholds as much as she tells us. All my memories tell me that we should have entered the river in spring. Winter snaps at us now, and still she counsels us to wait. Why?’

She admired his forthrightness. He did not care that the ship knew his reservations about trusting her.

She Who Remembers preferred to be more subtle.

‘We must wait and discover that. For now, she has the alliance of the two-legs. She claims that when the time is right, she will use them to help us. But why, then, does she tremble at the very presence of this one?’

The ship gave no sign that she was aware of their submerged conversation.

She Who Remembers tasted a subtle change in the water that flowed past. Anger, now, as well as fear.

Deprived of the proper shape of her body, her frustrated flesh still attempted to manufacture the venoms of her emotions.

She Who Remembers worked her poison sacs.

There was little there to draw on; it took time for her body to replenish itself.

Still, she gaped her jaws wide, taking in Bolt’s faint venom, and then replied with her own.

She adjusted herself to the ship, to be better able to perceive her.

Above them, the two-legs gripped the ship’s railing. In essence, he laid hands on the dragon’s own body. She Who Remembers felt the ship’s shiver of reaction, and the complete transfer of her attention.

‘Good evening, Vivacia.’ The sound of Wintrow’s voice was muted by water and distance, but his touch on the railing amplified the sense of his words.

It carried through the ship’s bones to She Who Remembers.

I know you said his touch. In the naming of the name that Bolt disdained, he claimed a part of her.

And justly so, She Who Remembers decided, despite the ship’s resistance to him.

‘Go away, Wintrow.’

‘I could, but it would do no good. Do you know what I’ve been doing, Vivacia? I’ve been meditating. Reaching into myself. Do you know what I discovered?’

‘Your beating heart?’ With callous cruelty, the ship touched him. She Who Remembers felt the clench of the boy’s hands tighten as his heart skipped in its rhythm.

‘Don’t,’ he begged her convulsively. ‘Please,’ he added.

Reluctantly, the ship let him be. Wintrow clung to the railing.

When his breathing steadied, he said quietly, ‘You know what I found when I looked within myself. I found you. Twined through me, flesh and soul. Ship, we are one, and we cannot deceive one another. I know you, and you know me. Neither of us are what we have claimed to be.’

‘I can kill you,’ the ship snarled at him.

‘I know. But that would not rid you of me; if you kill me, I still remain a part of you. I believe you know that also. You seek to drive me away, ship, but I do not think I could go so far that the bond would be severed. It would only make both of us miserable.’

‘I am willing to take that chance.’

‘I am not,’ Wintrow replied mildly. ‘I propose another solution. Let us accept what we have become, and admit all parts of ourselves. If you will stop denying the humanity in you, I will accept the serpent and the dragon in myself. In our self,’ he amended thoughtfully.

Silence passed with the purling water. Something slowly built inside the ship, like venom welling in a serpent’s spiked mane. But when she spoke, she spilled bitterness like an abscess breaking. ‘A fine time to offer this, Wintrow Vestrit. A fine time.’

She struck him down like a dragon flicking away an annoying gorecrow. The two-legs fell flat to her deck. Drops of his blood leaked from his nostrils and dripped onto her planking. Though the ship roared defiantly, her planking soaked up the red stuff and took him into herself.