Page 46

A CHANGE OF FORTUNES

T HE CRUNCHING OF SHOD FEET on the sandy rocks brought him to alertness.

Despite his years of blindness, he lifted his head and turned his eyes towards the sound.

Whoever was coming was silent save for the footsteps.

It was not a child: a child walked more lightly and they usually came in groups, to run past him shouting insults at him and dares to one another.

They had used to throw rocks at him, until he learned not to dodge them.

When he endured them stoically, they soon became bored and went off to find small crabs or starfish to torture instead.

Besides, the rocks did not hurt that much, and most of them did not even hit. Most of them.

He kept his arms crossed over his scarred chest, but it took an act of will to do so.

When one fears a blow and cannot know from what quarter it will come, it is hard not to try to guard one’s face, even when all that is left of that face is a mouth and nose and the splintered wreckage that a hatchet had made of his eyes.

The last high tide had nearly reached him.

Sometimes he dreamed of a gigantic storm, one that would come to lift him from the rocks and sand and carry him back out to sea.

Even better would be one that almost lifted him, one that would slam and crash him against the rocks, break him up into planks and beams and oakum and scatter him wherever the waves and winds pushed him.

He wondered if that would bring him oblivion, or if he would live on as a carved chunk of wizardwood, bobbing for ever on the tides.

Sometimes such thoughts could deepen his madness.

Sometimes, as he lay on the beach, listing to starboard, he could feel the screw-worms and barnacles eating into his wood, boring in and chewing deep, but never into his keel nor any of the wizardwood planking.

No. That was the beauty of wizardwood; it was impervious to the assault of the sea.

The beauty and the eternal condemnation.

He knew of only one liveship that had died.

Tinester had perished in a fire that spread swiftly through his cargo holds full of barrels of oil and dry hides, consuming him in a matter of hours.

A matter of hours of the ship screaming and begging for help.

The tide had been out. Even when the blaze holed him and he sank, saltwater pouring onto his internal flames, he could not sink deeply enough to douse the deck fires.

His wizardwood self had burned slowly, with black greasy smoke that poured up from him into the blue sky over the harbour, but he had burned.

Maybe that was the only possible peace for a liveship.

Flames and a slow burning. He wondered that the children had never thought of that.

Why did they fling stones when they could have set fire to his decaying hulk a long time ago? Should he suggest it to them sometime?

The footsteps were closer now. They halted. Feet grinding sand grittily against underlying stone. ‘Hey, Paragon.’ A man’s voice, friendly, reassuring. It took him a moment and then he had it.

‘Brashen. It’s been a time.’

‘Over a year,’ the man admitted easily. ‘Maybe two.’ He came closer, and a moment later Paragon felt a warm human hand brush the point of his elbow. He unfolded his arms and reached down his right hand. He felt Brashen’s small hand attempt to grasp his own.

‘A year. A full turning of the seasons. That’s a long time for you people, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The man sighed. ‘It was a lot longer when I was a kid. Now each passing year seems shorter than the one before.’ He paused. ‘So. How have you been?’

Paragon grinned through his beard. ‘Now there’s a question.

Answer it yourself. I’m the same as I have been for the past, what, thirty of your years?

At least that many, I think. Passing time has little meaning for me.

’ It was his turn to pause. Then he asked, ‘So. What brings you out to see an old derelict like me?’

The man had the grace to sound embarrassed. ‘The usual. I need a place to sleep. A safe place.’

‘And you’ve never heard that just about the worst luck that can be found will be found aboard a ship like me.’ It was an old conversation between them. But they had not had it in a while, and so Paragon found it comforting to lead Brashen once more through its measures.

Brashen gave a bark of laughter. He gave a final squeeze to Paragon’s hand before releasing it.

‘You know me, old ship. I’ve already got about the worst luck that anyone could hunt up.

I doubt that I’ll find worse aboard you.

And at least I can sleep sound, knowing I’ve a friend watching over me. Permission to come aboard?’

‘Come aboard and welcome. But watch your step. Bound to be a bit more rot than the last time you sheltered here.’

He heard Brashen circle him, heard his leap and then a moment later felt the man hauling himself up and over the old railing.

Strange, so strange to feel a man walk his decks after such a long time.

Not that Brashen strode them easily. Hauled out as he was on the sand, Paragon’s decks sloped precipitously.

Brashen more clambered than walked as he crossed the deck to the forecastle door.

‘No more rot than the last time I was here,’ the man observed aloud, almost cheerily.

‘And there was damned little then. It’s almost weird how sound you are after all the weathering you must take. ’

‘Weird,’ Paragon agreed, and tried not to sound glum about it. ‘No one’s been aboard since the last time you were here, so I fancy you’ll find all within as you left it. Save for a bit more damp.’

He could hear and feel the man moving about inside the forecastle, and then into the captain’s quarters. His raised voice reached Paragon’s ears. ‘Hey! My hammock is still here. Still sound, too. I’d forgotten all about it. You remember, the one I made last time I was here.’

‘Yes. I remember,’ he called back. Paragon smiled a rare smile of remembered pleasure.

Brashen had kindled a small fire on the sand, and drunkenly instructed the ship in the ways of weaving.

His hands, so much larger than a man’s, had proven a challenge to Brashen as he tried to teach the blind ship the necessary knots by touch alone.

‘Didn’t no one ever teach you anything before?

’ Brashen had demanded with drunken indignance as Paragon had fumbled his way through the simple motions.

‘No. No one. At least, nothing like this. When I was young, I saw it done, but no one ever offered me a chance to try it for myself,’ Paragon had answered.

He wondered how many times since then he had dragged out the memory to pass the long night hours, how many times he had held his empty hands up before him and woven imaginary lines into the simple webbing of a hammock.

It was one way to keep the deeper madness at bay.

Within the captain’s quarters, he knew Brashen had kicked his shoes off.

They slid down into a corner, the same corner that everything slid into.

But the hammock was secured to hooks that Brashen had mounted, and so it hung level as the man grunted and clambered his way into it.

Paragon could feel it give with his weight, but the hooks held.

It was as Brashen had said: surprisingly little new rot.

As if Brashen could sense how hungry the ship was for companionship, he roused himself enough to call, ‘I’m really tired, Paragon.

Let me sleep a few hours and then I’ll tell you all my adventures since the last time I saw you. My misadventures, too.’

‘I can wait. Get some sleep,’ the ship told him affably. He wasn’t sure if Brashen heard him or not. It didn’t matter.

He felt the man shift in the hammock and then settle more comfortably.

After that there was almost silence. The ship could sense his breathing.

It was not much for company, but it was more than Paragon had had for many a month.

He folded his arms more comfortably across his bare chest, and focused on the sound of Brashen breathing.

Kennit faced Sorcor across the white linen cloth on the captain’s table.

The mate wore a new shirt of red-and-white striped silk, and garish earrings: mermaids with tiny pearls in their navels and green glass eyes.

Sorcor’s scarred face looked painfully scrubbed above his beard and his hair was sleeked back from his brow with an oil that was probably supposed to be aromatic.

To Kennit, the scent suggested both fish and musk.

But he let nothing of that opinion show on his face.

Sorcor was ill at ease enough. Formality always strained the man.

Formality plus the captain’s disapproval would probably paralyse his mind entirely.

The Marietta creaked softly against the dock.

Kennit had closed the cabin’s small window against the stench of Diwytown, but the noise of night revelry still penetrated in a distant cacophony.

There was no crew aboard save for the ship’s boy to wait the table and a single man on watch on deck.

‘That will do,’ Kennit told the boy abruptly.

‘Be careful cleaning those. That’s pewter, not tin. ’

The boy left the cabin with his tray of dishes, shutting the door firmly but respectfully behind himself.

For a few moments, there was almost silence within the snug chamber as Kennit deliberately considered the man who was not only his right hand on the deck, but his sounding line for the crew’s temper.