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On the deck were the bloody silhouettes of fallen bodies.

The blood marred the well-scrubbed decks.

A shame. Captain Trell had run a tight ship; Paragon was as clean as Kennit had ever seen him.

Igrot had run a strict ship, but had not been much for spit and polish.

When Kennit’s father commanded, the ship had been as cluttered as his home.

Kennit walked to the door of the captain’s chamber and paused there.

A strange fluttering seized his heart. For a mercy, the charm on his wrist was silent.

He walked another turn about the decks. The men below the hatches were quieting.

That was good. His three deckhands returned, each bearing a cask of oil.

‘Splash it about, lads, rigging and house and deck. Then get back to our own decks.’ He looked at them gravely, making sure that each knew the seriousness of his words.

‘I’ll be the last man to leave this ship.

Do your work and get off him. Cast him loose save for a stern line, and then I want everyone on our ship to go below as well.

Understand me? Everyone. I’ve a final errand of my own. ’

Ducking and bobbing their obedience, they left him.

Kennit stood clear and let them perform their duty.

When the last empty cask was rolling on the deck, he motioned for them to leave.

Finally alone, he made his way forwards through the buffeting wind and stood on the deck looking down on Paragon’s bowed head.

If the ship looked up at him, if he had had to meet eyes that were angry or defiant or sad or overjoyed to see him, he could not have spoken.

But, foolish thought, that! Paragon could not look up at him with any sort of eyes.

Igrot had seen to that years ago. Kennit had wielded the hatchet, standing on Paragon’s great hands to reach his ship’s face.

Together, they had endured that, because Igrot had promised them both that if they did not, Kennit would die.

Igrot had stood on this deck, where Kennit stood now, and watched and laughed while Kennit did the dirty task.

Paragon had already killed two good hands that Igrot had sent to blind him.

But he would not hurt the boy, oh, no. He would stand the pain, and even hold the boy close enough to reach his face so he could do the job, as long as Igrot promised not to kill Kennit.

And as Kennit had looked deep into his dark eyes one final time and then ruined them with the rising and falling of his hatchet, he had known that no one should love anyone or anything that deeply.

No one should have a heart that true. He had known then that never, never, never would he love anyone or anything as Paragon loved him.

He had promised it to himself, and then he had lifted the shining hatchet and chopped into the dark eyes so full of love for him.

Beneath them he found nothing, not blood, not flesh, only silvery grey wood that splintered easily away under his small hatchet.

Wizardwood, he had been told, was among the hardest woods a ship could be built from, but he chopped it away like cottonwood, falling in chips and chunks into the deep cold sea beneath his bare feet.

Little cold feet, so callused against his warm palm.

The double strength of the mutually relived memory seared him.

Kennit could recall vision falling from him in pieces, not at all as a man would have lost his sight.

Rather it was like someone cut away pieces of a picture before his eyes, leaving him in blackness.

He trembled suddenly and vertigo took him.

When he came back to himself, he was clutching the forerail.

A mistake. He had not intended to touch any part of the ship with his bare hands, yet here he was.

Linked again. Bound by blood and memories.

‘Paragon.’ He said the name quietly.

The ship flinched, but did not lift his head. A long silence wrapped them. Then: ‘Kennit. Kennit, my boy.’ His deep gentle voice was choked. Incredulous recognition overwhelmed all other emotions. ‘I was so angry with you,’ the ship apologized in wonder. ‘How could I ever be angry with you?’

Kennit cleared his throat. It was a little time before he could speak.

‘I never thought to stand here again, nor speak to you once more.’ Love was rising from the ship like a flood tide, threatening to engulf him.

Kennit fought to hold himself apart from Paragon.

He forced out the rebuke. ‘This is not what we planned, ship. This is not what we agreed upon at all.’

‘I know.’ Paragon spoke into his hands, cupped over his face. Shame swept through him and touched Kennit as well. ‘I know. I tried. I did try.’

‘What happened?’ Despite himself, Kennit spoke gently.

He did not really want to know. Paragon’s rich deep voice reminded him of thick treacle over morning cakes, of warm summer days running on his decks barefoot while his mother begged his father to make the boy be more cautious.

Memories, all those memories had soaked into the wood of this ship and were bleeding up into him.

‘I went down to the bottom and stayed there. I did. Or I tried. No matter how much water I let in, I could not sink all the way. But I stayed under and I stayed hidden. Fish and crabs came. They picked clean the bones. I felt purified. All was silent and cold and wet.

‘But then serpents came. They talked to me. I knew I could not understand them, but they insisted I did. They tormented me, asking me questions, demanding things of me. They wanted memories, they begged for memories, but I kept my word to you. I kept our secrets. It made them angry. They cursed me, and they taunted me and mocked me and…I had to, don’t you see?

I knew I had to be dead and forgotten by all but they would not let me be dead and forgotten.

They kept making me remember. I had to get away from them.

And…then somehow I was in Bingtown again, and they righted me and I feared they would sail me but they dragged me up on shore and chained me there.

So I could not be dead. But I did my best to forget. And to be forgotten.’

The ship drew a ragged breath.

‘Yet you are here,’ Kennit pointed out. ‘And not only here, but carrying folk who would kill me. Why, ship? Why did you betray me like that?’ True agony choked him. ‘Why do you make us both face this all over again?’

Paragon reached up to seize handfuls of his hair and drag at it.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he cried. The penitent boy’s voice came oddly from those bearded lips.

‘I did not mean to. They did not come to kill you. They only wanted Althea’s ship back.

They were going to offer to buy Vivacia back from you.

I knew they did not have enough coin for that, but at one point I hoped that when you saw me, clean and well-rigged and riding level in the water, you would want me back.

That perhaps you would take me in trade.

’ The voice was rising to an edge of anger now.

Paragon’s first shock at his presence was wearing off.

‘I thought a Ludluck might want his rightful liveship instead of one he had stolen! I had heard from the lips of a pirate that you had said you had always wanted a liveship like her. But you’d had one. Me.

‘Remember that night? The night you said that you had to kill yourself because you could not go on with such memories? And it was I who thought of it, I who said I would take all the memories, the pain memories, the bad memories, even the good memories of times that could never come again, and I would take them and die so that you could live and be free of them. I thought of how we could end them all. I took them all with me, everyone who knew what had been done to you. Remember? I purified your life for you, so you could go on living. And you said you would never love another ship as you had loved me, that you would never want to love another ship as we had loved. Don’t you remember that? ’

The abandoned memory burned up from Kennit’s clutching hands to his shaking soul and settled there. Every detail, every emotion came with it. He had forgotten how painful true remembering was.

‘You promised,’ Paragon went on in a shaking voice. ‘You promised and you broke that promise, just as I broke mine. So we are even.’

Even. A boy’s concept. But the soul of Paragon had always been a boy’s soul, abandoned and forsaken.

Perhaps only another boy could have won his love as Kennit had.

Perhaps only a boy who had been as abused and neglected as Paragon could have stood by Kennit’s side through the long days of Igrot’s reign.

But Paragon had remained a boy, with a boy’s logic, while Kennit had grown to be a man.

A man could face hard truths, and know that life was seldom even or fair.

And another hard truth: the shortest distance between a man and his goal was often a lie.

‘You think I love her?’ Kennit was incredulous.

‘How could I? Paragon, she is not blood of my blood. What could we share? Memories? I cannot. I have already entrusted them all to you. You hold my heart, ship, as you always have. I love you, Paragon. Only you. Ship, I am you, and you are me. Everything I am, or was, is locked within you. Safe and secret still … unless you have divulged it to others?’ Kennit asked the question cautiously.

‘Never,’ the ship declared devoutly.

‘Well. That is good. For now. But we both know there is only one way they can be truly safe forever. Only one way to keep our secrets hidden.’