Page 49

Perhaps the fine wine had gone to Sorcor’s head faster than a lesser vintage would have.

Or perhaps Kennit had unwittingly found the man’s one nerve.

His deep voice was deadly soft as he pointed out, ‘You only think so because you’ve never been chained hand and foot in a stinking hold when you’re scarcely more than a lad.

You’ve never had your head gripped in a vice to still you while a tattooist jabs your new master’s mark into your face.

’ The man’s eyes glittered, turned inward towards a darkness only his sight could pierce.

He drew a slow breath. ‘And then they put me to work in a tanner’s pit, curing hides.

They cared nothing for what it did to my own hide.

I saw older men there coughing blood from their lungs.

No one cared, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I was one of them.

One night I killed two men and got away.

But where was I to go? North where it’s all ice and snow and barbarians?

Back south to where my tattoo would mark me as an escaped slave, easy money for anyone who wanted to club me down and return me to my owner?

Or should I make for the Cursed Shores, and live like an animal until some demon drained my blood?

No. The only thing left to a man like me was the Pirate Isles and a pirate’s life.

But it’s not what I would have chosen, Kennit, given the chance to choose.

There’s damned few here would have chosen this.

’ His voice wandered off as did his eyes.

He stared past Kennit into the dim corner of the room, seeing nothing for a time.

Then his gaze snapped suddenly back to Kennit’s.

‘For every liveship we chase, we run down a slaver. That’s all I’m asking.

I give you a shot at your dream, you allow me one at mine.

‘Fair enough,’ Kennit declared brusquely. He knew when the final bargain had been set out on a table. ‘Fair enough then. For every liveship, a slaver.’

A coldness welled up in Wintrow. It had filled his belly first and now it flowed out through him.

He literally shook with it. He hated how it made his voice waver, as if he were a child on the brink of crying when all he was trying to do was present his case rationally and calmly, as he had been trained.

As he had been taught in his beloved monastery.

The memory of the cool stone halls where peace flowed with the wind rose up unbidden.

He tried to take strength from it. Instead it only unmanned him more.

He was not there, he was here, in the family’s dining hall.

The low table of golden oak polished until it shone, the cushioned benches and lounges that surrounded the table, the panelled walls and the paintings of ships and ancestors all reminded him that he was here, in Bingtown.

He cleared his throat and tried to steady his voice as he looked from his mother to his father to his grandmother.

They were all seated at the same table, but they were grouped at one end of it, like a panel about to pass judgement on him. As perhaps they were. He took a breath.

‘When you sent me off to be a priest, it was not my choice.’ Again he looked from face to face, trying to find some memory in them of that devastating day.

‘We stood in this very room. I clung to you, Mother, and promised I’d be good for ever, if only you wouldn’t send me away.

But you told me I had to go. You told me that I was a first-born son, dedicated to Sa from the moment that I drew breath.

You said you couldn’t break your promise to Sa, and you gave me over to the wandering priest to take me to the monastery at Kall.

Don’t you remember at all? You stood there, Father, over by that window, on a day so bright that when I looked at you, all I could see was a black shadow against the sunlight.

You said not a word that day. Grandmother, you told me to be brave, and gave me a little bundle with a few cakes from the kitchen to keep me on my way. ’

Again he looked from face to face, seeking some discomfort with what they were doing to him, some trace of guilt that would indicate they knew they were wronging him.

His mother was the only one to show any signs of uneasiness.

He kept trying to catch her eye, to make her speak her thoughts, but her gaze slid away from him to his father.

The man looked as if he were carved of stone.

‘I did what you told me to do,’ he said simply.

The words sounded weak, whiny. ‘I left here and went off with a stranger. The way to the monastery was hard, and when I got there, everything was foreign. But I stayed and I tried. And after a time, it came to be my home, and I realized how correct your decision for me had been.’ Memories of his first taste of priestly life were bittersweet; the strangeness and then the Tightness of it all washed over him yet again.

Tears pricked at his eyes as he said, ‘I love serving Sa. I have learned so much, grown so much, in ways I cannot even express to you. And I know that I’m only at the beginning, that it is all just starting to unfold for me.

It’s like…’ He fumbled for a metaphor. ‘When I was younger, it was as if life was a beautiful gift, wrapped in exquisite paper and adorned with ribbons. And I loved it, even though all I knew of it was the outside of the package. But in the last year or so, I’ve finally started to see there is something even better, inside the package.

I’m learning to see past the fancy wrappings, to the heart of things.

I’m right on the edge. I can’t stop now. ’

‘It was wrong,’ his father conceded suddenly.

But even as Wintrow’s heart started to soar with relief, the sea-captain went on.

‘All those years ago, I knew it was wrong to send you away. I stood there and I kept my mouth shut and I let your mother have her way, because it seemed so important to her. And small as Selden was, he was a brave little fellow, and I knew I’d have a son to follow after me. ’

He rose from his seat at the table and crossed the room, to stare out the window as he had on that morning years ago.

Kyle Haven shook his head at himself. ‘But I should have followed my instincts. I knew it was a bad decision, and so it has proved. The time has come when I, when this family, needs a young son to rise up and take his place on the family ship, and we are not prepared. Selden is still too young. Two years from now, even one perhaps, and I’d take him as a ship’s boy.

’ He turned back to face the room. ‘We brought this on ourselves, all of us. And so all of us will have to endure, without complaining, the pain of correcting that mistake. It means that you women will have to manage on your own here for yet another year. Somehow our creditors must be made to wait, and you must do whatever it takes to wring a profit out of our holdings. Those that cannot be made profitable must be sold to shore up those that can. It means another year of sailing for me, and a hard year, for we will have to sail fast and traffic in that which is most profitable. And for you, Wintrow, it means a single year in which I must teach you all you should have learned in the last three, a single year for you to learn the ways of a man and a sailor.’ He paced the room as he spoke, ticking off orders and goals on his fingers.

Wintrow suddenly knew that this was how he spoke to his mate on board ship, lining out tasks to be done.

This was Captain Haven, accustomed to unquestioning obedience and he was sure to be astonished by what was about to happen.

Wintrow stood, pushing his chair back carefully.

‘I am going back to the monastery. I have little to pack, and all I can do here I have done. I shall be leaving today.’ He looked around the table.

‘I promised Vivacia when I left her this morning that someone would come down to spend the rest of the day with her. I suggest you wake Althea and ask her to go.’

His father’s face reddened with instant rage. ‘Sit down and stop talking nonsense,’ he barked. ‘You’ll do as you’re told. That’ll be your first lesson to learn.’

Wintrow thought the beating of his heart was making his whole body shake.

Was he afraid of his own father? Yes. It took all the defiance he could muster to remain standing.

He had nothing left to speak with. Yet even as he met his father’s glare and did not look away, even as he stood still and silent as the furious man advanced on him, a cool and particular part of himself observed, ‘yes, but it’s only physical fear of physical things’.

The notion caught up his whole mind in its web, so he paid no attention to his mother crying out and then shrieking, ‘Oh, Kyle, no, please, please don’t, just talk to him, persuade him, don’t, oh, please don’t!

’ and his grandmother’s voice raised in command, a fierce shout of, ‘This is my home and you will not…’

Then the fist hit the side of his face, making a tremendous crack as it impacted.

So fast and so slowly he went down, amazed or ashamed that he had neither lifted a hand to defend himself nor fled, and all the time somewhere a philosophical priest was saying, ‘physical fear, ah, I see, but is there another kind, and what would have to be done to me to make me feel it?’ Then the flagstone floor struck him, hard and cool despite the dawning heat of the day.

Losing consciousness felt like he was sinking down into the floor, becoming one with it as he had with the ship, save that the floor thought only of darkness. So did Wintrow.