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He reached the door and looked out. Althea had slowed.

She clung to the wall, stumbling doggedly on.

Her dark hair hung in a lank curtain about her face.

She was dressed in Wintrow’s clothing, soiled now with spilled food and vomit.

She must have awakened, dressed, and then huddled there, waiting for him.

Quite a plan, for as much poppy as he had given her.

He almost admired her. He’d have to increase the dosage.

The silhouette of a crewman appeared in the doorway at the end of the hall. Kennit raised his voice in a command. ‘Detain her. Bring her back to her room. She is not well. She attacked me.’

The figure took two steps into the darkened companionway, and Kennit suddenly saw his error.

The crewman was Wintrow. ‘Aunt Althea?’ he asked incredulously.

He offered her a steadying arm, but she disdained him.

He doubted that she recognized Wintrow. Instead, she lifted her arm to point a shaking hand at Kennit.

‘He raped me!’ She flung back her head to peer at the lad through her draggled hair.

‘And my ship is locked down deep in the dark. I’m drugged.

I’m sick. Help me. Help her.’ Her words ran down with her strength.

She sagged against the wall and slid down it while Wintrow stood transfixed in horror.

Her head swayed like a poisoned cat’s. To Kennit’s dismay, another crewman had arrived.

Then, worst of all, he heard Etta’s voice behind him.

‘What did that bitch say?’ she demanded furiously.

Kennit turned quickly to face her. ‘She’s ill. She makes no sense. She attacked me.’ He shook his head. ‘The loss of her companions seems to have driven her mad.’

Etta’s eyes went very wide. ‘Kennit, you’re bleeding!’ she exclaimed in horror.

He lifted a hand to his brow and his fingers came away scarlet.

He had struck his head harder than he thought.

‘It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.’ He composed himself and spoke in a voice of both command and concern.

‘Wintrow. Be cautious but gentle with her. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.

Watching Paragon burn has turned her mind. ’

‘I’m sane enough, you raping, murdering bastard!’ Althea snarled. Her words ran together. She thrashed about, trying to stand.

‘Aunt Althea!’ Wintrow was shocked. Kennit could see the horror in the boy’s face. He crouched down and helped the woman to stand. ‘You need to rest,’ he offered her sympathetically. ‘You’ve had quite a shock.’

She held onto his shoulders and looked across at Wintrow as if he were an insect.

He stared back at her in consternation. But for their expressions, they looked very alike.

It reminded Kennit of the old depictions of Sa, male and female face to face on the ancient coins.

Then Althea turned her look of disgust on Kennit.

He saw her decide, and he was ready for her shambling charge.

He thought he could avoid her dazed attack, but he did not have to try.

With a furious screech, Etta sprang out in front of him.

The whore was larger than Althea, physically alert and more experienced in fighting.

She knocked the Bingtown woman down effortlessly and then straddled her, pinioning her.

Althea gave a full-throated roar of fury and struggled, but Etta held her easily.

‘Shut up!’ the whore shrieked at her. ‘Shut your lying mouth! I don’t know why Kennit bothered saving your useless life. Shut up or I’ll break your teeth.’

Kennit stared in horrified fascination. He had seen women fight before; in Divvytown, it was so common a sight as to be unremarkable, but he had always considered it a tawdry spectacle. Somehow, this humiliated him. ‘Etta. Get up. Wintrow. Put Althea back in her room,’ he commanded.

Althea gasped her words from beneath Etta’s weight. ‘I’m a stupid bitch? He raped me. Here, on my own family ship! And you, a woman, defend him?’ She rolled her head and stared up wildly at Wintrow. ‘He’s buried our ship! How can you look at him and not know what he is? How can you be so stupid?’

‘Shut up! Shut up!’ Etta’s voice slid up the scale, cracking on hysteria. She slapped Althea, an open-handed blow that rang in the confined companionway.

‘Etta! Stop that, I said!’ Kennit cried in horror.

He seized the whore’s upraised hand by the wrist and tried to drag her off Althea.

Instead, Etta only struck her with her other hand, and then, to Kennit’s complete mystification, burst into tears.

Kennit lifted his eyes to find half a dozen sailors crowding the end of the hall, staring in open-mouthed wonder at the spectacle.

‘Separate them,’ he snapped. Finally, several men moved forwards to do his bidding.

Wintrow took Etta by the arm and pulled her from Althea.

For a wonder, she did not fight him, but allowed him to hold her back.

‘Put Etta in my chamber until she calms herself,’ he directed Wintrow.

‘You others, put Althea back in her room and fasten the lock. I will deal with her later.’

Althea’s brief struggle with Etta had consumed her resistance. Her eyes were open, but her head lolled on her neck as two men dragged her to her feet. ‘I’ll … kill… you,’ she promised him gaspingly as they hauled her past him. She meant it.

He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his brow.

The blood on the cloth was darker; the cut was clotting.

He probably looked a sight. The prospect of confronting Etta did not appeal to him, but it could not be avoided.

He would not walk about with blood dribbling down his face and spattered food on his clothing.

He drew himself up straight. As the crewmen returned from locking Althea up, he managed a wry smile for them.

He shook his head conspiratorially. ‘Women. They simply do not belong aboard a ship.’ One crewman returned him a grin, but the others looked uneasy.

That was not good. Was Etta that great a favourite with the crew?

He’d have to do something about that. He’d have to do something about this whole situation.

How had it become so untidy? He straightened his rumpled jacket and brushed food from the sleeve.

‘Captain Kennit, sir?’

He looked up in annoyance at yet another rattled deckhand. ‘What is it now?’ he snapped.

The man licked his lips. ‘It’s the ship, sir. The figurehead. She says she wants to see you, sir.’ The sailor swallowed, and then went on, ‘She said, “Tell him right now. Now!” No disrespect intended, sir, but that was how she spoke, sir.’

‘Did she?’ Kennit managed to keep his voice coolly amused. ‘Well, you may tell her, with no disrespect intended, that the captain has another matter to tend to, but that he will be with her presently. At his earliest convenience.’

‘Sir!’ The man fumbled for a way to begin a desperate protest. Kennit speared him with a cold gaze. ‘Yes, sir,’ he conceded. His step dragged as he departed.

Kennit did not envy him his errand, but he could scarcely let the ship see him like this, let alone have a common seaman see him dash to obey the ship’s summons. He lifted a hand to smooth his moustache. ‘Slow. Calm. Steady. Take control of it again,’ he counselled himself.

But a tiny voice spoke from his wrist in mocking counterpoint.

‘Swiftly. Messily. It all falls to pieces. In the end, dear sir, you will not even have control of yourself. No more than Igrot did when he met his fate at your hands. For when you became the beast, little Kennit, you doomed yourself to share the beast’s end. ’

‘Etta. Etta, please,’ Wintrow begged her, helplessly torn.

He should be seeing to Althea. She had appeared both sick and deranged, but how could he leave Etta like this?

She paid no attention. She wept on, sobbing into the pillows as if she could not stop.

He had never seen anyone weep this way. There was a terrible violence to her gasping sobs, as if her body sought to purge herself of sorrow, but the misery went too deep for tears to assuage.

‘Etta, please, Etta,’ he tried again. She did not even seem to hear him.

Timidly, he patted her on the back. He had dim memories of his mother patting his little sister so, when Malta was so immersed in a tantrum that she could not calm herself.

‘There, there,’ he said comfortingly. ‘It’s all over now.

It’s all over.’ He moved his hand in a small, comforting circle.

She took a deep breath. ‘It’s all over,’ she confirmed, and broke into fresh mourning. It was so unlike Etta that it was like trying to comfort a stranger. Her behaviour was as incomprehensible as Althea’s.

The scene with Althea had been horrible; something was deeply wrong with his aunt, and he had to speak with her, regardless of what Kennit commanded.

Her wild accusations of rape and strange talk of a buried ship stirred deep fears for her sanity.

He should never have let Kennit prevent him from seeing her.

The isolation had not rested her, but had left her alone with her grief. How could he have been so stupid?

But Etta wept on, and he could not leave her. Why had Althea’s crazed words affected Etta like this? Then the answer came to him: She was pregnant. Women always behaved strangely when they were pregnant. He felt almost giddy with relief. He put his arm around her and spoke by her ear.

‘It’s all right, Etta. Just cry it out. These emotional storms are to be expected, in your condition.’