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CONVER GENCE

‘I T’S FINISHED. I’ LL have to bore a hole through your ear. Will you mind?’

‘After everything else you’ve done, I shan’t even notice. May I touch it first?’

Amber put the large earring into Paragon’s open hand. ‘Here. You know, you could just open your eyes and look. You needn’t do everything by touch any more.’

‘Not yet,’ Paragon told her. He wished she would not speak of that.

He could not explain to her just why he could not open his eyes yet.

He would know when the time was right. He weighted the earring in his hand and smiled, savouring the newness of the facial sensation.

‘It’s like a net carved of wood links. With a lump trapped in the middle. ’

‘Your description is so flattering,’ Amber observed wryly. ‘It’s to be a silver net with a blue gemstone caught in it. It matches an earring I wear. I’m on the railing. Hold me so I can reach your earlobe.’

When he offered her his palm as a platform, she climbed on without hesitation.

He held her to his ear, and did not wince as she set a drill to his earlobe.

The reconstruction of his face had not been painful as humans understood pain.

Amber leaned against his cheek as she worked, bracing herself against the impacts as he breasted each wave.

The bit passing through his earlobe tingled strangely.

Wizardwood chips fell in a fine shower that she caught in a canvas apron.

He ingested them at the end of each day. None of his memories had been lost.

He no longer hid from his memories. Mother spent part of each day on the foredeck with his log books.

On wet days, she sheltered herself and her books under a flap of canvas.

He could not understand the gabbling of her truncated tongue, but that did not matter.

She sat on his deck and leaned against his railing as she read.

Through her, the ancient memories came trickling back to him.

Recorded in those books were the sparse observations of his captains through the years.

It did not matter. The notations were touchstones for memories of his own.

The tool passed completely through his lobe.

Amber drew it back, and after a moment of fumbling, hung the earring from his ear.

She fastened a catch at the back of his earlobe.

Then she stood clear as he accepted the wood back to himself.

He gave an experimental tug on it, then shook his head to accustom himself to the dangling weight. ‘I like it. Did I get it right?’

‘Oh, so do I.’ Amber sighed with satisfaction.

‘And you got it exactly right. It went from grey to rosy, and now it shines so brilliantly silver that I can barely look at it. The gemstone winks out from among the links and flashes blue and silver, just like the sea on a sunny day. I wish you would look at it.’

‘In time.’

‘Well, you’re complete, save for final touch-ups. I’ll take my time on the finish work.’

She ran her bared hands over his face again.

It was an odd gesture, partly affectionate and partly a search for small flaws in her carving.

Immediately after they left Key Island, Amber had come to the foredeck.

She clattered down her carrier of tools.

Then, without more ado, she had roped herself to the railing and climbed over the side.

She had measured his face, marking it with charcoal and humming as she did so.

Mother had come to the railing, gabbling questioningly.

‘I’m repairing his eyes. And changing his face, at his own request. There’s a sketch there, under the mallet. Take a look, if you like.’ Amber had spidered across his chest as she spoke. She favoured the scalded side of her body. He spread his hands protectively beneath her.

When Mother returned to the railing, she made approving sounds.

Since then, she had watched most of the work.

It took dedication, for Amber had worked nearly day and night on him.

She had begun with saw and chisel, removing great slabs of his face, not just his beard, but from his brow and even his nose.

Then she attacked his chest and upper arms, ‘To keep you proportional,’ she had explained.

His groping hands had found only the rough suggestion of features.

That swiftly changed, for she worked on him with a fervour such as Paragon had never known.

Neither rain nor wind deterred her. When daylight failed her, she hung lanterns and worked on, more by touch than sight he thought.

Once, when Brashen cautioned her against keeping such hours, she had replied that this work was better than sleep for restoring her soul.

Her healing injuries did not slow her. Not only her tools flew over his countenance, but she had a trick of using her fingers as well.

He had never felt a touch like hers. A press of her fingertips could smooth a line while a brushing touch erased a jagged spot.

Even now, as she encountered a rough bit, she dabbed at the grain of his face and it aligned under her tingling touch. ‘You loved him, didn’t you?’

‘Of course I did. Now stop asking about it.’

Sometimes, when she worked on his face, he could feel her affection for the countenance she carved.

His face was beardless now, and youthful.

It was more in keeping with his voice and with whom he felt himself to be, and yet it made him squirmingly curious to know he wore the face of someone Amber loved.

She would not speak of him, but sometimes in the brushing touch of her fingers, he glimpsed the man she saw in her mind.

‘Now I am layer upon layer upon layer,’ he observed as he held her up to the railing. ‘Dragon and dragon, under Paragon Ludluck, under…whoever this is. Will you give me his name, also?’

‘Paragon suits you better than any other name could.’ She asked quietly, ‘Dragon and dragon?’

‘Quite well, thank you, and how are you today?’ He grinned as he said it. His polite nothing conveyed his intent. His dragons were his business, just as the identity of the man whose face he wore was hers.

Brashen had come to the foredeck. Now, as Amber climbed down from the railing, he sternly reminded her, ‘I don’t like you out there without a line on you. At the clip we’re going, by the time we discovered you were gone, it would be too late.’

‘Do you still fear I would let her fall unnoticed, Brashen?’ Paragon asked gravely.

Brashen looked at the ship’s closed eyes.

His boyish brow was unlined, serene as he waited for Brashen’s reply.

After a short but very uncomfortable silence, Brashen found words.

‘A captain’s duty is to worry about all possibilities, ship.

’ He changed the subject, addressing Amber.

‘So. Nice earring. Are you nearly finished then?’

‘I am finished. Save for a bit of smoothing on his face.’ She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘And I may do some ornamentation on his accoutrements.’

Brashen leaned out on the fore-rail. He swept his eyes critically over the whole figurehead.

She had accomplished an amazing amount of work in a very short time.

From her myriad sketches, he surmised she had been planning this since they left Bingtown.

In addition to the earring, the extra bits of wood Amber had carved away to reshape his face had been fashioned into a wide copper bracelet for his wrist and a leather battle harness pegged to his chest. A short-handled battleaxe hung from it.

‘Handsome,’ Brashen observed. In a quieter voice, he asked Amber, ‘Are you going to fix his nose?’

‘There is nothing wrong with his nose,’ Amber asserted warningly.

‘Mm.’ Brashen considered the crooked line of it. ‘Well, I suppose a sailor should have a scar or two to his face. And a broken nose gives him a very determined look. Why the axe?’

‘I had wood to use up,’ Amber replied, almost evasively. ‘It’s only ornamental. He has given it the colours of a real weapon, but it remains wizardwood.’

Mother made an assenting sound. She sat cross-legged on the deck, a logbook open in her lap. She seemed always to be there, mumbling through the words. She read the logbooks as devoutly as some folk read Sa’s Edicts.

‘It completes him,’ Amber agreed with great satisfaction. She drew her discarded gloves back on and began gathering her tools. ‘And I’m suddenly tired.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me. Get some sleep, then come to my quarters. We draw closer to Divvytown with every breath of this wind. I want to discuss strategy.’

Amber smiled wryly. ‘I thought we had agreed we didn’t have any, except go to Divvytown and let the word out that we want to trade Kennit’s mother for Althea.’

Mother’s bright eyes followed the conversation. She nodded assent.

‘And you see no flaws in that plan? Such as, perhaps, the whole town rising against us and taking Mother to gain favour with Kennit?’

Mother shook her head; her gestures indicated she would oppose such an act.

‘Oh, that. Well, the whole plan is so riddled with flaws that one of that magnitude seemed too obvious to mention,’ Amber replied lightly.

Brashen frowned. ‘We gamble for Althea’s life. This isn’t a jest to me, Amber.’

‘Nor to me,’ the carpenter swiftly replied.

‘I know you are worried to the bone and justly so. But for me to dwell on that anxiety with you will not lessen it. Instead, we must focus on our hopes. If we cannot anchor ourselves in a belief that we will succeed, we have already been defeated.’ She stood, hefting her tools to her shoulder, then cocked her head and looked at him sympathetically.

‘I don’t know if it will draw any water with you, Brashen, but there is something I know, right down to my bones.

I will see Althea again. There will come a time when we will all stand together again.

Beyond that moment, I cannot see. But, of that, at least, I am sure. ’