Page 52

‘Now means now!’ Kyle barked in angry triumph. His head swivelled to the door and a gaping serving man there. ‘You! Welf! Stop your gawking and escort my son down to the Vivacia. See that he packs and takes everything he came here with, for he’ll be living on the ship from now on.’

As Welf hastened into the room to take Wintrow’s arm and lead him out of the room, Kyle rounded on Althea. His success at bullying his son seemed to have bolstered his courage, for he challenged her with, ‘Are you wise enough to take a lesson from this, sister?’

Althea kept her voice even and low. ‘I’d be very surprised if we had not all learned something about you today, Kyle. Chiefly that there is very little you won’t do in your ambition to control the Vestrit family.’

‘Control?’ Kyle stared at her incredulously, and then turned to the other two women to see if they were as astonished as he was.

But Ronica met his gaze with a black stare, while Keffria sobbed against her shoulder.

‘Is that what you think this is about? Control?’ He shook his head and gave a brittle laugh.

‘This is about salvage. Damn me, I don’t know why I try.

You all look at me as if I were a criminal, when all I’m trying to do is keep this family afloat.

Keffria! You know what this is about. We’ve talked about this. ’

He turned towards his wife. She finally lifted her tear-stained face to meet his gaze, but there was no understanding in her eyes.

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he asked of them all.

‘Our holdings are losing money every day, we’ve a liveship we’re still paying the money-lenders for, our creditors are threatening to start confiscating our holdings, and you all seem to think we should genteelly ignore it and take tea together.

No, I take that back. Althea seems to think she should hasten our progress toward ruin by keeping the liveship as a toy for herself, while she spends her evenings getting drunk with the local water rats and having a bit of slap and tickle on the side. ’

‘Stop it, Kyle,’ Ronica warned him in a low voice.

‘Stop what? Telling you what you already know but refuse to recognize? Listen to me, all of you, just for a few moments.’ He paused and took a deep breath, as if trying to set aside his anger and frustration.

‘I have my children to think of, Selden and Malta. Just like Ephron, I, too, will die some day. And I don’t intend for them to inherit naught but a mass of debts and a bad name.

Ephron left you no sons to protect you, Ronica, no men to take over the running of the holdings.

So I step up, as a dutiful son-in-law, to do what must be done, however painful.

I’ve given it a lot of thought these last few months, and I believe I can get us back on our feet.

I’ve established a number of contacts in Chalced, ready to deal with us.

It is not really that unusual a plan: we must work the ship, and work her hard, running the most profitable cargoes as swiftly as we can transport them.

In the meanwhile, we must evaluate all our holdings, without sentiment, and keep only those that can actually give us a profit this year.

But even more important, we must not panic our creditors.

If we sell things off wildly, they will think we are going under, and will close in on us, to get a share of what is left before it is gone.

And, quite frankly, if they see Althea out drinking and carousing with lowlifes, as if there is no hope nor pride left in the family, that too will have its effect.

Blacken your name, Althea, and you blacken my daughter’s with yours.

Someday I hope to see Malta make a good marriage.

She will not ever receive the attention of honourable men if you have established yourself as a drunk and a slattern. ’

‘How dare you —’ Althea growled.

‘I dare much, for my children. I’ll see Wintrow hammered into a man, even if he grows up thinking he hates me for it.

I’ll see a sturdy financial basis back under this family, even if I have to work that liveship as you never could to do it.

If you cared for your own kin even half as much as I do, you’d be straightening yourself up and presenting yourself as a lady and trying to make an acceptable marriage to shore up the family fortunes. ’

A cold fury now possessed Althea. ‘So I should whore myself out to the highest bidder, so long as he’ll call me wife and offer a good bride-price?’

‘Better than to the lowest bidder, as you seemed so intent on doing last night,’ Kyle replied as coldly.

Althea drew breath, swelling like an angry cat, but her mother’s cold voice cut across her quarrel with Kyle.

‘Enough.’

It was a single word, quietly spoken. As if she were setting down an armful of bedding, she moved Keffria to a nearby chair and deposited her in it.

Something in the finality of her tone had silenced them all.

Even Keffria’s sobs were stilled. Her small, dark mother seemed even smaller in her dark mourning garments, but when she imposed herself between Althea and Kyle, they both stepped back.

‘I am not going to shout,’ she told them both.

‘Nor am I going to repeat myself. So I suggest you both pay attention, and commit to memory what I am going to tell you. Althea. I address you first, because I have not had the opportunity to truly speak to you since you landed. Kyle, do not even think of interrupting, not even to agree with me. Now.’

She drew a breath and showed an instant of uncertainty.

She approached Althea and took both her unresisting hands in hers.

‘My daughter. I know you feel yourself wronged. You expected to inherit the ship. It was your father’s plan for you.

He is gone, and though it pains me, I will speak plainly of such things.

He always treated you as if you were one of the sons we lost. If your brothers had survived the plague…

but they did not. But, back when the boys were alive, he always said the land would go to his daughters, the ship to his sons.

And although he never said so plainly, after our boys died, I believe that he intended Keffria to inherit the land holdings, and you the ship.

But he also intended to live until he was an old man, to see the debt on the ship and the notes against our holdings paid off, and to see you married to a man who would sail the Vivacia for you.

No. Be quiet!’ she said harshly as Althea opened her mouth to object.

‘It is hard enough to say these things. If I am interrupted, we shall never get this over with,’ she went on in a softer voice.

She lifted her head up straight and met her daughter’s eyes firmly.

‘If you wish to blame someone for your disappointment, blame me. For when I could no longer deny that your father was dying, I sent for Curtil, our old adviser. And between us, we set on paper what I believed best, and I persuaded your father to set his sign to it. I persuaded him, Althea, I did not deceive him. Even your father finally saw the wisdom of what we had to do. If the family fortunes were divided now, none of us would survive. As Keffria is elder with children to provide for, I did as tradition decreed and made her the sole heir.’ Ronica Vestrit looked away from Althea’s shocked stare to her other daughter.

Keffria still sat on the bench, her head on the table, but her weeping was stilled.

Kyle moved to set a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

Althea could not decide if he were comforting her or claiming her.

Her mother spoke on. ‘Keffria knew of her inheritance. She also knows that the document states plainly that she must continue to provide for her sister’s maintenance until such time as Althea makes an appropriate marriage, at which time Althea is to be dowered with a goodly sum.

So Keffria is bound, not only by blood but by written word, to do well by you. ’

Althea’s gaze of dismay had not changed.

‘Althea,’ her mother pleaded. ‘Please try to see it impartially. I have been as fair as I could. If the ship had been left to you, you would have barely enough to operate her. It takes coin to provision a ship and hire a crew and maintain and refit her, and a profitable voyage might still leave you scrambling to make a payment on the note and still have enough money to sail again. And if you did not show a profit, then what? The note on the ship is secured also with the land holdings. There was no way to sensibly divide the inheritance. It must be used together to pull itself out of debt.’

‘So I have nothing,’ Althea said quietly.

‘Althea, your sister would never let you lack —’ her mother began, but Althea shocked her by blurting out, ‘I don’t care.

I don’t care, really, if I am a pauper or not.

Yes, I dreamed that Vivacia would be mine.

Because she is mine, Mother, in a way that I cannot make you understand.

In the same way that Seddon Dib’s carriage-horses pull his carriage, but all know their hearts belong to his stable-boy.

Vivacia’s heart is mine, and I am hers. I look forward to no better marriage than that.

Keep whatever coin she brings in, let all say she belongs to Keffria.

Just let me sail her. That’s all I’m asking, Mother, Keffria.

Just let me sail her and I’ll be no trouble to you, I won’t dispute your will in all else.

’ Her desperate eyes besought first her mother’s face and then the tear-stained visage that Keffria lifted to her. ‘Please,’ she breathed, ‘please.’