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CONSEQUENCES AND REFLECTIONS

‘A ND IF I WISHED to dispute these documents?’ Althea asked slowly. She tried to make her voice impartially calm, but inside she was quivering with both anger and hurt.

Curtil scratched reluctantly at what was left of his greying hair.

‘That is specifically provided for. Anyone who disputes this last testament is automatically excluded from benefiting from it.’ He shook his head, almost apologetically.

‘It’s a standard thing,’ he told her gently.

‘It’s not as if your father was thinking specifically of you when we wrote it. ’

She looked up from her tangled hands and met his eyes firmly. ‘And you believe this is actually what he wished? That Kyle take over Vivacia, and I be dependent on my sister’s charity?’

‘Well, I doubt that is how he envisioned it,’ Curtil said judiciously.

He took a sip of his tea. Althea wondered if that were a delaying tactic, to give him time to think.

The old man straightened in his chair as if he’d decided something.

‘But I do believe he knew his own mind. No one deceived him or coerced him. I would never have been a party to that. Your father wished to see your sister as his sole heir. He did not desire to punish you, but rather to safeguard his entire family.’

‘Well, in both of those desires he failed,’ Althea said harshly.

Then she lowered her face into her hands, ashamed to have spoken so of her father.

Curtil let her be. When she lifted her face some time later, she observed, ‘You must think me a carrion bird. Yesterday my father died, and today I come quarrelling for a share of what was his.’

Curtil offered her his handkerchief and she took it gratefully.

‘No. No, I don’t think that. When the mainstay of one’s world is taken away, it’s only natural to cling to all the rest, to try desperately to keep things as close to the way they were as one can.

’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘But no one can ever go back to yesterday.’

‘No. I suppose not.’ She sighed heavily. She considered her last pathetic straw of hope. ‘Trader Curtil. By Bingtown law, if a man swears an oath to Sa, cannot he be held to that oath as a legal contract?’

Curtil’s long brow furrowed. ‘Well. It depends. If in a fit of anger, in a tavern, I say that by Sa, I’m going to kill so-and-so, well, that’s not a legal action in the first place, so…’

Althea stopped mincing words. ‘If Kyle Haven swore before witnesses that if I could produce proof that I was a worthy seaman, he would give Vivacia back to me, if he swore that in Sa’s name, could it be enforced?’

‘Well, technically, the ship is your sister’s property, not his—’

‘She has ceded control of it over to him,’ Althea said impatiently. ‘Is such an oath legally binding?’

Curtil shrugged. ‘You’d end up before the Traders’ Council, but, yes, I think you’d win. They’re conservative, the old customs count for much with them. An oath sworn before Sa would have to be legally honoured. You have witnesses to this, at least two?’

Althea leaned back in her chair with a sigh. ‘One, perhaps, who would speak up for the truth of what I say. The other two… I no longer know any more what I could expect of my mother and sister.’

Curtil shook his head. ‘Family disputes such as these are such messy things. I counsel you not to pursue this, Althea. It can only lead to even worse rifts.’

‘I do not believe that it can get any worse,’ she observed grimly, before bidding him farewell.

She was her father’s daughter. She had gone immediately to Curtil in his offices.

The old man had not seemed at all surprised to see her.

As soon as she was shown into his chambers, he rose and took down several rolled documents.

One after another, he set them before her, and made plain to her just how untenable her position was.

She had to give her mother credit for thoroughness; the whole thing was lashed down like storm-weather cargo.

Legally, she had nothing. Legally, she was dependent entirely on her sister’s goodwill.

Legally. She did not intend that her reality would have anything to do with that kind of legality.

She would not live off Keffria’s charity, especially not if it meant she would have to dance to Kyle’s tunes.

No. Let them go on thinking her father had died and left her nothing.

They’d be wrong. All he had taught her, all her knowledge of the sailing trade and her observations of his trading were still hers.

If she could not make her own way on that, then she deserved to starve.

Stoutly she told herself that when the first Vestrit came to Bingtown, he probably knew little more than that, and he had made his own way.

She should be able to do as much for herself.

No. More than that. She’d get the proof that she was all she said she was, and she’d hold Kyle to his oath.

Wintrow, she was sure, would support her.

It was his only way out from under his father’s thumb.

But would her mother or Keffria? Althea considered.

She did not think they would willingly do so.

On the other hand, she did not think they would speak before the Traders’ Council and lie.

Her resolve firmed itself. One way or another, she’d stand up to Kyle and claim what was rightfully hers.

The docks were busy. Althea picked her way down to where Vivacia was tied, side-stepping men with barrows, freight wagons drawn by sweating horses, chandlers making deliveries of supplies to outbound ships and merchants hastening to inspect their incoming shipments before taking delivery.

Once the hustle of the midday business on the docks would have excited her.

Now it weighed her spirits. Abruptly she felt excluded from these lives, set apart and invisible.

When she walked the docks dressed as befitted a daughter of a Bingtown Trader, no sailor dared to notice her, let alone call out a cheery greeting to her.

It was ironic. She had chosen the simple dark dress and laced sandals that morning as a partial apology to her mother for how badly she had behaved the night before.

She had little expected that it would become her sole fortune as she set off on her own into the world.

But as she walked down the docks, her confidence peeled away from her.

How was she to employ such knowledge to feed herself?

How could she approach any ship’s captain or mate, dressed as she was, and convince him that she was an able-bodied sailor?

While female sailors were not rare in Bingtown, they were not all that common either.

One frequently saw women working the decks of Six Duchies ships when they came to Bingtown.

Many of the Three-Ships’ Immigrants had become fisherfolk, and among them, family ships were worked by the whole family.

So while female sailors were not unknown in Bingtown, she’d be expected to prove herself just as tough or tougher than the men she’d have to work alongside.

But she wouldn’t even be given the chance to try, dressed as she was.

As the rising heat of the day made her uncomfortably aware of the weight and breadth of her dark skirts and modest jacket, she longed more and more for simple canvas trousers and a cotton shirt and vest.

Finally she stood beside Vivacia. She glanced up at the figurehead.

To anyone else, it would have appeared that the ship was dozing in the sun.

Althea did not even need to touch her to know that in actuality, the ship’s senses and thoughts were turned inward, keeping track of her own unloading.

That job was proceeding apace, with longshoremen streaming down her gangplanks burdened with the variety of her cargo like ants fleeing a disturbed nest. They paid scant attention to her; Althea was just another gawker on the docks.

She ventured closer to Vivacia and set a hand to her sun-warmed planking. ‘Hello,’ she said softly.

‘Althea.’ The ship’s voice was a warm contralto.

She opened her eyes and smiled down at Althea.

Vivacia extended a hand towards her, but lightened as she was, she floated too high for their hands to reach.

Althea had to content herself with the sensations she received through the rough planking her hand rested on.

Already her ship had a much greater sense of self.

She could speak to Althea, and still keep awareness of cargo as it was shifted in her holds.

And, Althea realized with a pang, she focused much of her awareness on Wintrow.

The boy was in the chain locker, coiling and stowing lines.

The heat of the tiny enclosed room was oppressive, while the thick ship’s smell all around him made him nauseated.

The distress he felt had spread through the ship as a tension in the planking and a stiffness to the spars.

Here, tied to the dock, that was not so bad, but out in the open sea a ship had to be able to give with the pressures of the water and wind.

‘He’ll be all right,’ Althea told Vivacia comfortingly, despite the jealousy she felt over the ship’s concern. ‘It’s a hard and boring task for a green hand, but he’ll survive it. Try not to think of his discomfort right now.’

‘It’s worse than that,’ the ship confided quietly. ‘He’s all but a prisoner here. He doesn’t want to be aboard, he wants to be a priest. We started out to be such wonderful friends, and now I think they are making him hate me.’