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Nor could she go home without appearing to crawl.

And there was no predicting what Kyle would attempt to do if she appeared on the doorstep, even to claim her things.

She wouldn’t put it past him to try and lock her up in her room like a naughty child.

Yet she had a responsibility to Vivacia that didn’t stop even if they had declared the ship no longer belonged to her.

She finally salved her conscience by stopping a message runner.

For a penny, she got a sheet of coarse paper and a charcoal pencil and the promise of delivery before sundown.

She penned a hasty note to her mother, but could find little more to say except that she was concerned for the ship, that Vivacia seemed unhappy and restless.

She asked for nothing for herself, only that her mother would visit Vivacia herself and encourage the ship to speak plainly to her and reveal the source of her unhappiness.

Knowing it would be seen as overly dramatic, she nevertheless reminded her mother of Paragon’s sad fate, saying she hoped her family’s ship would never share it.

Then Althea re-read her missive, frowning at how histrionic it seemed.

She told herself it was the best she could do, and that her mother was the kind of person who would at least go down and see for herself.

She sealed it with a dab of wax and an uneven press from her ring, and sent the lass on her way with it.

That much done, she lifted her head and looked around her.

She had wandered into Rain Wild Street. It had always been a favourite section of town for her father and her.

After they had conducted their business, they almost always found an excuse to stroll down it arm in arm, delighting in calling each other’s attention to new and exotic wares.

The last time they had walked here together, they had spent almost an afternoon in a crystal shop.

The merchant featured a new kind of wind chimes.

The slightest breath stirred them to music, and they played, not randomly, but an elusive and endless tune, too delicate for mortal tongue to hum and lingering oddly in the mind afterward.

He had bought her a little cloth bag full of candied violets and rose petals, and a set of earrings shaped like sailfish.

She had helped him pick out some perfume gems for her mother’s birthday, and had gone with him to the silversmith to have them set in rings.

It had been an extravagant day, of wandering in and out of the odd little shops that showcased the wares of the Rain River folk.

It was said that magic flowed with the waters of the Rain River.

And certainly the wares that the Rain River families sent into town were marvellously tinged with it.

Whatever dark rumours one might hear of those settlers who had chosen to remain in the first settlement on the Rain River, their trade goods reflected only wonder.

From the Verga family came trade goods with the scent of antiquity on them: finely woven tapestries depicting folk not quite human, with eyes of lavender or topaz; bits of jewellery made of a metal whose source was unknown, in wondrously strange designs; lovely pottery vases, both aromatic and graceful.

The Soffrons marketed pearls in deep shades of orange and amethyst and blue, and vessels of cold glass that never warmed and could be used to chill wine or fruit or sweet cream.

From others came kwazi fruit, whose rind yielded an oil that could numb even a serious wound and whose pulp was an intoxicant with an effect that lingered for days.

The toy shops always lured Althea the strongest: there one could find dolls whose liquid eyes and soft warm skin mimicked that of a real infant, and clockwork toys so finely geared they would run for hours, pillows stuffed with herbs that assured wonderful dreams, and marvellously carved smooth stone that glowed with a cool inner light to keep nightmares at bay.

The prices on such things were dear, even in Bingtown, and extravagantly high once the goods had been shipped to other ports.

Even so, price was not the reason why Ephron Vestrit refused to buy such toys, even for the outrageously spoiled grand-daughter Malta.

When Althea had pressed him about it, he had only shaken his head.

‘You cannot touch magic and not carry away some of its taint upon you,’ he had told her darkly.

‘Our forebears judged the price too high, and left the Rain Wilds to settle Bingtown. And we ourselves do not traffic in Rain Wild goods.’ When she had pressed him as to what he meant, he had shaken his head and told her that they would discuss it when she was older.

But even his misgivings had not stopped him from buying the perfume gems that his wife had so longed for.

When she was older.

Well, no matter how much older she got, that was a discussion they would never have.

The bitterness of this broke her out of her pleasant memories and into the dwindling afternoon.

She left the Rain Wild Street, but not without an apprehensive glance at Amber’s shop on the corner.

She almost expected to spy the woman staring out of the window at her.

Instead the window showed only her wares draped artfully on a spread of cloth-of-gold.

The door to the shop stood invitingly open, and folk were coming and going.

So her business prospered. Althea wondered which of the Rain River families she was allied with, and how she had managed it.

Unlike most of the other stores, her street sign did not bear a Trader family insignia.

In a quiet alley, Althea untied her pockets and considered their contents.

It was as she had expected. She could have a room and a meal tonight, or she could eat frugally for several days on what it held.

She thought again of simply going home, but could not bring herself to do it.

At least, not while Kyle might be there.

Later, after he had sailed, if she had not found work and a place to stay by then, then she might be driven to go home and retrieve at least her clothes and personal jewellery.

That much she surely could claim, without loss of pride.

But not while Kyle was there. Absolutely not.

She dumped the coins and notes into her purse and cinched it tight, wishing she could call back the money she had spent so carelessly on drink the night before.

She couldn’t, so best to be careful with what remained.

She hung the pockets back inside her skirts.

She left her alley and found herself walking purposefully down the street.

She needed a place to stay for the night and there was but one that came to mind.

She tried not to think of the many times her father had sternly warned her about his company before he finally outright forbade her to visit him.

It had been months since she had last spoken to him, but when she was a child, before she began sailing with her father, she had spent many summer afternoons in his company.

Although the other children from town had found him both alarming and disgusting, Althea had soon lost her fear of him.

She had felt sorry for him, truth to be told.

He was frightening, true, but the most frightening part about him was what others had done to him.

Once she had grasped that, a tentative friendship had followed.

As the afternoon sun dimmed into a long summer’s evening, Althea left Bingtown proper behind her and began to pick her way down the rock-strewn beach to where Paragon reposed on the sand.