Page 64

TRANSITIONS

B RASHEN AWOKE WITH GRITTY EYES and a crick in his neck.

Morning sunlight had penetrated the thick panes of the bay windows that glassed one end of the chamber.

It was a thick, murky light, greenish with the dried algae that coated the outside of the windows, but light nonetheless.

Enough to alert him that it was daylight and time he was up and about.

He swung out of the hammock to his feet.

Guilty. He was guilty of something. Spending all his pay when he had sworn that this time he would be wiser.

Yes, but that was a familiar guilt. This was something else, something that bit with sharper teeth.

Oh. Althea. The girl had been here last night, begging his advice, or he had dreamed her.

And he had given her his bitterest counsels with not a word of hope or an offer of help from him.

He tried to shrug the concern away. After all, what did he owe the girl?

Nothing. Not a thing. They hadn’t even really been friends.

Too big of a gap in status for that. He had just been the mate on her father’s ship, and she had been the daughter of the captain.

No room for a friendship there. And as for the old man, well, yes, Ephron Vestrit had done him a good turn when no one else would, had let him prove himself when no one else would.

But the old man was dead now, so that was that.

Besides. Bitter as the advice had been, it was solid.

If Brashen could have gone back in time, he would never have quarrelled with his father.

He’d have gone to the endless schooling, behaved correctly at the social functions, eschewed drunkenness and cindin, married whoever was chosen for him.

And he’d be the heir now to the Trell fortune instead of his little brother.

The thought reminded him that as he was not heir to the Trell fortune and as he had spent the rest of his money last night save for a few odd coins, he had best be worrying more about himself and less about Althea.

The girl would have to take care of herself.

She’d have to go home. That’s all there was to it.

What was the worst that would happen to her, really?

They’d marry her off to a suitable man. She’d live in a comfortable home with servants and well prepared food, wear clothing tailored especially for her and go to the endless round of balls and teas and social functions that seemed so essential to Bingtown society and the Traders especially.

He snorted softly to himself. He should hope for such a cruel fate to befall him.

He scratched at his chest and then his beard.

He ran both hands through his hair to smooth it back from his face.

Time to find work. He’d best clean himself up and head down to the docks.

‘Good morning,’ he greeted Paragon as he rounded the bow of the ship.

The figurehead looked permanently uncomfortable, fastened to the front of the heavily-leaning ship.

Brashen suddenly wondered if it made his back ache, but didn’t have the courage to ask.

Paragon had his thickly-muscled arms crossed over his bare chest as he faced out over the glinting water to where other ships came and went from the harbour.

He didn’t even turn toward Brashen. ‘Afternoon,’ Paragon corrected him.

‘So it is,’ Brashen agreed. ‘And more than time I got myself down to the docks. Have to look for a new job, you know.’

‘I don’t think she went home,’ Paragon replied. ‘I think that if she went home, she would have gone her old way, up the cliffs and through the woods. Instead, after she said goodbye, I heard her walking away over the beach toward town.’

‘Althea, you mean?’ Brashen asked. He tried to sound unconcerned.

Blind Paragon nodded. ‘She was up at first light.’ The words almost sounded like a reproach. ‘I had just heard the morning birds begin to call when she stirred and came out. Not that she slept much last night.’

‘Well. She had a lot to think about. She may have gone into town this morning, but I’ll wager she goes home before the week is out. After all, where else does she have to go?’

‘Only here, I suppose,’ the ship replied. ‘So. You will seek work today.’

‘If I want to eat, I have to work,’ Brashen agreed. ‘So I’m down to the docks. I think I’ll try the fishing fleet or the slaughter-boats instead of the merchants. I’ve heard a man can rise rapidly aboard one of the whale or dolphin boats. And they hire easy, too. Or so I’ve heard.’

‘Mostly because so many of them die,’ Paragon relentlessly observed.

‘That’s what I heard, back when I was in a position to hear such gossip.

That they’re too long at sea and load their ships too heavy, and hire more crew than they need to work the ship because they don’t expect all of them to survive the voyage. ’

‘I’ve heard such things, too,’ Brashen reluctantly admitted.

He squatted down on his haunches, then sat in the sand beside the beached ship.

‘But what other choice do I have? I should have listened to Captain Vestrit, all those years. I’d have had some money saved up by now if I had.

’ He gave a sound that was not a laugh. ‘I wish someone had told me, all those years ago, that I should just swallow my stupid pride and go home.’

Paragon searched deep in his memory. ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,’ he declared, and then smiled, almost pleased with himself. ‘There’s a thought I haven’t recalled for a long time.’

‘And true as ever it was,’ Brashen said disgruntledly. ‘So I’d best take myself down to the harbour and get myself a job on one of these stinking kill-boats. More butchery than sailor’s work is what I’ve heard of them as well.’

‘And dirty work it is, too,’ Paragon agreed.

‘On an honest merchant vessel, a man gets dirty with tar on his hands, or soaked with cold seawater, it’s true.

But on a slaughter-ship, it’s blood and offal and oil.

Cut your finger and lose a hand to infection.

If you don’t die. And on those that take the meat as well, you’ll spend half your sleeping time packing the flesh in tubs of salt.

On the greedy ships the sailors end up sleeping right alongside the stinking cargo. ’

‘You’re so encouraging,’ Brashen said bleakly. ‘But what choice do I have? None at all.’

Paragon laughed oddly. ‘How can you say that? You have the choice that eludes me, the choice that all men take for granted so that they cannot even see they have it.’

‘What choice is that?’ Brashen asked uneasily. A wild note had come into the ship’s voice, a reckless tone like that of a boy who fantasizes wildly.

‘Stop.’ Paragon spoke the word with breathless desire. ‘Just stop.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Stop being. You are such a fragile thing. Skin thinner than canvas, bones finer than any yard. Inside you are wet as the sea, and as salt, and it all waits to spill from you any time your skin is opened. It is so easy for you to stop being. Open your skin and let your salt blood flow out, let the sea creatures take away your flesh bite by bite, until you are a handful of green slimed bones held together with lines of nibbled sinew. And you won’t know or feel or think anything any more. You will have stopped. Stopped.’

‘I don’t want to stop,’ Brashen said in a low voice. ‘Not like that. No man wants to stop like that.’

‘No man?’ Paragon laughed again, the sound breaking and going high. ‘Oh, I have known a few that did want to stop. I have known a few that did stop. And it ended the same, whether they wanted to or not.’

‘One appears to have a small flaw.’

‘I am sure you are mistaken,’ Althea replied icily. ‘They are well matched and deep hued and of the finest quality. The setting is gold.’ She met the jeweller’s gaze squarely. ‘My father never gave me a gift that was less than the finest quality.’

The jeweller moved his palm and the two small earrings rolled aimlessly in his hand. In her ear lobes, they had looked subtle and sophisticated. In his palm, they merely looked small and simple. ‘Seventeen,’ he offered.

‘I need twenty-three.’ She tried to conceal her relief. She had decided she would not take less than fifteen before she came into the shop. Still, she would wring every coin she could out of the man. Parting with them was not easy, and she had few other resources.

He shook his head. ‘Nineteen. I could go as high as nineteen, but no more than that.’

‘I could take nineteen,’ Althea began, watching his face carefully. When she saw his eyes brighten she added, ‘if you would include two simple gold hoops to replace these.’

A half hour of bargaining later, she left his shop.

Two simple silver hoops had replaced the earrings her father had given her on her thirteenth birthday.

She tried not to think of them as anything other than a possession she had sold.

She still had the memory of her father giving them to her.

She did not need the actual jewellery. They would only have been two more things to worry about.

It was odd, the things one took for granted.

Easy enough to buy heavy cotton fabric. But then she had to get needle, thread and palm as well.

And shears for cutting the fabric. She resolved to make herself a small canvas bag as well to keep these implements in.

If she followed her plan to its end, they would be the first possessions she had bought for her new life.