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Amber nodded slowly, more to herself than to the girl.

‘So it seemed to me, also. And yet it was not you at all that I went seeking.’ She toyed with her earrings, setting first the dragon and then the serpent to swinging.

‘I went to the docks looking for a nine-fingered slave boy, if you can credit that.’ She smiled oddly.

‘You were what found me instead. There is coincidence, and there is fate. I am more than willing to argue with coincidence. But the few times I have argued with fate, I have lost. Badly.’ She shook her head, setting all four of her mismatched earrings to swaying.

Her eyes seemed to look inward, recalling other times.

Then she looked up and met Althea’s curious gaze, and once more her smile softened her face.

‘But that is not true for all folk. Some folk are meant to argue with fate. And win.’

Althea could think of no reply to that, so held her silence.

After a moment, the woman moved to one of her shelves, and took down a basket.

At least, at first glance it had appeared to be a basket.

As she approached, Althea could see that it had been wrought from a single piece of wood, all excess carved away to leave a lattice of woven strands.

Amber shook it as she came nearer, and the contents clicked and rattled pleasantly against one another.

‘Choose one,’ she invited Althea, extending the basket to her. ‘I’d like to make you a gift.’

Within the basket were beads. One glimpse of them, and Althea’s impulse to haughtily refuse the largesse died.

Something in the variety of colour and shape caught the eyes and demanded to be touched.

Once touched, they pleased the hand. Such a variety of colour and grain and texture.

They were all large beads, as big around as Althea’s thumb.

Each appeared to be unique. Some were simple abstract designs, others were animals, or flowers.

Leaves, birds, a loaf of bread, fish, a tortoise…

Althea found she had accepted the basket and was sifting through the contents while Amber watched her with strangely avid eyes.

A spider, a twining worm, a ship, a wolf, a berry, an eye, a pudgy baby.

Every bead in the basket was desirable, and Althea suddenly understood the charm of the woman’s wares.

They were gems of wood and creativity. Another artisan could surely carve as well, wood as fine could be bought, but never before had Althea seen such craft applied to such wood with such precision.

The leaping dolphin bead could only have been a dolphin: there was no berry, no cat, no apple hiding in that bit of wood.

Only the dolphin had been there, and only Amber could have found it and brought it out of concealment.

Althea could not choose, and yet she kept looking through the beads.

Searching for the one that was most perfect.

‘Why do you want to give me a gift?’ she asked suddenly.

Her quick glance caught Amber’s pride in her handiwork.

She gloried in Althea’s absorption in her beads.

The woman’s sallow cheeks were almost warm, her golden eyes glowing like a cat’s before a fire.

When she spoke the warmth rode her words as well. ‘I would like to make you my friend.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I can see that you go through life athwart it. You see the flow of events, you are able to tell how you could most easily fit yourself into it. But you dare to oppose it. And why? Simply because you look at it and say, “this fate does not suit me. I will not allow it to befall me.”’ Amber shook her head, but her small smile made it an affirmation.

‘I have always admired people who can do that. So few do. Many, of course, will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You… you would rather go naked into the storm.’ Again the smile, fading as quickly as it blossomed.

‘I cannot abide that you should do that. So I offer you a bead to wear.’

‘You sound like a fortune teller,’ Althea complained, and then her finger touched something in the bottom of the basket.

She knew the bead was hers before she gripped it between thumb and forefinger and brought it to the top of the hoard.

Yet when she lifted it, she could not say why she had chosen it.

An egg. A simple wooden egg, pierced to be worn on a string on her wrist or neck.

It was a warm brown, a wood Althea did not know, and the grain of the wood ran around it rather than from end to end.

It was plain compared to the other treasures in the basket, and yet it fit perfectly in the hollow of her hand when she closed her fingers about it.

It was pleasant to hold, as a kitten is pleasant to stroke.

‘Might I have this one?’ she asked softly and held her breath.

‘The egg.’ Amber’s smile came and stayed. ‘The serpent’s egg. Yes, you might have that. You might indeed.’

‘Are you sure you wish nothing in return?’ Althea asked baldly. She knew it was an awkward question, but something about Amber cautioned her that it was wiser to ask her a rude question than to blunder about with the wrong assumption.

‘In return,’ Amber answered smoothly. ‘I only ask that you allow me to help you.’

‘Allow you to help me what?’

Amber smiled. ‘Thwart fate,’ she replied.

Wintrow scooped a double handful of lukewarm water from the bucket and splashed and rubbed it over his face.

With a sigh, he lowered his hands back into the bucket and allowed the water to soothe them for a moment.

Broken blisters, his father had assured him, were the beginning of callous.

‘We’ll have those priest’s hands toughened up in a week.

You’ll see,’ his father had jovially promised him the last time he had seen fit to notice his son’s existence. Wintrow had been unable to reply.

He could not remember when he had ever been so tired before.

His training told him that the deepest rhythms of his body were being broken.

Instead of rising at dawn and seeking his bed when darkness closed over the land, his father and the first and second mates were forcing him into a new regimen, based on watches and bells.

There was no need for their cruelty. The ship was still tied firmly to the dock, but nevertheless they persisted.

What they were insisting he learn was not that difficult, if only they would let his body and mind completely rest between lessons.

Instead they woke him at hours that made no sense to him, and had him clambering up and down masts and tying knots and sewing canvas and scrubbing and scouring.

And always, always, with a scant smile at the corners of their lips, with an edge of mockery to every command.

He was convinced he could have dealt well with anything they threw at him, if only he had not had to face that ever-present scorn.

He pulled his aching hands from the bucket and gently dried them on a bit of rag.

He looked around the chain locker that had become his home. A hammock of coarse twine was draped across one corner. His clothing shared pegs with coils of line. Every bit of rope was now precisely and neatly stowed. The broken blisters on Wintrow’s hands were testament to his repeated lessons.

He took down his cleanest shirt and eased into it.

He thought about changing his trousers and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

He’d washed put his other pair last night, but in the close confines of the storage room, they were still damp and were beginning to acquire a mildewy smell.

He sank down onto his haunches; there was no comfortable place to sit.

He put his aching head in his hands and waited for the bang on the door that would summon him to the captain’s table.

Since he had tried simply to walk off the ship yesterday, Torg had taken to locking him in his quarters during the time allotted for him to sleep.

Incredibly, he dozed off as he crouched there, jerking back to wakefulness when the door was snatched open. ‘Cap’n wants you,’ Torg greeted him. As he strode off, the apish man added, ‘though why anyone would want you is a puzzle to me.’

Wintrow ignored the gibe and the screaming of his joints to rise and follow the man. As he walked, he tried to work his shoulders loose. It felt good to be able to stand completely upright again. Torg glanced back at him. ‘Hurry up, you! No one has time to put up with your dawdling.’

It was more his body than his mind that responded, making an effort to put spring in his step.

Although Torg had threatened him several times with a knotted rope, he’d never used it.

And the fact that he only threatened him when neither his father nor the first mate were on board made Wintrow suspect it was something Torg would have liked to do but dared not.

Still, just the sensing of that capacity in the man was enough to make Wintrow’s flesh crawl whenever he was about.

Torg saw him right to the captain’s door, as if he could not trust the boy to report himself.

And Wintrow supposed he could not. Even though his father had reminded him repeatedly that Sa’s precepts included obedience and honour due to one’s parents, Wintrow had decided that if any opportunity presented itself at all, he would leave the ship and return however he could to his monastery.

Sometimes he felt that resolve was all he had left to cling to.

Torg watched him as he knocked sharply on the door, and then entered to his father’s curt, ‘Come ahead.’