Ship of Magic

Page 301

“I suppose I wasn't,” he admitted humbly. “I'll listen now, if you want me to. ”

“Now is too late,” she said sharply. Then she amended it to, “I don't want to tell you about it now. Perhaps I want to puzzle it out for myself. Maybe it's time I did that for myself, instead of always having a Vestrit do it for me. ”

It was his turn to feel abandoned and shut out. “But . . . what shall I do?”

She turned to look back at him, and there was almost kindness in her green eyes. “A slave would ask such a question and wait to be told. A priest would know the answer for himself. ” She almost smiled. “Or have you forgotten who you are without me?” She asked the question, but desired no answer. She turned her back on him. Head up, she stared at the horizon. She had shut him out.

After a time, he heaved himself to his feet. He found the bucket Mild had brought earlier and lowered it over the side. The rope jerked hard against his grip as it filled. It was heavy as he dragged it up. He picked up the rag he had used earlier. She did not watch him go as he left her, taking his bucket and rag below into the slave holds.

I don't know if I can do this, she thought in despair. I don't know how to be myself without help. What if I go mad? She looked past the islands and rocks that dotted the wide channel, ahead to the horizon. She spread out her senses, tasting both wind and water. She became immediately aware of serpents. Not just the fat white one that trundled along in her wake like a fat dog on a leash, but others that shadowed her at a distance. Resolutely she shut them out of her thoughts. She wished she could do the same for the misery of the slaves within her and the confusion of her crew. But the humans were too close to her, they touched her wizardwood in too many places. Despite herself, she was aware of Wintrow as he went from slave to slave, wiping faces and hands with his cool wet rag, offering what small comforts he could. Both priest and Vestrit, she thought to herself. She felt oddly proud of the boy, as if he were hers somehow. But he was not. With each passing moment of this separateness, she realized more the truth of that. Humans and their emotions filled her, but they were not herself. She tried to accept them and encapsulate them and find herself as someone separate from them. Either she could not, or there was not much to herself.

After a time, she lifted her head and set her jaw. If I am no more than a ship, then I shall be a proud ship. She located the rush of the channel's current and edged herself into it. In tiny movements that were scarcely perceptible even to herself, she aligned her planking, trimming herself. Gantry was on the wheel now and she sensed his sudden pleasure in how well she ran before the wind. She could trust him. She closed her eyes to the rush of air past her face and tried to let the dreams come. What do I want of my life? she asked them.

“You lied to my captain. ” The Ophelia had a husky, courtesan's voice, sweet as dark honey. “Boy,” she added belatedly. She gave Althea a sideways glance. Ophelia, like many figureheads of her day, had been arrayed upon the beakhead of the ship, rather than positioned below the bowsprit. The glance she gave Althea over her bare and ample shoulder was an arch warning against lying.

Althea didn't dare reply. She was sitting cross-legged on a small catwalk that had been built, she'd been told, solely that Ophelia might socialize more easily. Althea shook the large dice box in her hands. It was oversized, as were the dice within it. They were the property of the Ophelia. Upon discovering that there was an “extra” hand aboard the ship, she had immediately demanded that Althea would spend part of her watches amusing her. Ophelia was very fond of games of chance, but mostly, Althea suspected, because they gave her plenty of time to gossip. She also suspected that the ship routinely cheated, but this was something she had decided to over-look. Ophelia herself kept tally sticks of what each crew member owed her. Some of the sticks bore the notches of years. Althea's stick already bore a generous number of notches. She opened the box, looked within, and frowned at it. “Three gulls, two fish,” she announced, and tilted the box for the figurehead's inspection. “You win again. ”

“So I do,” Ophelia agreed. She smiled crookedly at Althea. “Shall we up the stakes this time?”

“I already owe you more than I have,” Althea pointed out.

“Exactly. So, unless we change our wager, I have no chance of being paid. How about this: Let's play for your little secret. ”

“Why bother? I think you already know it. ” Althea prayed it was no more than her sex. If that was all Ophelia knew and all she could reveal, then she was still relatively safe. Violence aboard a liveship was not unheard of, but it was rare. The emotions that radiated from violence were too unsettling to the ship. Most of the ships themselves disdained violence, although it was rumored that the Shaw had a mean streak, and had once even called for the flogging of an incompetent hand who'd spilled paint on him. But the Ophelia, for all her blowzy airs, was a lady, and a kind-hearted one as well. Althea doubted she would be raped aboard such a ship, though the rough courtship of a sailor attempting to be gallant could be almost as fierce and bruising. Consider Brashen, for instance, she thought to herself, and then she wished she hadn't. Lately he popped into her mind at unguarded moments. She probably should have hunted him down in Candletown and bid him good-bye. That was all she was missing, putting a final close to things. Above all, she should never have let him have the last word.