Ship of Magic

Page 49

The door opened onto dimness. Attar of roses had been vanquished by the thick sour odor of the sickroom and the stinging scent of medicines. The windows were closed, the curtains drawn against the day's brightness. Althea moved uncertainly into the room as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Papa?” she asked hesitantly of the still, mounded bed. There was no reply.

She went to a window and pushed back the heavy brocaded curtains to admit the slanting afternoon light. A corner of the light fell on the bed, lighting a fleshless yellow hand resting atop the covers. It reminded her of the gaunt curled talons of a dead bird. She crossed the room to the bedside chair and took what she knew was her mother's post there. Despite her love for her father, she felt a moment's revulsion as she took that limp hand in her own. Muscle and callus had fled that hand. She leaned forward to look into his face. “Papa?” she asked again.

He was already dead. Or so she thought from that first look into his face. Then she heard the rasp of an in-drawn breath. “Althea,” he breathed out in a voice that rattled with mucus. His gummy eyelids pried themselves open. The sharp black glance was gone. These eyes were sunken and bloodshot, the whites yellowed. It took him a moment to find her. He gazed at her and she desperately tried to smooth the horror from her face.

“Papa, I'm home,” she told him with false brightness, as if that could make some difference to him.

His hand twitched feebly in hers, then his eyes slid shut again. “I'm dying,” he told her in despair and anger.

“Oh, Papa, no, you'll get better, you'll . . . ”

“Shut up. ” It was no more than a whisper, but the command came from both her captain and her father. “Only one thing that matters. Get me to Vivacia. Got to die on her decks. Got to. ”

“I know,” she said. The pain that had just started unfolding in her heart was suddenly stilled. There was no time for it, just now. “I'll get things ready. ”

“Right now,” he warned her. His whisper sounded gurgly, drowning. A wave of despair washed over her, but she righted herself.

“I won't fail you,” she promised him. His hand twitched again, and fell free of hers. “I'll go right now. ”

As she stood he choked, then managed to gag out, “Althea!”

She halted where she stood. He strangled for a bit, then gasped in a breath. “Keffria and her children. They're not like you. ” He took another frantic breath. “I had to provide for them. I had to. ” He fought for more breath for speaking, but could not find any.

“Of course you did. You provided well for all of us. . Don't worry about that now. Everything is going to be fine. I promise. ”

She had left the room and was halfway down the hall before she heard what she had said to him. What had she meant by that promise? That she would make sure he died on the liveship he had commanded so long! It was an odd definition of fine. Then, with unshakable certainty, she knew that when her time came to die, if she could die on the Vivacia's decks, everything would be fine for her, too. She rubbed at her face, feeling as if she were just waking up. Her cheeks were wet. She was weeping. No time for that, just now. No time to feel, no time to weep.

As she hurried out the door into the blinding sunlight, she all but ran into a knot of people clustered there. She blinked for a moment, and they suddenly resolved into her mother and Kyle and Keffria and the children. They stared at her in silence. For a moment she returned that stricken gaze. Then, “I'm going down to get the ship ready,” she told them all. “Give me an hour. Then bring Papa down. ”

Kyle frowned darkly and made as if to speak, but before he could her mother nodded and dully said, “Do so. ” Her voice closed down on the words, and Althea watched her struggle to speak through a throat gone tight with grief. “Hurry,” she managed at last, and Althea nodded. She set off on foot down the drive. In the time it took a runner to get to town and send a shimshay back for her, she could be almost to the ship.

“At least send a servant with her!” she heard Kyle exclaim angrily behind her, and more softly her mother replied, “No. Let her go, let her go. There's no time to be concerned about appearances now. I know. Come help me prepare a litter for him. ”

By the time she reached the docks, her dress was drenched in sweat. She cursed the fate that made her a woman doomed to wear such attire. An instant later she was thanking the same Sa she had been rebuking, for a space had opened up on the tax docks, and the Vivacia was being edged into place there. She waited impatiently, and then hiked up her skirts and leaped from the dock to her decks even as the ship was being tied up.