Ship of Magic

Page 56

“Papa,” she whispered again. His back arched, his chest swelling high with his effort to find air. He rolled his head, turning his face to find hers before he suddenly collapsed back to the deck. The long fight was over. The light of life and struggle suddenly left his eyes. His body settled bonelessly against the deck as if he were melting into the wood. His hand fell from the peg. As her sister Keffria stood, Althea collapsed forward. She put her head on her father's chest and wailed shamelessly and hopelessly.

She did not see what Brashen saw. Keffria stood and surrendered the peg to her waiting husband. In disbelief, Brashen watched Kyle accept it. He walked away from them all, carrying the precious peg as if he truly had a right to it. For an instant, Brashen nearly followed him. Then he decided it was something he'd just as soon not witness. Peg or no, the ship would quicken. Brashen thought he already felt a difference about her; the use of a peg would only hasten the process. But the promise he had given his captain now had a different shade of meaning for him.

“Go with her, son. She'll need your help. Stand by her through this. ” Captain Vestrit had not been speaking about the peg, or his death. Brashen's heart sank as he tried to decide exactly what he had promised to do.

When Althea felt hands grip her shoulders, she tugged away from them. She didn't care who it was. In the space of a few moments, she had lost her father and the Vivacia. It would have been simpler to lose her life. She still could not grasp either fact. It was not fair, she thought inanely. Only one unthinkable thing should happen at a time. If the events had only happened one at a time, she could have thought of a way to deal with them. But whenever she tried to think of her father's death, at the moment of realizing it, the loss of the ship would suddenly loom up in her mind. Yet she could not think about that, not here by her father's dead body. For then she would have to wonder how this father she had worshipped could have betrayed her so completely. As devastating as her pain was, she feared even to consider her anger. If she let her anger take her over, it might completely consume her, leaving nothing but blowing ash.

The hands came back, settling on her bowed shoulders and grasping them firmly. “Go away, Brashen,” she said with no strength. But she no longer had the will to shrug his grip away. The warmth and steadiness of his hands on her shoulders were too much like her father's steady clasp. Sometimes her father would come up on deck while she was on wheel watch. He could move as silently as a ghost when he wanted to; his whole crew knew that, and knew, too, that one could never know when he would silently appear, never interfering in a man's work but checking the task with a knowing eye. She would be standing at the wheel, both hands on it and holding a steady course, and she wouldn't even know he was there until she felt the firm, approving grip of his hands on her shoulders. Then he might drift off, or he might stand beside her and have a pipe while he watched the night and the water and his daughter steering his ship through both.

Somehow that memory gave her strength. The sharp edges of her grief settled into a dull, throbbing lump of pain. She straightened up, squaring her shoulders. She didn't understand anything; not how he could have died and left her, and certainly not how he could have taken her ship from her and given it to her sister. “But, you know, there were a lot of times when he barked orders, and I couldn't fathom the sense of them. But if I simply jumped up and obeyed, it always came right. It always came right. ”

She turned, expecting to confront Brashen. Instead it was Win-trow who stood behind her. It surprised her, and that made her almost angry. Who was he, to touch her so familiarly, let alone to give her a pale ghost of her father's smile and say quietly, “I am sure it will be so again, Aunt Althea. For it is not only your father's will that we accept tragedy and disappointment in our lives, but Sa's will also. If we endure what he sends us cheerfully, it never fails that he will reward us. ”

“Stuff it,” she snarled in a low and savage voice. How dare he puke out platitudes at her just now, this son of Kyle's that stood to gain all she had lost! No doubt he could endure that fate quite easily. The look of shock on his boy's face almost made her laugh out loud. His hands dropped clear of her and he took a step backwards.

“Althea!” her mother gasped in shock and rebuke.

Althea dragged her sleeve across her wet face and returned her mother's glare. “Don't think I don't know whose idea it was that Keffria inherit the ship,” she warned her heatedly.

“Oh, Althea!” Keffria cried out, and the pain in her voice sounded almost real. The grief and dismay on her sister's face nearly melted her. Once they had been so close. . . .