speak, she added, ‘And if Wintrow would sleep aboard and give comfort to Vivacia as best he can, I would take it as a personal favour.’ She turned to the figurehead and added, ‘I shall need him to escort me to the coach first, though. Will you be all right alone, for just a few moments, Vivacia?’
He had been vaguely aware of how anxiously the ship had been following their conversation. Now a beaming smile broke out over the carved features. ‘I am certain I shall be just fine, Ronica. Just fine.’ She shifted her glance to Wintrow, her gaze diving into his eyes so deeply that it startled him. ‘When you come back on board, would you sleep up here, on the foredeck, where I can see you?’
He glanced uncertainly at his father. They seemed to be the only two aware that he had not yet given his permission for this. Wintrow decided to be diplomatic. ‘If my father permits it,’ he concurred cautiously. He still had to look up to his father to meet his eyes, but he forced himself to do it and not to look away.
His father scowled still but Wintrow thought he also saw grudging respect in the man’s eyes. ‘I permit it,’ he said at last, making it clear to everyone that he regarded this decision as his. He looked his son up and down. ‘When you come on board, report to Torg. He’ll see you get a blanket.’ Kyle glanced from the boy to the waiting second mate, who nodded to the order.
His mother sighed out, as if she had been holding her breath. ‘Well, if that’s settled, then let’s go home.’ Her voice broke unexpectedly on that last word, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, my father,’ she said softly, as if rebuking the dead man. Kyle patted her hand where it rested on his arm and escorted her from the ship. Wintrow followed more slowly with his grandmother. His younger siblings scrambled impatiently past them and hurried ahead to the carriage.
His grandmother moved so slowly, he thought she was excessively weary until she began speaking. Then he realized she had deliberately delayed to have a moment of privacy with him. Her voice was lowered, pitched for his ears alone.
‘It all seemed strange and foreign to you earlier today, Wintrow. Yet just now, you spoke as a Vestrit, and I believe I saw your grandfather in your face. The ship reaches for you.’
‘Grandmother, I fear I have no idea what you are talking about,’ he confessed quietly.
‘Don’t you?’ She halted their slow stroll and he turned to face her. Small but straight, she looked up into his face. ‘You say you don’t, but I see otherwise,’ she said after a moment. ‘If you did not already know it yourself, in your heart, you could not have spoken up for the ship the way you did. You’ll come to it, Wintrow. You’ll come round to it in time, no fear.’
He felt a tightening of foreboding. He wished he were going home with them tonight, and that he could sit down with his father and mother and speak plainly. Obviously they had discussed him. He did not know what they had been talking about, but he felt threatened by it. Then he sternly reminded himself to avoid pre-judgement. His grandmother said no more and he assisted her down the gangplank and then handed her up into the waiting carriage. All the others were already within.
‘Thank you, Wintrow,’ she told him gravely, and ‘You’re welcome,’ he replied, but uncomfortably, for he suspected she thanked him for more than walking her to the carriage. He wondered briefly whether he would truly welcome giving her whatever it was she assumed. He stood alone as the driver chupped to his horses and drove them off, their hooves thudding hollowly on the wooden planks of the docks. After they had gone, he lingered for a time, seeking the quiet of the night.
In truth, it was not quiet at all. Neither Bingtown proper nor the docks ever truly slept. Across the curve of the harbour, he could see the lights and hear the distant sounds of the night market. A trick of the wind brought him a brief gust of music: pipes and wrist-bells. A wedding, perhaps, with dancing. Closer to hand, the tarry torches bracketed to the dock supports provided widely-spaced circles of fitful light. The waves sloshed rhythmically against the pilings beneath the docks, and the tethered boats rubbed and creaked in their slips. They were like great wooden animals, he thought, and then a shiver walked up his spine as he recalled the liveship’s awareness. Neither animal nor wooden ship, he realized, but some unholy mix and wondered how he could have volunteered to spend the night aboard her.
As he walked down the docks to where Vivacia was tied, the dancing torchlight and moving water combined to confuse his vision and make every step uncertain. By the time he reached the ship, the weariness of the day had caught up with him.
‘Oh, there you are!’
He startled at the ship’s greeting, then recovered. ‘I told you I would come back,’ he reminded her. It seemed strange to stand on the docks and look up at her. The torchlight moved strangely over her, for though her features were human, the light reflected from her skin as it did from wood. From this vantage, it was markedly more obvious that she was substantially larger than life. Her ample bared breasts were more obvious from this point of view as well. Wintrow found himself avoiding looking at them, and thus uncomfortable about meeting her eyes as well. A wooden ship, he tried to remind himself. She’s a wooden ship. But in the gloom as she smiled down on him, she seemed more like a young woman leaning alluringly from a window. It was ridiculous.
‘Aren’t you coming aboard?’ she asked him, smiling.
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’
As he mounted the gangplank, and then groped his way forward on the darkened deck, he again wondered at himself. Liveships, so far as he knew, were unique to Bingtown. His instruction as a priest of Sa had never touched upon them. Yet there were certain magics he had been warned of as running counter to the holiness of all life. He ran through them in his head; the magics that deprived something of life in order to bring life to something else, the magics that deprived something of life in order to enhance one’s own power, the magics that brought misery to another’s life in order to enhance one’s own or another’s life… None of them seemed to apply exactly to whatever it was that wakened life in a liveship. His grandfather would have died whether the ship existed or not. He decided that one could not say his grandfather had been deprived of life in order to quicken the ship. At about the time he resolved that, he stumbled over a coil of rope. In trying to catch himself, his feet tangled in the hem of his brown novice’s robe and he fell, sprawling full length on the deck.
Somewhere, someone brayed out a laugh. Perhaps it was not at him. Perhaps somewhere on the shadowed deck, sailors kept watch together and told amusing stories to pass the time. Perhaps. His face still flushed, and he suppressed anger at the possible ridicule. Foolishness, he told himself. Foolish to be angered if a man was dull-witted enough to find his stumbling humorous, and even more foolish to be angry when he could not be certain that was the case at all. It had simply been too long a day. He got carefully to his feet and groped his way to the foredeck.
A single coarse blanket had been left in a heap there. It smelt of whoever had used it last, and was either badly woven or stiffened in spots with filth. He let it drop back to the deck. For a moment he considered making do with it; the summer night was not that cold, he might not need a blanket at all. Let the insult go by; he’d not be dealing with any of them after tomorrow. Then he stooped to snatch the blanket up from the deck. This was not the misfortune of an early fall of hail or a flooding river, a happenstance of nature to be weathered stoically. This was the cruelty of men, and a priest of Sa was not expected silently to accept it, regardless of whether that cruelty was inflicted on himself or on others.
He squared his shoulders. He knew how they saw him. The captain’s son, a boy, a runt, sent off to live in a monastery, to be raised to believe in goodness and kindness. He knew there were many who saw that as a weakness, who saw the priests and priestesses of Sa as sexless ninnies who spent their lives wandering about prating that the world could be a beautiful, peaceful place. Wintrow had seen the other side of a priest’s life. He had tended priests brought back to the monastery, priests maimed by the cruelty they had fought against, or dying of the plagues they had contracted when they nursed other victims. A clear voice and a steady eye, he counselled himself. He draped the offending blanket over one arm and picked his way carefully towards the afterdeck where a single