more grudging in her duties. Yesterday Ronica had asked her to take charge of Selden for the day, and the woman had looked stricken. Her grandson was only seven, but the woman seemed to have a strange aversion to him. She had shaken her head, fiercely and mutely, her eyes lowered, until Ronica had ordered her off to the kitchen instead. Perhaps she was seeing how far she could push her new mistress before Ronica ordered her punished. Well, she’d find that Ronica Vestrit was not the kind of woman who ordered her servants beaten or their rations reduced. If Rache could not find it within herself to accept living comfortably in a well-appointed house with relatively light duties and a gentle mistress, well then, she would have to go back to Davad, and eventually take her place on the block and see what fate dealt her next. That was all there was to it. A shame, for the woman had promise. A shame, too, that despite Davad’s kindness in offering Rache’s services to her, the Old Trader was perilously close to becoming a slave-dealer. She had never thought to see one of the old family lines enticed into such a scurrilous trade. Ronica shook her head, and put both Rache and Davad out of her mind. She had other, more important things to think of beside Rache’s sour temperament and Davad’s dabbling in semi-legal professions.
After all, Ephron was dying.
The knowledge jabbed at her again. It was like a splinter in the foot that one could not find and dig out. That little knife of knowing stabbed into her at every step.
Ephron was dying. Her big bold husband, her dashing and handsome young sea-captain, the strong father of her children, the mate of her body was suddenly this collapsed flesh that sweated and moaned and whimpered like a child. When they had first been married, her two hands could not span the muscled right arm of her groom. Now that arm was no more than a stick of bone clothed in slack flesh. She looked down into his face. It had lost the weathering of the sea and wind; it was almost the colour of the linen he lay on. His hair was black as ever, but the sheen had fled it, leaving it dull when it was not matted with sweat. No. It was hard to find any trace of the Ephron she had known and loved for thirty-six years.
She set aside her basin and cloth. She knew she should leave him to sleep. It was all she could do for him any more. Keep him clean, dose him against pain, and then leave him to sleep. She thought bitterly of all the plans they had made together, conspiring until dawn as they sprawled together on their big bed, the stifling blankets thrown aside, the windows flung open to the cool night breeze.
‘When the girls are grown,’ he’d promised her, ‘wedded and bedded, with lives of their own, then, my lass, we’ll take up our own life again. I’ve a mind to carry you off with me to the Perfume Isles. Would you fancy that? Twelvemonth of clean salt air and naught to do but be the captain’s lady? And then, when we get there, why, we shall not hurry to take on a cargo. We shall go together, into the Green Mountains. I know a chieftain there who’s often invited me to come and see his village. We could ride those funny little donkeys of theirs, right up to the very edge of the sky, and…’
‘I’d rather stay home with you,’ she’d always said then. ‘I’d rather keep you at home here with me for a full year, have you beside me to see a full turning of the seasons with me. We could go to our holdings in the hills for spring; you’ve never seen it, when the trees are covered with red and orange blossoms, with not a leaf to be seen on one of them. And once, just once, I’d like to have you suffer alongside me during the mafe harvest. Up every morning before dawn, rousing the workers, getting them out to pick the ripe beans before the sun can touch them and shrivel them. Thirty-six years we’ve been married, and never once have you had to help me with that. Come to think of it, in all the years we’ve been married, you’ve never been home for the blooming of our wedding tree. You’ve never seen the pink buds swell and then open, so full of fragrance.’
‘Oh, there will be time enough for that. Time enough for posies and landwork, when the girls are grown and the debts paid.’
‘And when they are, I’ll have a year of you, all to myself,’ she’d threatened him. And always he’d promised her, ‘A whole year of me. You’ll probably be heartily sick of me before it’s done. You’ll be begging me to go back to sea and leave you to sleep at night in peace.’
Ronica bowed her face into her hands. She’d had her year of him at home; woeful gods, but what a way to gain her wish. She’d had an autumn of him coughing and fractious, feverish and red-eyed, lying in their bed all day and staring out the window at the sea whenever he was well enough to sit. ‘He’d best be taking care of them,’ he’d growled whenever the sky showed a dark cloud, and Ronica had known that his thoughts were always with Althea and the Vivacia. He’d been so reluctant to turn the ship over to Kyle. He’d wanted to give it to Brashen, an untried boy. It had taken Ronica weeks of arguing with him to make him see how that would look to the town. Kyle was his own son-in-law, and had proved himself as captain on three other ships. If he’d passed him over to put Brashen in charge of the Vivacia it would have been a slap in the face to his daughter’s husband, to say nothing of his family. Even though the Havens were not Bingtown Traders, they were an old family in Bingtown nonetheless. And the way the Vestrit fortunes were faring lately, they could afford to offend no one. So last autumn she’d persuaded him to entrust his precious Vivacia to Kyle and take a trip off, to strengthen his lungs again.
As winter had darkened their skies and whitened the streets, he’d stopped coughing. She had thought he was getting better, except that he couldn’t seem to do anything. At first, when he walked the length of the house, he’d lost his breath. Soon he was stopping to breathe between their bedroom and the parlour. By the time spring came, he could not cover the distance unless he leaned on her arm.
He’d finally been home for the blooming of their wedding tree. As the year warmed, the tree had budded. There had been a few weeks when, if Ephron was not getting better, at least he got no worse. She sat by his lounge and sewed or did the accounts while he did scrimshaw or made rope mats for the doorsteps. They had spoken of the future and he had fretted about his ship and daughter. The only times they had disagreed had been over Althea. But there was nothing new about that. They’d been disagreeing about her for as long as they’d had her.
Ephron had never been able to admit that he spoiled their youngest child. The Blood Plague had carried off their boys, one by one, back in that hellish disease year. Even now, close to twenty years later, Ronica felt the squeeze in her chest when she thought of it. Three sons, three bright little boys, taken in less than a week. Keffria had barely come through it alive. Ronica had thought it would drive them both mad, to see the tree of their family stripped of every male flower. Instead, Ephron had suddenly turned his attention and hopes to the babe that had sheltered inside her womb. Attentive as he had never been during her other pregnancies, he had even tied up the ship for an extra two weeks to be sure of being home when the child was born.
When the babe had been a girl, Ronica had expected Ephron to be bitter. Instead, he had given all his attention to his young daughter, as if somehow his will could make a man of her. He had encouraged her wildness and stubbornness until Ronica despaired of her. Ephron had always denied it was anything other than high spirits. He refused her nothing, and when Althea one day demanded to go with him on his next voyage, Ephron had even consented to that. It had been a short trip, and Ronica had met the ship at the docks, convinced she would get back a girl who had had more than enough of the rough living conditions on the ship. Instead she’d seen a wild monkey up the rigging, her black hair cut back to no more than a brush, barefoot and bare-armed. Ever since then, she had sailed with her father. And now she sailed without him.
They’d had words about that, too. It had taken all her words and his pain in addition to convince him that he should stay home for a time. Ronica had assumed that, of course, Althea would stay home, too. What business had she aboard a ship without her father? When she had suggested as much to Ephron, he had been aghast.
‘Our family liveship leave port without one of our blood aboard her? Do you know the kind of ill luck you’d be inviting, woman?’
‘The Vivacia has not quickened yet. Surely Kyle, our marriagekin, should be sufficient. He has been Keffria’s husband for close on fifteen years! Let Althea stay home for a time. It would do her hair and skin a world of good, and give her a chance