her a word for. So she knew the thundering of Wintrow’s heart, and sensed too the small leap of triumph he felt when his father looked up from his bills of lading to startle at the sight of his son standing so boldly before him.
‘What do you do here?’ Kyle demanded harshly. ‘You’re the ship’s boy, no more than that. Don’t bring your whining to me.’
Wintrow stood quietly until his father was finished. Then in an even voice he spoke. ‘I need this finger cut off. It was crushed, and now it’s infected. I can tell already it won’t get better.’ He took a small, swift breath. ‘I’d like it done while it’s only the finger and not the whole hand.’
When Kyle finally replied, his voice was thick and uncertain. ‘You are sure of this? Did the mate tell you so? He does the doctoring aboard the ship.’
‘It scarcely needs a doctor’s eye. See for yourself.’ With a casualness Vivacia was sure Wintrow did not feel, he began to unwind the crusted bandaging. His father made a small sound. ‘The smell is bad, also,’ Wintrow confirmed, still in that easy voice. ‘The sooner you cut it off for me, the better.’
His father rose, scraping his chair back over the deck. ‘I’ll get the mate for you. Sit down, son.’
‘I’d rather you did it, sir, if it’s all the same to you. And up on deck, by the figurehead.’ She could almost feel Wintrow’s calculated glance about the room. ‘No sense in bleeding in your stateroom,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
‘I can’t… I’ve never…’
‘I can show you where to cut, sir. It’s not that different from boning out a fowl for the pot. It’s just a matter of cutting out the joint. That’s another thing they taught me in the monastery. Sometimes it surprised me, how much cooking had in common with medicine. The herbs, the knowledge of… meat. The knives.’
It was some kind of a challenge, Vivacia realized. She didn’t understand it in full. She wondered if even Wintrow did. She tried to work it through in her head. If Kyle refused to cut the infected finger from his son’s hand, he somehow lost. Lost what? She was not sure, but she suspected it had something to do with who truly controlled Wintrow’s life. Perhaps it was a challenge from the boy for his father to admit fully to himself the life he had forced his son into, to make him confront completely the harshness of it. There was in it also the foolish challenge to risk his body that he had refused in town. They had called him a coward for that, and deemed him fearful of pain. He would prove to them all now that it had not been pain he feared. A shiver of pride in him travelled over her. Truly, he was unlike any Vestrit she had ever carried before.
‘I’ll call the mate,’ Kyle Vestrit replied firmly.
‘The mate won’t do,’ Wintrow asserted softly.
Kyle ignored him. He stepped to the door, opened it and leaned out to bellow, ‘GANTRY!’ for the mate. ‘I’m captain of this ship,’ he told Wintrow in the intervening space of quiet. ‘And on this ship, I say what will or will not do. And I say who does what. The mate does this sort of doctoring, not I.’
‘I had thought my father might prefer to do it himself,’ Wintrow essayed quietly. ‘But I see you have no stomach for it. I’ll wait for the mate on the foredeck, then.’
‘It’s not a matter of stomach,’ Kyle railed at him, and in that moment Vivacia glimpsed what Wintrow had done. He had shifted this, somehow, from a matter between the ship’s boy and the captain to something between a father and a son.
‘Then come and watch, Father. To give me courage.’ Wintrow made his request. No plea, but a simple request. He stepped out of the cabin without waiting to be dismissed, not even pausing for an answer. As he walked away, Gantry approached the door, to be harshly ordered to fetch his surgeon’s kit and come to the foredeck. Wintrow did not pause but paced calmly back to the foredeck.
‘They’re coming,’ he told Vivacia quietly. ‘My father and the mate, to cut off my finger. I pray I don’t scream.’
‘You’ve the will,’ Vivacia promised him. ‘Put your hand flat to my deck for the cut. I’ll be with you.’
The boy made no reply to that. A light breeze filled her sails and blew to her the scent of his sweat and fear. But he spoke no more words. He only sat patiently picking the last of the bandaging from his injured hand. ‘No.’ He spoke the word with finality. ‘There’s no saving this. Better to be parted from it before it poisons my whole body.’ She felt him let go of the finger, felt him remove it from his perception of his body. In his mind, he had already done the deed.
‘They come,’ Vivacia said softly.
‘I know.’ He gave a nervous giggle, chilling to hear. ‘I feel them. Through you.’
It was his first acknowledgement of such a thing. Vivacia wished it could have come at a different time, when they could have spoken about it privately, or simply been alone together to explore the joining. But the two men were on the foredeck and Wintrow reflexively surged to his feet and turned to face them. His injured hand rested upon the palm of his good one like an offering.
Kyle jerked his chin toward his son. ‘Boy thinks you need to take his finger off. What do you think?’
Wintrow’s heart seemed to pause in his chest, then begin again. Wordlessly he presented his hand to the mate. Gantry glanced at it and bared his teeth in his distaste. ‘The boy is right.’ He spoke to his captain, not Wintrow. He gripped Wintrow’s right wrist firmly and turned his hand to see the finger from all sides. He gave a short grunt of disgust. ‘I’ll be having a word with Torg. I should have seen this hand before now. Even if we take the finger off now, the lad will need a day or so of rest, for it looks to me like the poison from the finger has worked into the hand.’
‘Torg knows his business,’ Kyle replied. ‘No man can predict everything.’
Gantry looked levelly at his captain. There was no argument in his voice as he observed, ‘But Torg has a mean streak to him, and it comes out worst when he thinks he has one who should be his better at his mercy. It’s what drove Brashen away; the man was a good hand, save when Torg was prodding him. Torg, he picks a man, and doesn’t know when to leave off riding him.’ Gantry went on carefully, ‘It’s not a matter of favouritism. Don’t fear that. I don’t care what this lad’s name is, sir. He’s a working hand aboard the ship, and a ship runs best when all hands can work.’ He paused. ‘I’ll be having a word with Torg,’ he repeated, and this time Kyle made no reply. Gantry’s next words were to Wintrow.
‘You’re ready to do this.’ It wasn’t really a question, mostly an affirmation that the boy had seen the right of it.
‘I am.’ Wintrow’s voice had gone low and deep. He went down on one knee, almost as if he were pledging his loyalty to someone, and set his injured hand flat on Vivacia’s deck. She closed her eyes. She concentrated on that touch, on the splayed fingers pressing against the foredeck. She was wordlessly grateful that the foredeck was planked with wizardwood. It was almost an unheard-of use for the expensive wood, but today she would see that it would be worth every coin the Vestrits had pledged for it. She gripped his hand, adding her will to his that it would not move from the place where he had set it.
The mate had crouched beside him and was unrolling a canvas kit of tools. Knives and probes rested in canvas pockets, while needles were pierced through the canvas. Some were ready threaded with fine fish-gut twine. As the last of the kit bounced open, it revealed
