‘I am probably more sensitized to it than anyone else could be. Still. It is nice to jolt you out of it now and then.’ Vivacia paused. ‘Will you be going ashore, do you think?’
‘I doubt it.’ Wintrow tried to keep the sulkiness from his voice. ‘I haven’t touched shore since I “shamed” my father in Cress.’
‘I know,’ the ship replied needlessly. ‘But, Wintrow, if you do go ashore, be careful of yourself.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, exactly. I think it is what your great-great-grandmother would have called a premonition.’
Vivacia sounded so unlike herself that Wintrow stood up and peered over the bow railing at her. She was looking up at him. Every time he thought he had become accustomed to her, there would be a moment like this. The light was unusually clear today, what Wintrow always thought of as an artist’s light. Perhaps that accounted for how luminous she appeared to him. The green of her eyes, the rich gloss of her ebony hair, even her fine-grained skin shone with the best aspects of both polished wood and healthy flesh. She flushed pink to have him stare at her so, and in response to that he felt again the sudden collision of his love for her and his total benightedness as to what she truly was. It rocked him, as it always did. How could he feel this… passion, if he dared to use that word, for a creation of wood and magic? His love had no logical roots he could find… there was no prospect of marriage and children to share, no hunger for physical satiation in one another, there was no long history of shared experience to account for the warmth and intimacy he felt with her. It made no sense.
‘Is it so abhorrent to you?’ she asked him in a whisper.
‘It isn’t you,’ he tried to explain. ‘It is that this feeling is so unnatural. It is like something imposed on me rather than something I truly feel. Like a magic spell,’ he added reluctantly. The followers of Sa did not deny the reality of magic. Wintrow had even seen it done, on rare occasions, small spells to cleanse a wound or spark a fire. But those were acts of a trained will coupled with a gift to have a physical effect. This sudden rush of emotion, triggered, as much as he could determine, solely by prolonged association, seemed to him something else entirely. He liked Vivacia. He knew that, it made sense to him. He had many reasons to like the ship: she was beautiful and kind and sympathetic to him. She had intelligence, and watching her use that intelligence as she built chains of thought was a pleasure. She was like an untrained acolyte, open and willing to any teaching. Who would not like such a being? Logic told him he should like the ship, and he did. But that was separate from the wave of almost painful emotion that would sweep through him at odd moments like this. He would perceive her as more important than home and family, more important than his life at the monastery. At such moments, he could imagine no better end to his life than to fling himself flat upon her decks and be absorbed into her.
But no. The goal of a life lived well was to become one with Sa.
‘You fear that I subvert the place of your god in your heart.’
‘I think that is almost what I fear,’ he agreed with her reluctantly. ‘At the same time, I do not think it is something that you, as Vivacia, impose upon me. I think it has to do with what a liveship is.’ He sighed. ‘If anyone consigned me to this, it was my own family, my great-great-grandmother when she saw fit to commission the building of a liveship. You and I, we are like buds grafted onto a tree. We can grow true to ourselves, but only so much as our roots will allow us.’
The wind gusted up suddenly, as if welcoming the ship into the harbour. Wintrow stood and stretched. He was more aware of the differences in his body these days. He did not think he was getting any taller, but his muscles were definitely harder than they had been. A glimpse in a looking-glass the other day had shown him the roundness gone from his face. Changes. A leaner, fitter body and nine fingers to his hands. But it was still not enough changes to suit his father. When his fever had finally gone down and his hand was healing well, his father had summoned him. Not to tell him he’d been pleased by Wintrow’s show of bravery or even to ask how his hand was. Not even to say he’d noticed his improved skills as a seaman. No. Only to tell him how stupid he had been, that he had had the chance in Cress to win the crew’s approval and be seen as truly a part of them. And he had let it go by.
‘It was a sham,’ he’d told his father. ‘The whole set-up with the bear and the man who won were just a lure. I knew that right away.’
‘I know that!’ his father had declared impatiently. ‘That’s not the point. You didn’t have to win, you idiot. Only to show them you have spunk. You thought to prove your courage by standing silent while Gantry cut off your finger. I know you did, don’t deny it. Instead you only showed yourself as some sort of… religious freak. When they expected guts, you showed yourself a coward. And when any normal man would have cried out and cursed, you behaved like a fanatic. At the rate you’re going, you’ll never win this crew. You’ll never be part of them, let alone a leader they respect. Oh, they may pretend to accept you, but it won’t be real. They’ll just be waiting for you to let your guard down, so they can really put it to you. And you know something? That’s what you’ve earned from them. And damn me if I don’t hope you get it!’
His father’s words still echoed through him. In the long days that had passed since then, he had thought he sensed a grudging acceptance by the crew. Mild, as swift to forgive as he was to take offence, had been most quick to resume a tolerant attitude towards him. But Wintrow could no longer relax and accept it. Sometimes, at night, when he tried to reach for his old meditative states, he could convince himself that the situation was contrived. His father had poisoned his attitude toward the other crew members. His father did not wish to see them accept him; therefore he would see to it, however he could, that Wintrow remained an outcast. And that, he told himself as he painstakingly traced the convoluted logic of such insanity, was why he must never trust completely to the crew’s acceptance and friendship. Because if he did, his father would find some way to turn them against him.
‘Every day,’ he said quietly, ‘it becomes harder for me to know who I am. My father plants doubts and suspicions in me, the coarseness of life aboard this ship accustoms me to casual cruelty amongst my fellows and even you, even the hours I spend with you are shaping me, carrying me away from my priesthood. Toward something else. Something I don’t think I want to be.’
These words were hard for him to speak. They hurt him as much as they hurt her. That was the only thing that let her keep silent.
‘I don’t think I can stand it much longer,’ he warned her. ‘Something will have to give way. And I fear it will be me.’ He met her eyes unflinchingly. ‘I’ve just been living from day to day. Waiting for something or someone else to change the situation.’ His eyes studied her face, looking for a reaction to his next words, ‘I think I need to make a real decision. I believe I need to take action on my own.’
He waited for her to say something, but she could think of no words. What was he hinting he might do? What could the boy do against his father’s dominance?
‘Hey, Wintrow! Lend a hand!’ someone shouted down to the deck.
The call back to drudgery. ‘I have to go,’ he told Vivacia. He took a deep breath. ‘Right or wrong, I’ve come to love you. But —’ He shook his head, suddenly wordless.
‘Wintrow! Now!’
Like a well-trained dog, he sprang to obey. She watched him scamper up the rigging with familiar ease. That facility told as much as his words did of his love for her. He still complained, and often. He still suffered the torments of a divided heart. But when he gave words to his unhappiness they could
