up despite unhappiness. Eventually they would be whole, the both of them. All that they needed was time. She had known ever since that first night together that he was truly destined to be aboard her. It was not easy for him to accept. He had struggled long against the idea. But even in his defiant words today, she sensed a pending resolution to that struggle. Her patience would be rewarded.
She looked about the harbour with new eyes. In many ways, Wintrow was absolutely correct about the city’s underlying corruption. Not that she would want to reinforce that with the boy. He needed no help from her to be gloomy. Better for Wintrow that he focus his thoughts on what was clean and good about Jamaillia. The harbour was lovely in the winter sunlight.
She did and yet did not recall it all. Ephron’s memory of it was a man’s view, not a ship’s. He had focused on the docks and merchants awaiting his trade goods, and the architectural wonder of the city above them. Ephron could never have noticed the curling tendrils of filthy water bleeding into the harbour from the city’s sewers. Nor could he have smelt with every pore of his hull the underlying stench of serpent. Her eyes skimmed the placid waters but there was no sight of the cunning, evil creatures. They were below, worming about in the soft mud of the harbour. Some foreboding made her swing her gaze to the section of the harbour where the slavers anchored. Their foul stench came to her in hints on the wind. The smell of serpent was mixed with that of death and faeces. That was where the creatures coiled thickest, over there beneath those miserable ships. Once she was unloaded and refitted for her new trade, she would be anchored alongside them, taking on her own load of misery and despair. Vivacia crossed her arms and held herself. Despite the sunny day, she shivered. Serpents.
Ronica sat in the study that had once been Ephron’s and was now slowly becoming hers. It was in this room that she felt closest to him still, and in this room that she missed him most. In the months since his death, she had gradually cleared away the litter of his life, replacing it with the untidy scattering of her own bits of papers and trifles. Yet Ephron was still there in the bones of the room. The massive desk was far too large for her, and sitting in his chair made her feel like a small child. Oddities and ornaments of his far-ranging voyages characterized this room. A massive sea-washed vertebra from some immense sea creature served as a footstool, while one wall shelf was devoted to carved figurines, seashells, and strange body ornaments from distant folk. It was an odd intimacy to have her ledgers scattered across the polished slab of his desk top, to have her tea cup and discarded knitting draped on the arm of his chair by his fireplace.
As she often did when perplexed, she had come here to think and try to decide what Ephron would have counselled her. She was curled on the divan on the opposite side of the fireplace, her slippers discarded on the floor. She wore a soft woollen robe, well worn from two years’ use. It was as comfortable as her seat. She had built the fire herself, and kindled it and watched it burn through its climax. Now the wood was settling, glowing against itself, and she was relaxed and warm but seemed no closer to an answer of any kind.
She had just decided that Ephron would have shrugged his shoulders and delegated the problem back to her when she heard a tap at the heavy wood-panelled door.
‘Yes?’
She had expected Rache, but it was Keffria who entered. She wore a nightrobe and her heavy hair was braided and coiled as for sleep, but she carried a tray with a steaming pot and heavy mugs on it. Ronica smelled coffee and cinnamon.
‘I had given up on your coming.’
Keffria didn’t directly answer that. ‘I decided that as long as I couldn’t sleep, I might as well be really awake. Coffee?’
‘Actually, that would be good.’
This was the sort of peace they had found, mother and daughter. They talked past one another, asking no questions save regarding food or some other trifle. Keffria and Ronica both avoided anything that might lead to a confrontation. Earlier, when Keffria had not come as invited, Ronica had assumed that was why. Bitterly she had reflected that Kyle had taken both her daughters from her: driven the one away and walled the other up. But now she was here, and Ronica found herself suddenly determined to regain at least something of her daughter. As she took the steaming mug from Keffria, she said, ‘I was impressed by you today. Proud.’
A bitter smile twisted Keffria’s face. ‘Oh, I was too. I single-handedly triumphed in defeating the conniving plot of a sly thirteen year old girl.’ She sat down in her father’s chair, kicked off her slippers and curled her feet up under her. ‘Rather a hollow victory, Mother.’
‘I raised two daughters,’ Ronica pointed out gently. ‘I know how painful victory can be sometimes.’
‘Not over me,’ Keffria said dully. There was self-loathing in her tone as she added, ‘I don’t think I ever gave you and father a sleepless night. I was a model child, never challenging anything you told me, keeping all the rules, and earning the rewards of such virtue. Or so I thought.’
‘You were my easy daughter,’ Ronica conceded. ‘Perhaps because of that, I undervalued you. Overlooked you.’ She shook her head to herself. ‘But in those days, Althea worried me so that I seldom had a moment to think of what was going right…’
Keffria exhaled sharply. ‘And you didn’t know the half of what she was doing! As her sister, I… but in all the years, it hasn’t changed. She still worries us, both of us. When she was a little girl, her wilfulness and naughtiness always made her papa’s favourite. And now that he has gone, she has disappeared, and so managed to capture your heart as well, simply by being absent.’
‘Keffria!’ Ronica rebuked her for the heartless words. Her sister was missing, and all she could be was jealous of Ronica worrying about her? But after a moment, Ronica asked hesitantly, ‘You truly feel that I give no thoughts to you, simply because Althea is gone?’
‘You scarcely speak to me,’ Keffria pointed out. ‘When I muddled the ledger books for what I had inherited, you simply took them back from me and did them yourself. You run the household as if I were not here. When Cerwin appeared on the doorstep today, you charged directly into battle, only sending Rache to tell me about it as an afterthought. Mother, were I to vanish as Althea has, I think the household would only run more smoothly. You are so capable of managing it all.’ She paused and her voice was almost choked as she added, ‘You leave no room for me to matter.’ She hastily lifted her mug and took a long sip of the steaming coffee. She stared deep into the fireplace.
Ronica found herself wordless. She drank from her own mug. She knew she was making excuses when she said, ‘But I was always just waiting for you to take things over from me.’
‘And always so busy holding the reins that you had no time to teach me how. “Here, give me that, it’s easier if I just do it myself.” How many times have you said that to me? Do you know how stupid and helpless it always made me feel?’ The anger in her voice was very old.
‘No,’ Ronica said quietly. ‘I didn’t know that. But I should have. I really should have. And I am sorry, Keffria. Truly sorry.’
Keffria snorted out a sigh. ‘It doesn’t really matter, now. Forget it.’ She shook her head, as if sorting through things she could say to find the words she must. ‘I’m taking charge of Malta,’ she said quietly. She glanced up at her mother as if expecting opposition. Ronica only looked at her. She took a deeper breath. ‘Maybe you doubt that I can do it. I know I doubt it. But I know I’m going to try. And I wanted to ask you… No. I’m sorry, but I have to tell you this. Don’t interfere. No matter how rocky or messy it gets. Don’t try to take it away from me because it’s easier to do it yourself.’
Ronica was aghast. ‘Keffria, I
