he was on the very threshold of the debtor’s gaol. The only route out of there for him would have been an indentureship, for all knew his own family had had their fill of his wastrel ways. And all knew what lay down the road from an enforced indentureship. He’d probably have ended up in Chalced, a face full of slave tattoos, were it not for Ephron Vestrit. And yet he had dared to speak to her like that. He thought entirely too much of himself, did Brashen Trell. Most Trells did. At the Traders’ Harvest Ball last year, his younger brother had presumed to ask her to dance twice with him. Even if Cerwin was the Trell heir now, he should not be so bold. She half-smiled as she thought of his face when she’d coolly declined. His polite acceptance of her refusal had been correct, but all his training had not been enough to keep the flush from his face. Cerwin had prettier manners than Brashen, but he was slender as a boy, with none of Brashen’s muscle. On the other hand, the younger Trell had been smart enough not to throw away both family name and fortune. Brashen hadn’t.
Althea pushed him from her mind. She felt a twinge that Kyle was going to let him go at the end of the voyage, but she would not be especially sad to see him go. Her father’s feelings on that matter would be another thing. He’d always made something of a pet of Brashen, at least on shore. Most of the other Trader families had stopped receiving Brashen when the Trells disinherited him. But Ephron Vestrit had shrugged and said, ‘Heir or not, he’s a good seaman. Any sailor of my crew who isn’t fit to call at my door isn’t fit to be on my decks.’ Not that Brashen came often to the house, or ever sat at table with them. And on the ship her father and Brashen were strictly master and man. It was probably only to her that her father had spoken admiringly of the boy’s gumption in picking himself up and making something of himself. But she’d say nothing to Kyle on that score. Let him make yet one more mistake for her father to see. Let her father see just how many changes Kyle would make on the Vivacia if he were not checked.
She was strongly tempted to go out on deck, simply to challenge Kyle’s order to her. What could he do? Order a deckhand to put her back in her quarters? There wasn’t a hand on this ship that would dare lay hands on her, and not just because she was Althea Vestrit. Most of them liked and respected her, and that had been a thing she’d earned for herself, not bought with her name. Despite what Kyle said, she knew this ship better than any sailor aboard it now. She knew it as only a child who has grown up aboard a ship could; she knew the places in the holds where no grown man could have fit himself, she had climbed masts and swung on rigging as other children climbed trees. Even if she did not stand a regular watch, she knew the work of every hand aboard and could do it. She could not splice as fast as their best rigger, but she could make a neat strong splice, and cut and sew canvas as well as any deckhand. She had divined this was her father’s intention in bringing her aboard; to learn the ship and every sailor’s task of running her. Kyle might despise her as a mere daughter of her family, but she had no fear that her father thought her any less than the three sons the family had lost to the Blood Plague. She was not a substitute for a son; she was to be Ephron Vestrit’s heir.
She knew she could defy Kyle’s order and nothing would befall her. But like as not he’d take it out on the hands, punishing them when they did not leap to obey his order to confine her to quarters. She would not let that happen to them. This was her quarrel with Kyle; she’d settle it herself. Because despite what he’d said, she did not care just for herself. The Vivacia deserved a good crew, and save for Kyle, her father had chosen every hand well. He paid good money, more than the going rate, to keep able and willing hands aboard. Althea would not give Kyle an excuse to discharge any of them. She felt again a pang of guilt that she’d been part of that fate coming down on Brashen.
She tried to push thoughts of him aside, but he refused to budge. In her mind’s eye, he stood before her, arms crossed on his chest, looking down at her from his superior height as he so often did. Lips flat in disapproval of her, brown eyes narrowed to slits, with even the bristle of his beard betraying his annoyance. Good deckhand he might be, and a promising mate, but for all of that, the man had an attitude. He’d thrown over the Trell name, but not their aristocratic ways. She could respect that he’d worked his way up the decks to his position of mate; still, she found it irritating that he moved and spoke as if command were his birthright. Perhaps it had been once, but when he’d thrown that over, he should have discarded his prideful ways along with the name.
She rolled suddenly from her bunk, landing lightly on the deck. She crossed to her sea-chest and flung the lid open. Here were things that could sweep all these unpleasant thoughts from her mind. The trinkets she had brought for Selden and Malta now faintly annoyed her. She spent good coins on these gifts for her niece and nephew. Fond as she was of both children, right now she could only see them as Kyle’s children and her threatened replacements. She set aside the elaborately-dressed doll she’d chosen for Malta and put the brightly-painted top for Selden with it. Beneath were the bolts of silk from Tusk. The silver-grey was for her mother, the mauve for Keffria. Below them was the bolt of green she had chosen for herself.
She stroked it with the back of her hand. Lovely, liquid fabric. She took out the cream-coloured lace she had chosen for trim. As soon as she got to Bingtown, she planned to take it to the Street of the Tailors. She’d have Mistress Violet sew her a gown for the Summer Ball. Her services were expensive, but silk this fine merited a skilful dressmaker. Althea wanted a gown that would show off her long waist and round hips, and perhaps attract a dance partner more manly than Brashen’s little brother. Not too tight in the waist, she decided; the dancing at the Summer Ball was the lively sort, and she wished to be able to breathe. Ample skirts that would move with the complex steps of the dances, she decided, but not so full they got in the way. The cream lace would frame her modest cleavage and perhaps make it look more ample. She’d wear her dark hair swept up this year, and use her silver clasps to hold it. Her hair was as coarse as her father’s, but its rich colour and thickness more than made up for that. Perhaps her mother would finally allow her to wear the silver beads her grandmother had left her. Nominally, they were Althea’s, but her mother seemed jealous of parting with her guardianship of them, and often cited their rarity and value as reasons they should not be worn casually. They’d go well with the silver earrings she’d bought in Brigtown.
She stood and shook out the silk, and held it up against her. The looking-glass in the room was small. She could see no more than how her tanned face looked above the green silk draped over her shoulder. She smoothed the silk, only for her rough hands to snag on it. She shook her head at that. She’d have to pumice them every day once she was home to work the callous off them. She loved working the Vivacia and feeling the ship respond to the sailors’ tasks, but it did take a heavy toll on her hands and skin, not to mention the bruising her legs took. It was her mother’s second biggest objection to her sailing with her father, that it absolutely ruined her appearance at social events. Her main objection was that Althea should have been home sharing the tasks of managing the house and lands. Her heart sank as she wondered if her mother would finally win her way. She let the silk slither from her hands and reached overhead to touch the heavy timbers that supported the Vivacia’s decks.
‘Oh, ship, they can’t separate us now. Not after all these years, not when you’re so close to quickening. No one has the right to take that from us.’ She whispered the words knowing that she need not speak aloud at all. She and the ship were linked that closely. She would have sworn she felt a shivering of response from the Vivacia. ‘This bond between us is something my father intended as well; it is why he brought me aboard when I was so young, that we might come to adulthood already knowing one another.’ There was a second tiny shivering of the ship’s timbers, so faint another might not have noticed it. But Althea knew the Vivacia too well to be deceived. She closed her eyes and poured herself forth into her ship, all her fears and anger and hopes. And in turn she felt the soft stirring of the Vivacia’s as yet unawakened spirit, answering her soothingly.
In years to come, after the Vivacia had quickened, she would be the one the ship preferred to speak to; it would be her hand on the wheel that the Vivacia answered most promptly. Althea knew the ship would run willingly before the wind for her,
