came around the table. He was a big man. Even as Althea began to retreat, the force of his slap sent her staggering. She caught at a bulkhead and forced herself to stand. He was very pale as he walked back to his chair and sat down. Too far. They’d both gone too far, as she had always feared they would. Had he feared it too? He seemed to be shaking as badly as she was.
‘That wasn’t for me,’ he said huskily. ‘That was for your sister. Drunk as a soldier, in a public tavern, and you as much as call her a whore. Do you realize that? Do you truly think she’d need to buy a man with the bribe of a liveship to command? She’s a woman that any man would be proud to claim, even if she came with not a copper to her name. Unlike you. You they’ll have to buy a husband for, and you’d better hope to the gods that your family fortunes do better, for they’d have to dower you with half the town before any decent man would look at you. Get to your quarters before my temper truly runs away with me. Now!’
She tried to turn and walk away with dignity, but Kyle stood up and came from behind the table, to place a broad hand on her back and propel her toward the door. As she left the captain’s quarters, shutting the door firmly behind her, she observed Mild diligently sanding some splintering from a railing nearby. The lad had ears like a fox; he’d have heard everything. Well, she’d neither done nor said anything she was ashamed of. She doubted Kyle could say the same. She kept her head up as she made her way aft to the small stateroom that had been hers since she was twelve years old. As she shut the door behind her, the full measure of Kyle’s threat to move her off the ship came to her.
This was home. He couldn’t force her out of her home. Could he?
She’d loved this room since she was a child, and never would forget that thrill of ownership that came to her the first time she’d walked in and tossed her sea-bag up onto the bunk. That was close to seven years ago, and it had been home and safety ever since. Now she clambered up onto that same bunk and lay curled there, her face to the bulkhead. Her cheek stung, but she would not put her hand to it. He’d struck her. Let it bruise and darken. Maybe when she got home, her sister and her parents would look at it and perceive what sort of vermin they had welcomed into their family when they’d wedded Keffria to Kyle Haven. He was not even Trader stock. He was a mongrel, part Chalcedean and part wharf-rat. But for marrying her sister, he’d have nothing now. Nothing. He was a piece of dung and she would not cry because he was not worth her tears, only her anger. Only her anger.
After a few moments, the beating of her heart calmed. Her hand wandered idly over the pieced comforter that Nana had made for her. After a moment she twisted to stare out the porthole on the other side of the room. Limitless grey sea at the bottom, vast sky in the upper third. It was her favourite view of the world, always constant yet always changing. Her eyes wandered from the view to her room. The small desk securely bolted to the bulkhead, with its tiny railing to contain papers during weather. Her book shelf and scroll rack were beside it, her books securely fenced against even the roughest weather. She even had a small chart table that would fold down, and a selection of charts, for her father had insisted she learn to navigate, even to take her own bearings. Her instruments for that were within a small cushioned case that clipped securely to the wall. Her sea clothes hung on their hooks. The only decoration in the room was a small painting of the Vivacia that she had commissioned herself. Jared Pappas had done it, and that alone would have made it a valuable painting, but it was the subject matter, that endeared it to Althea. In the painting, the Vivacia’s sails were bellied full of wind and her bow was cutting the waves cleanly.
Althea reached overhead, to press her hands against the exposed timbers of the Vivacia’s body. She could feel the near-life of the ship thrumming through them. It was not just the vibration of the wood as the ship cut the water, it was not even the thud of the sailors’ feet on the decks or their gull cries as they sang out in response to the mate’s commands. It was the life of the Vivacia herself, so close to waking.
The Vivacia was a liveship. Sixty-three years ago, her keel had been laid, and that long true timber had been wizardwood. The wood of her figurehead was also wizardwood, harvested from the same great tree as was the planking of her hull. Great Grandma Vestrit had commissioned her, had signed away the lien against the family’s holdings that her father Ephron was still paying off. That was back when women could still do such things without creating a scandal, back before the stupid Chalcedean custom of showing one’s wealth by keeping one’s women idle had taken hold in Bingtown. Great grandma, father was fond of saying, had never let other folk’s opinions come between her and her ship. Great grandma had sailed the Vivacia for thirty-five years, past her seventieth birthday. One hot summer day she had simply sat down on the foredeck, said, ‘That’ll do, boys,’ and died.
Grandpa had taken over the ship next. Althea could vaguely remember him. He’d been a black bull of a man, his voice always full of the roar of the sea even when he was at home. He’d died fourteen years ago, on the deck of the Vivacia. He’d been sixty-two, and Althea herself but a little girl of four. But she had stood beside his litter with the rest of the Vestrit family and witnessed his death, and even then felt the faint quiver that ran through the Vivacia at his passing. She had known that that shiver was both regret and welcome; the Vivacia would miss her bold captain, but she welcomed the flowing of his anma into her timbers. His death put her one life closer to awakening.
And now there only remained her father’s death to complete the quickening. As always, Althea felt a rush of conflicting emotions when she considered it. The thought of her father dying filled her with dread and horror. It would devastate her for her father to be gone. And if he died before she reached her majority, and authority over her fell to her mother and Kyle… she hastily pushed the thought away, rapping her knuckles against the wood of the Vivacia to ward off the ill luck of thinking of such a bad thing.
Yet she could not deny how she anticipated the quickening of the Vivacia. How many hours had she spent, stretched out on the bowsprit as close to the figurehead as she could get as they ploughed through the seas, and stared at the carved wooden lids that covered the Vivacia’s eyes? She was not wood and paint like the figurehead of any ordinary ship. She was wizardwood. She was painted for now, yes, but at the moment of Ephron Vestrit’s death aboard her decks, the painted locks of her tumbling hair would be not gilt but curling gold, and her high-boned cheeks would lose their rouge of paint and glow pink with her own life. She’d have green eyes. Althea knew it. Of course, everyone said that no one could truly know what colour a liveship’s eyes would be until those eyes were opened by the deaths of three generations. But Althea knew. The Vivacia would have eyes as green as sea-lettuce. Even now, thinking of how it would be when those great emerald eyes opened, Althea had to smile.
The smile faded as she recalled Kyle’s words. It was plain what he hoped to do. Put her off the ship and bring one of his sons aboard. And when her father did die, Kyle would try to keep command of the Vivacia, would keep his boy aboard as his token Vestrit to keep the ship happy. It had to be an empty threat. Neither boy was suited, the one too young, the other given to the priests. Althea had nothing against her nephews, but even if Selden were not too young to live aboard ship, he had the soul of a farmer. As for Wintrow, Keffria had given him over to the priests years ago. Wintrow cared nothing for the Vivacia, knew nothing of ships; her sister Keffria had seen to that. And he was destined to be a priest. Kyle had never been much enthused about that, but last time Althea had seen the boy, it was plain that he’d make a good priest. Small and spindly, always staring off into the distance, smiling vaguely, thoughts full of Sa; that was Wintrow.
Not that Kyle would care where the boy’s heart was, or even about backing out on dedicating his eldest son to Sa. His children by Keffria were no more than tools to him, the blood he’d claim in order to gain control of the liveship. Well, he’d shown his hand a bit too plainly this time. When they got back to port, she’d see to it that her father knew exactly what Kyle had planned, and how badly he’d treated her. Perhaps then her father would reconsider his decision that Althea was too
