Robin Hobb - Ship of Magic

“Captain?” Sorcor asked doubtfully.

Kennit leaned on him heavily. His face was moist with sweat, but still he smiled. “Give the lady her due. A liveship under me. Court her for me, man, until I can charm her myself.” With a sigh like death, he folded suddenly into his mate's arms. As Sorcor hefted the man and then bore him off to what had been his father's stateroom, Wintrow wondered at the strange smile Kennit yet wore. The woman walked behind them, her eyes never leaving Captain Kennit's face.

Wintrow turned and walked slowly to the bow, to the spot where Kennit had stood. No one, he marked, moved to stop him. He was as free aboard the ship as he had ever been.

“Vivacia,” he said quietly.

She had been staring after Kennit. She broke from her bemusement to look up at Wintrow. Her eyes were wide with wonder. They sparkled.

She lifted a hand to him and he leaned to let their palms touch. No words were needed, yet he spoke them anyway. “Be careful.”

“He is a dangerous man,” she agreed. “Kennit.” Her voice caressed the name.

He opened his eyes to a well-appointed room. The grain of the paneled walls had been carefully selected to match. The fixed lanterns were of brass that would gleam when properly polished again. Rolled charts graced the chart rack like fat hens in nesting boxes. They would be a treasure trove of information, the gathered wealth of a Bingtown Trader family's charts. There were other niceties, too. The washstand with its matching porcelain bowl and pitcher. The framed paintings fastened securely to the walls. The meticulously carved shutters for the thick glass windows. A tasteful and elegant room indeed. True, it had been recently rifled, and the captain's possessions scattered about, but Etta moved quietly about it, setting it to rights. There was an overlying smell of cheap incense that could not disguise the underlying stench of a slaver. Yet it was obvious to him that the Vivacia had not been so used for long; it should be possible to scrub it out of her. Once more she could be a bright and tidy vessel. And this was a room for a true captain.

He glanced down at himself. He had been undressed and a sheet draped his legs.

“And where is our boy-captain?” Kennit asked Etta.

She spun at the sound of his voice and then hurried to his side. “He has gone to tend his father's ribs and head. He said it would not take long, and he wished to have the chamber cleared of clutter before he tried to heal you.” She looked at him and shook her head. “I do not understand how you can trust him. He must know that if you live this ship can never be his. Nor do I understand why you will allow a mere boy to do what you forbade three skilled healers even to think of in Bull Creek.”

“Because he is a part of my luck,” he said quietly. “The same luck that has given this ship to me so easily. You must see this is the ship I am meant to have. The boy is part and parcel of that.”

He almost wanted to make her understand. But no one must know of the words the charm had spoken when the boy looked so deeply into his eyes. No one must know of the bond forged between them in that instant, a bond that frightened Kennit as much as it intrigued him. He spoke again to keep her from asking any more questions. “So. We are under weigh all ready?”

“Sorcor takes us back to Bull Creek. He has put Gory on the wheel and Brig in charge of the deck. We follow the Marietta.”

“I see.” He smiled to himself. “And what do you think of my liveship?”

She gave him a bittersweet smile. “She is lovely. And I am already jealous of her.” Etta crossed her arms on her chest and gave him a sideways glance. “I do not think we shall get along easily. She is too strange a thing, neither woman nor wood nor ship. I do not like the pretty words you sprinkle so thickly before her, nor do I like the boy Wintrow.”

“And as ever, I care little what you like or dislike,” Kennit told her impatiently. “What can I give the ship to win her, save words? She is not a woman in the same way you are.” When the whore still looked sulky, he added savagely, “And were not my leg so painful, I would put you on your back and remind you of what you are to me.”

Her eyes changed suddenly from black ice to dark fire. “Would that you could,” she said gently, and disgusted him with the warmth of the smile his rebuke earned him.

Kyle Haven lay on Gantry's bare bunk, facing the bulkhead. All that the ransacking slaves had left of the mate's possessions were scattered on the floor. There was not much. Wintrow stepped over a carved wooden chain and a single discarded sock. All else that had been Gantry's — his books, his clothes, his carving tools — had been taken or left in fragments, either by the slaves in their first rush of plundering, or by the pirates in their far more organized gathering of loot.

“It's Wintrow, Father,” he told him as he shut the door behind him. It would not latch anymore; during the uprising, someone had kicked it open rather than simply trying the knob. But the door stayed shut, and the two map-faces that Sa'Adar had posted as sentries did not try to open it again.

The man on the bed did not stir.

Wintrow set the basin of water and the rags he'd salvaged down on the cracked remains of Gantry's desk and turned to the man in the bed. He hastily set his fingers to the pulsepoint in his throat, and felt his father jolt back to consciousness at his touch. The man shuddered away from him with an incoherent sound, then sat up hastily.

“It's all right,” Wintrow said comfortingly. “It's only me.”

His father showed his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “It's only you,” he conceded. “But I'll damn well bet it isn't all right.”

He looked terrible, worse than he had when the slaves were trying to feed him to the serpent. Old, Wintrow thought to himself. He looks suddenly old. Stubble stood on his cheeks and blood from his head wound was smeared through it. He had come in here intending to clean his father's wounds and bind them. Now he felt himself strangely reluctant to touch the man. It was not dismay at the blood, nor was he too proud to do such tasks. His time in the hold tending the slaves had eroded those things away long ago. This was a reluctance to touch because the man was his father. Touch might affirm that link.

Wintrow faced what he felt squarely. He wished with all his heart he had no bond to this man.

“I brought some wash water,” he told him. “Not much. Fresh water supplies are very low just now. Are you hungry? Shall I try to get some hard-tack for you? It's about all that is left.”

“I'm fine,” his father said flatly, not answering his question. “Don't trouble yourself on my account. You've more important friends to pander to just now.”

He ignored his father's choice of words. “Kennit's sleeping. If I'm to have any chance of healing him, he'll need all the rest he can get to strengthen him.”

“So. You'll truly do it. You'll heal the man who's taken your ship from you.”

“To keep you alive, yes.”

His father snorted. “Bilge. You'd do it anyway, even if they'd fed me to that snake. It's what you do. Cower before whoever has the power.”

Wintrow tried to consider it impartially. “You're probably right. But not because he has power. It would have nothing to do with who he is. It's life, father. Sa is life. While life exists, there is always the possibility of improvement. So, as a priest, I have a duty to preserve life. Even his.”

His father gave a sour laugh. “Even mine, you mean.”

Wintrow gave a single nod.

He turned the gashed side of his head toward his son. “May as well get to it, then, priest. As it's all you're good for.”

He would not be baited. “Let's check your ribs first.”