Robin Hobb - The Mad Ship

When his father died, Cosgo had dismissed all his father’s Heart Companions. Ignoring all tradition, he had sent them off without the mercy of shelter and sustenance for their declining years. Most had been elderly women. Serilla alone he retained. She would have left then, if she could have. As long as she wore a Satrap’s ring, she was bound to the Satrap’s side. Cosgo was Satrap now. Her vows demanded that she stay and advise him as long as he desired it. Her advice was all he could require of her. From the beginning, he had made it plain he wished more. For his other Heart Companions, he had chosen women more educated in the flesh than in diplomacy. Not one of them refused him.

Traditionally, the Companions of the Heart were not a harem. They were supposed to be women with no other loyalties than to the Satrapy. They were supposed to be what Serilla was: blunt, out-spoken, and ethically uncompromising. They were the Satrap’s conscience. They were supposed to be demanding, not comforting. Sometimes Serilla wondered if she were the only Companion who remembered that.

Serilla suspected that if she ever did allow him into her bed, she would lose all power over him. As long as she represented a possession of his father’s that he could not claim, he would want her. He would pretend to listen to her, and occasionally actually follow her advice in an attempt to please her. It was the last vestige of power left to her. She hoped she could use it as a lever to gain her freedom.

So now, she regarded him in cool silence. She waited.

‘Oh, very well!’ he suddenly exclaimed in disgust. ‘I will take you to Bingtown, then, if it means so much to you.’

She teetered between elation and dismay. ‘You’ll let me go, then?’ she asked breathlessly.

A tiny frown creased his brow. Then he smiled at her. He had a tiny thin moustache that twitched just like a cat’s whiskers. ‘No. That is not what I said. I said I’d take you there. You can accompany me, when I go.’

‘But you are the Satrap!’ she faltered. ‘For two generations, no ruling Satrap has left Jamaillia City!’

‘It is as you said. This will convince them of my sincerity when we negotiate. Besides. It is on my way to Chalced. I have been invited there numerous times. I had already decided to go. You shall accompany me there, after we have settled the rebellious rabble in Bingtown.’ His smile widened. ‘There is much you can learn in Chalced. I think it will be good for both of us.’

‘SIT STILL.’

‘It hurts,’ Malta protested. She lifted a hand to touch the hair her mother was twining into gleaming coils. Her mother pushed her hand away.

‘Most of being a woman hurts,’ Keffria told her daughter pragmatically. ‘This is what you wanted. Get used to it.’ She tugged at the weight of shining black hair in her hand, then deftly tucked a few stray strands into place.

‘Please don’t fill her head with nonsense like that,’ Ronica said irritably. ‘The last thing we need is her going about the house feeling martyred simply because she is a female.’ Malta’s grandmother set down the handful of ribbons she had been sorting and paced a restless turn around the room. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said suddenly.

‘What? Getting Malta ready for her first beau?’ There was bemused, maternal warmth in Keffria’s voice.

Malta frowned to herself. Her mother had initially refused to accept Malta being treated as a woman. Only a few weeks ago, she had said her daughter was much too young to have men courting her. Did she now approve of the idea? Malta shifted her eyes to try to see her mother’s face in the looking glass, but Keffria’s head was bent over her hairdressing task.

The chamber was light and airy, perfumed by hyacinths in small glass vases. Sunlight spilled into the room from the tall windows. It was a lovely afternoon in early spring, a day that should have brimmed with promise. Instead, Malta felt weighted with the listlessness of the two older women. There was no lighthearted chatter as they readied her to meet her first suitor. The house seemed stagnated in mourning, as if her grandfather’s death last spring had visited a permanent desolation upon them.

On the table before Malta were small pots of paints and creams and perfumes. None of them were new. They were leftovers from her mother’s rooms. It rankled Malta that they thought she deserved no better than that. Most were not even from the bazaar. They had been made at home, in the kitchen, rendered down like soup stock from berries, flowers, cream, and tallow. Her mother and grandmother were so disappointingly old-fashioned about these things. How could they expect Bingtown society to respect them if they lived as meagrely as paupers?

They spoke over her head as if she were a baby incapable of understanding them.

‘No, I’ve surrendered on that.’ Her grandmother sounded more irritable than resigned. ‘I don’t like that we haven’t heard anything from Kyle and the Vivacia. That is what worries me.’

Keffria’s voice was carefully neutral when she spoke of her husband and the family ship. ‘The spring winds can be fickle. No doubt, he will be home in a handful of days…if he chooses to stop in Bingtown. He may pass us and go directly to Chalced to sell his cargo while it is still in good condition.’

‘You mean while the slaves are still alive and marketable,’ Ronica observed relentlessly. She had always opposed using the family liveship as a slaver. She claimed to oppose slavery on principle, but that did not prevent her from keeping a slave in the house. Ronica had claimed it would be bad for the ship to be used as a slaver, that a liveship could not cope with the dark emotions of such a cargo. Vivacia had quickened only a short time before she set out on this voyage. Everyone said that liveships were very sensitive to the feelings of those who lived aboard them and young ships even more so. Malta had her doubts. She thought the whole thing about liveships was silly. As far as she could see, owning a liveship had brought her family only debt and trouble.

Look at her situation now. After she had begged for months to be allowed to dress and socialize as a young woman instead of a little girl, her family was finally giving in to her. And why? Not because they had seen how reasonable her request was. No. It was because some stupid contract said that if her grandmother could not keep up the payments on the family liveship debt, one of the family’s children would have to be offered to the Rain Wilds in place of the gold.

The unfairness of the whole thing rose and choked her. Here she was, young, lovely, and fresh. Who would her first suitor be? A handsome young Trader like Cerwin Trell, a melancholy poet like Krion Trentor? No. Not for Malta Vestrit. No, she got some warty, old Rain Wild Trader, a man so hideously deformed he had to wear a veil if he wished to come to Bingtown. Did her mother and grandmother even care about such things? Did they ever stop to think what it might mean to her to have such a man foisted upon her? Oh, no, not them. They were too busy worrying about the ship or what was happening to her precious brother Wintrow or where her Aunt Althea was. Malta counted for nothing. Here they were, helping her dress, doing her hair, and still not paying attention to her. On what might be the most important afternoon of her life, they were arguing about slavery!

‘…doing the best he can for the family.’ Her mother spoke in a low even voice. ‘You have to admit that much. Kyle can be thoughtless of feelings. I admit that. He has injured mine more than once. Nevertheless, he is not an evil man, nor selfish. I have never known him to do anything that he did not believe was best for all of us.’