Robin Hobb - The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy - Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny

‘Why do you allow your crew to play boy’s pranks when they ought to be about their work?’ Keffria demanded. Her heart bled for Wintrow even as she fervently wished her son had simply gone after his own shirt. If he’d but risen to their challenge, they would have seen him as one of their own. Now they would see him as an outsider to torment. She knew it instinctively, and wondered that he had not.

‘You’ve fair ruined the lad by sending him off to the priests.’ Kyle sounded almost satisfied as he said this, and she suddenly realized how completely he had changed the topic.

‘We were discussing, not Wintrow, but Malta.’ A new tack suddenly occurred to her. ‘As you have insisted that only you know the correct way to raise our son in the ways of men, perhaps you should concede that only a woman can know the best way to guide Malta into womanhood.’

Even in the darkness, she could see the surprise that crossed his face at the tartness of her tone. It was, she suddenly knew, the wrong way to approach him if she wanted to win him to her side. But the words had been said and she was suddenly too angry to take them back. Too angry to try to cajole and coax him to her way of thinking.

‘If you were a different type of woman, I might concede the right of that,’ he said coldly. ‘But I recall you as you were when you were a girl. And your own mother kept you tethered to her skirts much as you seek to restrain Malta. Consider how long it took me to awaken you to a woman’s feelings. Not all men have that patience. I would not see Malta grow up as backward and shy as you were.’

The cruelty of his words took her breath away. Their slow courtship, her deliciously gradual hope and then certainty of Kyle’s interest in her were some of her sweetest memories. He had snatched that away in a moment, turned her months of shy anticipation into some exercise of bored patience on his part, made his awakening of her feelings an educational service he had performed for her. She turned her head and stared at this sudden stranger in her bed. She wanted to deny that he had ever spoken such words, wanted to pretend that they did not truly reflect his feelings but had been said out of some kind of spite. Coldness welled up from within her now. Spite words or true, did not it come to the same thing? He was not the man she had always believed him to be. All these years, she had been married to a fantasy, not a real person. She had imagined a husband to herself, a tender, loving, laughing man who only stayed away so many months because he must, and she had put Kyle’s face on her creation. Easy enough to ignore or excuse a few flaws or even a dozen when he made one of his brief stops at home. She had always been able to pretend he was tired, that the voyage had been both long and hard, that they were simply getting readjusted to one another. Despite all the things he had said and done in the weeks since her father’s death, she had continued to treat him and react to him as if he were the man she had created in her mind. The truth was that he had never been the romantic figure her fancies had made him. He was just a man, like any other man. No. He was stupider than most.

He was stupid enough to think she had to obey him. Even when she knew better, even when he was not around to oppose her. Realizing this was like opening her eyes to the sun’s rising. How had it never occurred to her before?

Perhaps Kyle sensed that he had pushed her a bit too far. He rolled towards her, reached out across the glacial sheets to touch her shoulder. ‘Come here,’ he bade her in a comforting voice. ‘Don’t be sulky. Not on my last night at home. Trust me. If all goes as it should on this voyage, I’ll be able to stay home for a while next time we dock. I’ll be here, to take all this off your shoulders. Malta, Selden, the ship, the holdings… I’ll put all in order and run them as they should always have been run. You have always been shy and backward… I should not say that to you as if it were a thing you could change in yourself. I just want to let you know that I know how hard you have tried to manage things in spite of that. If anyone is at fault, it is I, to have let these concerns have been your task all these years.’

Numbed, she let him draw her near to him, let him settle against her to sleep. What had been his warmth was suddenly a burdensome weight against her. The promises he had just made to reassure her instead echoed in her mind like a threat.

Ronica Vestrit opened her eyes to the shadowy bedroom. Her window was open, the gauzy curtains moving softly with the night wind. I sleep like an old woman now, she thought to herself. In fits and starts. It isn’t sleeping and it isn’t waking and it isn’t rest. She let her eyes close again. Maybe it was from all those months spent by Ephron’s bedside, when she didn’t dare sleep too deeply, when if he stirred at all she was instantly alert. Maybe, as the empty lonely months passed, she’d be able to unlearn it and sleep deep and sound again. Somehow she doubted it.

‘Mother.’

A whisper light as a wraith’s sigh. ‘Yes, dear. Mother’s here.’ Ronica replied to it as quietly. She did not open her eyes. She knew these voices, had known them for years. Her little sons still sometimes came, to call to her in the darkness. Painful as such fancies were, she would not open her eyes and disperse them. One held on to what comforts one had, even if they had sharp edges.

‘Mother, I’ve come to ask your help.’

Ronica opened her eyes slowly. ‘Althea?’ she whispered to the darkness. Was there a figure just outside the window, behind the blowing curtains. Or was this just another of her night fancies?

A hand reached to pull the curtain out of the way. Althea leaned in on the sill.

‘Oh, thank Sa you’re safe!’

Ronica rolled hastily from her bed, but as she stood up, Althea retreated from the window. ‘If you call Kyle, I’ll never come back again,’ she warned her mother in a low, rough voice.

Ronica came to the window. ‘I wasn’t even thinking of calling Kyle,’ she said softly. ‘Come back. We have to talk. Everything’s gone wrong. Nothing’s turned out the way it was supposed to.’

‘That’s hardly news,’ Althea muttered darkly. She ventured closer to the window. Ronica met her gaze, and for an instant she looked down into naked hurt. Then Althea looked away from her. ‘Mother… maybe I’m a fool to ask this. But I have to, I have to know before I begin. Do you recall what Kyle said, when… the last time we were all together?’ Her daughter’s voice was strangely urgent.

Ronica sighed heavily. ‘Kyle said a great many things. Most of which I wish I could forget, but they seem graven in my memory. Which one are you talking about?’

‘He swore by Sa that if even one reputable captain would vouch for my competency, he’d give my ship back to me. Do you remember that he said that?’

‘I do,’ Ronica admitted. ‘But I doubt that he meant it. It’s just his way, to throw such things about when he is angry.’

‘But you do remember him saying it?’ Althea pressed.

‘Yes. Yes, I remember he said that. Althea, we have much more important things to discuss than this. Please. Come in. Come back home, we need to…’

‘No. Nothing is more important than what I just asked you. Mother, I’ve never known you to lie. Not when it was important. The time will come when I’ll be counting on you to tell the truth.’ Incredibly, her daughter was walking away, speaking over her shoulder as she went. For one frightening instant, she looked so like her father as a young man. She wore the striped shirt and black trousers of a sailor on shore. She even walked as he had, that roll to her gait, and the long dark queue of hair down her back.