Wintrow’s hand went slowly to the glass. He lifted it, then set it down again. ‘What if that life no longer exists to call back, sir? What if she is simply gone?’
Kennit laughed, and it chilled Etta. So might a man laugh under torture, when screams were no longer sufficient for his pain. ‘You doubt me, Wintrow. That is because you do not know what I know. This is not the first liveship I have ever known. They do not die so easily. That, I promise you. Now drink up that brandy, there’s a good lad. Etta! Where are you? What ails you that you’ve set out a near-empty bottle on the table? Fetch another, and quickly.’
The boy had no head for liquor. Kennit had put him easily under the table, and tending him would occupy the whore. ‘Take him to his room,’ he told Etta, and watched tolerantly as she pulled him to his feet. He staggered blindly alongside her, groping a hand ahead of him down the passage. Kennit watched them go. Confident that he now had some time to himself, Kennit tucked his crutch firmly under his arm and lurched to his feet. With a ponderously careful tread, he made his way out onto the deck. He was, perhaps, just the slightest bit drunk himself.
It was a fine night still. The stars were distant, a haze of cloud veiling their brilliance. The sea had risen a bit, to run against them, but Vivacia’s trim hull cut each wave with rhythmic grace. The wind was steady and stronger than it had been. There was even a faint edge of a whistle in it as it cut past their sails. Kennit cocked his ear to it with a frown, but even as he listened, the sound faded.
Kennit made a slow circuit of the deck. The mate was on the wheel; he acknowledged his captain with a nod, but uttered no word. That was as well. There would be a man up in the rigging, keeping watch, but he was invisible in the darkness beyond the reach of the ship’s muted lanterns. Kennit moved slowly, his tapping crutch a counterpoint to the softness of his step. His ship. The Vivacia was his ship, and he would call her back to life. And when he did, she would know he was her master, and she would be his in a way she had never been Wintrow’s. His own liveship, just as he had always deserved. Damn right, he had always deserved his own liveship. Nothing was going to take her from him now. Nothing.
He had come to hate the short ladder that led from the main deck to the elevated foredeck. He managed it now, and not too clumsily, then sat for a moment, catching his breath but pretending simply to study the night. At last he drew his crutch to him, regained his footing and approached the bow rail. He looked over the sea before them. Distant islands were low black hummocks on the horizon. He glanced once at the grey-fleshed figurehead. Then he looked out past her, over the sea.
‘Good evening, sweet sea lady,’ he greeted her. ‘A fine night tonight and a good wind at our backs. What more could we ask?’
He listened to her stillness just as if she had replied. ‘Yes. It is good. I’m as relieved as you are to see Wintrow up and about again. He took a good meal, some wine, and more brandy. I thought the lad could do with a good sleep to heal him. And, of course, I set Etta to watch over him. It gives us a minute or two to ourselves, my princess. Now. What would please you this evening? I’ve recalled a lovely old tale from the Southlands. Would you like to hear it?’
Only the wind and the water replied to him. Despair and anger warred in him, but he gave no voice to them. Instead, he smiled cordially. ‘Very well, then. This is an old tale, from a time before Jamaillia. Some say it is really a tale from the Cursed Shores that was told in the Southlands, and eventually claimed as their own.’ He cleared his throat. He half-closed his eyes. When he spoke, he spoke in his mother’s words, in the cadence of the storyteller. As she had spoken, so long ago, before Igrot cut out her tongue, slicing her words away forever.
‘Once, in that distant time so long ago, there was a young woman, of good wit but small fortune. Her parents were elderly, and when they died, what little they had would be hers. She might, perhaps, have been content with that, but in their dotage, they decided to arrange a marriage for their daughter. The man they chose was a farmer, of good fortune but no wit at all. The daughter knew at once she could never find happiness with him, nor even tolerate him. So Edrilla, for that was her name, left both parents and home and –’
‘Erlida was her name, dolt.’ Vivacia twisted slowly to look back at him. The movement sent a jolt of ice up Kennit’s spine. She turned sinuously, her body unbound by human limitations. Her hair was suddenly jet-black shot with silver gleams. The golden eyes that met his caught the faint gleams of the ship’s lantern and threw the light back to him. When she smiled at him, her lips parted too widely, and the teeth she showed him seemed both whiter and smaller than before. Her lips were too red. The life that moved in her now glittered with a serpent’s sheen. Her voice was throaty and lazy. ‘If you must bore me with a tale a thousand years old, at least tell it well.’
His breath caught hard in his throat. He started to speak, then caught himself. Be silent. Make her talk. Let her betray herself to him first. The creature’s gaze on him was like a blade at his throat, but he refused to show fear. He did his best to meet her gaze and not flinch from it.
‘Erlida,’ she insisted. ‘And it was not a farmer, but a riverside pot-maker that she was given to; a man who spent all his day patting wet clay. He made heavy, graceless pots, fit only for slops and chamber pots.’ She turned away from him, to stare ahead over the black sea. ‘That is how the tale goes. And I should know. I knew Erlida.’
Kennit let the silence stretch until it was thinner and more taut than the silk of a spider’s web. ‘How?’ he demanded hoarsely at last. ‘How could you have known Erlida?’
The figurehead snorted contemptuously. ‘Because we are not as stupid as humans, who forget everything that befell them before their individual births. The memory of my mother, and of my mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother are all mine. They were spun into strands from memory sand and the saliva of those who helped encase me in my cocoon. They were set aside for me, my heritage, for me to reclaim when I awoke as a dragon. The memories of a hundred lifetimes are mine. Yet here I am, encased in death, no more than wistful thinking.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kennit ventured stiffly when it was obvious she had finished speaking.
‘That is because you are stupid,’ she snapped bitterly.
No one, he had once vowed to himself, would ever speak to him like that again. Then he had cleansed their blood from his hands, and he had kept that promise to himself. Always. Even now. Kennit drew himself up straight. ‘Stupid. You may think me stupid, and you may call me stupid. At least I am real. And you are not.’ He tucked his crutch under his arm and prepared to lurch away.
She turned back to him, the corner of her mouth lifting in a sneering smile. ‘Ah. So the insect has a bit of sting to him. Stay, then. Speak to me, pirate. You think I am not real? I am real enough. Real enough to open my seams to the sea at any moment I choose. You might wish to think on that.’
Kennit spat over the side. ‘Boasts and brags. Am I to find that admirable, or frightening? Vivacia was braver and stronger than you, ship, whatever you are. You take refuge in the bully’s first strength: what you can destroy. Destroy us all then, and have done with it. I cannot stop you, as well you know. When you are a sunken wreck on the bottom, I wish you much joy of the experience.’ He turned resolutely away from her. He had to walk away now, he knew that. Just turn and keep walking, or she would not respect him at all. He had nearly reached the edge of the foredeck when the entire ship gave a sudden lurch. There was a wild whoop from the lookout high in the rigging, and a cumulative mutter of surprise from the crew below in their hammocks. The mate back on the wheel shouted an angry question. Kennit’s crutch tip skittered on