Assassin’s Fate

Amber nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I believe that you will. As will Vivacia and the other liveships. But you will be dragons as dragons have not existed before. Dragons touched with humanity. Understanding us. Perhaps even caring about us.’

‘You do not know what you are saying! Dragons shaped by human touch? Do you know what those are? Abominations! That is what they are, those who hatch and grow on Others’ Island. Those who are as much human as serpent, and hence neither! And never will they be dragons. I shall be dragons!’

I made little sense of this outburst, but Amber seemed to understand it. ‘Yes. Yes, of course, you will be dragons. And the part of you that will remember humanity is not in your wing or your tooth or your eye. It will be in your memory. As the serpents of the sea recall the memories they need of those who were serpents before them, and as a dragon recalls his ancestral knowledge. You will have an additional pool of memories. Your human memories. And it will give you wisdom beyond what other dragons have. You and the dragons who have been liveships will be dragons apart from the ordinary. A new kind of dragon.’

He turned away from all of us. ‘You have no idea what you are suggesting. Look. Soon they will be hailing us. Should not you be about your duties?’

The tariff ship’s captain was a young man. The red beard that edged his chin was patchy and though he wore a fine hat with several immense plumes in it, I think he was relieved when Brashen shouted to him that we were Divvytown bound to submit for taxing. ‘I’ll follow you then,’ he declared, as if he had been about to demand that we submit.

‘Go ahead and try,’ Paragon invited him affably. And indeed, once we were under way again, he demonstrated the difference between a liveship and one made of wood. Given the same wind and current, we pulled steadily away from the tariff vessel. Truly, if Paragon had wanted to run from him, the tariff ship’s chase would have been futile.

No one asked us to leave the deck and so I stood by the rail with my small retinue, enjoying the wind on my face. ‘How does he do it?’ I asked Amber, and felt Per step closer for the answer.

‘I don’t truly know. He smooths his hull, I think. And unlike many other ships, a liveship will never develop a beard of weed and mussels. His hull never needs to be scraped and painted, and no tubeworm will ever hole his planking.’

For the rest of the afternoon, we watched the islands grow closer. Soon even Paragon had to slow in order to thread his way through islets to what had once been a hidden town, a place where pirates went to divvy out their spoils and drink and gamble and take every pleasure they could. Once it had been a place where escaped slaves could go to begin a new life as free folk. I’d heard tales of it as a noisome place of stagnant water and patchwork hovels and sagging wharves.

But Paragon followed a well-marked channel into a tidy little harbour where large sailing vessels, obviously merchanters, were anchored in the bay while smaller ships and fishing boats were tied to an orderly array of docks. A prosperous little city spread back from the harbour in a grid of streets and alleys. Trees I did not recognize lined the streets, heavy with yellow blossoms. The main street led to a large structure about the same size as the manor house at Withywoods, but there the resemblance ended. Queen Etta’s palace was of plank, painted white, with long open porches on the front. A green surrounded it, so that even from the harbour it was visible past the rows of warehouses and storefronts. As I looked, I realized that the height of the buildings had been reduced to have exactly that effect; the royal residence towered over the town and, from the upper balconies and tower, had an unimpeded view of the harbour.

‘Is that the Vivacia?’ Lant asked and I turned my gaze.

‘I don’t know but she’s definitely a liveship.’ She was a queenly creation, a youthful woman with her head held high and her shapely arms and wrists crossed at her waist. Her hair was a black tumble of curls that fell to her bared shoulders and over her breasts. I saw in her proud features an echo of Althea, as if they were related. As Spark described the vessel to Amber in a low voice, Amber nodded. ‘Vivacia,’ she confirmed. ‘The Vestrit family liveship. Command of her was snatched away from Althea by cruelty and strange turns of fate. Her nephew Wintrow commands her now. Brashen served aboard her for years, as first mate under Althea’s father. This will be bittersweet for both of them.’