Ship of Magic

Brashen gave a short, bitter laugh. “Didn't I? I tried. They just threw me out again. Because I had waited too long. So. Now you know you are getting good advice. Go back home while you still can, while a bit of crawling and humble obedience will buy you a place to sleep and food on your plate. Wait too long, let the disgrace set in, let them get used to life without the family troublemaker, and they won't have you back, no matter how you plead and crawl.”

Althea was silent for a long time. Then, “That really happened to you?”

“No. I'm making it all up,” Brashen replied sourly.

“I'm sorry,” Althea said after a time. More resolutely she went on, “But I can't go back. At least, not while Kyle's in port. And even after he's gone, if I do go back, it will only be to get my things.”

Brashen shifted in his hammock. “You mean your dresses and trinkets? Precious relics from your childhood? Your favorite pillow?”

“And my jewelry. If I have to, I can always sell that.”

Brashen threw himself back in the hammock. “Why bother? You'll find you can't drag all that stuff around with you anyway. As for your jewelry, why not pretend you already got it, sold it piece by painful piece and the money is gone and now you really have to find out how to live your own life? That'll save you time, and any heirloom stuff will at least remain with your family. If Kyle hasn't seen to having it locked up already.”

The silence that followed Brashen's bitter suggestion was blacker than the starless darkness that Paragon stared into. When Althea did speak again, her voice was hard with determination.

“I know you're right. I need to do something, not wait around for something to happen. I need to find work. And the only work I know anything about it sailing. And it's my only path to getting back on board Vivacia. But I won't get hired dressed like this. . . .”

Brashen gave a contemptuous snort. “Face it, Althea. You won't get hired no matter how you are dressed. You've got too much stacked up against you. You're a woman, you're Ephron Vestrit's daughter, and Kyle Haven won't be too happy with anyone who hires you, either.”

“Why should being Ephron Vestrit's daughter be a mark against me?” Althea's voice was very small. “My father was a good man.”

“True. That he was. A very good man.” For a moment Brashen's tone gentled. “But what you have to learn is that it isn't easy to stop being a Trader's daughter. Or son. The Bingtown Traders look like as solid an alliance you can imagine, from the outside. But you and I, we came from the inside, and the inside works against us. See, you're a Vestrit. All right. So there are some families that trade with you and profit, and other families that compete with you, and other families that are allied with those who compete with you ... no one is an enemy, exactly. But when you go looking for work, it's going to be, well, like it was for me. ‘Brashen Trell, eh, Keif Trell's son? Well, why don't you work for your family, boy? Oh, had a falling out? Well, I don't want to get on your father's bad side by hiring you.’ Not that they ever come right out and say it, of course, they just look at you and put you off and say, ‘come back in four days,’ only they aren't in when you come back. And those that don't get along with your family, well, they don't want to hire you, either, cause they like seeing you down in the dirt.”

Brashen's voice was winding down, getting deeper and softer and slower. He was talking himself to sleep, Paragon thought, as he often did. He'd probably forgotten that Althea was even there. Paragon was overly familiar with Brashen's long litany of wrongs done him and injustices suffered by him. He was even more familiar with Brashen's caustic self-accusations of idiocy and worthlessness.

“So how did you survive?” Althea asked resentfully.