Ship of Magic

Questions had to be answered, if one didn't want a boot in the small of one's back. “I think that slavery is immoral and illegal. And that it isn't appropriate for us to be discussing the captain's plans.” He kept his eyes on his work. It was a pile of old line. His task was to untangle it, salvage what was good, and render the rest down into fibers that could either be retwisted into line or used as chinking as needed. His hands had become as rough as the hemp he handled. When he looked at them, it was hard to recall they had once been the hands of an artist with a fine touch for glass. Across from him on the foredeck, Mild was working on his side of the pile. He envied the young sailor the agility of his callused hands. When Mild took up a piece of rope and gave it a shake, it seemed to magically untangle itself. No matter how Wintrow tried to coil a piece of line, it still always wanted to twist in the other direction.

“Oh, ho. Getting a bit snippy, are we?” Torg's heavy boot nudged him painfully. He was still bruised from an earlier kick.

“No, sir,” Wintrow answered reflexively. It was getting easier, sometimes, to simply be subservient. When his father had first given him over to this brute, he had tried to speak to the man as if he had a mind. He had rapidly learned that any words Torg didn't understand he interpreted as mockery, and that explanations were only seen as feeble excuses. The less said, the fewer bruises. Even if it meant agreeing with statements he normally disagreed with. He tried not to see it as an eroding of his dignity and ethics. Survival, he told himself. It was simple survival until he could get away.

He dared to venture a question. “What ports shall we be stopping in?”

If there were one anywhere on the peninsula of Marrow, he'd be off the ship there, somehow. He didn't care how far he had to walk, or if he had to beg his way across the entire peninsula, he'd get back to his monastery. When he told his tale there, they'd listen to him. They'd change his name and place him elsewhere, where his father could never find him again.

“Nowhere near Marrow,” Torg told him with vicious delight. “If you want to get back to your priesting, boy, you're going to have to swim.” The second mate laughed aloud, and Wintrow saw how he had been set up to ask that question. It disturbed him that even Torg's slow wit could know so clearly where his heart was. Did he dream on it too much, did it show in his every action? He had begun to think it was the only way for him to stay sane. He constantly planned ways to slip away from the ship. Every time they latched him into the chain locker for the night, he would wait until the footsteps had died away and then try the door. He wished he had not been so impatient when he first was dragged aboard the ship. His clumsy attempts to leave had alerted both captain and crew to his intent, and Kyle had made it well known both to him and the crew that any man who let him leave the ship would pay heavily for it. He was never left alone, and those who worked alongside him resented that they could not trust him, but must guard him as well as work.

Now Torg made a great show of stretching his muscles. He lifted a booted foot to tap Wintrow's spine again. “Got to go, boys. Work to do. Mild, you're the nanny. See pretty boy here keeps busy.” With a final painful nudge, Torg lumbered away down the deck. Neither boy looked up to watch him go. But when he was out of earshot, Mild observed calmly, “Someone will kill him someday and tip him over the side and no one will be the wiser.” The young sailor's hands never paused in their work as he imparted this information to Wintrow. “Maybe it will be me,” he added pleasantly.

The youth's calm advocation of murder chilled Wintrow. Much as he disliked Torg, as difficult as it was for him not to hate the man, he had never considered killing him. That Mild had was disconcerting. “Don't let someone like Torg distort your life and focus,” he suggested quietly. “Even to think of killing for the sake of vengeance bends the spirit. We cannot know why Sa permits such men as Torg to have power over others, but we can deny him the power to distort our spirits. Yield him obedience where we must, but do not . . .”

“I didn't ask for a sermon,” Mild protested irritably. He flung down the piece of line he'd been working on in disgust. “Who do you think you are? Why should you be telling me how to think or live? Don't you ever just talk? Try it sometime. Just say out loud, I'd really love to kill that dog-pronging bastard. You'd be surprised what a relief it is.” He turned his face away from Wintrow and spoke aloud in an apparent aside to a mast. “Dung. You try to talk to him like he's a person and he acts like you're on your knees begging his advice.”