Ship of Magic

There were times when Ronica wanted to punish Keffria savagely for not having the spine to stand up to Kyle. She wanted to force her to confront every bit of the pain that man had managed to cause in the few short months since Ephron had died. Wintrow had been virtually kidnapped and forced into slavery on his own family ship. Sa only knew what had become of Althea; sometimes that was the hardest for Ronica, to lie awake at night and wonder endlessly what had become of her wayward daughter. Did her body rot in a hasty grave somewhere? Did she live somewhere in Bingtown in dreadful circumstances, doing whatever she must to support herself? This last Ronica doubted. She had made too many inquiries and received not even a tidbit of gossip about her daughter. If Althea lived, she had left Bingtown. Under what circumstances, though?

Bingtown was no longer the civilized place it had been but five years ago. These newcomers had brought all sorts of vices with them, and very contagious attitudes toward both servants and women. The newcomers were mostly men. She did not know how they treated their women at home, but the women in their households now were servants only nominally different from slaves. And slaves were often treated as less than animals. The first time Ronica had seen a newcomer man strike one of his servants in the face right there in the market, she had been shocked. Not that the man had done it; there were ill-tempered tyrants among the Bingtown Traders as there were anywhere else, folk who lost their tempers with servants or kin and lashed out at them. Usually they ended up with what they deserved: servants who stole and lied and did as little as possible. But the servant in the market only cowered away from his master; he did not speak out at all, did not threaten to leave his employer or even complain it was an injustice. And somehow by not speaking out on his own behalf, he made it impossible for anyone else to object. One hesitated, wondering, did he perhaps truly deserve the blow? Was he acknowledging his own fault in the matter by accepting it? And so no one else spoke out for the man.

Now it had evolved that there were two classes of servants in Bingtown. True servants, like Nana, paid a living wage and entitled to their own dignity and lives—for waiting on the Vestrits was only her job, not her life. And the newcomers' servants, who were no more than slaves, whose very existence was to please any whim of their owners. It was not legal, but how did one go about proving a man was a slave and not merely a servant? When asked, such servants immediately and fearfully asserted they were, indeed, servants whose wages were sent home to their families. Many insisted they were content as they were, and had chosen their lives. It always made Ronica a bit queasy to wonder what threats held them in such abject fearfulness. Obviously the threats had been carried out more than once, for the slaves to so fear them.

“Good day, Ronica Vestrit.”

She did not startle. She had that much poise. Cerwin was before her, nodding his head in a gentleman's bow to her. She nodded gravely in return. “Good day, Cerwin Trell. I hope you enjoy our garden room. And if you enjoy the trumpet vine, perhaps Keffria can give you a cutting from it. As harsh as it may seem, we cut ours back quite severely to encourage it to bloom and to have a graceful shape.”

“I see,” he said, and she was sure that he did. He thanked her and then followed Keffria from the room. Malta and Delo, heads together, followed them. Malta's pent frustration showed in her flared nostrils and flat lips. Clearly she had expected to get Cerwin alone, or at least in no more than the company of his sister. To what end? Probably the girl herself did not know.

Possibly that was the most frightening thing about all this; that Malta had flung herself into it so aggressively with so little knowledge of the consequences.

And whose fault was that, Ronica was forced to ask herself as she watched them go. The children had been growing up in her household. She had seen them often, at table, underfoot, in the gardens. And yet they had been, always, the children. Not tomorrow's adults, not small people growing towards what they must someday be, but the children. Selden. Where was Selden, at this moment, what was he doing? Probably with Nana, probably with his tutor, supervised and secure. But that was all she knew of him. A moment of panic washed over her. There was so little time, it might even now be too late to shape them. Look at her own daughters. Keffria, who only wanted someone to tell her what to do, and Althea, who only desired that she do her own will always.