Ship of Magic

They were not his concern. Vivacia was. Her futile pleas had died away to small inarticulate sounds. Wintrow caught sight of two map-faces on the lee side of the ship. They were systematically throwing the stacked bodies of slain crewmen and slaves overboard. Their faces were detached, their only comments relating to the gluttony of the white serpent who seized them. Wintrow caught a glimpse of Mild as he went over, and would recall forever the image of bare feet dangling from ragged trousers as the white serpent seized his friend's body in an engulfing maw. “Sa forgive us,” he prayed on a breath. He spun away from the sight and got his hands on die ladder to the foredeck. He had started up it when he heard Sa'Adar order a map-face, “Fetch Captain Haven here.” Wintrow halted an instant, then swarmed up it and raced to the bow. “Vivacia. I'm here, I'm here.” He pitched his voice low.

“Wintrow!” she gasped. She turned to him, reached up a hand. He leaned down to touch it. The face she turned up to him was devastated with both shock and fear. “So many are dead,” she whispered. “So many died last night. And what will become of us now?”

“I don't know,” he told her truthfully. “But I promise that of my own will, I will never leave you again. And I will do all I can to stop any further killing. But you have to help me. You must.”

“How? No one listens to me. I'm nothing to them.”

“You are everything to me. Be strong, be brave.”

In the waist there was a sudden stir, a muttering that grew to an animalistic roar. Wintrow didn't need to look. “They have my father down there. We have to keep him alive.”

“Why?” The sudden harshness in her voice was chilling.

“Because I promised him I would try. He helped me through the night, he stood by me. And you. Despite all that is between us, he helped me keep you off the rocks.” Wintrow took a breath. “And because of what it would do to me if I just stood by and allowed them to kill my father. Because of who that would make me.”

“There is nothing we can do,” she said bitterly. “I could not save Gantry, I could not save Mild. Not even Findow for the sake of his fiddling could I save. For all these slaves have suffered, they have only learned to disregard suffering. Pain is the coin they use now in all their transactions. Nothing else reaches them, nothing else will satisfy them.” An edge of hysteria was creeping into her voice. “And that is what they fill me with. Their own pain, and their hunger for pain and . . .”

“Vivacia,” he said gently, and then more firmly, “Ship. Listen to me. You sent me below to recall who I was. I know you did. And you were right. You were right to do so. Now. Recall who you are, and who has sailed you. Recall all you know of courage. We will need it.”

As if in response to his words, he heard Sa'Adar's voice raised in command. “Wintrow! Come forth. Your father claims you will speak for him.”

A breath. Two. Three. Finding himself at the center of all things, finding Sa at the center of himself. Recalling that Sa was all and all was Sa.

“Do not think you can hide yourself!” Sa'Adar's voice boomed out. “Come out. Captain Kennit commands it!”

Wintrow pushed the hair back from his eyes and stood as tall as he could. He walked to the edge of the foredeck and looked down on them all. “No one commands me on the deck of my own ship!” He threw the words down at them and waited to see what would happen.

“Your ship? You, made a slave by your father's own hand, claim this ship as yours?” It was Sa'Adar who spoke, not one of the pirates. Wintrow took heart.

He did not look at Sa'Adar as he spoke but at the pirates who had turned to stare at him. “I claim this ship and this ship claims me. By right of blood. And if you think that true claim can be disputed, ask my father how well he succeeded at it.” He took a deep breath and tried to bring his voice from the bottom of his lungs. “The liveship Vivacia is mine.”

“Seize him and bring him here,” Sa'Adar ordered his map-faces disgustedly.

“Touch him and you all die!” Vivacia's tone was no longer that of a frightened child, but that of an outraged matriarch. Even anchored and grappled as she was, she contrived to put a rock in her decks. “Doubt it not!” she roared out suddenly. “You have soaked me with your filth, and I have not complained. You have spilled blood on my decks, blood and deaths I must carry with me forever, and I have not stirred against you. But harm Wintrow and my vengeance will know no end. No end save your deaths!”