Ship of Magic

The hands came back, settling on her bowed shoulders and grasping them firmly. “Go away, Brashen,” she said with no strength. But she no longer had the will to shrug his grip away. The warmth and steadiness of his hands on her shoulders were too much like her father's steady clasp. Sometimes her father would come up on deck while she was on wheel watch. He could move as silently as a ghost when he wanted to; his whole crew knew that, and knew, too, that one could never know when he would silently appear, never interfering in a man's work but checking the task with a knowing eye. She would be standing at the wheel, both hands on it and holding a steady course, and she wouldn't even know he was there until she felt the firm, approving grip of his hands on her shoulders. Then he might drift off, or he might stand beside her and have a pipe while he watched the night and the water and his daughter steering his ship through both.

Somehow that memory gave her strength. The sharp edges of her grief settled into a dull, throbbing lump of pain. She straightened up, squaring her shoulders. She didn't understand anything; not how he could have died and left her, and certainly not how he could have taken her ship from her and given it to her sister. “But, you know, there were a lot of times when he barked orders, and I couldn't fathom the sense of them. But if I simply jumped up and obeyed, it always came right. It always came right.”

She turned, expecting to confront Brashen. Instead it was Wintrow who stood behind her. It surprised her, and that made her almost angry. Who was he, to touch her so familiarly, let alone to give her a pale ghost of her father's smile and say quietly, “I am sure it will be so again, Aunt Althea. For it is not only your father's will that we accept tragedy and disappointment in our lives, but Sa's will also. If we endure what he sends us cheerfully, it never fails that he will reward us.”

“Stuff it,” she snarled in a low and savage voice. How dare he puke out platitudes at her just now, this son of Kyle's that stood to gain all she had lost! No doubt he could endure that fate quite easily. The look of shock on his boy's face almost made her laugh out loud. His hands dropped clear of her and he took a step backwards.

“Althea!” her mother gasped in shock and rebuke.

Althea dragged her sleeve across her wet face and returned her mother's glare. “Don't think I don't know whose idea it was that Keffria inherit the ship,” she warned her heatedly.

“Oh, Althea!” Keffria cried out, and the pain in her voice sounded almost real. The grief and dismay on her sister's face nearly melted her. Once they had been so close. . . .

But then Kyle strode into their midst, announcing angrily, “Something's wrong. The peg won't go into the figurehead.”

Everyone turned to stare at him. The impatient irritation in his voice was too much at odds with the pathetic body stretched on the deck before them. For a moment the silence held, then even Kyle had the grace to look abashed. He stood holding the silver-gray peg and glancing about as if his eyes could find nowhere to rest. Althea took a long shuddering breath, but before she could speak, she heard Brashen's voice, dripping sarcasm.

“Perhaps you do not know that only a blood-family member may quicken a liveship?”

It was as if he stood in an open field in a storm and called the lightning down on himself. Anger convulsed Kyle's face, and he went redder than Althea had ever seen him.

“What gives you the right to speak here, dog? I'll see you off this ship!”

“That you will,” Brashen affirmed calmly. “But not before I've done my last duty to my captain. He spoke clearly enough, for a dying man. ‘Stand by her through this,’ he said to me. I do not doubt that you heard him. And I shall. Give the peg to Althea. The quickening of the ship at least belongs to her.”

He never knows when to shut up. That had always been her father's strongest criticism of his young first mate, but when he had said it, an awed admiration had always crept into his voice. Althea had never understood it before. Now she did. He stood there, ragged as any deckhand was at the end of a long voyage, and spoke back to the man who had commanded the ship and likely would again. He heard himself publicly dismissed, and did not even flinch. She knew Kyle would never concede to his demand; she did not even let her heart yearn for it. But in making that demand, he suddenly gave her a glimpse of what her father had seen in him.

Kyle stood glowering. His eyes went around the circle of mourners, but Althea knew he was just as aware of the outer circle of crew-members, and even of the folk who had come down to the docks to see a liveship quicken. In the end, he decided to ignore Brashen's words.

“Wintrow!” he commanded in a voice that snapped like a lash. “Take the peg and quicken the ship.”