After a time, she sank slowly back into her chair. She took a deep breath, and then lifted her hands to her throbbing temples. Her eyes were scratchy with unshed tears. So much tension, so many quarrels lately. It seemed as if there was never a moment of peace in the house. She longed suddenly to return to the days when her father was a healthy man, and he and Althea sailed while she and her mother stayed home and cared for the house and children.
Then when Kyle had come into port, it had been like a holiday. He had been the captain of the
Daring
in those days. All had spoken well of him, how handsome, how dashing he looked. His days at home they had spent either dallying late in their bedchamber or strolling arm in arm about Bingtown. His sea chest had always brimmed with prizes for her and the children, and he had made her always feel like a newly wed bride. Ever since he had taken over the
Vivacia,
he had become so serious. And so, so . . . she tried to think of a word. “Grasping” came to mind, but she rejected it. He was simply a man in charge, she decided to herself. And with her father's death, he had extended that to everything: not just the family ship, but the household, the holdings, the children, and even, she thought woefully, her sister and her mother.
They used to talk late at night, long conversations about nothing. Kyle had liked to open the draperies and let the moonlight stream in across their curtained bed. He had spoken of the fury of the storms he had seen, and the beauty of the full sails when the wind was right, as he had touched her with hands and eyes that said he found her as fascinating as the sea. Now he spoke of little, save what cargo he had sold and what goods he'd taken on. Over and over, he reminded her that the foundering or the thriving of the Vestrit family fortunes rested on his shoulders now. Over and over he vowed to her that he would show the Bingtown Traders a thing or two about sagacious management and shrewd trading. The nights they spent together brought her neither release nor rest. The days in port he spent with his ship. And now, she admitted bitterly, what she was looking forward to was his sailing. When he left, she could at least reclaim some of the peace of regular days and routines.
She looked up at the sound of footsteps, both hoping and dreading that they heralded her husband's return. Instead her mother drifted into the room. She looked at Keffria and the remnants of food on the breakfast table as if they were less than shadows. Then her eyes roamed the room as if looking for something else. Or someone else. “Good morning, Mother,” Keffria said.
“Good morning,” her mother replied listlessly. “I heard Kyle leave.”
“So you came down,” Keffria supplied bitterly. “Mother, it pains me that you avoid him. There are things that must be discussed, that must be decided . . .”
Her mother's smile was tight. “And while Kyle is present, that is impossible. Keffria, I am too tired and too grieved to speak tactfully. Your husband leaves no room for discussion. There is no point to my trading words with him, for we do not agree, and he will admit to no reason save his own.” She shook her head. “It seems I have but two thoughts these days. I can grieve for your father, or rebuke myself for the muddle I have made of what he entrusted to me.”
Despite her own recent anger with Kyle, the words stung Keffria. When she replied, it was in a low voice, freighted in hurt. “He is a good man, Mother. He only does what he believes is best for all of us.”
“That may be true, but it's little comfort, Keffria.” Ronica shook her head to herself. “Your father and I certainly believed he was a good man, or we would never have consented to your wedding him. But at that time, we could not have foreseen even half of what has come to pass. You might have been better off wedded to a man of Trader stock. We all might have been better off, had you married someone more familiar with our ways.” Her mother came and seated herself at the table, moving like an old woman, slowly and stiffly. She turned her face away from the bright summer morning flooding the room with light as if her eyes hurt her. “Look at what we have come to, through Kyle's doing what he believes is good for us all. Althea is still missing. And young Wintrow is carried off against his will to the ship. That's not good. Not for the boy nor for the ship. If Kyle truly understood all that a liveship is, I don't think he'd have the boy aboard a new ship while he's so agitated and unhappy. From all I've heard, the first few months that a ship is quickened are crucial. Calm is what she needs, and confidence in her master, not coercion and quarreling. As for his idea of using her as a slaver . . . it makes me ill. Simply ill.” She lifted her head and her gaze pinned Keffria in her place. “It shames me that you can allow your son to endure all he must see if he travels aboard a slaveship. How can you allow him to see that, let alone be a part of it? What do you think he must become to survive it?”
Her words wakened nameless dread in Keffria, but she clenched her hands under the table and sought to still them. “Kyle says he will not be harsh with Wintrow. As for the slaves, as he has pointed out to me, to make them suffer needlessly would only be to damage a valuable cargo. I did speak to him, I did, of all I have heard of slave ships. And he promised me that the
Vivacia
would not become some stinking death-hole.”
“Even should Kyle treat Wintrow as gently as a girl child, he will suffer from what he sees on a slaveship. The necessary crowding, the deaths, the savage discipline to keep such a cargo under control . . . it's wrong. It's wrong, and we both know it.” Her mother's voice brooked no opposition.
“But we have a slave right here in the house. Rache, that Davad lent you while Papa was so ill.”
“It's wrong,” Ronica Vestrit repeated in a low voice. “I realized that, and I wanted to send her back to Davad. But when I tried to send her home, she fell to her knees and begged me not to. She'll bring a good price in Chalced, she knows that, for she has a bit of learning. Her husband was already sent that way, for being a debtor. They came from Jamaillia, you know. And when they fell into debt and could not find a way out of it, both she and her husband and son were sent to the slave block. Her husband was a well-educated man, and he brought a goodly price. But she and her small son were sold cheaply, to one of Davad's agents.” Ronica Vestrit's voice thickened. “She told me about her journey here. Her little boy did not survive it. Yet I do not think Davad Restart is a cruel man, at least not intentionally. Nor is he so poor a trader as to intentionally damage a valuable cargo.” Her mother's voice had remained curiously flat through this telling. When she mimicked Kyle's words back to her in that same tone, it made Keffria's skin prickle.
“I think I had grown immune to death. In the years since your brothers died of the plague, I had pushed it aside as something I had endured and had done with. Now your father has gone, and it has reminded me of how sudden and how permanent is that moment of ending. Hard enough to deal with it when it is delivered by disease. But Rache's boy died because his little belly could not tolerate the tossing motion in the crowded, airless hold. He could not keep down the coarse bread and stagnant water the crew fed them. She had to watch her little boy die.”
Her mother lifted her eyes to meet Keffria's and there was torment there. “I asked Rache, why did not you cry out to the crew when they came to feed you? Surely they could have given you a bit of time on the deck in the fresh wind, a little food that your boy could tolerate. She told me she did. That she begged and pleaded each time they came near to pass out the food or haul the buckets away. But the sailors behaved as if they could not hear her. She was not the only one aboard begging for mercy. Chained beside her, grown men and young women died as uselessly as her boy had. When they came and took the man next to her and her child away, they lugged him off like a meal sack. She knew they would throw his body to the serpents that followed the ship. And it made her mad.
“Oddly enough, her insanity was what saved her. For when she began to cry out, begging the serpents to break in the hull of the ship and devour her as well, when she began to call on Sa to send winds and tides to smash the ship on the rocks, her ranting moved the sailors as her pleas had not. They did not want this woman who cared so little for life as to call down death upon them all. She was beaten, but she would not be silenced. And when the ship docked briefly in Bingtown, she was put off, for the sailors vowed that the last storm they had endured was of her calling, and they'd sail no further with her aboard. Davad had to take receipt of her; she was cargo he owned. But as he could not call her a slave in Bingtown, he took her as indentured servant. And when he grew apprehensive of her stares, for she blames him for her boy's death, he sent her here to wait upon us. So you see, his gift to us in our time of need had more of fear in it than charity. And I mistrust that that is what Davad himself has become; a man governed more by fear than charity.”
She paused as if reflecting. “And with a good measure of greed thrown in. I did not think Davad the type of man who could listen to a tale such as Rache's and then continue the trade that had bred it. But he has. And he pushes, quite persistently, at those he knows well to ask them to vote to legalize his trade for Bingtown as well.” Again her eyes speared Keffria. “Now that you have inherited your father's holdings, you inherit his Council vote as well. No doubt Davad will begin to court you to use that vote to his bidding. And if your own economic interests align with that of slavery . . . what do you think Kyle will bid you do?”
Keffria felt paralyzed. She dared not answer. She wished to say her husband would not countenance slavery in Bingtown, but already her mind was unwillingly marking up the ledger. Were slaves legal, certain properties could suddenly become profitable once again. Grain fields. The tin mine. But apart from that, Kyle would not have to take his cargo as far as Chalced to dispose of it profitably, but could sell the slaves right here in Bingtown. Less time in transit meant more of his cargo would arrive alive and in good condition to be sold . . .
With a shudder, Keffria suddenly considered the full import of her thought.
More of his cargo would arrive alive.
From the beginning, she had accepted that if Kyle chose to transport slaves, it was inevitable that some would die in the process. Of what? Of old age or ill health? No. Kyle was too sage to buy slaves likely to die. She had been expecting them to die from the trip. Accepting that it must happen. But why? In her journeys by ship, she had never feared for her own life or health. So only the treatment of the unwilling passengers could be the reason for the deaths. The treatment of the slaves that might well be part of Wintrow's duties as a sailor. Would her son learn to ignore the pleading cries of a young woman begging mercy for her child? Would he help fling the lifeless bodies to the serpents?
Her mother must have read something of her thoughts, for she said quietly, “Remember, it is your vote. You can cede it to your husband if you wish. Many Bingtown Trader wives in your position would do so, though Bingtown law does not require it. But remember that the Vestrit family gets one vote on the Traders' Council, and one vote only. And once you have ceded it to your husband, you cannot reclaim it. He can appoint whoever he wishes to vote his will in his absence.”
Keffria suddenly felt very cold and alone. No matter how she decided this, she would suffer for it. She could not doubt that Kyle would advocate for slavery. She could almost hear his logical, rational arguments, even when he argued that slavery in Bingtown was bound to be a kinder fate for the slaves than slavery in Chalced. He would persuade her. And when he did, her mother would lose respect for her. “It is but one vote on the Traders' Council,” she heard herself say faintly. “One vote of fifty-six.”
“Fifty-six remaining Trader families,” her mother conceded. In the next breath she went on, “and do you know how many newcomers have amassed enough leffers of land to claim a vote on the Bingtown Council now? Twenty-seven. You look shocked. Well, so was I. Evidently there are folk settling to the south of Bingtown, quietly taking up land with grants signed by the new Satrap, and then coming into Bingtown to assert their right to a place on the Bingtown Council. That second Council that we created—in a sense of fairness, that the Three-Ships Immigrants could have a place to resolve their own grievances among themselves, and a voice in governing Bingtown—is now being used against us.
“And the pressure is not just from within Bingtown. Chalced itself casts greedy eyes on our wealth. They have challenged our northern border, more than once, and that fool boy of a Satrap has all but conceded to them without a murmur. All for the sake of the gifts they send him, women and jewelry and pleasure herbs. He will not stand for Bingtown against Chalced. He will not even keep Esclepius' promises to us. Rumor has it that this new Satrap has depleted Jamaillia's treasury with his wastrel ways, and seeks to find more coin for his amusement by issuing grants of land to whoever will court his favor with gifts and promises of gifts. Not just to Jamaillian nobles does he give our land, but to his Chalcedean sycophants as well. So you may be correct in what you were about to say, Keffria. Perhaps one vote will do no good at all to stop the changes that are overtaking Bingtown.”
Her mother rose slowly from her place at the table. She had taken no food, not even a sip of tea. As she drifted toward the door, she sighed. “In time, not even all fifty-six Trader votes will be enough to stem the will of this wave of newcomers. And if this new Satrap Cosgo will so violate one promise given to us by Esclepius, will he hold the others sacred? How long before the monopolies granted to us are sold to others as well? I do not like to think of what may happen here. It will be far more than the end of our way of life. What such greedy and incautious folk as these may awaken if they venture up the Rain Wild River, I do not like to think.”
For one horrific instant, Keffria's mind was carried back to the birth of her third child. Or rather, her third time to be brought to childbed, for no child was born of that long pregnancy and painful labor. Only a creature her mother had neither allowed her to see nor to hold, something that had growled and snarled and thrashed wildly as her mother carried it from the room. Kyle had been at sea. Her father had been at home, and it had been left to him to do what was the burden of the Bingtown Trader families. No one had spoken of it afterwards. Even when Kyle came home from sea, he had not asked about the cradle still empty, but only accepted it and treated her with great tenderness. Once, since then, he had referred to her “stillbirth.” She wondered if that was what he truly believed. He was not Trader-born; perhaps he did not believe in the price that must be paid.