He interrupted whatever it was Gankis was blithering about. “Ah, this will never do. See what I've accidentally carried off from their beach. Be a good lad now, and run this back to the beach for me. Give it to the Other and see it puts it safely away.”
Gankis gaped at him. “There isn't time. Leave it here, sir! We've got to get back to the ship, before she's on the rocks or they have to leave without us. There won't be another tide that will let her back into Deception Cove for a month. And no man survives a night on this island.”
The man was beginning to get on his nerves. His loud voice had frightened off a tiny green bird that had been on the point of alighting nearby. “Go, I told you. Go!” He put whips and fetters into his voice, and was relieved when the old sea-dog snatched the locket from his hand and dashed back the way they had come.
Once he was out of sight, Kennit grinned widely to himself. He hastened up the path into the island's hilly interior. He'd put some distance between himself and where he'd left Gankis, and then he'd leave the trail. Gankis would never find him, he'd be forced to leave without him, and then all the wonders of the Others' island would be his.
“Not quite. You would be theirs.”
It was his own voice speaking, in a tiny whisper so soft that even Kennit's keen ears barely heard it. He moistened his lips and looked about himself. The words had shivered through him like a sudden awakening. He'd been about to do something. What?
“You were about to put yourself into their hands. Power flows both ways on this path. The magic encourages you to stay upon it, but it cannot be worked to appeal to a human without also working to repel the Other. The magic that keeps their world safe from you also protects you as long as you do not stray from the path. If they persuade you to leave the path, you'll be well within their reach. Not a wise move.”
He lifted his wrist to a level with his eyes. His own miniature face grinned mockingly back at him. With the charm's quickening, the wood had taken on colors. The carved ringlets were as black as his own, the face as weathered, and the eyes as deceptively weak a blue. “I had begun to think you a bad bargain,” Kennit said to the charm.
The face gave a snort of disdain. “If I am a bad bargain to you, you are as much a one to me,” it pointed out. “I was beginning to think myself strapped to the wrist of a gullible fool, doomed to almost immediate destruction. But you seem to have shaken the effect of the spell. Or rather, I have cloven it from you.”
“What spell?” Kennit demanded.
The charm's lip curled in a disdainful smile. “The reverse of the one you felt on the way here. All succumb to it that tread this path. The magic of the Other is so strong that one cannot pass through their lands without feeling it and being drawn toward it. So they settle upon this path a spell of procrastination. One knows that their lands beckon, but one puts off visiting them until tomorrow. Always tomorrow. And hence, never. But your little threat about the kittens has unsettled them a bit. You they would lure from the path, and use as a tool to be rid of the cats.”
Kennit permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction. “They did not foresee I might have a charm that would make me proof against their magic.”
The charm prissed its mouth. “I but made you aware of the spell. Awareness of any spell is the strongest charm against it. Of myself, I have no magic to fling back at them, or use to deaden their own.” The face's blue eyes shifted back and forth. “And we may yet both meet our destruction if you stand about here talking to me. The tide retreats. Soon the mate must choose between abandoning you here or letting the
Marietta
be devoured by the rocks. Best you hasten for Deception Cove.”
“Gankis!” Kennit exclaimed in dismay. He cursed, but began to run. Useless to go back for the man. He'd have to abandon him. And he'd given him the golden locket as well! What a fool he'd been, to be so gulled by the Others' magic. Well, he'd lost his witness and the souvenir he'd intended to carry off with him. He'd be damned if he'd lose his life or his ship as well. His long legs stretched as he pelted down the winding path. The golden sunlight that had earlier seemed so appealing was suddenly only a very hot afternoon that seemed to withhold the very air from his straining lungs.
A thinning of the trees ahead alerted him that he was nearly to the cove. Instants later, he heard the drumming of Gankis' feet on the path behind him, and was shocked when the sailor passed him without hesitation. Kennit had a brief glimpse of his lined face contorted with terror, and then he saw the sailor's worn boots flinging up gravel from the path as he ran ahead. Kennit had thought he could not run any faster, but he suddenly put on a burst of speed that carried him out of the sheltering trees and onto the beach.
He heard Gankis crying out to the ship's boy to wait, wait. The lad had evidently decided to give up on his captain's return, for he had pushed and dragged the gig out over the seaweed and barnacle-coated rocks to the retreating edge of the water. A cry went up from the anchored ship at the sight of Kennit and Gankis emerging onto the beach. On the afterdeck, a sailor waved at them frantically to hurry. The
Marietta
was in grave circumstances. The retreating tide had left her almost aground. Straining sailors were already laboring at the anchor windlass. As Kennit watched, the
Marietta
gave a tiny sideways list and then slid from atop a bared rock as a wave briefly lifted her clear. His heart stood still in his chest. Next to himself, he treasured his ship above all other things.
His boots slipped on squidgy kelp and crushed barnacles as he scrambled down the rocky shore after the boy and gig. Gankis was ahead of him. No orders were necessary as all three seized the gunwales of the gig and ran her out into the retreating waves. They were soaked before the last one scrambled inside her. Gankis and the boy seized the oars and set them in place while Kennit took his place in the stern. The
Marietta
's anchor was rising, festooned with seaweed. Oars battled with sails as the distance between the two craft grew smaller. Then the gig was alongside, the tackles lowered and hooked, and but a few moments later Kennit was astride his own deck. The mate was at the wheel, and the instant he saw his captain safely aboard, Sorcor swung the wheel and bellowed the orders that would give the ship her head. Wind filled the
Marietta
's sails, and flung her out against the incoming tide into the racing current that would buffet her, but carry her away from the bared teeth of Deception Cove.
A glance about the deck showed Kennit that all was in order. The ship's boy cowered when the captain's eyes swept over him. Kennit merely looked at him, and the boy knew his disobedience would not be forgotten nor overlooked. A pity. The boy had had a sweet smooth back; tomorrow that would no longer be so. Tomorrow would be soon enough to deal with him. Let him look forward to it for a time, and savor the stripes his cowardice had bought him. With no more than a nod to the mate, Kennit sought his own quarters. Despite the near mishap, his heart thundered with triumph. He had bested the Others at their own game. His luck had held, as it always had; the costly charm on his wrist had quickened and proved its value. And best of all, he had the oracle of the Others themselves to give the cloak of prophecy to his ambitions. He would be the first King of the Pirate Isles.
CHAPTER TWO
LIVESHIPS
THE SERPENT FLOWED THROUGH THE WATER, EFFORTLESSLY RIDING
the wake of the ship. Its scaled body shone like a dolphin's, but more iridescently blue. The head it lifted clear of the water was wickedly quilled with dangling barbels like those on a ratfish. Its deep blue eyes met Brashen's and widened in expectation like a woman's when she flirts. Then the maw of the creature opened wide, brilliantly scarlet and lined with row upon row of inward slanting teeth. It gaped open, big enough to take in a standing man. The dangling barbs stood up suddenly around the serpent's head, a lion's mane of poisonous darts. The scarlet mouth came darting towards him to engulf him.
Darkness surrounded Brashen, and the cold carrion stench of the creature's mouth. He flung himself away wildly with an incoherent cry. His hands met wood, and with the touch of it, relief flooded him. Nightmare. He drew a shuddering breath. He listened to the familiar sounds; the creaking of the
Vivacia
's timbers, the breathing of other sleeping men and the slapping of the water against the hull. Overhead, he could hear the barefoot patter of someone springing to answer a command. All was familiar, all was safe. He took a deep breath of air thick with the scent of tarry timbers, the stink of men living long in close quarters, and beneath it all, faint as a woman's perfume, the spicy smells of their cargo. He stretched, pushing his shoulders and feet against the cramped confines of his wooden bunk, and then settled back into his blanket. It was hours yet to his watch. If he didn't sleep now, he'd regret it later.
He closed his eyes to the dimness of the forecastle, but after a few moments, he opened them again. Brashen could sense his dream lurking just beneath the surface of sleep, waiting to reclaim him and drag him down. He cursed softly under his breath. He needed to get some sleep, but there'd be no rest in it if all he did was drop back down into the depths of the serpent dream.
The recurrent dream was now almost more real to him than the memory. It came to trouble him at odd times, usually when he was facing some major decision. At such times it reared up from the depths of his sleep to fasten its long teeth into his soul and try to pull him under. It little mattered that he was a full-grown man now. It mattered not at all that he was as good a sailor as any he'd ever shipped with, and better than nine-tenths of them. When the dream seized on him he was dragged back to his boyhood, back to a time when all, even himself, had rightly despised him.
He tried to decide what was troubling him most. His captain despised him. Yes, that was true, but it didn't make him any less a seaman. He'd been mate on this ship under Captain Vestrit and had well proved his worth to that man. When Vestrit had taken ill, Brashen had dared to hope the
Vivacia
would be put into his hands to captain. Instead the old Trader had turned it over to his son-in-law Kyle Haven. Well, family was family, and Brashen could accept what had been done. Then Captain Haven had exercised his option of choosing his own first mate, and it hadn't been Brashen Trell. Still the demotion was no fault of his own, and every sailor in the ship—no, every sailor in Bingtown itself—had known that. No shame to it; Kyle had simply wanted his own man. Brashen had thought it over and decided he'd rather serve as second mate on the
Vivacia
than first on any other vessel. It had been his own decision and he could fault no one else for it. Even after they had left the docks and Captain Haven had belatedly decided that he wanted a familiar man as second, and Brashen could move down yet another notch, he had gritted his teeth and obeyed his captain. But despite his years with the
Vivacia
and his gratitude to Ephron Vestrit, he suspected this would be the last time he shipped on her.
Captain Haven had made it clear to him that he neither welcomed nor respected Brashen as a member of his crew. During this last leg of the journey, nothing he did pleased the captain. If he saw a task that needed doing and put men to work on it, he was told he'd overstepped his authority. If he did only the duties that were precisely assigned to him, he was told he was a lazy lackwit. With each passing day, Bingtown grew nearer, but Haven grew more abrasive as well. Brashen was thinking that when they tied up in their home port, if Vestrit wasn't ready to step back on as captain again, Brashen would step off the
Vivacia
's decks for the last time. It gave him a pang, but he reminded himself there were other ships, some of them fine ones, and Brashen had a name now as a good hand. It wasn't like it had been when he'd first sailed and he'd had to take any berth he could get on any ship. Back then, surviving a voyage had been his highest priority. That first ship out, that first voyage and his nightmare were all tied together in his mind.
He had been fourteen the first time he'd seen a sea serpent. It was ten long years ago now, and he had been as green as the grass stains on a tumble's skirts. He'd been less than three weeks aboard his first ship, a wallowing Chalcedean sow called the
Spray.
Even in the best of water she moved like a pregnant woman pushing a barrow, and in a following sea no one could predict where the deck would be from one moment to the next. So he'd been seasick, and sore, both from the unaccustomed work and from a well-earned drubbing from the mate the night before. Sore in spirit, too, for in the dark that slimy Farsey had come to crouch by him as he slept in the forepeak, offering him words of sympathy for his bruises and then a sudden hand groping under his blanket. He'd rebuffed Farsey, but not without humiliation. The tubby sailor had a lot of muscle underneath his lard, and his hands had been all over Brashen even as the boy had punched and pummeled and writhed away from him. None of the other hands sleeping in the forepeak had so much as stirred in their blankets, let alone offered to aid him. He was not popular with the other sailors, for his body was too unscarred and his language too elevated for their tastes. “Schoolboy” they called him, not guessing how that stung. They knew they couldn't trust him to know his business, let alone do it, and a man like that aboard a ship is a man who gets other men killed.
So when he fled the forepeak and Farsey, he went to the afterdeck to sit huddled in his blanket and sniffle a bit to himself. The school and masters and endless lessons that had seemed so intolerable now beckoned to him like a siren, recalling him to soft beds and hot meals and hours that belonged to him alone. Here on the
Spray,
if he was seen to be idle, he caught the end of a rope. Even now, if the mate came across him, he'd either be ordered back below or put to work. He knew he should try to sleep. Instead he stared out over the oily water heaving in their wake and felt an answering unrest in his own belly. He'd have puked again, if there had been anything left to retch up. He leaned his forehead on the railing and tried to find one breath of air that did not taste of either the tarry ship or the salt water that surrounded it.
It was while he was looking at the shining black water rolling so effortlessly away from the ship that it occurred to him he had one other option. It had never presented itself to him before. Now it beckoned to him, simple and logical. Slip into the water. A few minutes of discomfort, and then it would all be over. He'd never have to answer to anyone again, or feel the snap of a rope against his ribs. He'd never have to feel ashamed or frustrated or stupid again. Best of all, the decision would only take an instant, and then it would be done. There'd be no agonizing over it, not even a prayer of undoing it. One moment of decisiveness would be all he'd have to find.
He stood up. He leaned over the railing, searching within himself for that one moment of strength to seize control of his own fate. But as he took that one great breath to find the will to tumble over the rail, he saw it. It slipped along, silent as time, its great sinuous body concealed in the smooth curve of water that was the wake of the ship. The wall of its body perfectly mimicked the arch of the moving water: but for the betraying moonlight showing him a momentary flank of glistening scales, Brashen would never have known the creature was there.
His breath froze in his chest, catching hard and hurting him. He wanted to shout out what he'd seen, bring the second watch running back to confirm it. Back then, sightings of serpents were rare, and many a landsman still claimed they were no more than sea-tales. But he also knew what the sailors said about the big serpents. A man who sees one sees his own death. With sudden certainty, Brashen knew that if anyone else knew he'd seen one, it would be taken as an ill omen for the entire ship. There'd be only one way to purge such bad luck. He'd fall from a yard when someone else didn't quite hold the flapping canvas down tightly enough, he'd tumble down an open hatch and break his neck, or he'd just quietly disappear some night during a long dull watch.
Despite the fact that he'd been toying with the notion of suicide but a moment before, he was suddenly sure he didn't want to die. Not by his own hand, not by anyone else's. He wanted to live out this thrice-damned voyage, get back to shore and somehow get his life back. He'd go to his father, he'd grovel and beg as he'd never groveled and begged before. They'd take him back. Perhaps they wouldn't take him back as heir to the Trell family fortune, but he didn't care. Let Cerwin have it, Brashen would be more than satisfied with the portion of a younger son. He'd stop his gambling, he'd stop his drinking, he'd give up cindin. Whatever his father and grandfather demanded, he'd do. He was suddenly gripping life as tightly as his blistered hands gripped the rail, watching the scaled cylinder of flesh slide along effortlessly in the wake of the ship.
Then came what had been worst. What was still worst, in his dreams. The serpent had known its defeat. Somehow, it had sensed he would not fall prey to its guile, and with a shudder as jolting as Farsey's hand on his crotch, he knew that the impulse had not been his own, but the serpent's suggestion. With a casual twist, the serpent slid from the cover of the ship's wake, to expose its full sinuous body to his view. It was half the length of the
Spray
and gleamed with scintillant colors. It moved without effort, almost as if the ship drew it through the water. Its head was not the flat wedge shape of a land serpent but full and arched, the brow curved like a horse's, with immense eyes set to either side. Toxic barbels dangled below its jaws.
Then the creature rolled to one side in the water, baring its paler belly scales, to stare up at Brashen with one great eye. That glance was what had enervated him and sent him scrabbling away from the railing and fleeing back to the forepeak. It was still what woke him twitching from his nightmares. Immense as they had been, browless and lashless, there had still been something horribly human in the round blue eye that gazed up at him so mockingly.
ALTHEA LONGED FOR A FRESH-WATER BATH. AS SHE TOILED UP
the companionway to the deck, every muscle in her body ached, and her head pounded from the thick air of the aft hold. At least her task was done. She'd go to her stateroom, wash with a wet towel, change her clothes and perhaps even nap for a bit. And then she'd go to confront Kyle. She'd put it off long enough, and the longer she waited, the more uncomfortable she became. She'd get it over with and then damn well live with whatever it brought down on her.
“Mistress Althea.” She had no more than gained the deck before Mild confronted her. “Cap'n requires you.” The ship's boy grinned at her, half-apologetic, half-relishing being the bearer of such tidings.
“Very well, Mild,” she said quietly. Very well, her thoughts echoed to herself. No wash, no clean clothes and no nap before the confrontation. Very well. She took a moment to smooth her hair back from her face and to tuck her blouse back into her trousers. Prior to her task, they had been her cleanest work clothes. Now the coarse cotton of the blouse stuck to her back and neck with her own sweat, while the trousers were smudged with oakum and tar from working in the close quarters of the hold. She knew her face was dirty, too. Well. She hoped Kyle would enjoy his advantage. She stooped down as if to re-fasten her shoe, but instead placed her hand flat on the wood of the deck. For an instant she closed her eyes and let the strength of the
Vivacia
flow through her palm. “Oh, ship,” she whispered as softly as if she prayed. “Help me stand up to him.” Then she stood, her resolve firm once more.
As she crossed the twilit deck to the captain's quarters, not an eye would meet hers. Every hand was suddenly very busy or simply looking off in another direction. She refused to glance back to see if they watched after her. Instead she kept her shoulders squared and her head up as she marched to her doom.
She rapped sharply at the door of the captain's quarters and waited for his gruff reply. When it came she entered, and then stood still, letting her eyes adjust to the yellow lantern light. In that instant, she felt a sudden wash of homesickness. The intense longing was not for any shoreside house, but rather for this room as it once had been. Memories dizzied her. Her father's oilskins had hung on that hook, and the smell of his favorite rum had flavored the air. Her own hammock he had rigged in that corner when he had first allowed her to start living aboard the
Vivacia,
that he might better watch over her. She knew a moment of anger as her eyes took in Kyle's clutter overlaying the familiar hominess of these quarters. A nail in his boot had left a pattern of scars across the polished floorboards. Ephron Vestrit had never left charts out, and would never have tolerated the soiled shirt flung across the chair back. He did not approve of an untidy deck anywhere on his ship, and that included his own quarters. His son-in-law Kyle apparently did not share those values.
Althea pointedly stepped over a discarded pair of trousers to stand before the captain at his table. Kyle let her stand there for a few moments while he continued to peruse some notation on the chart. A notation in her father's own precise hand, Althea noticed, and took strength from that even as her anger burned at the thought that he had access to the family's charts. A Trader family's charts were among their most guarded possessions. How else could one safeguard one's swiftest routes through the Inside Passage, and one's trading ports in lesser-known villages? Still, her father had entrusted these charts to Kyle; it was not up to her to question his decision.