“Enter,” Kyle replied.
She could not see all that went on within herself, but she was aware of it in a way humans had never given her a word for. So she knew the thundering of Wintrow's heart, and sensed too the small leap of triumph he felt when his father looked up from his bills of lading to startle at the sight of his son standing so boldly before him.
“What do you do here?” Kyle demanded harshly. “You're the ship's boy, no more than that. Don't bring your whining to me.”
Wintrow stood quietly until his father was finished. Then in an even voice he spoke. “I need this finger cut off. It was crushed, and now it's infected. I can tell already it won't get better.” He took a small, swift breath. “I'd like it done while it's only the finger and not the whole hand.”
When Kyle finally replied, his voice was thick and uncertain. “You are sure of this? Did the mate tell you so? He does the doctoring aboard the ship.”
“It scarcely needs a doctor's eye. See for yourself.” With a casualness Vivacia was sure Wintrow did not feel, he began to unwind the crusted bandaging. His father made a small sound. “The smell is bad, also,” Wintrow confirmed, still in that easy voice. “The sooner you cut it off for me, the better.”
His father rose, scraping his chair back over the deck. “I'll get the mate for you. Sit down, son.”
“I'd rather you did it, sir, if it's all the same to you. And up on deck, by the figurehead.” She could almost feel Wintrow's calculated glance about the room. “No sense in bleeding in your stateroom,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“I can't . . . I've never . . .”
“I can show you where to cut, sir. It's not that different from boning out a fowl for the pot. It's just a matter of cutting out the joint. That's another thing they taught me in the monastery. Sometimes it surprised me, how much cooking had in common with medicine. The herbs, the knowledge of . . . meat. The knives.”
It was some kind of a challenge, Vivacia realized. She didn't understand it in full. She wondered if even Wintrow did. She tried to work it through in her head. If Kyle refused to cut the infected finger from his son's hand, he somehow lost. Lost what? She was not sure, but she suspected it had something to do with who truly controlled Wintrow's life. Perhaps it was a challenge from the boy for his father to admit fully to himself the life he had forced his son into, to make him confront completely the harshness of it. There was in it also the foolish challenge to risk his body that he had refused in town. They had called him a coward for that, and deemed him fearful of pain. He would prove to them all now that it had not been pain he feared. A shiver of pride in him traveled over her. Truly, he was unlike any Vestrit she had ever carried before.
“I'll call the mate,” Kyle Vestrit replied firmly.
“The mate won't do,” Wintrow asserted softly.
Kyle ignored him. He stepped to the door, opened it and leaned out to bellow, “GANTRY!” for the mate. “I'm captain of this ship,” he told Wintrow in the intervening space of quiet. “And on this ship, I say what will or will not do. And I say who does what. The mate does this sort of doctoring, not I.”
“I had thought my father might prefer to do it himself,” Wintrow essayed quietly. “But I see you have no stomach for it. I'll wait for the mate on the foredeck, then.”
“It's not a matter of stomach,” Kyle railed at him, and in that moment Vivacia glimpsed what Wintrow had done. He had shifted this, somehow, from a matter between the ship's boy and the captain to something between a father and a son.
“Then come and watch, father. To give me courage.” Wintrow made his request. No plea, but a simple request. He stepped out of the cabin without waiting to be dismissed, not even pausing for an answer. As he walked away, Gantry approached the door, to be harshly ordered to fetch his surgeon's kit and come to the foredeck. Wintrow did not pause but paced calmly back to the foredeck.
“They're coming,” he told Vivacia quietly. “My father and the mate, to cut off my finger. I pray I don't scream.”
“You've the will,” Vivacia promised him. “Put your hand flat to my deck for the cut. I'll be with you.”
The boy made no reply to that. A light breeze filled her sails and blew to her the scent of his sweat and fear. He only sat patiently picking the last of the bandaging from his injured hand. “No.” He spoke the word with finality. “There's no saving this. Better to be parted from it before it poisons my whole body.” She felt him let go of the finger, felt him remove it from his perception of his body. In his mind, he had already done the deed.
“They come,” Vivacia said softly.
“I know.” He gave a nervous giggle, chilling to hear. “I feel them. Through you.”
It was his first acknowledgment of such a thing. Vivacia wished it could have come at a different time, when they could have spoken about it privately, or simply been alone together to explore the joining. But the two men were on the foredeck, and Wintrow reflexively surged to his feet and turned to face them. His injured hand rested upon the palm of his good one like an offering.
Kyle jerked his chin toward his son. “Boy thinks you need to take his finger off. What do you think?”
Wintrow's heart seemed to pause in his chest, then begin again. Wordlessly he presented his hand to the mate. Gantry glanced at it and bared his teeth in his distaste. “The boy is right.” He spoke to his captain, not Wintrow. He gripped Wintrow's right wrist firmly and turned his hand to see the finger from all sides. He gave a short grunt of disgust. “I'll be having a word with Torg. I should have seen this hand before now. Even if we take the finger off now, the lad will need a day or so of rest, for it looks to me like the poison from the finger has worked into the hand.”
“Torg knows his business,” Kyle replied. “No man can predict everything.”
Gantry looked levelly at his captain. There was no argument in his voice as he observed, “But Torg has a mean streak to him, and it comes out worst when he thinks he has one who should be his better at his mercy. It's what drove Brashen awry; the man was a good hand, save when Torg was prodding him. Torg, he picks a man, and doesn't know when to leave off riding him.” Gantry went on carefully, “It's not a matter of favoritism. Don't fear that. I don't care what this lad's name is, sir. He's a working hand aboard the ship, and a ship runs best when all hands can work.” He paused. “I'll be having a word with Torg,” he repeated, and this time Kyle made no reply. Gantry's next words were to Wintrow.
“You're ready to do this.” It wasn't really a question, mostly an affirmation that the boy had seen the right of it.
“I am.” Wintrow's voice had gone low and deep. He went down on one knee, almost as if he were pledging his loyalty to someone, and set his injured hand flat on Vivacia's deck. She closed her eyes. She concentrated on that touch, on the splayed fingers pressing against the wizardwood planking of the foredeck. She was wordlessly grateful that the foredeck was planked with wizardwood. It was almost an unheard-of use for the expensive wood, but today she would see that it would be worth every coin the Vestrits had pledged for it. She gripped his hand, adding her will to his that it would not move from the place where he had set it.
The mate had crouched beside him and was unrolling a canvas kit of tools. Knives and probes rested in canvas pockets, while needles were pierced through the canvas. Some were ready threaded with fine fish-gut twine. As the last of the kit bounced open, it revealed the saws, toothed both fine and coarse. Wintrow swallowed. Beside them Gantry set out bandages of lint and linen.
“You'll want brandy,” Gantry told him harshly. The man's heart was a deep trembling inside him. Vivacia was glad he was not unfeeling about this.
“No.” The boy's word was soft.
“He may want it. Afterwards.” She dared to speak up. Wintrow did not contradict her.
“I'll fetch it,” Kyle said harshly.
“No.” Both she and Wintrow spoke the word together.
“I wish you to stay,” Vivacia said more softly. It was her right. But in case Kyle did not understand it, she spoke it aloud. “When you cut Wintrow, I bleed. In a manner of speaking,” she added. She forced her own nervousness down. “I have a right to demand that you be here, with me, when something as unsettling as this is happening on my deck.”
“We could take the boy below,” Kyle offered gruffly.
“No,” she forbade him again. “If this mutilation must be done, I wish it done here, where I may witness it.” She saw no need to tell him that no matter where on the ship it was done, she would be aware of it. If he was that ignorant of her full nature, let him remain so. “Send one of the others.”
Kyle turned to follow her gaze, and almost startled. The rumor had spread quickly. Every hand that was not occupied had somehow found an excuse to draw closer to the foredeck. Mild, white-faced, almost jumped out of his skin when Kyle pointed at him. “You. Fetch the brandy and a glass. Quickly.”
The boy jumped to the command, his bare feet slapping the deck as he hastened away. No one else moved. Kyle chose to ignore them.
Wintrow took a deep breath. If he had noticed those who had gathered to watch, he gave no sign of it. His words were spoken to Gantry. He lifted his left hand and pointed carefully to his injured right. “There is a place, right here . . . in the knuckle. That's where I want you to cut. You'll have to go in . . . with the point of the knife . . . and sort of feel as you cut. If you feel the knuckle of your own hand, you can find the spot I mean. That way there will be no jag of bone left . . . And afterwards, I want you to draw the skin together over the . . . space. And stitch it.” He cleared his throat and spoke plainly. “Careful is better than fast. A clean slice, not a chop.”
Between each phrase, Wintrow drew a steadying breath. His voice did not quite shake, nor did his hand as he pointed carefully to what had been the index finger of his right hand. The finger that might have worn a priest's pledge ring someday, had he been allowed to keep it.
Sa, in your mercy, do not let me scream. Do not let me faint, nor look away. If I must do this, let me do it well.
The undercurrent of the boy's thoughts was so strong, Vivacia found herself joined with him. He took a final breath, deep and steadying, as Gantry chose a knife and held it up. It was a good one, shining and clean and sharp. Wintrow nodded slowly. Behind him came the patter of Mild's feet and his whisper of “I've brought the brandy, sir,” but it seemed to come from far away, as faint and meaningless as the cries of the sea-birds. Wintrow was doing something, Vivacia realized. With each breath, the muscles of his body slackened. He dwindled inside himself, going smaller and stiller, almost as if he were dying. He's going to faint, she thought, and pity for him filled her.
Then in the next instant he did something she did not understand. He left himself. He was not gone from his body, but in some strange way he was apart from it. It was almost as if he had joined her and looked through her eyes at the slender boy kneeling so still upon the foredeck. His hair had pulled free from his sailor's queue. A few strands danced on his forehead, others stuck to it with sweat. But his black eyes were calm, his mouth relaxed as he watched the shining blade come down to his hand.
Somewhere there was great pain, but Wintrow and Vivacia watched the mate lean on the blade to force it into the boy's flesh. Bright red blood welled.
Clean blood,
Wintrow observed somewhere.
The color is good, a thick deep red.
But he spoke no word and the sound of the mate swallowing as he worked was almost as loud as the shuddering breath Kyle drew in as the blade sank deep into the boy's knuckle. Gantry was good at this; the fine point of the blade slipped into the splice of the joint. As it severed it, Wintrow could feel the sound it made. It was a white pain, shooting up his finger bone, traveling swift and hot through his arm and into his spine.
Ignore it,
he commanded himself savagely. In a willing of strength unlike anything Vivacia had ever witnessed before, he kept the muscles of his arm slack. He did not allow himself to flinch or pull away. His only concession was to grip hard the wrist of his right hand with his left, as if he could strangle the coursing of the pain up his arm. Blood flowed freely now, puddling between his thumb and middle finger. It felt hot on Vivacia's deck planking. It soaked into the wizardwood and she drew it in, cherishing this closeness, the salt of it, the copper of it.
The mate was true to Wintrow's wishes. There was a tiny crunch as the last gristle parted under the pressure of the blade, and then he drew the knife carefully across to sever the last bit of skin. The finger rested on her deck now, a separate thing, a piece of meat. Wintrow reached down carefully with his left hand to pick up his own severed finger and set it aside. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he pinched the skin together over the place where his right forefinger had been.
“Stitch it shut,” he told the mate calmly as his own blood welled and dripped. “Not too tight; just enough to hold the skin together without the thread cutting into it. Your smallest needle and the finest gut you have.”
Wintrow's father coughed and turned away. He walked stiffly to the railing, to stand and stare out at the passing islands as if they held some deep and sudden fascination for him. Wintrow appeared not to notice, but Gantry darted a single glance at his captain. Then he folded his lips, swallowed hard himself, and took up the needle. The boy held his own flesh together as the mate stitched it and knotted the gut thread. Wintrow set his bloodied left hand flat to the deck, bracing himself as the mate bandaged the place where the finger had been. And the whole time he gave no sign, by word or movement, that he felt any pain at all. He might have been patching canvas, Vivacia thought. No. He was aware, somewhere, of the pain. His body was aware, for the sweat had flowed down the channel of his spine and his shirt was mired in it, clinging to him. He felt the pain, somewhere, but he had disconnected his mind from it. It had become only his body's insistent signal to him that something was wrong, just as hunger or thirst was a signal. A signal that one could ignore when one must.