He breathed, too, a startled, trembling breath, as though he could draw her fleeing spirit into his body before it fled away forever.
Crucias stood. The Jamuraan tea set toppled and crashed to the ground.
She did not stir at the sound.
He lingered there, holding her, gazing out at the black, unseeable sea.
This ship had been his courage. He had not gone to sea again until he could take Nunieve with him. Now the ship was dead, and he nearly so. It was a ghost ship, ravaged first by economic necessities, then by jaded ill-use, and last of all by a blast that destroyed the very world. The same dark, inexplicable forces that had clawed from the blind earth to destroy his daughter had reached up from the black sea to destroy the ship that bore her name.
'I failed her twice,' Crucias whispered bitterly to himself. 'I lost her twice.' He felt a stab of guilt for taking his daughter to sea, for turning her namesake into a barge for hauling human bloodlust and depravity. 'I destroyed them both.' There could be no more damning fate than that.
He was done. He had died in every way a man could die except in flesh. It could come in many ways now. Perhaps the ship would sink or capsize. Perhaps the storm would kill him with ice and tumbling debris and exposure. But all of those would only be doing the work Crucias should do himself.
'I destroyed her. I can destroy myself.'
With a groan, he dragged himself up from the staved crate where he lay. He had no idea how long he had lingered there, lapsing into and out of consciousness. The ceaseless turmoil of wind and sea and the dizzy pitch and shudder of the ship had made sleep and dream indistinguishable. Trembling, he eased himself to the planks and crawled. A smashed barrel spilled pasty flour across the boards. A wet line snaked through the mess, and jags of shattered glass littered the floor. Uncaring, Crucias wormed his way toward the hold door. The staterooms and his own cabin lay beyond. There would be a very sharp knife in his desk drawer, one of the blades he had used to carve the figurehead. It would carve his neck shortly. But he did not think of that. He thought of her. In his mind's eye he could still see the lines of that sculpture, the face of his beloved child.
'She would not have wanted me to do this,' he told himself as he reached the door out of the hold and hauled on the bar that held it closed. 'She would not have wanted me to do any of this.'
The bar was jammed solidly. Gritting his teeth, Crucias rose and kicked. The bar shifted upward. Another kick, and the thing had nearly cleared its bracket. 'Nothing can be easy. Not even this.' He kicked one last time.
A creaking groan began, and he shied back. Wood splintered. Something struck the door, and it split, spilling rubble out on him. A beam rammed Crucias's belly. A cargo hook struck his head. He would have spun away except for the debris that mired his legs. The landslide of wreckage continued over him, burying him to the waist. Crucias twisted, struggling to wrench himself free of the pile, but a jabbing pain began in his side.
The ache intensified, stretching out through his chest and into his neck.
'This is it, then,' he thought bitterly and slumped down in the debris. 'This is it.'
'Sit down, Daddy. It's getting cold,' Nunieve said the next morning. She was on the verandah overlooking the sea, red bricks and grape vines embracing her in the cool air of morning.
Crucias stood where always he did, though this time, he knew it was only a dream. 'There was no next morning, Nunieve,' he said sadly. 'You died last night.'
She shrugged, leaning over to pat a little metal seat beside her. 'I just wanted to see if you would make it through.'
'If I would make it through?'
'Yes, through the night,' she said simply. Her smile would have seemed almost mischievous had she not been so sad. 'Now, come and sit.'
'Oh, darling, this is only a dream.'
'Yes. In this dream, I always ask you to sit, but you never do,' she replied scoldingly. 'It's a dream, Daddy. You can do whatever you want. Come, sit with me.'
'Yes,' he said, releasing a grateful sigh. 'Yes.'
With elaborate decorum, she lifted the teapot and poured his cup to the brim. The brown liquid sent up a gentle fragrance. Her hands were small and tan above the white porcelain.
'I broke these cups last night, too.'
'Yes,' she said. The tea poured contentedly from the little pot. 'But you made it through. I was afraid you wouldn't. I was afraid your life would end.'
'It did, darling. It did,' Crucias assured. This time the tea was not scalding or bitter. 'You were my whole life and future. I tried to go on. I built a ship in your name, but she wasn't you. And I couldn't provide for her, either. She wasted away, just as you did.' He shook his head and let out a rueful laugh. 'When you died, darling, my world had come to an end. And when the ship I named after you died, the whole world came to an end in a great explosion that consumed everything. The ship was destroyed by the blast and the storms afterward. I was blinded and battered and buried in a pile of rubble.'
She looked at him over her cup of tea. Her eyes seemed older, her expression grown-up despite her young face. 'What did you do then?'
A look of perplexity crossed his face, and he lowered the teacup, only half emptied. 'What did I do then?'
'Yes.'
'Well, darling-' he laughed darkly, '-I died. That's what I did then.'
Her look turned to one of consternation. 'You died?'
He nodded. 'I died.'
'You were one of the last people left alive in hundreds of miles of ocean, and you didn't make it through?'
Crucias reached over to take her hand. 'What reason did I have to live? If I had had a reason I could have done anything. I could have crawled out from under all this rubble. I could have braved the storms to clear the deck. I could have manned the pumps by myself and found some way to smell for land or listen for stars. If I had had you beside me, I would have had my whole world again, and I could have done anything.'
'You have me.' Her voice had changed, eager still but not young, the voice of a woman instead of a child. Her face was fading-her face and the verandah and the morning sea beyond. A pulpy darkness seeped through the fabric of dream, and only the woman's voice remained. 'You do have me. I thought I was the only one left alive until you opened the hold door.'
'Nunieve, you're only a dream,' he said wearily, groping for her hands.
'I'm not a dream,' she answered. She clutched his hands tightly. 'And I am not Nunieve. My name is Elgia. I'm Lady Gheiri's niece.'
'Elgia?' Crucias replied. Where am I? 'I was dreaming,' he said into the tangled darkness of the cyclone. 'I thought you were my daughter.'
'Call me what you will. I want you to get up. I want you to get this ship back under control. I want you to take me to land.'
He shook his head and felt icy brine dripping onto his shoulders. 'I can't. I'm done.'
'What about all the things you just said? About pumping out the ship and clearing the decks and steering to land?'
'I don't have any fight left in me, my dear. I'm worn-out-battered, blind. There is nothing left to believe in-'
The answer was immediate: 'Believe in me. I want to live. Isn't that enough? I want to live.'
So like Nunieve. So strong and determined and brave.
'It wasn't enough for my daughter.'
'It should have been,' Elgia said, desperate. 'It should have been enough.'
So like Nunieve.
'Yes. It should have been. But out there is a monster, perhaps a god, that sees all the should-have-beens in human lives and makes them impossible. Call it what you will-fate or curse, hatred or caprice-but it remains, the implacable darkness.'
