under there, too. Ronica guessed that the coach had rolled at least twice before coming to rest. Even now, it did not look stable. 'Be careful,' she cautioned her daughter in a low voice. 'It may slide further down the hill.'
'I'll be careful,' Keffria promised uselessly. Then she clambered slowly up the undercarriage of the coach. She gasped once as her injured hand slipped. She lay on the side of the vehicle, looking in the window. 'I can't see a thing,' she called down to them. 'I'll have to climb down inside it.'
Ronica listened to her wrestle with the door. She managed to drag it open. Then she sat on the edge of the opening for a moment, before lowering herself inside. Ronica heard her sharp exclamation of horror. 'I stepped on her,' Keffria wailed. 'Oh, my baby, my baby.'
The silence stretched all the way to the stars and back. Then Keffria began to sob. 'Oh, Mother, she's breathing! She's alive, Malta's alive!'
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Proofs
IT WAS ALMOST DAWN WHEN SHE SLIPPED QUIETLY INTO HIS CABIN. NO doubt, she thought he was asleep.
Kennit was not. When they had first returned to the ship, Etta had assisted him through a hot bath and into clean clothing. Then he had shooed her out of his cabin, and spread out the plans for Divvytown on the chart table. He set out his straight-edge, dividers and pens, and considered his previous effort with a scowl. He had been working from memory when he created it. Today, as he painstakingly stumped over the areas in question, he swiftly saw that some of his ideas were unworkable. He set out a new sheet of vellum and began work afresh.
He had always loved this type of work. It was like creating his own world, a tidy and orderly world where things made sense and were arranged to their best advantage. It took him back to the days of his very early boyhood, when he had played on the floor beside his father's desk. The floor had been earth in that first home he remembered. When his father was sober, he worked on his plans for Key Island. It was not only his own grand manor house that he drew. He inked in the cottages in a row where the servants would live, designating how large the garden plots for each would be, and even calculating how much space each crop would need. He had sketched out the stable and the barn, the pens for the sheep, arranging them so that the manure piles would be handy to the garden plots. He had planned a bunkhouse for the ship's crew members should they want to sleep ashore. He set each structure in place so that the roads might run straight and level. It was the plan for a perfect little world on a hidden island. Often he had taken young Kennit on his lap, to show him his dream. He had told him tales of how they would all be happy here. All had been laid out so well. For a brief time, the dream had prospered.
Until Igrot came.
He had pushed that thought away, shoved it down to the back of his mind as he worked. He was working on the layout for the shelter at the base of the watchtower when the charm suddenly spoke. 'What is the purpose of this?' it demanded.
Kennit scowled at the squiggle of ink his start had caused. He blotted it carefully away. It would still leave a mark. He would have to sand it out of the vellum. He frowned as he leaned to the work again. 'The purpose of this design,' he said, more to himself than to the insolent charm, 'is that this structure can double as a safe haven in case of attack, as well as a temporary shelter until their homes are rebuilt. If they put a well here, inside, and fortify the outside structure, then-'
'Then they could starve to death instead of being carted off for slaves,' the charm observed brightly.
'Raiding ships don't have that type of patience, usually. They are after a quick, easy capture of plunder and slaves. They are not likely to besiege a fortified town.'
'But what is the purpose of these plans? Why do you take such an interest in creating a better town for folk you secretly despise?'
For a moment, the question stymied him. He looked down at his plans. The folk of Divvytown were truly not worthy to live in such an orderly place. It did not matter, he discovered. 'It will be better,' he said stubbornly. 'It will be tidier.'
'Control,' the charm corrected him. 'You will have left your mark on how they live their lives. I have decided that that is what you are all about, Kennit. Control. What do you believe, pirate? That if you get enough control, you can go back and control the past? Make it all unhappen? Put your father's precise plan back to work, bring his little paradise back to life? The blood will always be there, Kennit. Like a smear of ink on a perfect plan, the blood sinks in and stains. No matter what you do, when you walk into that house, you will always smell the blood and hear the screams.'
He had thrown down his pen in fury. To his disgust, it had left a snake's trail of blood across his plans. No, not blood, he told himself angrily. Ink, black ink, that was all it was. Ink could be blotted and bleached away. So could blood. Eventually.
He had gone to bed.
In the darkness, he had lain awake and waited for Etta to come in. But when she did come in, she came slinking in like a cat after a night's hunt. He knew where she had been. He listened to her disrobe in the darkness. She came softly to the side of the bed she slept in and tried to slip under the covers.
'So. How was the boy?' he asked her in a hearty voice.
She gasped in surprise. He saw her silhouette as she set her hand to her heart. 'You startled me, Kennit. I thought you were asleep.'
'Obviously,' he observed sarcastically. He was angry, he decided, not because she had slept with the boy. He had intended that all along, of course. It was that she thought she could deceive him about it. That meant she thought he was stupid. It was time to divest her of that notion.
'Are you in pain?' she asked him. Her concern sounded genuine.
'Why do you ask?' he asked in return.
'I thought that might be what kept you awake. I fear Wintrow was injured more seriously than we thought. He did not complain this afternoon, but tonight his arm was so swollen he scarcely could get his shirt off.'
'So you helped him,' Kennit decided pleasantly.
'Yes. I made a poultice for him. It took the swelling down. Then I asked him some questions about a book I've been trying to read. It seemed to me a foolish book, for all it spoke about was how to decide what was real in one's life and what was the product of how one considered life. Philosophy, he named it. A waste of one's time, I told him. What is the good of pondering how one knows that a table is a table? He argued that it makes us think about how we think. I still think it is foolish, but he insists I should read it. I had not realized how long we had argued until I left his room.'
'Argued?'
'Not angrily. Discussed, I should have said.' She lifted the coverlet and slid into the bed with him. 'I've washed,' she added hastily as he shrugged away from her touch.
'In Wintrow's room?' he asked nastily.
'No. In the galley, where the water can be kept hot more easily.' She settled her body against his and sighed. A moment later, she asked, almost sharply, 'Kennit, why did you ask me that? Do you mistrust me? I am faithful to you.'
'Faithful!' The word shocked him.
She sat up abruptly in the bed, her action snatching the blankets off him. 'Of course, faithful! Faithful always. What did you think?'
This could be a barrier to all his plans for her. He tugged at the blanket and she lay back down beside him. He formulated his words carefully. 'I thought that you would be with me for a time. Until another attracted you.' He shrugged lightly, more disturbed than he liked to admit. Why should it be so hard to admit this? She was a whore. Whores were not faithful.
'Until another attracted me? Such as Wintrow, you mean?' She laughed a rich throaty chuckle. 'Wintrow?'
'He is closer to your age than I am. His body is sweet and young, scarcely scarred and possessed, I might
