add, of two legs. Why would not you find him more desirable?'
'You are jealous!' She said it as if he had just presented her with a diamond. 'Oh, Kennit. You are being silly. Wintrow? I started to be kind to him only because you asked it of me. Now, I have come to see his value. I see what you wanted to show me about him. He has taught me much, and I am grateful for that. But why would I trade a man for an untried youth?'
'He is whole,' Kennit pointed out. 'Today he fought as a man. He killed.'
'He fought today, yes. But that scarcely makes him a man grown. He fought for the first time, with a blade we gave him and the skills I taught him. He killed, and that act consumes and torments him tonight. He spoke long about it, the wrong of taking from a man what Sa alone could give him.' She lowered her voice. 'He wept about it.'
Kennit groped to follow. 'And that made you despise him as less than a man.'
'No. It made me pity him, even as I wanted to shake him out of it. He is a youth torn between his natural gentleness of spirit and his need to follow you. He himself knows that. He spoke of it tonight. A long time ago, when we were first thrown into one another's company, I said things to him. Commonsense things, such as finding his life in what is instead of longing after what could be. He took those things to heart, so seriously, Kennit.' She lowered her voice. 'He now believes that Sa has steered him to you. Everything, he says, that happened to him since he left his monastery carried him toward you. He believes that Sa gave him over to slavery so that he might better understand your hatred of it. He fought the idea for so long. He says that he resisted it because he was jealous of how his ship swung so quickly to you. That jealousy blinded him and made him seek out faults in you. But over the last few weeks, he has come to see it is Sa's will for him. He believes he is destined to stand beside you, speak out for you and fight for you. Yet, he dreads the last. It tears him.'
'Poor boy,' Kennit said aloud. It was hard to sound sympathetic with triumph racing through his heart. He tried. It was almost as good as if she had slept with the boy.
Etta's hands came up to rest on his shoulders. She kneaded gently at his flesh. Her cool hands were pleasant. 'I tried to comfort him. I tried to tell him it might be chance, not destiny, that has put him here. Do you know what he said?'
'That there is no chance, only destiny.'
Her hands paused. 'How did you know?'
'It is one of the cornerstones of Sa's teachings. That destiny is not reserved for a few chosen ones. Each man has a destiny. Recognizing it and fulfilling it are the purpose of a man's life.'
'It seems a burdensome teaching to me.'
Kennit shook his head against the pillow. 'If a man can believe it, then he can know he is as important as any other man. He can also know that he is no more important than any other is. It creates a vast equality of purpose.'
'But what of the man he killed today?' Etta asked.
Kennit snorted softly. 'That is Wintrow's hurdle, isn't it? To accept that someone is destined to die at his hand, and that he is destined to wield the knife. In time Wintrow will see that it was not his doing that slew the man at all. Sa brought them both together, to fulfill their destinies.'
Etta spoke hesitantly. 'Then you, too, believe in Sa and his teaching?'
'When it fits my destiny to do so,' Kennit told her loftily, and then laughed. He suddenly felt inexplicably good. 'This is what we shall do for the lad. We'll get the Divvytown construction under way, and then we'll take Wintrow to the Others Island. I'll let him walk the beach, and have an Other tell his fortune from what he finds.' He grinned in the darkness. 'Then I'll tell him what it means.'
He rolled over into her reaching arms.
AT LEAST ONE BARREL OF THEIR SALT PORK HAD GONE BAD. THE CASKS that held fatty pieces of meat floating in brine should have been tight. The smell meant that the cask had been broached, either in loading or by other cargo shifting against it. The leaking brine and rotting meat not only stank, it would contaminate any other food it contacted. The stench was coming from a forward hold, one with little headspace. Food supplies in kegs, boxes and barrels filled it snugly. The cargo would have to be shifted, the offending cask disposed of and anything it had leaked onto would have to be cleaned up or discarded. Brashen had discovered the stench on one of his prowls of the ship. He'd given the task to Lavoy, who had passed it on to her. She had put two men onto it at the beginning of her watch. Now, as dawn reached over the face of the water, she had come down to see how they had progressed.
The sight that met her eyes infuriated her. Only about half the cargo had been shifted. The stench was as strong as ever; there was no sign that the cask had been discovered, or any cleaning done. The hand hooks they should have been using to move the kegs and crates were both sunk into an overhead beam. Lop sat on a cask, hunching his tall, skinny frame over the crate before him, his pale blue eyes intent on three walnut shells. Opposite him was Artu, his dirty fingers flickering and dancing over the shells. 'Which one, which one,' he was humming in the old trickster's chant as he deftly shifted the shells. The slick scar of the old brand on his cheek caught the lantern's fading light. This was Brashen's rapist. Lop was merely stupid, and prone to idleness, but Althea hated Artu. She never worked near him if she could help it. The man had glittery little eyes, dark as a rat-hole, and a puckered mouth that was constantly wet. So engrossed was he in cheating Lop out of his money that Artu was completely unaware of her. He stopped the shells with a flourish, and his darting tongue wet his lips again. 'And which one has the bean?' he demanded, wiggling his eyebrows at Lop.
Althea strode up and kicked the crate, making all the shells jump. 'Which cask has the rotten meat?' she roared at them.
Lop turned amazed eyes up at her. Then he pointed at the overturned shells. 'There's no bean!' he exclaimed.
She seized him by the back of his shirt collar and shook him. 'There never is!' she told him, and then shoved him to one side. He gaped at her.
She turned on Artu. 'Why haven't you found that cask and cleaned it up?'
He came to his feet, licking his lips nervously. He was a small, bandylegged man, more quick than strong. ' 'Cause there ain't one to find. Me and Lop, we shifted all the cargo in this hold, looked at it all and found nothing. Right, Lop?'
Lop goggled at her, his large pale eyes wide. 'We didn't find it, ma'am.'
'You didn't move all the cargo. I can smell it! Can't you?'
'Just ship stink, that's all. All ships smell like that.' Artu shrugged elaborately. 'When you been on as many ships as I have,' he began condescendingly, but Althea cut him off.
'This ship doesn't stink like that. And it never will as long as I'm a mate on it. Now get that cargo shifted, find that rotten meat and clean it up.'
Artu scratched at a boil on the side of his neck. 'Our watch is almost up, ma'am. Maybe the next watch'll find it.' He nodded to himself in satisfaction and gave Lop a conspiratorial nudge. The lanky sailor echoed Artu's grin.
'Tidings for you, Artu. You and Lop are on watch down here until you find it and clean it up. Clear? Now get on your feet and start shifting this cargo.'
'That ain't fair!' Artu cried out as he came to his feet. 'We worked our watch! Hey, come back here! That ain't fair!'
His grubby fingers caught at her sleeve. Althea tried to jerk free, but his grip was amazingly strong. She froze. She wouldn't risk a struggle she might not win, nor a torn shirt, with this man. She met his gaze with narrowed eyes. 'Let go,' she said flatly.
Lop stared, wide-eyed as a boy. He'd caught his lower lip between his teeth. 'Artu, she's second mate,' he whispered nervously. 'You're gonna get in big trouble.'
'Mate,' Artu snorted in disgust. Quick as a flea's hop, he shifted his grip from her sleeve to her forearm inside it. His dirty fingers bit down hard on her flesh. 'She ain't no mate, she's a woman. And she wants it, Lop. She wants it bad.'
'She wants it?' Lop asked dimly. He looked at Althea in consternation.
'She ain't screaming,' Artu pointed out. 'She's just standing here, waiting for it. I think she's tired of getting it from the captain.'
