He could not speak. His tongue was too swollen in his mouth. He could not beg them not to return him to the ship. A part of him still loved her, despite knowing what she was. How could he bear it? Could he keep what he knew from her? For so long, she had believed she was truly alive. He must not let her know that she was dead.
THE SEA HAD NEVER OPPOSED THEM AS IT DID NOW. ETTA CROUCHED IN the stern with Wintrow's sodden body in her arms. The four sailors on the oars fought them. The whites showed all around their eyes as they struggled. There seemed to be one current for Vivacia to contend with, and another that gripped the small boat and tugged at it like a dog with a bone. The rain lashed down and the wind added its push to the water's pull. Kennit huddled in the bow. His crutch had been lost when they hauled him from the water. Etta could scarcely see him for the rain that sheeted down between them. Kennit's hair was sleeked to his skull and his mustache had straightened completely in the wet. In one breathless break in the rain, Etta thought she glimpsed the Marietta far offshore. Her sails hung limp from her spars and sunlight glinted off her decks. In the next breath, Etta blinked the rain from her lashes. She told herself that what she had seen was impossible.
Wintrow was a heavy weight atop her legs. If she bent her head over his face, she could hear breath hiss in and out of him. 'Wintrow. Wintrow, keep breathing. Keep breathing.' If she had come upon his body anywhere else, she would not have known him. His fat, shapeless lips moved vaguely, but if he spoke it was without sound.
She lifted her eyes. She could not bear to look at him. Kennit had come into her life and taught her how to be loved. He had given her Wintrow, and she had learned to be a friend. Now the damn serpent was going to steal that from her, just as she had discovered it. Her salt tears blended with the rain running down her face. She could not bear it. Had she learned to feel again, only to have to feel this? Could any amount of love ever be worth the pain of losing it? She could not even hold him as he died, for the slime still on him ate into her clothes and the abrasion of her touch wiped away his skin. She cradled him as loosely as she could, while the ship's boat rocked and reared wildly and never seemed to get any closer to the Vivacia.
She lifted her face and peered through the storm. She found Kennit staring at her. 'Don't let him die!' he commanded her loudly.
She felt impotent. She could not even tell him how helpless she felt. She saw him crouch and thought he would crawl through the boat to help her somehow. Instead he suddenly stood, peg and foot braced. He turned his back on her and the rowers and faced into the storm that opposed them. He threw back his head to it. The wind flapped his white shirtsleeves against his arms and streamed his black, black hair out behind him.
'NO!' he roared into it. 'Not now! Not when I am so close! You can't have me and you can't have my ship! By Sa, by El, by Eda, by the God of Fishes, by every god nameless and not, I swear you shall not have me nor mine!' He held out his hands, his fingers like claws, as if he would grapple with the wind that defied them.
'KENNIT!'
Vivacia's voice roared through the storm. She reached for them with wooden arms, leaning toward the small vessel as if she would tear herself loose from the ship to come to him. Her hair streamed away from her face. A wave hit her, and she took it deep enough to send green water streaming across her deck. But she rose from it, and as she came up from the trough, her hands still reached. The storm she battled threatened to sweep her away, and yet she yearned toward him, mindless of her own safety.
'I shall live!' Kennit bellowed suddenly into the storm. 'I demand it.' His one hand gripped his other wrist as he pointed into the storm. 'I COMMAND IT!' he roared.
The king worked his first miracle.
From the depths of the very sea that opposed him, the creature rose to his command. The serpent rose at the stern of the vessel. She opened wide her jaws and added her roar to his. Etta shrank down, small, foolish creature that she was, clutching Wintrow to her breast. She groped for a knife long lost even as she wailed out her hopeless terror.
Then the sea serpent, vast beast though she was, bent her head to Kennit's will. She made deep obeisance to him as he stood in the bow, defying the storm. He turned toward her at the sailor's voices. Face white and taut, he pointed at her wordlessly. His mouth was open, but either he said nothing to the creature, or the wind blew his words away. Later, the rowers would tell the rest of the crew that however it was he commanded her, it was not for human ears to hear. She set her broad serpent's brow to the stern of the boat and pushed. Suddenly, the small boat was cutting through the water toward the Vivacia. Kennit, exhausted by this display of power, sank suddenly down to his seat in the bow. Etta dared not look at him. His face shone with something, an emotion that perhaps only the god-touched could feel.
Behind her, the stern of the small boat steamed and stank where the serpent's slime touched it. It would have been faithless of her to be afraid of what it did, for it acted on Kennit's command. She bent forward over Wintrow's body, holding him as tenderly as she could, as the creature shoved them through the waves. She had no mercy on the tiny vessel, but forced it through the waves that opposed them. The rowers abandoned their oars and huddled in the bottom of the boat, wordless with terror and awe.
The Vivacia plunged doggedly toward them. There was a moment when two oceans seemed to collide in turmoil. There was no pattern to wave nor winds. The breath of the world lashed them, threatening to snatch the clothes from their bodies, and the hair from their heads. Etta felt deafened by the onslaught, but the serpent inexorably pushed the tiny boat on.
Then they were suddenly in the same wind and the same current as Vivacia. Joyously both sea and air caught at them, and conspired with the serpent to bring them together. The wind and current that Vivacia opposed swept their small boat toward her reaching arms. Vivacia took a wave hard. The sailors that waited at the bow of the ship, lines ready for throwing, clung madly to her railings instead to keep from being swept away by green water.
But as Vivacia came up from the wave that had swamped her briefly, her great arms cupped and held the helpless boat. She rose from the wave with it clasped to her. Etta had never been so close to the figurehead. As she bore them up out of the deep, her voice boomed out over them. 'Thank you, thank you! A thousand blessings upon you, sister of the sea. Thank you!' Silver tears of joy streamed down the liveship's carved face and fell like jewels into the water.
As the frightened sailors scrabbled toward their fellows on deck, Kennit sat roaring with joyous laughter in the bow of the boat. If there was an echo of madness in his mirth, that was the least fearsome thing about him now. For as his crewmen reached down to lay hands on him and haul him on board, the great green and gold serpent rose from the storming depths and gazed upon him. Etta felt gripped by that whirling gold stare. She looked into the depths of the creature's eyes and almost knew… something.
Then the creature roared one final time and sank back into the suddenly calming depths.
The small boat was going to pieces around them, the planks twisting away from their fellows as the stern gave way. Etta felt herself and Win-trow cradled in the ship's hands as Vivacia let the useless pieces of wood fall away. The ship herself lifted them to where eager hands gripped them and pulled them abroad. 'Gently, gently!' she cried as they seized Win-trow from her arms. 'Bring fresh water. Cut his clothes away and pour over him water and wine. Then… then…'
Vivacia suddenly cried aloud in wonder. She clasped her steaming hands together as if she prayed. 'I know you!' she cried out abruptly. 'I know you!'
Kennit reached down to where Etta crawled on the deck. His long-fingered hand cupped her cheek. 'I will take care of it, my dear,' he told her. The same hand that had commanded both sea and serpent touched her skin. Etta fell to the deck and knew no more.
KENNIT HAD FOLLOWED ETTA'S ADVICE ABOUT WINTROW, FOR LACK OF ANY better. The boy, loosely wrapped in a length of linen, now slept in his own bed. Breath whistled in and out of him. He was ghastly. His entire body was so swollen as to be almost shapeless. The skin had blistered and bubbled up from his body. The slime had eaten through his clothing, and then melted skin and fabric together. In washing him, great patches of his skin had sloughed away, leaving raw red stretches of flesh. Kennit suspected it was good that he was unconscious. Otherwise, the pain would have been terrible.
Kennit rose stiffly. He had been sitting on the foot of the bed. Now that the storm was over, he had time to think things through. But he would not. Some things were not to be too carefully considered. He would not ask
