had to be. He could not be any other way and still command effectively. She felt a pang of loss that the line must separate him from her as well. But the surge of pride she felt in him overwhelmed any selfish regrets. This was what her father had seen in him. Brashen had justified all of Ephron Vestrit's belief.
For an instant, he looked at her without speaking, as if he could sense her thoughts. Then he gestured at the scraps of canvas on the table. 'Althea. You've always had a better hand with a pen than I did. These are rough sketches. I'd like you to make clean copies of them. They're all I could chart of the pirate ports I visited with the Springeve. We'll look for Vivacia first in Divvytown, but I doubt we'll be lucky enough to catch her there. These bits of charts may come in handy. If you have any questions, I'll go over them with you. When they're finished, we need to bring Lavoy in on them as well. He doesn't read, but his memory is sharp. It's important this knowledge is shared amongst us.'
The words he left unspoken chilled her. He was obviously considering what would be best for the ship and crew in case of his death. She had avoided thinking of such things. He had not. That, too, was part of command. He pushed the scraps of canvas toward her and she began to leaf through them. His next words to Amber brought her attention back to him.
'Amber. Last night, you were over the side. Paragon was holding you. I heard your voices.'
'I was,' Amber agreed evenly.
'Doing what?'
The carpenter looked extremely uncomfortable. 'Experimenting.'
Brashen sighed out through his nose. 'I won't tolerate that from Lavoy. What makes you think you can adopt that attitude?' More gently, he added, 'If it happens on the ship, and I think it's my business, I'll know about it. So tell me.'
Amber looked down at her gloved hands. 'We all discussed this before we left Bingtown. Paragon knows of the work I did on Ophelia. He supposes that if I could restore her hands, I could give him eyes again.' Amber licked her lips. 'I have my doubts.'
Brashen's tone was dangerous. 'As I do. As you were well aware. I told you before we sailed, this is no time for risky experiments in wizardwood carving. A failure that disappointed him could endanger us all.'
Anger flickered over Amber's face.
'I know what you are thinking,' Brashen told her. 'But it isn't something that is between the two of you. It involves all of us.'
She took a breath. 'I haven't touched his eyes, sir. Nor told him that I would.'
'Then what were you doing?'
'Erasing the scar from his chest. The seven-pointed star.'
Brashen looked intrigued. 'Has he told you what the star means?'
Amber shook his head. 'I don't know. I only know that whatever memories it holds for him are extremely unpleasant. It was a sort of a compromise. That encounter with the serpent disturbed him. Deeply. He has thought of little else since then. I sense that he is reconsidering all he is. He's like a boy in adolescence. He has decided that nothing is the way he believed it to be, and is reconstructing his whole vision of the world.' She took a deep breath as if to say something important. She seemed to reconsider it, and said instead, 'It's a very intense time for him. It is not necessarily bad, what he's doing, but it's deeply introspective. For Paragon, that means sifting through some very bad memories. I sought to distract him,'
'You should have asked me first. And you should not be over the side without someone watching you.'
'Paragon was watching me,' she pointed out. 'And holding me while I did the work.'
'Nevertheless.' Brashen made the single word a sharp warning.
'When you are over the side, I want to be aware of it.' More gently, he asked, 'How is the work progressing?'
Amber kept her temper. 'Slowly. The wood is very hard. I don't want to just plane it off and leave a different sort of scar. I'm more obscuring than erasing it.'
'I see.' Brashen stood and paced a turn around the chamber. 'Do you think it's possible you could restore his eyes?'
Amber shook her head regretfully. 'I'd have to rework his whole face. The wood is simply gone. Even if I just carved eyes there, there is no guarantee he could see out of them. I have no idea how the magic of wizardwood works. Nor does he. I'd be taking a great risk, and possibly damaging him more.'
'I see.' Brashen considered a moment longer. 'Carry on with the scar, but I want you to take the same precautions I'd expect of any other hand. This includes having a partner of some kind when you are over the side. In addition to Paragon.' He was silent briefly, then nodded. 'That's all, then. You can go.'
Althea suspected it was not easy for Amber to accede to Brashen's authority. She rose to his command, not resentfully, as Lavoy had, but stiffly, as if it offended her sense of self. Althea rose to follow her out, but Brashen's voice stopped her at the door. 'A last word with you, Althea.'
She turned back to him. He glanced at the door standing ajar. She shut it quietly. He took a deep breath. 'A favor. I've put Amber in a bad position with Lavoy. Watch over her-no, that's not what I mean. She's as dangerous to him as he is to her. He just doesn't know that yet. Watch the situation. If it looks as if they will clash, warn me. Lavoy is bound to have resentments, but I won't permit him to take them too far.'
She nodded, then spoke the words. 'Yes, sir.'
'One other thing.' He hesitated. 'You're all right? Your hands, I mean?'
'I think so.' She flexed her fingers for him. She waited.
It took a time before he spoke. 'I want you to know-' His voice went quiet. 'I wanted to kill Artu. I still do. You know that.'
She smiled crookedly. 'So did I. I tried.' She pondered an instant. 'But it was better as it came out. I beat him. He knows it. The crew knows it. If you had jumped in, I'd still be trying to prove myself to them. But it would be worse now.' She suddenly knew what he had to hear from her. 'You did the right thing, Captain Trell.'
His real smile broke through briefly. 'I did, didn't I?' There was real satisfaction in his voice.
She crossed her arms and held them tightly against her chest to keep from going to him. 'The crew respects your command. So do I.'
He sat a bit straighter. He didn't thank her. It wouldn't have been appropriate. She walked quietly from the room. She didn't look back at him as she quietly closed the door between them.
AS SHE CLOSED THE DOOR, BRASHEN SHUT HIS EYES. HE D MADE THE RIGHT decision. And they had made the right decision. They both knew it. They had agreed that it was better this way. Better. He wondered when it was going to get easier.
Then he wondered if it would ever get easier.
'THERE'S TWO OF us.' PARAGON DIVULGED THE SECRET TO HER AS HE HELD her in his hands. She weighed so little. She was like a doll stuffed with millet.
'So there is,' Amber agreed. 'You and I.' The rasp moved carefully over his chest. It reminded him of a cat's tongue. No, he corrected himself. It would have reminded Kerr Ludluck of a cat's tongue. That long-dead boy had liked cats and kittens. Paragon had never had one.
Paragon. Now there was a name for him. If only they knew. The secret he held slipped from him again. 'Not you and I. Me and me. There's two of us.'
'Sometimes I feel that way myself,' Amber replied easily. Sometimes, when she was working, he felt like she went somewhere else.
'Who is your other me?' he demanded.
'Oh. Well. A friend I had. We used to talk a lot. Sometimes I hear myself still talking to him, and I know how he would answer.'
'I'm not like that. There has always been two of me.'
She returned the rasp to the tool sling. He could feel her do it, and felt the shift of her weight as she searched for something else. 'I'm going to use sandpaper now. Are you ready?'
'Yes.'
She went on as if she had not interrupted the conversation. 'If there are two of you, I like both. Keep still
