offered her the pick of the riches of the Cursed Shores. What did the carpenter choose? Wood.
She tried again to wake a response in him. 'It was gilded once. See. You can still see bits of gilt caught in the details of the rooster heads. And there are places for tail feathers to be set into it, but the feathers have rotted away long ago.'
'I remember it,' he said hesitantly. 'But that is all. Someone wore it.'
'Who?' she pressed him earnestly. He held it out to her and she took it back again. She shook her hair from her eyes, and then set the rooster crown on her head again. 'Someone like me?' she asked hopefully.
'Oh.' He paused, striving to recall her. 'I'm sorry,' he said, shaking his head at last. 'She wasn't an Elderling. That's all I can recollect of her.' The woman who wore it had been pale as milk. Not like Amber at all.
'That's all right,' she assured him quickly, but he sensed her disappointment. 'If you don't mind, I'd like to have this.'
'Of course. Did the others object?'
'I didn't ask them,' she replied sheepishly. 'I didn't give them the chance.' She took the crown off again. Her eyes and fingers wandered lovingly over the carving.
'It's yours,' Paragon confirmed. 'Take it with you when you go.'
'Ah. You guessed that I am leaving, then.'
'I did. You will not even stay with me until high summer? That is when I will return here, to be near when the dragons hatch.'
Her fingers tracked the details of the carved bird heads. 'I am tempted. Perhaps I will. But eventually, I think I must go north again. I have friends there. I haven't seen them in a long time.' She lowered her voice. 'A suspicion itches at me. I think I should go interfere in their lives some more.' She laughed with false lightness. 'I hope I will fare better with them than I have down here.' Her face grew troubled. She climbed suddenly to the railing, saying softly, 'Take me up.'
He reached over his shoulder to offer her his right hand. She climbed onto it and he turned back to contemplate the tangled jungle. It was easier to look away from the light and into the darkness. More restful. Carefully he shifted, until his arms were crossed on his chest. Trusting as a child, she sat on his crossed arms and leaned back against him companionably. All around them, night insects shrilled. Her bare legs dangled down.
She was always the one who dared to ask the questions others left unuttered. Tonight she had another one. 'How did they all die?'
He knew exactly what she meant. Pointless to pretend he didn't. And pointless to keep it a secret anymore. It almost felt good to share it with someone. 'Wizardwood. Kennit kept a chunk from my face. One of his chores was to help with the cooking. He boiled it with the soup. Almost all of Igrot's crew died from it.' He felt her cringe.
He tried to make her understand. 'He was only finishing what Igrot had started. Men had begun to die on the ship. Igrot keelhauled two sailors for insubordination. They both drowned. Two others went over the side during a stormy night watch. There was a stupid accident in the rigging. Three died. We decided Igrot was behind it. He probably meant to do away with anyone who knew where the treasure was hidden. Including Kennit.' He forced himself to unclench his hands. 'We had to do it, you see. To save Kennit's life.'
Amber swallowed. She asked the question anyway. 'And those that didn't die from the soup?'
Paragon took a breath. 'Kennit put them over the side anyway. Most were too poisoned to put up much of a fight. Three, I think, managed to put out a boat and escape. I doubt they survived.'
'And Igrot?'
The jungle seemed a black and peaceful place. Things moved in it, outside the circle of the lantern light. Snakes and night birds, small tree-dwelling creatures, both furred and scaled. Many things lived and moved in the tangled dark.
'Kennit beat him to death. Belowdecks. You've seen the marks down there. The handprints of a crawling man.' He took a breath. 'It was fair, Amber. Only fair.'
She sighed. 'Vengeance for both of you. For the times when he had beaten Kennit to death.'
He nodded above her. 'Twice he did that. Once the boy died on my deck. But I couldn't let him go. I could not. He was all I had. Another time, curled up belowdecks in his hidey-hole, he died slowly. He was bleeding inside, growing so cold, so cold. He cried for his mother.' Paragon sighed. 'I kept him with me. I pushed life into him, and forced his body to mend itself as best as I could. Then I put him back in his body. Even then, I wondered if there was enough of him left to be a whole being. But I did it. It was selfish. I did not do it for Kennit. I did it for myself. So I would not be left alone again.'
'He truly was as much you as he was himself.'
Paragon almost chuckled. 'There was no such line between Kennit and me.'
'And that was why you had to have him back?'
'He couldn't die without me. Not any more than I could truly live without him. I had to take him back. Until I was whole again, I was vulnerable. I could not seal myself to others. Any blood shed on my deck was a torment to me.'
'Oh.'
For a long time, she seemed content to leave it at that. She leaned back against him. Her breathing became so deep and regular that he thought she slept. Behind him, on the deck, insects battered themselves against her lantern. He heard Semoy do a slow circuit of the deck. He paused by the lantern. 'All's well?' he asked Paragon quietly.
'All's well,' the ship replied. He had come to like Semoy. The man knew how to mind his own business. His footsteps receded again.
'Do you ever wonder,' Amber asked him quietly, 'how much you changed the world? Not just by keeping Kennit alive. By simply existing.'
'By being a ship instead of a dragon?'
'All of it.' A slight wave of her hand encompassed all his lives.
'I lived,' he said simply. 'And I've stayed alive. I suppose I had as much a right to do that as anyone.'
'Absolutely.' She shifted, then reclined in his arms to look up. He followed her gaze but saw only darkness. The clouds were thick beyond the trees. 'All of us have a right to our lives. But what if, for lack of guidance, we take the wrong paths? Take Wintrow for instance. What if he was meant to lead a different life? What if, because of something I failed to do or say, he became King of the Pirate Isles when he was meant to be a man leading a life of scholarly contemplation? A man whose destiny was to experience a cloistered, contemplative life becomes a king instead. His deep spiritual meditations never occur and are never shared with the world.'
Paragon shook his head. 'You worry too much.' His eyes tracked a moth. It fluttered earnestly by, intent on battering itself to death against the lantern. 'Humans live such short lives. I believe they have little impact on the world. So Wintrow will not be a priest. It is probably no more significant than if a man who was meant to be a king became a philosophical recluse instead.'
He felt a shiver run over her body. 'Oh, ship,' she rebuked him softly. 'Was that meant to be comforting?'
Carefully, he patted her as a father might soothe an infant. 'Take comfort in this, Amber. You are only one small, short-lived creature. You'd have to be a fool to think you could change the course of the whole world.'
She was silent until she broke out in a shaky laugh. 'Oh, Paragon, in that you are more right than you know, my friend.'
'Be content with your own life, my friend, and live it well. Let others decide for themselves what path they will follow.'
She frowned up at him. 'Even when you see, with absolute clarity, that it is wrong for them? That they hurt themselves?'
'Perhaps people have a right to their pain,' he hazarded. Reluctantly he added, 'Perhaps they even need it.'
'Perhaps,' she conceded unhappily. Then, 'Up, please. I think I shall go to bed and sleep on what you have told me. Before the rain and the mosquitoes find me.'
