so-subtle warnings to stay away from here. When I ask why, I get lies and excuses. They tell me no one but a Bingtown Trader can own a liveship. You ask why, you'll get more lies. Goes against all their traditions, is what they'd like you to believe. But actually, there's a great deal more to it than that. More than I ever suspected when I first started negotiating for this. Ah! Here we are! Even damaged, you can see how magnificent he once was.”
The voices had grown closer as Mingsley was speaking. A sense of foreboding had been growing within Paragon, too, but his voice was steady as he boomed out, “Magnificent? I thought ‘ugly’ was the word you applied to me last time.”
He had the satisfaction of hearing both men gasp.
Mingsley's voice was none too steady as he attempted to brag, “Well, we should have expected that. A liveship is, after all, alive.” There was a sound of metal against metal. Paragon guessed that a lantern had been unhooded to shed more light. The smell of hot oil came more strongly. Paragon shifted uneasily, crossing his arms on his chest. “There, Firth. What do you think of him?” Mingsley announced.
“I'm… overwhelmed,” the other man muttered. There was genuine awe in his voice. Then he coughed and added, “But I still don't know why we're out here and at night. Oh, I know a part of it. You want my financial backing. But just why should I help you raise three times what a ship this size would cost us for a beached derelict with a chopped-up figurehead? Even if it can talk.”
“Because it's made of wizardwood.” Mingsley uttered the words as if revealing a well-kept secret.
“So? All liveships are,” Firth retorted.
“And why is that?” Mingsley added in a voice freighted with mystery. “Why build a ship of wizardwood, a substance so horrendously expensive it takes generations to pay one off? Why?”
“Everyone knows why,” Firth grumbled. “They come to life and then they're easier to sail.”
“Tell me. Knowing that about wizardwood, would you rush to commit your family's fortunes for three or four generations, just to possess a ship like this?”
“No. But Bingtown Traders are crazy. Everyone knows that.”
“So crazy that every damn family of them is rich,” Mingsley pointed out. “And what makes them rich?”
“Their damn monopolies on the most fascinating trade goods in the world. Mingsley, we could have discussed economics back at the inn, over hot spiced cider. I'm cold, the fog has soaked me through, and my knee is throbbing like I'm poisoned. Get to the point.”
“If you fell on barnacles, likely you are poisoned,” Paragon observed in a booming voice. “Likely it will swell and fester. He's lined you up for at least a week of pain.”
“Be quiet!” Mingsley hissed.
“Why should I?” Paragon mocked him. “Are you that nervous about being caught out here, tinkering with what doesn't concern you? Talking about what you can never possess?”
“I know why you won't!” Mingsley suddenly declared. “You don't want him to know, do you? The precious secret of wizardwood, you don't want that shared, do you? Because then the whole stack of blocks comes tumbling down for the Bingtown Traders. Think about it, Firth. What is the whole of Bingtown founded on, really? Not some ancient grant from the Satrap. But the goods that come down the Rain Wild River, the really strange and wondrous stuff from the Rain Wild themselves.”
“He's getting you in deeper than you can imagine,” Paragon warned Firth loudly. “Some secrets aren't worth sharing. Some secrets have prices higher than you'll want to pay.”
“The Rain Wild River, whose waters run cold and then hot, brown and then white. Where does it really come from, that water? You've heard the same legends I have, of a vast smoking lake of hot water, the nesting grounds of the firebirds. They say the ground there trembles constantly and that mist veils the land and water. That is the source of the Rain Wild River… and when the ground shakes savagely, then the river runs hot and white. That white water can eat through the hull of any ship almost as swiftly as it eats through the flesh and bones of a man. So no one can go up the Rain Wild River to trade. You can't trek up the banks either. The shores of the river are treacherous bogs, the hanging vines drip scalding acid, the sap of the plants that grow there can raise welts on a man's flesh that burn and ooze for days.”
“Get to the point,” Firth urged Mingsley angrily, even as Paragon shouted, “Shut up! Close your foul mouth! And get away from my beach. Get away from me. Or come close enough to be killed by me. Yes. Come here, little man. Come to me!” He reached out blindly, swinging his arms wide, his hands open to grasp.
“Unless you have a liveship.” Mingsley revealed. “Unless you have a liveship, hulled with wizardwood, impervious to the hot white water of the river. Unless you have a liveship, who knows from the moment it is quickened the one channel up the river. That is the true source of the Bingtown monopoly on the trade. You have to have a liveship to get in the game.” He paused dramatically. “And I'm offering you the chance to get one.”
“He's lying,” Paragon shouted desperately. “Lying! There's more to it, so much more to it. And even if you owned me, I wouldn't sail for you. I'd roll and kill you all! I've done it before, you've heard the tales. And if you haven't, ask in any tavern. Ask about the Paragon, the Pariah, the death ship! Go ahead, ask, they'll tell you. They'll tell you I'll kill you!”
“He can be forced,” Mingsley said with quiet confidence. “Or removed. The hull is what is most important, a good riverman could sound us out a channel. Think what we could do with a wizardwood ship. There's some tribe up there that the Bingtown Traders traffic with. One trip would be all it would take. Firth, we could pay them double what the Old Traders pay them, and still make a profit. This is our chance to get in on a trade that's been closed to outsiders since Bingtown was founded. I've got the contacts, the owners are listening for the right cash offer. All I need is the backing. And you've got that.”
“He's lying to you,” Paragon bellowed out into the night. “He's going to get you killed. And worse! Much worse. There are worse tilings than dying, you Chalcedean scum. But only a Bingtown Trader would know that. Only a Bingtown Trader could tell you that.”
“I think I'm interested,” Firth said quietly. “But there are better places to discuss this.”
“No!” howled Paragon. “You don't know what he's selling you, you don't know what grief you'd be buying. You've no idea, no idea at all!” His voice broke suddenly. “I won't go with you, I won't, I won't. I don't want to, and you can't make me, you can't, I'll kill you, I'll kill you all!”
Again he flailed out wildly. If he had been able to reach the beach, he would have thrown sand, rocks, seaweed, anything. But his hands found nothing. He halted suddenly, listening. The footsteps were receding.
“…tell anyone?”
“Not a concern, really,” he heard Mingsley reply confidently. “You heard him. He's mad, completely insane. No one listens to him. No one even comes out here. Even if he had someone to tell, they'd never believe him. That's the beauty of this, my friend. It's so far outside of any one else's imagining. That ship has rested there for years. Years! And no one ever thought of this before…”
His voice dwindled, and was damped away by the muffling fog and the shush of the waves.
“NO!” Paragon shrieked out into the night. He reached back with his fists to drum and batter on his own planking. “No!” he cried again. Denial and defiance. And hopelessness. They weren't listening to him. No one ever listened to him. That had always been the problem. They'd ignore everything he told them. They'd take him out and he'd have to kill them all. Again.
“Serpent!”
Althea's voice rang out clear and cold as the night that surrounded them. She clung with near-numbed fingers, her feet braced against the lookout's platform. Her eyes strained through the darkness to track the creature even as she heard the thundering of the crew's feet on the deck below, heard her cry passed on. Hatches were flung open as all hands hit the decks to do whatever they could do to withstand this latest attack.
“Where?”
“Three points off the starboard bow, sir! A big one.”
They were all big, she reflected bitterly as she strove to tighten her weary grip. She was cold and wet and tired, and the healing injury on her scalp still throbbed all the time. In the cold of a night like this, the throbbing became a dull agony as the chill tightened her skin. The fever had passed days ago, and Reller had snipped and tugged the stitches out when the itching had become unbearable. Reller's clumsiness and coarse jokes about her pain were infinitely preferable to the guarded tenderness she saw in Brashen's eyes whenever she chanced to be near him. Damn him. And damn him again, for here she was thinking of him when her very life depended on her focusing her mind on her task. Where had the serpent gone? One moment she had seen it, and now it was
