our original agreement. Exactly the same thing we are requiring of the Satrap.”
“Then it does not feel at all to you as if we would be selling her into slavery, if a time came when we did not have the payment and they claimed blood instead?”
Ronica was silent a moment. “No, it does not,” she said at last. Then she sighed. “I would not be happy to see her go. But, you know, Keffria, I have never heard of any Bingtown man or woman who was kept against their will by the Rain Wild Traders. They seek wives and husbands, not servants. Who would wish to wed someone against their inclination? Some folk go there of their own accord. And some, who go there as part of a contract, return when it suits them. You remember Scilla Appleby? She was carried off to the Rain Wilds when her family failed in a contract. Eight months later, they brought her back to Bingtown, because she was unhappy there. And two months after that, she sent them word that she had made a mistake, and they came for her again. So it cannot be all that bad.”
“I heard that her family shamed her into returning. That her grandfather and mother both felt she had disgraced the Applebys and broken their pledge when she came back to Bingtown.”
“I suppose that could be so,” her mother conceded doubtfully.
“I don't want Malta to go there against her will,” Keffria said bluntly. “Not for duty nor for pride. Not even for our good name. If it came down to it, I think I would help her run away myself.”
“Sa help me, I fear I would, too.” Her mother's words came some minutes later, uttered in a voice that seemed dragged from her.
Keffria was shocked. Not just by what her mother was admitting, but by the depth of emotion that her voice betrayed. Ronica spoke on.
“There have been times when I hated that ship. How could anything be worth so much? Not just gold they pledged, but their own descendants!”
“If Papa had continued in the Rain Wild trade, the Vivacia would most likely be paid off by now,” Keffria pointed out.
“Most likely. But at what cost?”
“So Papa always said,” Keffria said slowly. “But I never understood it. Papa never explained it or talked about it in front of us girls. The only time I ever asked him about it, he just told me he thought it was an unlucky path to choose. Yet all the other families who have liveships trade with the Rain Wild families. As the Vestrits own a liveship, we have the right to do so, too. Yet Papa refused it.” She spoke very carefully as she continued, “Perhaps it is a decision we should reconsider. Kyle would be willing. He made that clear when he asked about charts of the Rain Wild River. Before that day, we had not discussed it. I thought that perhaps Papa had already explained to him. Before that day, he had never asked me why we stopped trading up the River. It just never came up.”
“And if you manage things cleverly, it never will again,” Ronica said shortly. “Kyle up the Rain Wild River would be a disaster.”
And here was another uncomfortable topic. Kyle. Keffria sighed. “I remember that when Grandfather was alive, he took the Vivacia upriver. I remember the gifts he used to bring us. A music box that twinkled as it played.” She shook her head. “I don't even know what became of that.” More quietly she added, “And I never truly understood why Papa wouldn't trade up the river.”
Ronica stared into the fire as if she were telling an old tale. “Your father… resented the contract with the Festrews. Oh, he loved the ship, and would not have traded her for the world. But much as he loved the Vivacia, he loved you girls more. And like you, he saw the contract as a threat to his children. He disliked being bound by an agreement he'd had no say in.” Ronica lowered her voice. “In some ways, he thought ill of the Festrews, that they would hold him bound by such a cruel bargain. Perhaps they saw things differently in those days. Perhaps…” Her words faltered for a time. Then, “I suppose I lied to you just now. I speak the way I know I should think: that a bargain is a bargain, and a contract is a contract. But that contract was made in older, harder times. Still, it binds us.”
“But father resented it,” Keffria said, to draw her mind back to that.
“He despised the terms. He often pointed out that no one ever completely discharged a debt to the Rain Wilds. New debts were always stacked upon the old ones, so that the chains binding the contracting families together only got stronger and stronger as the years passed. He hated that idea. He wanted there to come a time when the ship would be ours, free and clear, and if we chose to pack up and leave Bingtown, we could do so.”
The very idea shook Keffria to the foundations of her life. Leave Bingtown? Her father had actually thought of taking the family away from Bingtown?
Her mother spoke on. “And though his father and grandmother had traded in Ram Wild goods, he always felt they were tainted. That was how he put it. Tainted. Too much magic. He always felt that sooner or later, such magic would have to be paid for. And he did not think it was… honorable, in a way, for him to bring back to our world the magic of another place and time, a magic that had, perhaps, been the downfall of another folk. Perhaps the downfall of the entire Cursed Shores. Sometimes he spoke of it, late at night, saying he feared we would destroy ourselves and our world, just as the Elder folk did.”
Ronica fell silent. Both women were still, thinking. These things were so seldom spoken aloud. Just as the charts of difficult channels represented a major trading advantage, so did the hard-won knowledge shared by Bingtown and Rain Wild Traders. The secrets they shared were as great a basis for their wealth as the goods they bartered.
Ronica cleared her throat. “So he did a thing both brave and hard. He stopped trading up the river. It meant he had to work twice as hard and be gone three times as much to turn the same profit. Instead of the Rain Wilds, he sought out the odd little places in the inland channels, to the south of Jamaillia. He traded with the native folk there, for goods that were exotic and rare. But not magical. He swore that would make our fortune. And if he had lived, it probably would have.”
“Did Papa think the Blood Plague was due to the magic?” Keffria asked carefully.
“Where did you hear such a thing?” Ronica demanded.
“I was very little. It was right after the boys died. Davad was here, I remember. And Papa was crying and I was hiding outside the door. You were all in this same room. I wanted to come in but I was afraid to. Because Papa never cried. And I heard Davad Restart curse the Rain Wild Traders, saying they had dug up the disease in their mining of the city. His wife and children were dead, too. And Davad said…”
“I remember,” Ronica said suddenly. “I remember what Davad said. But what you were too small to understand was that he was in the throes of a terrible grief. A terrible grief.” Ronica shook her head and her eyes were bleak, remembering. “A man says things at such times that he doesn't truly mean. Or even believe. Davad badly needed someone or something to blame for his loss. For a time he blamed the Rain Wild Traders. But he got past that a long time ago.”
Keffria took a careful breath. “Is it true, that Davad's son —”
“What was that?” Her mother's sudden exclamation cut off Keffria's words. They both sat up and were still, listening. Ronica's eyes were so wide, the white showed all round them.
“It sounded like a gong,” Keffria whispered into the gathered silence. It was eerie to hear a Rain Wild gong when they had been discussing them. She thought that she heard the scuff of footsteps in the hallway. With a wild look at her mother, she leapt to her feet. When she reached the door and pulled it open, her mother was right behind her. But all she caught was a brief glimpse of Malta at the end of the hall.
“Malta!” she called out sharply.
“Yes, mother?” The girl came back from around the corner. She was in her night-robe and carrying a cup and saucer.
“What are you doing up at this hour?” Keffria demanded.
For answer, Malta held up the cup. “I couldn't sleep. I made myself some chamomile tea.”
“Did you hear an odd sound, a few moments ago?”
Malta shrugged. “Not really. Perhaps the cat knocked something down.”
“Perhaps not,” Ronica muttered worriedly. She brushed past Keffria and headed towards the kitchen. Keffria followed her and Malta, cup in hand, trailed after them curiously.
The kitchen was dark save for the glow of the banked fires. There were the familiar, somehow safe smells of the room: the cook fire, the yeasty smell of the slow bread put out to rise for the morning's baking, the lingering aroma of the night's meat. Ronica had brought a candle from the den; she crossed the familiar room to the outside door and tugged it open. Winter cold flowed in, making mist ghosts in the room.
