enter the channel, we take the west passage. As the liveship emerges, there we are, waiting for her, anchored in mid-channel. The east passage still has a respectable current. The liveship will have no choice but to run aground in the shoal here.” He lifted his eyes from the chart to meet Sorcor's solemn look with a grin. “And she is ours. With minimum damage, if any.”
“Unless she simply rams us,” Sorcor pointed out sourly.
“Oh, she won't,” Kennit assured him. “Even if she did, we'd still just board her and take her anyway.”
“And lose the Marietta?” Sorcor was horrified.
“And gain a liveship!”
“This is not a good idea. A hundred things could go wrong,” Sorcor objected. “We could be smashed to bits on the Damned Rocks. That's not a piece of water I'd ever willingly run again. Or if her draft is shallower than ours, we might take all those risks and she might still just slip past us quick-like while we were still anchored. Or…”
He meant it. He actually meant it, he wasn't going to go along with the idea. How dare he? He'd be nothing without Kennit. Nothing at all. A moment before, he'd been swearing he owed all he was to his captain, and now he would deny him his chance at a liveship.
A sudden change in tactics occurred to Kennit.
He lifted a hand to stem the mate's words. “Sorcor. Do you care for me at all?” he asked with disarming directness.
That stopped his words, as Kennit had known it would. The man almost blushed. He opened his mouth and then stammered, “Well, Captain, we've sailed together for a time now. And I can't recall a man who's treated me fairer, or been more…”
Kennit shook his head and turned aside from him as if moved. “No one else is going to help me with this, Sorcor. There's no one I trust as I do you. Since I was a boy, I've dreamed of a liveship. I always believed that someday I'd walk the deck of one, and she'd be mine. And —” He shook his head and let his voice thicken. “Sometimes a man fears he may see the end sooner than he'd believed. This leg… if what they say is true for me…” He turned back to Sorcor, opened his blue eyes wide to meet Sorcor's dark ones. “This may be my last chance,” he said simply.
“Oh, sir, don't talk like that!” Tears actually started to the scarred mate's eyes. Kennit bit his lip hard to keep the grin away. He leaned closer to the chart table to hide his face. It was a mistake, for his crutch slipped. He caught at the table edge, but the tip of his rotten stump still touched the floor. He cried out with the agony of it and would have fallen if Sorcor had not caught him.
“Easy. I've got you. Easy now.”
“Sorcor,” he said faintly. He regained his grip on the chart table, and leaned hard on his arms to keep from collapsing. “Can you do this for me?” He lifted his head. He was shaking now, he could feel it. It was the strain of standing on one leg. He wasn't accustomed to it, that was all. He didn't truly believe he'd die of this. He'd heal, he always healed, no matter how badly he was injured. He could do nothing about the grimace of pain that twisted his face or the sweat that had started fresh on his face. Use it. “Can you give me this last chance at it?”
“I can do it, sir.” The dumb faith vied with heartbreak in Sorcor's eyes. “I'll get your liveship for you. You'll walk her decks. Trust me,” he begged Kennit.
Despite his pain, Kennit laughed in his throat. He changed it to a cough. Trust him. “What choice do I have?” he asked himself bitterly. Somehow the words slipped out aloud. He swung his gaze to where Sorcor regarded him worriedly. He forced a sick smile to his lips, warmth to his voice. He shook his head at himself. “All these years, Sorcor, who else have I ever trusted? I have no choice but to put the burden once more upon our friendship.”
He reached for his crutch. He took hold of it, but realized he did not have the strength to hold it firmly. The healing of his stump was drawing off every bit of strength he had. He blinked his heavy eyes. “I shall have to ask for your help to reach my bed as well. My strength deserts me.”
“Captain,” Sorcor said. The groveling affection of a dog was in the word. Kennit stored the thought away to consider when he felt better. Somehow asking Sorcor's aid had made the man more dependent on his approval than ever. He had chosen his first mate well, he decided. Were he in Sorcor's position, he would have instinctively grasped that now was his best opportunity to seize full power. Luckily for Kennit, Sorcor was slower-witted than he.
Sorcor stooped awkwardly and actually lifted Kennit bodily to carry him back to his bed. The abrupt movement stirred his pain to a new intensity. Kennit clutched at Sorcor's shoulders and his brain swam dizzily. For an instant he was overwhelmed by an ancient memory of his father: black whiskers and whiskey breath and sailor stink, whirling and laughing in a drunken dance with the boy Kennit in his arms. A time both terrifying and happy. Sorcor set him down gently on his bunk. “I'll send Etta in, shall I?”
Kennit nodded feebly. He reached after the memory of his father, but the chimera danced and mocked him from his shadowy childhood. Instead another face smiled down on him, sardonic and elegant. “A likely urchin. Perhaps something useful can be made of him.” He tossed his head against his pillow, shaking the memory from his mind. The door closed behind the first mate.
“You don't deserve these people,” a small voice said quietly. “Why they love you is beyond me. I would tell you that I would rejoice in your downfall the day they find you out, save that is also the day their hearts will break. By what luck do you deserve the loyalty of such folk?”
Wearily he lifted his wrist. The little face, strapped so tightly over his pulse point, glared up at him. He snorted a brief laugh at its indignant expression. “By my luck. By the luck in my name and the luck in my blood, I deserve them.” Then he laughed again, this time at himself. “The loyalty of a whore and a brigand. Such wealth.”
“Your leg is rotting,” the little face said with sudden malignance. “Rotting up the bone. It will stink and drip and burn the life from your flesh. Because you lack the courage to cut your own foulness from your body.” It sneered a grin at him. “Do you wit my parable, Kennit?”
“Shut up,” he said heavily. He had begun to sweat again. Sweating in his nice clean shirt, in his fresh clean bed. Sweating like a stinking old drunk. “If I am evil, what shall we say of you? You are part and parcel of me.”
“This piece of wood had a great heart once,” the charm declared. “You have put your face upon me and your voice comes from my mouth. I am bound to you. But wood remembers. I am not you, Kennit. And I swear I shall not become you.”
“No one… asked you… to.” His breath was coming harder. He closed his eyes and sank away.
Chapter Thirty
Defiance And Alliance
Her first slave death happened in early afternoon. The loading had gone slowly and poorly. A wind from the east had churned up a nasty chop in the water while the building clouds on the horizon promised yet another winter storm by morning. The coffles of slaves were being ferried out to where Vivacia was anchored, and the slaves were being prodded up the rope ladder hung over her side. Some of the slaves were in poor condition; others were afraid of the ladder, or simply awkward getting from the rocking boat to the ladder on the side of the rocking ship. But the man who died, died because he wanted to. He was halfway up the ladder, climbing awkwardly because his legs were still fettered together. He suddenly laughed out loud. “Guess I'll take the short road instead of the long one,” he sang out. He stepped away from the ladder and let go. He dropped like an arrow into the sea, the weight of chain on his ankles pulling him straight down. He could not have saved himself even if he had changed his mind.
In the dark waters far below her hull, a knot of serpents suddenly uncoiled. She sensed their lashing struggle for a share of the meat. The salt of a man's blood flavored the seawater briefly as it washed against her hull. Her horror was all the deeper that the men on her decks suspected nothing. “There are serpents below!” she called back to them, but they ignored her just as they ignored the pleas of the slaves.
After that, an angry Torg had the slaves roped together. This made it even more awkward for them to climb aboard, but he seemed to take some vengeful delight in reminding them that any man who jumped would have to answer to the rest of his coffle. No one else tried it, and Torg congratulated himself on his slyness.
Inside her holds, it was even worse. The slaves breathed out misery, until a miasma of unhappiness filled
