the young sailor bounded up with keys in hand and the medicine box under his arm.
Wintrow was stirring, and Gantry helped him sit up. He sat, hands braced wide on the deck behind him, and watched dazedly as Gantry unfastened the shackles on Wintrow's feet. “This is stupid,” the man hissed angrily. He glared at the oozing sores on Wintrow's ankles, then barked an order over his shoulder. “Mild, haul him up a bucket of salt water.” He turned his attention back to the boy before him. “Wintrow, wash those out good with salt water and then bandage them. Nothing like seawater for healing a cut. Leaves a good, tough scar. I should know, I got enough of them.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “And wash yourself while you're at it. Those chained below have an excuse for stinking. You don't.”
Gantry glanced up at Kyle, who still stood over them. He met his captain's eyes and dared to shake his head in disapproval. Kyle tightened his jaw but said nothing. Then Gantry stood and walked away from them, to where he could look down at Vivacia. She had craned her head over her shoulder to watch what was going on. Her eyes were very wide and she clutched her hands together at her breast. “Now,” he said levelly. “I've had enough of this. Exactly what is it that you want to make you behave?”
Confronted so baldly, Vivacia almost recoiled from him. She was silent.
“Well?” Gantry demanded, indignation slipping into his voice. “You've tried the patience of every man aboard you. Just what in Sa's name do you want to make you happy? Music? Company? What?”
“I want…” She paused and seemed to lose her thought. “I touched it, Gantry. I touched it. And it knew me and it said I wasn't Vivacia nor was I of the Vestrits. It said I belonged to them.” She was babbling now, Kyle thought in disgust. Babbling like an idiot.
“Vivacia,” Gantry told her sternly. “Serpents don't talk. It said nothing, it just frightened you. It rattled us all, but it's over. No one's badly hurt. But you could have hurt us, with your wild behavior and —”
She didn't seem to be listening. Vivacia furrowed her wooden brow and frowned, then seemed to recall his first question. “What I want is to go back to the way it was before.” It was a desperate plea.
“Before what?” Gantry demanded in despair. Kyle knew the man was already defeated. No sense in asking the ship what she wanted, she always wanted what no one could give her. She was spoiled, that was all, a spoiled female with vast ideas of her own importance. Trying to please her was the wrong tack. The more Gantry catered to her, the more she'd bully them all. It was the nature of women. Why hadn't they carved a man for a figurehead? A man could have understood reason.
“Before Kyle,” Vivacia said slowly. She turned to glare at him. “I want Ephron Vestrit back at the helm. And Althea on board. And Brashen.” She lifted her hands to cover her face and turned away from them. “I want to be sure of who I am again.” Her voice shook like a child's.
“I can't give you that. No man can give you that.” Gantry shook his head. “Come, ship. We're doing our best. Wintrow's out of the chains. I can't force him to be happy. I can't force the slaves to be happy. I'm doing the best I can.” The man was close to pleading.
Vivacia shook her head slowly. “I just can't go on like this,” she said, and there were tears in her muffled voice. “I feel it all, you know. I feel it all.”
“Bilge,” Kyle growled. Enough of this. He mastered the disgust he felt for his own unbridled anger. So he'd lost his temper. Well, Sa knew he'd been pushed hard enough lately. It was time to let them all know he'd tolerate no more nonsense. He stepped up to the railing beside his mate. “Gantry, don't encourage her to whine. Don't encourage her to be childish.” He looked down on Vivacia and their eyes met. “Ship. You'll sail. That's all there is to it. You can sail willing or sail like a cow-hide raft, but we'll sail you. I don't give a rat's ass for whether you're happy or not. We've got a task to do and we'll do it. If you don't like having a hold full of slaves, why then, sail faster, damn you. The sooner we get to Chalced the sooner we're rid of them. As for Wintrow, there's no making him happy. He didn't want to behave as my son, he didn't want to be the ship's boy. He made himself a slave. So that is what he is now. That's your likeness needled into his face. He's yours, to do with as you will and you're welcome to him. If he doesn't please you, you can throw him over the side for all I care.”
Kyle stopped. He was out of breath and they were all staring at him. He didn't like the look on Gantry's face. He was staring at Kyle as if he were mad. There was a deep uneasiness behind his eyes. Kyle didn't like it. “Gantry. Take the watch,” he snapped at him. He glanced aloft. “Get her canvas up, every scrap of it, and see the men scramble lively. Move this tub along. If a seagull farts near us, I want the wind from it caught.” He strode off to go back to his cabin. He'd bought incense in Jamaillia City, on the advice of one of the experienced slaver captains. He'd burn that and get away from the stink of slaves for a time. He'd get away from all of them for a time.
The ship had returned to near calm. A slaveship was never completely peaceful. Always, there were cries from somewhere in the hold. People cried out for water, for air, begging voices rose, pleading for the simple light of day. Fights broke out amongst the slaves. It was astounding, how much damage two closely chained men could work upon each other. The cramped quarters and the stench, the stingy rations of ship's bread and water made them turn on one another like rats in a rain barrel.
Not so different, Wintrow thought, from Vivacia and me. In their own way, they were like the slaves chained cheek by jowl below. They had no space to be separate from one another, not even in their thoughts and dreams. No friendship could survive such an enforced confinement. Especially not when guilt was an invisible third sandwiched between them. He had abandoned her, left her to her fate. And for her, the one whispered comment when she had first seen his marked face. “This falls upon me,” she had said. “But for me, none of this would have befallen you.”
“That is true,” he had had to agree with her. “But that does not mean it is your fault.”
By her stricken look, he had known that his words wounded her. But he had been too weary and despondent on his own behalf to try to soften them with yet more useless words.
That had been hours ago, back before his father had attacked him. Not a sound had she uttered since Gantry had left them. Wintrow had huddled in the angle of her prow, wondering what had possessed his father. He wondered if he would be suddenly attacked again. He had been too dispirited to speak. He had no idea what had stilled Vivacia's tongue but her silence was almost a relief.
When she finally did speak, her words were banal. “What are we going to do?”
The futility of the question jabbed him. He refolded the wet rag to find a cooler spot, then held it against his swollen face. The bitter words rose to his lips spontaneously. “Do? Why do you ask me? I no longer have any choices as to what I will do. Rather, you should tell your slave what you command.”
“I have no slave,” Vivacia replied with icy dignity. Outrage crept gradually into her voice. “If you wish to please your father by calling yourself a slave, say you belong to him. Not me.”
His long frustration found a target. “Rather say my father is intent on pleasing you, with no regard to what it does to me. If it were not for your strange nature, he would never have forced me to serve aboard you.”
“My strange nature? And whence did that come? Not from my will. I am what your family has made me. You spoke of choices a moment ago, saying you no longer had any. I have never had any. I am more truly a slave than any mark on your face can make you.”
Wintrow snorted in disbelief. His anger was rising to match her own. “You a slave? Show me the tattoo on your face, the manacles on your wrists. Easy for you to flaunt such words about. Vivacia, this is not something I play act. This mark is on my face for the rest of my life.” He forced the bitter words from his lips. “I'm a slave.”
“Are you?” Her voice was hard. “Before, you said you were a priest, and that no man could take that from you. But that, of course, was before you ran away. Since you have been dragged back, you have shown me otherwise. I had believed you had more courage, Wintrow Vestrit. More determination to shape yourself.”
Outrage at her words overtook him. He sat up, to look over his shoulder and out at her. “What would you know of courage, ship? What would you know about anything that is truly human? What can be more degrading than to have someone take all decision from you, to tell you that you are a ‘thing’ that ‘belongs’ to him? To no longer have a say in where you will go or what you will do? How can one keep any dignity, any faith, any belief in tomorrow? You speak to me of courage —”
“What can I know of courage? What can I know of such things?” The look she swung upon him was terrible to behold. “When have I ever known anything else than to be a ‘thing', a possession?” Her eyes blazed. “How dare you throw such things up to me!”
Wintrow gaped at her. For a moment he felt stricken, and then he tried to recover himself. “It is not the same! It is more difficult for me. I was born a man and —”
“Silence!” her words slashed at him. “I never put my mark upon your face, but your family spent three generations putting your mark upon my soul. Yes, soul! This ‘thing’ dares to claim one!” She looked him up and
