win you?”
“I do not… No one has ever…” Obviously flustered, she turned to Wintrow. “Wintrow is mine and I am his. We have both discovered that nothing can change that. Certainly you cannot come between us.”
“Can't I? So says the girl who speaks fondly of her brother, until her lover steals her heart away.”
Wintrow found himself speechless. Perhaps the only other person as flabbergasted at this interplay was the woman who had come aboard with Kennit. Her eyes were narrowed, like a cat's when she stares down a hostile dog. Jealous, Wintrow thought. She is jealous of his sweet words to the ship. As I, he admitted to himself, am jealous at Vivacia's confusion and pleasure.
The fine grain of her cheeks had taken on a pink blush. The breath that moved her bare breasts behind her arms came more swiftly. “I am a ship, not a woman,” she pointed out to him. “You cannot be my lover.”
“Can't I? Shall not I drive you through seas no other man would dare, shall not we together see lands that are the stuff of legends? Shall not we venture together under skies where the stars have not been named yet? Shall not we, you and I, weave such a tale of our adventures that the whole world will be in awe of us? Ah, Vivacia, I tell you plainly that I shall win you to me. Without fear, I tell you that.”
She looked from Kennit to Wintrow. Her confusion was pretty, as was the sweetness of her pleasure at his words. “You shall never take Wintrow's place with me, regardless of what you say,” she managed. “He is family.”
“Of course not!” Kennit told her warmly. “I do not wish it. If he makes you feel safe, then we shall keep him aboard forevermore.” Again he smiled at her, a smile both wicked and wise. “I do not wish to make you feel safe, my lady.” He crossed his arms on his chest, and despite his crutch and shortened leg, he managed to look both handsome and rakish. “I have no desire to be your little brother.”
In the midst of this courtship, his leg must have pained him, for he suddenly faltered, losing his smile to a grimace of pain. He bowed his head forward with a gasp, and in an instant Sorcor was at his side.
“You are hurt! You must go and rest now!” the Vivacia exclaimed before anyone else could speak.
“I fear I must,” Kennit concurred so humbly that Wintrow suddenly knew he was more than pleased at the ship's reaction. He even wondered if the man had deliberately sought it. “So I must leave you now. But I shall call again, shall I? As soon as I am able?”
“Yes. Please do.” Her hands fell away from her chest. She extended one towards him, as if to invite him to touch palms with her.
The pirate managed another deep bow but made no move to touch her. “Until then,” he told her, fondness already in his voice. He turned aside, to say in a huskier voice. “Sorcor. I shall require your assistance yet again.”
As the brawny pirate took his captain's weight and began to help him aft, Wintrow caught sight of the look that the woman gave the ship. It was not pleasant.
“Sorcor!” All turned back to the Vivacia's imperious command. “Be careful with him. And when you have finished there, I would borrow some of your archers. I'd like these serpents discouraged, if nothing else.”
“Captain?” Sorcor asked doubtfully.
Kennit leaned on him heavily. His face was moist with sweat, but still he smiled. “Give the lady her due. A liveship under me. Court her for me, man, until I can charm her myself.” With a sigh like death, he folded suddenly into his mate's arms. As Sorcor hefted the man and then bore him off to what had been his father's stateroom, Wintrow wondered at the strange smile Kennit yet wore. The woman walked behind them, her eyes never leaving Captain Kennit's face.
Wintrow turned and walked slowly to the bow, to the spot where Kennit had stood. No one, he marked, moved to stop him. He was as free aboard the ship as he had ever been.
“Vivacia,” he said quietly.
She had been staring after Kennit. She broke from her bemusement to look up at Wintrow. Her eyes were wide with wonder. They sparkled.
She lifted a hand to him and he leaned to let their palms touch. No words were needed, yet he spoke them anyway. “Be careful.”
“He is a dangerous man,” she agreed. “Kennit.” Her voice caressed the name.
He opened his eyes to a well-appointed room. The grain of the paneled walls had been carefully selected to match. The fixed lanterns were of brass that would gleam when properly polished again. Rolled charts graced the chart rack like fat hens in nesting boxes. They would be a treasure trove of information, the gathered wealth of a Bingtown Trader family's charts. There were other niceties, too. The washstand with its matching porcelain bowl and pitcher. The framed paintings fastened securely to the walls. The meticulously carved shutters for the thick glass windows. A tasteful and elegant room indeed. True, it had been recently rifled, and the captain's possessions scattered about, but Etta moved quietly about it, setting it to rights. There was an overlying smell of cheap incense that could not disguise the underlying stench of a slaver. Yet it was obvious to him that the Vivacia had not been so used for long; it should be possible to scrub it out of her. Once more she could be a bright and tidy vessel. And this was a room for a true captain.
He glanced down at himself. He had been undressed and a sheet draped his legs.
“And where is our boy-captain?” Kennit asked Etta.
She spun at the sound of his voice and then hurried to his side. “He has gone to tend his father's ribs and head. He said it would not take long, and he wished to have the chamber cleared of clutter before he tried to heal you.” She looked at him and shook her head. “I do not understand how you can trust him. He must know that if you live this ship can never be his. Nor do I understand why you will allow a mere boy to do what you forbade three skilled healers even to think of in Bull Creek.”
“Because he is a part of my luck,” he said quietly. “The same luck that has given this ship to me so easily. You must see this is the ship I am meant to have. The boy is part and parcel of that.”
He almost wanted to make her understand. But no one must know of the words the charm had spoken when the boy looked so deeply into his eyes. No one must know of the bond forged between them in that instant, a bond that frightened Kennit as much as it intrigued him. He spoke again to keep her from asking any more questions. “So. We are under weigh all ready?”
“Sorcor takes us back to Bull Creek. He has put Gory on the wheel and Brig in charge of the deck. We follow the Marietta.”
“I see.” He smiled to himself. “And what do you think of my liveship?”
She gave him a bittersweet smile. “She is lovely. And I am already jealous of her.” Etta crossed her arms on her chest and gave him a sideways glance. “I do not think we shall get along easily. She is too strange a thing, neither woman nor wood nor ship. I do not like the pretty words you sprinkle so thickly before her, nor do I like the boy Wintrow.”
“And as ever, I care little what you like or dislike,” Kennit told her impatiently. “What can I give the ship to win her, save words? She is not a woman in the same way you are.” When the whore still looked sulky, he added savagely, “And were not my leg so painful, I would put you on your back and remind you of what you are to me.”
Her eyes changed suddenly from black ice to dark fire. “Would that you could,” she said gently, and disgusted him with the warmth of the smile his rebuke earned him.
Kyle Haven lay on Gantry's bare bunk, facing the bulkhead. All that the ransacking slaves had left of the mate's possessions were scattered on the floor. There was not much. Wintrow stepped over a carved wooden chain and a single discarded sock. All else that had been Gantry's — his books, his clothes, his carving tools — had been taken or left in fragments, either by the slaves in their first rush of plundering, or by the pirates in their far more organized gathering of loot.
“It's Wintrow, Father,” he told him as he shut the door behind him. It would not latch anymore; during the uprising, someone had kicked it open rather than simply trying the knob. But the door stayed shut, and the two map-faces that Sa'Adar had posted as sentries did not try to open it again.
The man on the bed did not stir.
Wintrow set the basin of water and the rags he'd salvaged down on the cracked remains of Gantry's desk and turned to the man in the bed. He hastily set his fingers to the pulsepoint in his throat, and felt his father jolt back to consciousness at his touch. The man shuddered away from him with an incoherent sound, then sat up
