sailor's hands never paused in their work as he imparted this information to Wintrow. “Maybe it will be me,” he added pleasantly.
The youth's calm advocation of murder chilled Wintrow. Much as he disliked Torg, as difficult as it was for him not to hate the man, he had never considered killing him. That Mild had was disconcerting. “Don't let someone like Torg distort your life and focus,” he suggested quietly. “Even to think of killing for the sake of vengeance bends the spirit. We cannot know why Sa permits such men as Torg to have power over others, but we can deny him the power to distort our spirits. Yield him obedience where we must, but do not…”
“I didn't ask for a sermon,” Mild protested irritably. He flung down the piece of line he'd been working on in disgust. “Who do you think you are? Why should you be telling me how to think or live? Don't you ever just talk? Try it sometime. Just say out loud, I'd really love to kill that dog-pronging bastard. You'd be surprised what a relief it is.” He turned his face away from Wintrow and spoke aloud in an apparent aside to a mast. “Dung. You try to talk to him like he's a person and he acts like you're on your knees begging his advice.”
Wintrow felt a moment of outrage, followed by a rush of embarrassment. “I didn't mean it like that” He started to say he didn't think he was any better than Mild, but the lie died on his lips. He forced himself to speak truth. “No. I never talk without thinking first. I've been schooled to avoid careless words. And in the monastery, if we see or hear someone putting himself on a destructive path, then we speak out to each other. But to help each other, not to…”
“Well, you're not in a monastery anymore. You're here. When are you going to get that through your thick head and start acting like a sailor? You know, it's painful to watch how you let them all push you around. Get some gumption and stand up to them instead of preaching Sa all the time. Take a swing at Torg. Sure, you'll get a beating for it. But Torg is a bigger coward than you are. If he thinks there's even a chance you're going to lay for him with a marline spike, he'll back off of you. Don't you see that?”
Wintrow tried for dignity. “If he makes me behave like he does, then he's truly won. Don't you see that?”
“No. All I see is that you're so afraid of a beating you won't even admit you're afraid of it. It's just like your shirt the other day, when Torg put it up the mast to taunt you. You should have known you'd have to go get it yourself, so you should have just done it, instead of waiting until you were forced to do it. That made you lose to him twice, don't you see?”
“I don't see how I lost at all. It was a cruel joke, not worthy of men,” Wintrow replied quietly.
Mild lost his temper for an instant. “There. That's what you do that I hate. You know what I mean, but you try to talk about it a whole different way. It isn't about what is ‘worthy of men.’ Here and now, it's about you and Torg. The only way you could have won that round was pretending that you didn't give a damn, that climbing the mast to get your shirt back wasn't anything. Instead, you got sunburned sitting around acting too holy to go get your shirt” Mild sputtered off into silence, obviously frustrated by Wintrow's lack of response. He took a breath, tried again. “Don't you get it at all? The worst was him forcing you to climb the mast ahead of him. That was when you really lost. The whole crew thinks you've got no spine now. That you're a coward.” Mild shook his head in disgust. “It's bad enough you look like a little kid. Do you have to act like one all the time?”
The sailor rose in disgust and stalked away. Wintrow sat staring down at the heap of rope. The other boy's words had rattled him more than he liked to admit. He had pointed out, too clearly, that Wintrow now lived and moved in a different world. He and Mild were probably of an age, but Mild had taken up this trade of his own inclination, three years ago. He was a sailor to the bone now, and no longer the ship's boy since Wintrow had come aboard. No longer a boy at all in appearance. He was hard-muscled and agile. He was a full head taller than Wintrow as well, and the hair on his cheeks was starting to darken into proper whiskers. Wintrow knew that his slight build and boyish appearance were not faults, were not something he could change even if he saw them as faults. But somehow it had been easier in the monastery, where one and all agreed that each would grow in his own time and way.
Sa'Greb would never be taller than a lad, and his short stocky limbs would have made him the butt of all jokes had he remained in his home village. But in the monastery he was respected for the verses he wrote. No one thought of him as “too short”, he was simply Sa'Greb. And the kind of cruel pranks that were the ordinary day to day of this ship would never have been expected nor tolerated there. The younger boys teased and shoved one another when they first arrived, but those with a penchant for bullying or cruelty were swiftly returned to their parents. Those attributes had no place among the servants of Sa.
He suddenly missed the monastery with a sharp ache. He forced the pain away before it could bring tears smarting to his eyes. No tears aboard this ship; no sense in letting anyone see what they could only view as a weakness. In his own way, Mild was right. He was trapped aboard the Vivacia, either until he could make his escape or until his fifteenth birthday. What would Berandol have counseled him? Why, to make the best of his time here. If sailor he must be, then he were wiser to learn it swiftly. And if he were forced to be a part of this crew for… however long it would be… then he must begin to form alliances, at least.
It would help, he reflected, if he had had the vaguest idea of how one made friends with someone one's own age, but with whom one had next to nothing in common. He took up a worn piece of line and began to pick it apart as he pondered this very thing. From behind him, Vivacia spoke quietly. “I thought your words had merit.”
Wonderful. A soulless wooden ship, animated by a force that might or might not be of Sa, found his words inspiring. Almost as soon as he had the unworthy thought, Wintrow squelched it. But not before he sensed a vibration of pain from the ship. Had not he just been telling himself he needed allies? And here he was viciously turning on the only true ally he had. “I am sorry,” he said quietly, knowing he scarcely needed to speak the words aloud. “It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.”
“I've seen it before,” Vivacia agreed listlessly. “And you are not alone in your bitterness. The whole crew is in turmoil. Scarcely a soul aboard feels content with his lot.”
He nodded to her observation. “There has been too much change, too fast. Too many men dismissed, others put on lesser wage because of their age. Too many new hands aboard, trying to discover where they fit into the order of things. It will take time before they feel they are all part of the same crew.”
“If ever,” Vivacia said with small hope. “There is Vestrit's Old Crew, and Kyle's Men and the New Hands. So they seem to think of themselves, and so they behave. I feel… divided against myself. It is hard to trust, hard to relax and give control to… the captain.” She hesitated on the tide, as if she herself did not yet fully recognize Kyle in that position.
Wintrow nodded again, silently. He had felt the tensions himself. Some of the men Kyle had let go had been acrimonious, and at least two others had quit in protest. The latest disturbance had been when Kyle had demanded that one older man who was quitting return to him the gold earring that Captain Vestrit had given him for his long service aboard the Vivacia. The earring was shaped like Vivacia's figurehead and marked him as a valued member of her crew. The old man had thrown it over the side rather than surrender it to Kyle. Then he had stalked off down the dock, his sea-bag over his bony shoulder. Wintrow had sensed that the old man had little to go to; it would be hard to prove himself on board a new ship, competing with younger, more agile hands.
“He didn't really throw it into the sea.” Vivacia's voice was little more than a whisper.
Wintrow was instantly curious. “He didn't? How do you know?” He stood and went to the railing to look down at the figurehead. She smiled up at him.
“Because he came back later that night and gave it to me. He said we had been so long together, if he could not die aboard my decks, he wished me to have at least a token of his years.”
Wintrow felt himself suddenly deeply moved. The old sailor had given back to the ship what was surely a valuable piece of jewelry, as gold alone. Given it freely.
“What did you do with it?”
She looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I did not know what to do with it. But he told me to swallow it. He said that many of the liveships do that. Not commonly, but with tokens that are of great significance. The ships swallow them and thus carry the memory of the man who gave it for as many years as they live.” She smiled at Wintrow's astonished look. “So I did. It was not hard, although it felt strange. And I am… aware of it, in an odd way. But you know, it felt like the right thing to do.”
“I am sure it was,” Wintrow replied. And wondered why he was so sure.
The evening wind was welcome after the heat of the day. Even the ordinary ships seemed to speak softly to
