"03 - Ship of Destiny 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)
The two groups were looking at one another now, openly, the hostility between them mellowing to a tentative alliance. Her heart leapt. This was what she had been born to do. Bingtown was her destiny. She would unite it and save it and make it her own.
"It's late," she said softly. "I think that before we talk, we all need to rest. And think. I will expect all of you tomorrow, to share noon repast with me. By then, I will have organized my own thoughts and suggestions. If we are united in deciding to treat with the New Traders, I will suggest a list of New Traders who might be open to such negotiating, and also powerful enough to speak for their neighbors." As Roed Caern's face darkened and even Krion scowled, she added with a slight smile, "But of course, we are not yet united in that position. And nothing shall be done until we reach consensus, I assure you. I shall be open to all suggestions."
She dismissed them with a smile and a "Good evening, Traders."
Each of them came to bow over her hand and thank her for her counsels. As Roed Caern did so, she held his fingers in her own a moment longer. As he glanced up at her in surprise, her lips formed the silent words, "Come back later." His dark eyes widened but he spoke no word.
After the boy ushered them out, she breathed a sigh that was both relief and satisfaction. She would survive here, and Bingtown would be hers, regardless of what became of the Satrap. She pinched her lips together as she considered Roed Caern. Then she rose swiftly and crossed to the servant's bell. She would have her maid assist her in dressing more formally. Roed Caern frightened her. He was a man capable of anything. She did not wish him to think that her request to him was the invitation to a tryst. She would be cool and formal when she set him to tracking down Ronica Vestrit and her family.
CHAPTER THREE - Wintrow
THE CARVED FIGUREHEAD STARED STRAIGHT AHEAD AS SHE SLICED THE WAVES. The wind at her back filled her sails and drove her forward. Her bow cut the water in a near constant white spray. The flying droplets beaded Vivacia's cheeks and the foaming black curls of her hair.
She had left Others' Island and then Ridge Island behind her. Vivacia moved west now, away from the open ocean and toward the treacherous gap between Shield Wall and Last Island. Beyond the ridge of islands was the sheltered Inside Passage to the relative safety of the Pirate Isles.
Within her rigging, the pirate crew moved lively until six sails bellied full in the wind. Captain Kennit gripped the bow rail with his long-fingered hands, his pale blue eyes squinting. The spray damped his white shirt and elegant broadcloth jacket, but he took no notice of it. Like the figurehead, he stared longingly ahead, as if his will could wring more speed out of the ship.
"Wintrow needs a healer," Vivacia insisted abruptly. Woefully, she added, "We should have kept the slave surgeon from the Crosspatch. We should have forced him to come with us." The liveship's figurehead crossed her arms on her chest and hugged herself tightly. She did not look back toward Kennit, but stared over the sea. Her jaw clamped tightly shut.
The pirate captain took in a deep breath and erased all trace of exasperation from his voice. "I know your fears," he told her. "But you must set them aside. We are days from a settlement of any size. By the time we get to one, Wintrow will be either healing, or dead. We are caring for him as best we can, ship. His own strength is his best hope now." Belatedly, he tried to comfort her. He spoke in a gentler tone. "I know you are worried about the lad. I am just as concerned as you are. Hold to this, Vivacia. He breathes. His heart beats. He takes in water and pisses it out again. These are all marks of a man who will live. I've seen enough of injured men to know that is so."
"So you have told me." Her words were clipped. "I have listened to you. Now, I beg you, listen to me. His injury is not a normal one. It goes beyond pain or damage to his flesh. Wintrow isn't there, Kennit. I cannot feel him at all." Her voice began to shake. "While I cannot feel him, I cannot help him. I cannot lend him comfort or strength. I am helpless. Worthless to him."
Kennit fought to contain his impatience. Behind him, Jola bellowed angrily at the men, threatening to strip the flesh from their ribs if they didn't put their backs into their work. Wasted breath, Kennit thought to himself. Just do it once to one of them and the first mate would never need to threaten them again.
Kennit crossed his arms on his chest, containing his own temper. Strictness was not a tack he could take with the ship. Still, it was hard to leash his irritation. Worry for the boy already ate at him like a canker. He needed Wintrow. He knew that. When he thought of him, he felt an almost mystical sense of connection. The boy was intertwined with his luck and his destiny to be king. Sometimes it almost seemed as if Wintrow were a younger, more innocent version of himself, unscarred by the harshness of his life. When he thought of Wintrow that way, he felt an odd tenderness for him. He could protect him. He could be to Wintrow the kind of mentor that he himself had never had. Yet, to do that, he had to be the boy's sole protector. The bond between Wintrow and the ship was a double barrier to Kennit. As long as it existed, neither the ship nor the boy was completely his.
He spoke firmly to Vivacia. "You know the boy is aboard. You caught us up and saved us yourself. You saw him taken aboard. Do you think I would lie to you, and say he lived if he did not?"
"No," she replied heavily. "I know you would not lie to me. Moreover, I believe that if he had died, I would know of it." She shook her head savagely and her heavy hair flew with her denial. "We have been so closely linked for so long. I cannot convey to you how it feels to know he is aboard, and yet to have no sense of him. It is as if a part of myself had been cloven away...."
Her voice dwindled. She had forgotten to whom she spoke. Kennit leaned more heavily on his makeshift crutch. He tapped his peg loudly thrice upon her deck. "Do you think I cannot imagine what you feel?" he asked her.
"I know you can," she conceded. "Ah, Kennit, what I cannot express is how alone I am without him. Every evil dream, every malicious imagining that has ever haunted me ventures from the corners of my mind. They gibber and mock me. Their sly taunting eats away at my sense of who I am." She lifted her great wizardwood hands to her temples and pressed her palms there. "So often I have told myself that I no longer need Wintrow. I know who I am. And I believe I am far greater than he could ever grasp." She gave a sigh of exasperation. "He can be so irritating. He mouths platitudes and ponders theology at me until I swear I would be happier without him. However, when he is not with me, and I have to confront who I truly am..." She shook her head again, wordlessly.
She began again. "When I got the serpent's slime from the gig onto my hands-" Her words halted. When she spoke again, it was in an altered voice. "I am frightened. There is a terrible dread in me, Kennit." She twisted suddenly, to look at him over one bare shoulder. "I fear the truth that lurks inside me, Kennit. I fear the whole of my identity. I have a face I wear to show the world, but there is more to me than that. There are other faces concealed in me. I sense a past behind my past. If I do not guard against it, I fear it will leap out and change all I am. Yet, it makes no sense. How could I be someone other than who I am now? How can I fear myself? I don't understand how I could feel such a thing. Do you?"
Kennit tightened his arms across his chest and lied. "I think you are prone to flights of fancy, my sea lady. No more than that. Perhaps you feel a bit guilty. I know that I chide myself for taking Wintrow to the Others' Island where he was exposed to such danger. For you, it must be sharper. You have been distant with him of late. I know that I have come between you and Wintrow. Pardon me if I do not regret that. Now that you have been faced with the possibility of losing him, you appreciate the hold he still has on you. You wonder what would become of you if he died. Or left."
Kennit shook his head at her and gave her a wry smile. "I fear you still do not trust me. I have told you, I will be with you always, to the end of my days. Yet still you cling to him as the only one worthy to partner you." Kennit paused, then ventured a gambit to see how she would react. "I think we should use this time to prepare for when Wintrow will leave us. Fond as we are of him, we both know his heart is not here, but at his monastery. The time will come when, if we truly love him, we must let him go. Do you not agree?"
"My lovely water-flower, why cannot you allow me to fill his place with you?"
"Blood is memory," Vivacia said sadly. "Wintrow and I share both blood and memories."
It was painful, for he ached in every limb, but Kennit lowered himself slowly to her deck. He put his hand flat on the bloodstain that still held the outline of his hip and leg. "My blood," he said quietly. "I lay here while my leg was cut from my body. My blood soaked into you. I know you shared memories with me then."
"I did. And again, when you died. Yet-" She paused, then complained, "Even unconscious, you hid yourself from me. You shared what you chose to reveal, Kennit. The rest you cloaked in mystery and shadow, denying those memories even existed." She shook her massive head. "I love you, Kennit, but I do not know you. Not as Wintrow and I know one another. I hold the memories of three generations of his family line. His blood has soaked me as well. We are like two trees sprung from a single root." She took a sudden breath. "I do not know you," she repeated. "If I truly knew you, I would understand what happened when you returned from Others' Island. The winds and sea itself seemed to answer to your command. A serpent bowed to your will. I do not understand how such a thing could be, yet I witnessed it. Nor do you see fit to explain it to me." Very softly, she asked him, "How can I put my trust in a man who does not trust me?"
For a time, silence blew by with the wind. "I see," Kennit replied heavily. He got to his knee and then laboriously climbed up his crutch to stand erect. She had wounded him and he chose to let it show. "All I can say to you is that it is not yet time for me to reveal myself to you. I had hoped that you loved me well enough to be patient. You have dashed that hope. Still, I hope you know me well enough to believe my words. Wintrow is not dead. He shows signs of recovering. Once he is well, I have no doubt he will come to you. When he does, I shall not stand between you."
"Kennit!" she cried after him, but he limped slowly away. When he got to the short ladder that led from the raised foredeck to the main deck, he had to lower himself awkwardly to it. He set his crutch flat on the deck and scrabbled his body around to the ladder. It presented difficulties for a one-legged man, but he surmounted them without help. Etta, who should have been at his side to aid him, was nursing Wintrow. He supposed that she, too, now preferred the lad's company to his. No one seemed to care how his exertions on Others' Island had exhausted him. Despite the warm weather, he had developed a cough from their long and arduous swim. Every muscle and joint in his body ached, but no one offered him sympathy or support, for Wintrow was hurt, the skin scalded from his body by sea-serpent's venom. Wintrow. He was the only one that Etta and Vivacia noticed.
"Oh. Poor pirate. Poor, pathetic, unloved Kennit."
The words were drawled sarcastically, in a small voice. It came from the carved charm he wore strapped to his wrist. He would not even have heard the tiny, breathless voice if he had not been climbing down the ladder, his hand still gripping the rung by his face. His foot reached the lower deck. He held to the ladder with one hand as he tugged his coat straight, and corrected the fall of lace from his cuffs. Anger burned in him. Even the wizardwood charm he had created to bring him luck had turned on him. His own face, carved in miniature, flung mockery at him. He thought of a threat for the beastly little wretch.
He lifted his hand to smooth the curl of his moustache. Carved face close to his mouth, he observed quietly, "Wizardwood burns."
"So does flesh," the tiny voice replied. "You and I are bound as tightly as Vivacia is bound to Wintrow. Do you want to test that link? You have already lost a leg. Would you like to try life without your eyes?"
The charm's words set a finger of ice to the pirate's spine. How much did it know?
"Ah, Kennit, there can be few secrets between two such as we. Few." It spoke to his thoughts rather than his words. Could it truly know what he thought, or did it shrewdly guess?
"Here's a secret I could share with Vivacia," the charm went on relentlessly. "I could tell her that you yourself have no idea what happened during that rescue. That once your elation wore off, you cowered in your bed and trembled like a child while Etta was nursing Wintrow." A pause. "Perhaps Etta would find that amusing."
An inadvertent glance at his wrist showed him the sardonic grin on the charm's face. Kennit pushed down a deep uneasiness. He would not dignify the ill-natured little thing with a reply. He recovered his crutch and stepped swiftly out of the path of a handful of men hastening to reset a sail that was not to Jola's liking.
What had happened as they were leaving Others' Island? The storm had raged about them, and Wintrow had been unconscious, perhaps dying, in the bottom of the ship's boat. Kennit had been furious with fate that it would try to snatch his future away just as he was so close to realizing it. He had stood up in the gig, to shake his fist and forbid the sea to drown him and the winds to oppose him. Not only had they heeded his words, but the serpent from the island had risen from the depths to reunite the gig with its mother ship. He exhaled sharply, refusing credulous fear. It was difficult enough that his own crew now worshipped him with their eyes, cowering in terror at his slightest remonstrance. Even Etta quivered fearfully under his touch and spoke to him with downcast eyes. Occasionally, she slipped back into familiarity, only to be aghast with herself when she realized she had done so. Only the ship treated him as fearlessly as she always had. Now she had revealed that his miracle had created another barrier between them. He refused to surrender to their superstition. Whatever had happened, he must accept it and continue as he always had.
Commanding a ship demanded that the captain always live a detached life. No one could fraternize on equal terms with the ship's captain. Kennit had always enjoyed the isolation of command. Since Sorcor had taken over command of the Marietta, he had lost some of his deference for Kennit. The storm incident had once more firmly established Kennit as above Sorcor. Now his former second-in-command regarded him with a god-struck gaze. It was not the elevation in their regard that Kennit minded so much. It was knowing that a fall from this new pinnacle could shatter him. Even a slight mistake now might discredit him in their eyes. He must be more careful than ever before. The path he had set himself upon grew ever narrower and steeper. He set his customary small smile to his face. Let no one see his apprehension. He made his way toward Wintrow's cabin.
"WINTROW? HERE is WATER. DRINK."
Etta squeezed a small sponge above his lips. A pattering of drops fell. She watched anxiously as his blistered lips opened to the water. His thick tongue moved inside his mouth, and she saw him swallow. It was followed by a quick gasp for breath. "Is that better? Do you want more?"
She leaned closer and watched his face, willing a response from him. She would accept anything, the twitch of an eyelid, the flaring of a nostril. There was nothing. She dipped the sponge again. "Here comes more water," she assured him, and sent another brief trickle into his mouth. Again, he swallowed.
Thrice more she gave him water. The last time, it trickled down his livid cheek. She dabbed it gently away. Skin came with it. Then she leaned back into the chair by his bunk and considered him wearily. She could not tell if his thirst was satiated or if he was too weary to swallow more. She numbered her consolations. He was alive. He breathed; he drank. She tried to build hope upon that. She dropped the sponge back into the pan of water. For a moment, she regarded her own hands. She had scalded them in Wintrow's rescue, for when she had seized him to keep him from drowning, the serpent slime on his clothing had rubbed off on her, leaving shiny red patches, stingingly sensitive to both heat and cold. And it had done that damage after it had spent most of its strength on Wintrow's clothing and flesh.
His clothing had been corroded away to flimsy rags. Then, as warm water dissolves ice, the slime had eaten his flesh. His hands had taken the worst damage, but spatters of it had marred his face. It had eaten into his sailor's queue, leaving uneven hanks of black hair clinging to his head. She had cut his remaining hair to keep it from lying in his sores. His shorn scalp made him look even younger than he was.
In some places, the damage seemed no worse than sunburn; in others, raw tissue shone wet beside tanned and healthy flesh. Swelling had distorted his features, rendering his eyes as slits beneath a ledge of brow. His fingers were as sausages. His breath rattled in and out wetly. His oozing flesh stuck to the linen sheets. She suspected his pain was intense, and yet he gave few signs of it. He was so unresponsive that she feared he was dying.
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |