Ship of Magic

He lengthened his stride to try and escape his own thoughts. He needed to be out and moving just now. As he strode down the mud sticky street, a tiny voice spoke at his wrist. “That was likely the only bit of treasure ever carried off from the Others' Island, and you gave it to a whore.”

“So?” he demanded, bringing the small face up to his own to stare into it.

“So perhaps you do have both luck and wisdom.” The tiny face smirked at him. “Perhaps.”

“What mean you by that?”

But the wizardwood charm did not speak again that evening, not even when he flicked his forefinger against its face. The carved features remained as still and hard as stone.

He went to Ivro's parlor. He did not know he was going there until he stood outside the door. It was dark within. It was far later than he'd thought. He kicked at the door until first Ivro's son, and then Ivro, yelled at him to stop.

“It's Ke

A feeble light was kindled inside the house. After a moment, Ivro jerked the door open. “Why should I waste my time?” the small craftsman demanded furiously. “Take your trade elsewhere, to a dolt with some needles and ash who doesn't give a damn about his work. Then when you have it burned off the next day, you won't have destroyed anything worth having.” He spat, narrowly missing Ke

Ke

He found his control as abruptly as he had lost it. Breathing hard, he set the artist back on his own feet. “Understand,” he growled more softly. He saw hatred in the man's eyes, but also fear. He would do it. He'd do it for the heavy gold that clinked in the purse Ke

“Come in, then,” Ivro invited him in a deadly soft voice. With a shivering up his back, Ke

“Where and what?” Ivro demanded. His voice was as callous as Ke

“The nape of my neck,” Ke

“Another what?” Ivro asked testily. He was already drawing up a table beside them. Tiny pots of brilliant inks were arrayed upon it in precise rows. He placed a taller stool behind Ke

“An Other,” Ke

“I do,” Ivro said harshly. “It's a bad-luck tattoo, and I'm more than happy to drill it into you, you son of a bitch.” His fingertips walked lightly over Ke

“I liked them fine,” Ke

“You're a mad man,” Ivro observed, but his voice was distracted. Ke

It was the only way, he thought to himself. The only way to expunge the bad luck. Going to the Others' Island had been a bad decision, and now he had to pay for it. A thousand jabs of the needle, and the stinging freshness of the new tattoo for a day. Then the cleansing agony of the hot iron to burn the mistake away and make it as if it had never happened. To keep the good luck strong, Ke

Chapter Five

Bingtown

Seventeen days. Althea looked out the tiny porthole of her stateroom, and watched Bingtown draw nearer. The bared masts of caravels and carracks forested the docks that lined the placid bay. Smaller vessels plied busily between anchored ships and the shore. Home.

She had spent seventeen days within this chamber, leaving only when it was necessary, and then during the watches when Kyle was asleep. The first few days had been spent in seething fury and occasional tears as she railed against the injustice. Childishly, she had vowed to endure the restriction he had put upon her simply so she could complain of it to her father at journey's end. “Look what you made me do!” she said to herself, and smiled minutely. It was the old shout from when she was small and she would quarrel with Keffria. The semi-deliberate breaking of a dish or vase, the dumping of a bucket of water, the tearing of a dress: Look what you made me do! Keffria had screeched it at an a

That was only how her withdrawal had begun. She had by turns sulked or raged, thinking of all she would say if Kyle dared come to her door, either to be sure she was obeying him or to say he had repented his command. While waiting for that, she read all her books and scrolls again, and even laid out the silk and considered making a start at dressmaking herself. But her sewing skills were more suited to canvas than silk, and the fabric was too fine to take a chance on botching the job. Instead she mended all her ship-board clothes. But even that task ran out, and she had found she hated the empty, idle time that stretched before her. One evening, irritated at the confines of her too-small bunk, she had flung her bedding to the floor and sprawled on it as she read yet again Deldom's Journal of a Trader. She fell asleep there. And dreamed.

Often as a girl, she would catnap on the decks of the Vivacia, or spend an evening stretched out on the deck of her father's quarters reading his books. Dozing off always brought her vivid dreams and semi-waking fancies. As she had grown, her father chided her for such behavior, and saw that she had chores enough that she would have no time for napping on deck. In recalling her old dreams, she put them down to a child's vivid imaginings. But that night, on the deck of her own stateroom, the color and detail of her childhood dreams came back to her. The dream was too vivid to dismiss as the product of her own mind.

She dreamed of her great-grandma, a woman she had never known, but in her dream she knew Talley as well as she knew herself. Talley Vestrit strode the decks, shouting orders at the sailors who floundered through a tangle of canvas, lines and splintered wood in the midst of the great storm. In an instant, sudden as remembering, Althea knew what had happened. A great sea had taken off the mast and the mate, and Captain Vestrit herself had joined her crew to bring order and sanity back with her confident bellows. She was nothing like her portrait; here was no woman sitting docilely in a chair, attired primly in black wool and white lace, a stern-faced husband standing at her shoulder. Althea had always known that her great-grandma had commissioned the building of the Vivacia. In that dream, however, she was not just the woman who had gone to the money lenders and the ship builders; she was suddenly a woman who had loved the sea and ships and had boldly determined the course of her family's descendants with her decision to possess a liveship. Oh, to have lived in such a time, when a woman could wield such authority.