“Malta?” The voice was very soft, very gentle. A hand came to rest tenderly on her shoulder. “Are you all right, my dear?”

Malta whirled, seizing up her porridge bowl and dashing it at the floor at Rache's feet. “I hate porridge! Don't serve it to me again! I don't care what else you have to cook for me, don't serve me porridge. And don't touch me! You don't have the right. Now clean that up and leave me alone!”

She pushed the shocked slave out of the way and stormed out of the room. Slaves. They were so stupid. About everything.

“Paragon. There's something I have to talk to you about.”

Amber had spent the afternoon with him. She'd brought a lantern with her, and explored inside him. She'd walked slowly through his hold, the captain's chamber, the chart room, every compartment inside his hull. In the course of it, she'd asked many questions, some of which he could answer, others he would not or could not. She'd found the things that Brashen had left and boldly arranged them to suit herself. “Some night I'll come out here and sleep with you, shall I?” she had proposed. “We'll stay up late and tell each other stories until dawn.” She'd been intensely interested in every odd bit of junk she found. A bag with dice in it, still tucked up in a crack where some sailor had hidden it so he could game on watch and not be caught. A scratched out message on one bulkhead. “Three days, Sa help us all”, it read, and she had wanted to know who had carved it and why. She had been most curious about the blood stains. She had gone from one to another, counting up to seventeen irregular blotches on his deck and in various holds. She had missed six others, but he didn't tell her that, nor would he recall for her the day that blood had been shed or the names of those who had fallen. And in the captain's quarters she had found the locked compartment that should have held his log books, but did not. The lock was long shattered, even the plank door splintered and torn awry. The logs that should have been his memory were gone, all stolen away. Amber had picked at that like a gull at a body. Was that why he would not answer her questions? Did he have to have his logs to remember? Yes? Well, then, how did he remember her visits, or Mingsley's? He had no log of those things.

He had shrugged. “A dozen years from now, when you have lost interest in me and no longer come to visit, I shall probably have forgotten you as well. You do not stop to think that you are asking me of events that most likely occurred long before you were born. Why don't you tell me about your childhood. How well do you remember your infancy?”

“Not very well.” She changed the subject abruptly. “Do you know what I did yesterday? I went to Davad Restart and made an offer to buy you.”

Her words jolted him into silence. Then he coldly replied, “Davad Restart cannot sell me. He does not own me. Nor can a liveship be bought and sold at all, save from kin to kin, and then only in dire circumstance.”

It was Amber's turn to be silent. “Somehow, I thought you would know of these things. Well. If you do not, then you should, for they concern you. Paragon, among the New Traders, there have been rumors for months that you are for sale. Davad is acting as the intermediary. At first, your family was stipulating that you must not be used as a ship any longer because they… they didn't want to held responsible for any deaths” Her voice trailed off. “Paragon. How frankly can I speak to you? Sometimes you are so thoughtful and wise. Other times…”

“So you offered to buy me? Why? What will you make from my body? Beads? Furniture?” His edge of control was very thin, his words sharp with sarcasm. How dare she!

“No,” she said with a heavy sigh. Almost to herself she muttered, “I feared this.” She took a deep breath. “I would keep you as you are and where you are. Those were the terms of my offer.”

“Chained here? Beached forever? For seagulls to shit on, and crabs to scuttle beneath? Beached here until all of me that is not wizardwood rots away and I fall apart into screaming pieces?”

“Paragon!” She cried out the word, in a voice between pain and anger. “Stop this. Stop it now! You must know I would never let that befall you. You have to listen to me, you have to let me talk until you've heard it all. Because I think I will need your help. If you go off now into wild accusations and suspicions, I cannot help you. And more than anything, I want to help you.” Her voice went lower and softer on those words. She drew another deep breath. “So. Can you listen to me? Will you give me at least a chance to explain myself?”

“Explain,” he said coldly. Lie and make excuses. Deceive and betray. He'd listen. He'd listen and gather what weapons he could to defend himself against all of them.

“Oh, Paragon,” she said hoarsely. She put a palm flat to his hull. He tried to ignore this touch, to ignore the deep feeling that thrummed through her. “The Ludluck family, your family, has come on hard times. Very hard times. It is the same for many of the Old Trader families. There are many factors: slave labor, the wars in the north… but that doesn't matter to us. What matters is that your family needs money now, the New Traders know that, and they seek to buy you. Do not think ill of the Ludlucks. They resisted many offers. But when finally the money offered was very high, then they specified that they could not sell to anyone who wished to actually use you as a ship.” He could almost feel her shake her head. “To the New Traders, that simply meant that your family wanted more money, much more money, before they would sell you as a working ship.”

She took a deep breath and tried to go on more calmly. “Now, about then, I began to hear rumors that the only ship that can go up the Rain Wild River and come back intact is a liveship. Something about your wizardwood being impervious to the caustic white floods that sometimes come down the river. Which makes sense in light of how long you have rested here and not rotted, and it makes me understand why families would go into debt for generations to possess a ship like you. It is the only way to participate in the trade on the Rain Wild River. So now, as that rumor has crept about, the offers have risen. The New Traders who bid on you promise they will blame no one if you roll, and bid against each other.” She paused. “Paragon, do you hear me?” she asked quietly.

“I hear you,” he replied as he gazed out sightlessly over the ocean. He kept all expression out of his voice as he added, “Do go on.”

“I will. Because you should know this, not because I take pleasure in it. So far, the Ludlucks have still refused all offers. I think perhaps they fear what the other Old Traders might think of them, if they sold you and opened up the Rain Wild River trade to the newcomers. Those goods are the last complete bastion of the Bingtown Traders. Or perhaps, despite their neglect of you, there still remains some family feeling. So. I made an offer. Not as great as the others have bid, for I don't have the wealth they do. But coupled with my offer was my promise that you would remain intact and unsailed. For I think the Ludlucks still care about you. That in an odd way, they keep you here to keep you safe.”

“Ah, yes. Chaining up one's odder relatives and keeping them confined to a garret or cellar or other out of the way place has long been how Bingtown dealt with madness or deformity.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Consider the Rain Wild Traders, for example.”

“Who?”

“Exactly. Who? No one hears of them, no one knows of them, no one considers our ancient convenants with them. Least of all me or you. Pray, go on. After you buy me and leave me intact and don't sail me, what did you have in mind?”

“Oh, Paragon.” She sounded completely miserable now. “If it were up to me — if I could dream as a child does and believe those dreams could come true — I would say, then, I would have artisans come here, to right you and build a cradle to support you upright. And I would come and live aboard you. On the cliffs above you, I would plant a garden of scent and color, a bird-and-butterfly garden, with trailing vines to hang all the way down to the beach and bloom sweetly. And around you I would sculpt stone and create tidepools and populate them with sea stars and sea anemones and those little scarlet crabs.” As she raved on of this strange vision, her voice grew more and more impassioned. “I would live inside you and work inside you and in the evening I would dine on the deck and we would share our day. And if I dared to dream larger than that, why, then I would dream that someday I could obtain wizardwood and work it wisely enough to restore your eyes and your sight. In the mornings we would look out to the sun rising over the sea, and in the evenings we would look up to it setting over our cliff garden. I would say to the world, do what you will, for I am done with you. Destroy yourself or prosper, it is all one to me, as long as you leave us alone. And we would be happy, the two of us.”