She drew a breath and showed an instant of uncertainty. She approached Althea and took both her unresisting hands in hers. “My daughter. I know you feel yourself wronged. You expected to inherit the ship. It was your father's plan for you. He is gone, and though it pains me, I will speak plainly of such things. He always treated you as if you were one of the sons we lost. If your brothers had survived the plague… but they did not. But, back when the boys were alive, he always said the land would go to his daughters, the ship to his sons. And although he never said so plainly, after our boys died, I believe that he intended Keffria to inherit the land holdings, and you the ship. But he also intended to live until he was an old man, to see the debt on the ship and the notes against our holdings paid off, and to see you married to a man who would sail the Vivacia for you. No. Be quiet!” she said harshly as Althea opened her mouth to object.
“It is hard enough to say these things. If I am interrupted, we shall never get this over with,” she went on in a softer voice. She lifted her head up straight and met her daughter's eyes firmly. “If you wish to blame someone for your disappointment, blame me. For when I could no longer deny that your father was dying, I sent for Curtil, our old adviser. And between us, we set on paper what I believed best, and I persuaded your father to set his sign to it. I persuaded him, Althea, I did not deceive him. Even your father finally saw the wisdom of what we had to do. If the family fortunes were divided now, none of us would survive. As Keffria is elder with children to provide for, I did as tradition decreed and made her the sole heir.” Ronica Vestrit looked away from Althea's shocked stare to her other daughter. Keffria still sat on the bench, her head on the table, but her weeping was stilled. Kyle moved to set a hand on his wife's shoulder. Althea could not decide if he were comforting her or claiming her. Her mother spoke on. “Keffria knew of her inheritance. She also knows that the document states plainly that she must continue to provide for her sister's maintenance until such time as Althea makes an appropriate marriage, at which time Althea is to be dowered with a goodly sum. So Keffria is bound, not only by blood but by written word, to do well by you.”
Althea's gaze of dismay had not changed. “Althea,” her mother pleaded. “Please try to see it impartially. I have been as fair as I could. If the ship had been left to you, you would have barely enough to operate her. It takes coin to provision a ship and hire a crew and maintain and refit her, and a profitable voyage might still leave you scrambling to make a payment on the note and still have enough money to sail again. And if you did not show a profit, then what? The note on the ship is secured also with the land holdings. There was no way to sensibly divide the inheritance. It must be used together to pull itself out of debt.”
“So I have nothing,” Althea said quietly.
“Althea, your sister would never let you lack —” her mother began, but Althea shocked her by blurting out, “I don't care. I don't care, really, if I am a pauper or not. Yes, I dreamed that Vivacia would be mine. Because she is mine, mother, in a way that I cannot make you understand. In the same way that Seddon Dib's carriage horses pull his carriage, but all know their hearts belong to his stable boy. Vivacia's heart is mine, and I am hers. I look forward to no better marriage than that. Keep whatever coin she brings in, let all say she belongs to Keffria. Just let me sail her. That's all I'm asking, mother, Keffria. Just let me sail her and I'll be no trouble to you, I won't dispute your will in all else.” Her desperate eyes besought first her mother's face and then the tear-stained visage that Keffria lifted to her. “Please,” she breathed, “please.”
“No.” It was Kyle who spoke. “No. I've already given orders that you are not to be allowed on the ship, and I won't change them. You see how she is,” he announced, turning to Ronica and Keffria. “She has not a practical notion in her head. All she wishes is to have her own way, to continue as she always has. She would remain her father's willful daughter, living aboard ship, taking no responsibility beyond playing sailor, and coming home to stroll through the shops, picking out whatever she fancies and have it set to her father's account. Only now it would be her sister's and hence, mine. No, Althea. Your childhood is over with your father's death. It is time you started behaving as befits a daughter of this family.”
“I am not talking to you!” Althea flared. “You have no concept of what I am speaking of. To you Vivacia is no more than a ship, even if she speaks aloud to you. To me she is a member of my family, closer to me than a sister. She needs me to be aboard her, and I need to sail her. She would sail for me as she never will for you, with her own heart as the wind.”
“Girlish fancies,” Kyle scoffed. “Tripe. You walked away from her in anger on the day she was quickened, leaving Wintrow to spend the first night with her. If you'd had all these great feelings for her, you could not have done that. She seems to like him well enough, and he'll be aboard to keep her company or whatever it is. And he'll be learning to work as a true sailor, not mooning about the ship or getting drunk in foreign ports. No, Althea. There's no fitting place aboard the Vivacia for you, and I won't have you sowing discord or setting up a rivalry with Wintrow for the ship's favor.”
“Mother?” Althea pleaded desperately.
Her mother looked grieved. “Had I not seen you last night, drunk and bedraggled, I would oppose Kyle in this. I would believe he was being far too harsh.” She sighed heavily. “But I can't deny what I've seen with my own eyes. Althea, I know you love the Vivacia. If your father had lived… there's no use in wondering about that, I suppose. Instead, it is time, perhaps, for you to let her go. I have seen that Wintrow has the makings of a good man. He will do well by the ship. Let him. It is time, and more than time that you stepped forward and took your proper place in Bingtown.”
“My place is aboard the Vivacia,” Althea said faintly.
“No,” Kyle said, and her mother echoed it with a shake of her head.
“Then I have no place, in this family or in Bingtown.” Althea heard herself speak the words in a sort of wonder. She heard the ring of finality in them, and it shocked her. Like a rock dropped into still water, she thought, for she suddenly had a dizzying sense of the words spreading out like a widening ripple, changing every relationship she had, forever altering her days to come. For a moment, she could not take a breath.
“Althea? Althea!”
Her mother's voice rang loud behind her. She was walking down the hallway, and her home was suddenly an unfamiliar place. It had been years, she realized, since she had spent more than a month at one time here. How long had that tapestry hung there, when had those tiles cracked? She didn't know, she hadn't been here, no, she was not really changing anything, she hadn't lived here for years. This had not been her home for years. She was only recognizing the reality, not creating it. With no more than the clothes on her back, she stepped out the front door and into the wider world.
“If she comes home drunk again, I'm going to lock her in her room for a week. Make it plain to her that we won't tolerate her blackening the family name and her reputation in Bingtown.” Kyle was sitting next to Keffria on the bench now, his arm about her protectively.
“Kyle. Shut up.” Ronica Vestrit heard herself say the words crisply but quietly. It was all falling apart, her family, her home, her dreams of the future. Althea had meant what she had said; Ronica had heard Ephron's voice in her words. Her daughter was not going to turn up on the doorstep tonight, drunk or any other way. She had left. And all that idiot boy Keffria had married could do was play King of the Hill and make up ways to try out his new authority. She sighed heavily. Perhaps that was the only problem she could solve just now. And perhaps solving that would put her on a path to solving the others. “Kyle. I avoided saying this in front of Althea, as she needs no encouragement toward rebelling, but you've been acting like an ass all morning. As you have so tactfully pointed out, there is little I can do to intervene between you and your son. My daughter, Althea is another matter. She is not under your authority, and your efforts to correct her I have found extremely offensive.”