No. No! He would not let go. He would hang on to himself, and fight and something would happen. Something. Would the monastery send anyone to inquire after him when he did not return? “I think I'm hoping to be rescued,” he observed wearily to himself. There. That was a high ambition. To stay alive and remain himself until someone else could save him. He was not sure if… if… if… There had been the beginning of a thought there, but the upsurging blackness of sleep drowned it.
In the dark of the harbor, Vivacia sighed. She crossed her slender arms over her breasts and stared up at the bright lights of the night market. So engrossed was she in her own thoughts that she startled to the soft touch of a hand against her planking. She looked down. “Ronica!” she exclaimed in gentle surprise.
“Yes. Hush. I would speak quietly with you.”
“If you wish,” Vivacia replied softly, intrigued.
“I need to know… that is, Althea sent me a message. She feared all was not well with you.” The woman's voice faltered. “The message actually came some days ago. A servant, thinking it unimportant, had set it in Ephron's study. I only found it today.”
Her hand was still set to the hull. Vivacia could read some of what she felt, though not all. “It is hard for you to go into that room, isn't it? As hard as it is to come down here and see me.”
“Ephron,” Ronica whispered brokenly. “Is he… is he within you? Can he speak through you to me?”
Vivacia shook her head sorrowfully. She was used to seeing this woman through Ephron's eyes or Althea's. They had seen her as determined and authoritative. Tonight, in her dark cloak with her head bowed, she looked so small. Vivacia longed to comfort her, but would not lie. “No. I'm afraid it isn't like that. I'm aware of what he knew, but it is commingled with so much else. Still. When I look at you, I feel as my own the love he felt for you. Does that help?”
“No,” Ronica answered truthfully. “There is some comfort in it, but it can never be like Ephron's strong arms around me, or his advice guiding me. Oh, ship, what am I to do? What am I to do?”
“I don't know,” Vivacia answered. Ronica's distress was awakening an answering anxiety in her. She put it in words. “It frightens me that you ask me that question. Surely you know what to do. Ephron certainly always believed you did.” Reflectively, Vivacia added, “He thought of himself as a simple sailor, you know. A man who had the knack of running a ship well. You were the wisdom of the family, the one with the greater vision. He counted on that.”
“He did?”
“Of course he did. How else could he have sailed off and left you to manage everything?”
Ronica was silent. Then she heaved a great sigh.
Quietly Vivacia added, “I think he would tell you to follow your own counsels.”
Ronica shook her head wearily. “I fear you are right. Vivacia, do you know where Althea is?”
“Right now? No. Don't you?”
Ronica answered reluctantly. “I have not seen her since the morning after Ephron died.”
“I have, several times. The last time she came to see me, Torg came down onto the docks and tried to lay hands on her. She pushed him off the dock, and walked away while everyone else was laughing.”
“But she was all right?”
Vivacia shook her head. “Only as ‘all right’ as you or I am. Which is to say she is troubled and hurt and confused. But she told me to be patient, that all would eventually be put right. She told me not to take matters into my own hands.”
Ronica nodded gravely. “Those are the very things I came down here to say tonight, also. Do you think you can keep such counsels?”
“I?” The ship almost laughed. “Ronica, I am three times a Vestrit. I fear I shall have only as much patience as my forebears did.”
“An honest answer,” Ronica conceded. “I will only ask that you try. No. I will ask one more thing. If Althea returns here, before you sail, will you give her a message from me? For I have no other way to contact her, save through you.”
“Of course. And I will see that no one save her hears the message.”
“Good, that is good. All I ask is that she come to see me. We are not at odds as much as she believes we are. But I will not go into details now. Just ask her to come to me, quietly.”
“I shall tell her. But I do not know if she will.”
“Neither do I, ship. Neither do I.”
Chapter Fourteen
Family Matters
Kennit did not take the captured ship to Divvytown. he did not trust the wallowing thing not to become mired in negotiating the narrow channels and numerous sandbars a ship must pass to get there. Instead, after a tense conference, he and Sorcor determined that Askew would be a better port for her. Kennit had thought it fitting; had not Askew been founded when a storm-driven slaver took shelter up a channel and the cargo managed a successful uprising against the crew, he had asked Sorcor in amusement. Yes, that was true, but Sorcor had still been opposed, for there was little more to Askew than sand and rocks and clams. What future could these folk have there? Better than what the slaver had offered them, Kennit pointed out. Sorcor became surly but Kennit insisted. The journey there had taken six slow days, far less than it would have taken them to reach Divvytown, and from Kennit's point of view, the time had been well spent. Sorcor had seen a number of his rescued slaves die; disease and starvation did not vanish simply because a man could claim to be free. To Rafo's credit and that of his charges, they had turned to and given the vessel a good scrubbing. She no longer gave off the full stench of a slaver, but Kennit still insisted that the Marietta sail upwind of her. He would risk no wind bringing disease to his ship. He had permitted none of the freed slaves to board the Marietta, saying that crowding his own vessel to relieve the tight quarters on the Fortune would do no one any good. Instead the slaves had had to be content with spreading out on the decks and taking the living area of the devoured crew. Some of the healthier ones were pressed into service as deckhands to fill out the ranks of the skeleton crew that manned her. The unfamiliar work was hard for them, especially in their weakened state.
Despite this, and the continued deaths, the morale on the captured ship seemed high. The former slaves were pathetically grateful for fresh air, for shares of the salt pork that had once gone to the slaver's crew, and for whatever fish they could catch to supplement their diets. Sorcor had even been able to drive off the serpents with several showers of ballast shot from the ballista on the decks of the Marietta. Those who died now were still heaved from the decks of the ship, but the bodies splashed into the water rather than being snatched up by an avid serpent. This seemed to afford them great satisfaction, though for the life of him, Kennit could not see what difference it could make to the dead men.
They brought the ships into Askew on an incoming tide, when the push of the waters helped them up the sluggish tide channel that led into the brackish bay. The remains of a foundered ship thrust up skeletally at the shallow end of the anchorage. The village itself had sprung up as a row of huts and houses along the beach. These shelters were made from old ship's timbers, driftwood and stone. Thin smoke rose from a few chimneys. Two makeshift fishing boats were tied to a battered wharf and a half-dozen skiffs and coracles were pulled up on the sandy shore. It was not a prosperous town.
The Marietta led the way, and Kennit had to admit to a grudging pride that the slaves-cum-sailors that were the main crew of the Fortune now did not shame him. They worked lively if not as skillfully as seasoned salts, bringing the big ship in and setting her anchors well. The Fortune was now flying the Raven flag that was known throughout all the pirate isles as Kennit's emblem. By the time both ships had their boats away, a curious crowd had gathered on the rickety wharves to gawk at the newcomers. The rag-tag community of former slaves and refugees boasted no ship of their own larger than a fishing boat. To see two merchant ships anchor in their harbor must make them wonder what tidings or goods they brought.