Ship of Destiny

He had not known, before this, what a care Tintaglia had taken for him and Selden on that earlier flight. Now she rose so swiftly that the blood pounded in his face and his ears popped. His stomach was surely left far below them. He could sense the fury seething through her. He had shamed her, before humans, using her own name. He had revealed her name to those others, who had no right to it.

He caught a breath but could not decide on words. To apologize might be as great an error as to tell her she owed this to Malta. He stilled his tongue and clutched her talons, trying to ease their grip around his ribs.

‘Do you want me to loosen them, Reyn Khuprus?’ the dragon mocked him. She opened her claws, but before he could slip through them to his death, she clamped them shut again. Even as he gasped in terror, she arrested their ascent, tipping her body and sending them in a wide spiral above the river. They were too high to see anything. The forested land below them was an undulating carpet of moss, the river no more than a white ribbon. She spoke to his thought.

‘The eyes of a dragon are not like the eyes of a prey beast, small meat creature. I see as much as I need to see from here. She is not in sight. She must have been swept down the river.’

Reyn’s heart turned over in his chest. ‘We’ll find her,’ the dragon comforted him grudgingly. Her great wings began to sweep steadily, driving them down the course of the river.

‘Go lower,’ he begged her. ‘Let me search for her with my own eyes. If she is in the shallows, she may be hidden by the trees. Please.’

She made no reply, but took him down so swiftly that he saw darkness at the edges of his vision. She flew with him down the river. He clutched at her talons with both his hands and endeavoured to watch all of the broad face of the river and both banks. Her flight was too swift. He tried to believe that the dragon’s keener senses would find Malta even if he missed her, but after a time, despair took root in him. They had gone too far. If they had not found her yet, it was because she was no more.

‘There!’ Tintaglia exclaimed suddenly.

He looked, but saw nothing. She banked and turned as adroitly as a swallow, and brought him back over the same stretch of river. ‘There. In that little boat, with two others. Close to the centre of the river. See her now?’

‘I do!’ Joy leaped in him, followed as quickly by horror. They had found her, and as Tintaglia bore him ever closer, he saw that the Satrap and his Companion were with her. But seeing her was not the same as rescuing her. ‘Can you lift her up from the boat?’ he asked the dragon.

‘Perhaps. If I drop you and swamp the boat in the process. There is a chance I could snatch her up without doing more than breaking her ribs. Is that what you wish?’

‘No!’ He thought frantically. ‘Can dragons swim? Could you land near her on the river?’

‘I am not a duck!’ Her disgust was manifest. ‘If dragons choose to come down on a body of water, we do not stop on the surface, but plunge down to the bottom, and then walk out from there. I don’t think you would enjoy the experience.’

He grasped at straws. ‘Can you drop me into the boat?’

‘To do what? Drown with her? Do not be foolish. The wind off my wings would swamp the boat long before I was close enough to drop you right through the bottom of it. Human, I have done my part. I have found her for you. Now you know where she is, it is up to you and the other humans to save her. My part in her life is over.’

It was no comfort. He had seen Malta’s face turn up to them as they swept over her. He almost imagined he had heard her cry out to him, begging for rescue. Yet, the dragon was right. They could do nothing for Malta without putting all of them in greater danger.

‘Take me back to Trehaug, swiftly,’ he begged her. ‘If the Kendry sets out after her now, with every thread of sail he can muster, we may yet overtake the boat before the river devours it.’

‘A wise plan!’ the dragon rumbled sarcastically. ‘You would have been wiser still to have set out on the ship immediately instead of demanding this of me. I told you that she was on the river.’

The dragon’s cold logic was disheartening. Reyn could think of nothing to say. Once more, her wings worked powerfully, taking them high above the multi-canopied forest. The land passed swiftly away beneath them as she carried him back towards Trehaug.

‘Is there no way you can aid me?’ he asked pitifully as she circled above the city. At the sight of her, all the folk on the dock ran for the shore. The winds off her great wings as she beat them to slow their descent buffeted the Kendry. Once more her heavy hindquarters absorbed the impact of their landing as the wharf plunged and bucked under them. She lifted him in her claws, craning her neck and turning her head to focus one huge silver eye on him.

‘Little human, I am a dragon. I am the last Lord of the Three Realms. If any of my kind remain anywhere, I must seek them out and aid them. I cannot be concerned with a brief little spark like you. So. Fare as well as you can, on your own. I leave. I doubt we shall ever meet again.’

She set him on his feet. If she meant to be gentle, she failed. As he staggered away, he felt a sudden shock, more of mind than body. He was suddenly desperately afraid that he had forgotten something of vast importance. Then he realized that what was gone was his mental link with the dragon. Tintaglia had separated herself from him. The loss dizzied him. He seemed to have been taking some vitality from the link, for he was suddenly aware of hunger, thirst and extreme weariness. He managed to take a few steps before he went to his knees. It was as well that he was down, for otherwise he would have fallen as the dragon jolted the dock with her leap into the sky. A final time the beat of her wing wafted her reptilian stink over him. For no reason that he could understand, tears of loss stung his eyes.

The wharf seemed to keep rocking for a long time. He became aware of his mother kneeling beside him. She cradled his head in her lap. ‘Did she hurt you?’ she demanded. ‘Reyn. Reyn, can you speak? Are you hurt?’

He drew a deep breath. ‘Ready the Kendry to sail immediately. We must make all speed down the river. Malta, and the Satrap and his Companion … in a tiny boat.’ He halted, suddenly too exhausted even to summon words.

‘The Satrap!’ a man exclaimed close by. ‘Sa be praised! If he yet lives and we can recover him, then not all is lost. Haste to the Kendry. Make him ready to sail!’

‘Send me a healer!’ Jani Khuprus’s voice rang out above the sudden murmur. ‘I wish Reyn carried up to my apartments.’

‘No. No.’ He clutched feebly at his mother’s arm. ‘I must go with the Kendry. I must see Malta safe before I can rest.’

5 PARAGON AND PIRACY (#ulink_9fc237f6-f917-51aa-81f0-a3b0b10b829c)

‘I DON’T MIN’ A beatin’ when I’m due one. But this’un wasn’t tha. I dint do ennerthin wrong.’

‘Most beatings I’ve had in my life came from just that. Not doing anything wrong, but not doing anything right either,’ Althea observed impartially. She put two fingers under Clef’s chin and turned his face up towards the fading daylight. ‘It’s not much, boy. A split lip and a bruised cheek. It will be gone in less than a week. It’s not like he broke your nose.’

Clef pulled sullenly away from her touch. ‘He woulda if I hadenna seen it comen.’

Althea clapped the ship’s boy on the shoulder. ‘But you did. Because you’re quick and tough. And that’s what makes a good sailor.’

‘S’you think it was right, what he done t’me?’ Clef demanded angrily.

Althea took a breath. She hardened her heart and her voice to reply coolly. ‘I think Lavoy’s the mate, and you’re the ship’s boy and I’m the second. Right and wrong don’t come into it, Clef. Next time, be a bit livelier. And be smart enough to stay out of the mate’s path if he’s in a temper.’

‘He’s allus en a temper,’ Clef observed sullenly. Althea let the remark pass. Every sailor had the right to moan about the mate but she could not allow Clef to think that she would take sides on this. She hadn’t witnessed the incident; but she had heard Amber’s outraged account of it. Amber had been up in the rigging. By the time she had regained the deck, Lavoy had stalked away. Althea was glad there had not been an encounter between the first mate and the ship’s carpenter. Nevertheless, it had intensified the enmity Amber and Lavoy felt for one another. The clout Lavoy had given Clef had sent the lad flying, and all because the line he had been coiling hadn’t lain as flat as the mate thought it should. Privately, Althea thought Lavoy was a brute and a fool. Clef was a good-natured lad whose best efforts were bought with praise, not brutality.

They stood on the stern, looking out over the ship’s wake. In the distance, small islands were green hummocks. The water was calm but there was a light evening breeze and Paragon was making the most of it. Of late, the ship had seemed not only willing but almost eager to speed them on their way to the Pirate Isles. He had dropped all his talk of serpents and even his metaphysical musings on whether a person was what other people thought of him or what he thought of himself. Althea shook her head to herself as she watched some gulls diving on a shallow school of fish. She was glad he had stopped waxing philosophical. Amber had seemed to enjoy those long conversations, but Althea was unsettled by them. Now Amber complained that Paragon seemed withdrawn and abrupt, but to Althea he seemed healthier and more focused on the task at hand. It could not be good for a man or a liveship to ponder endlessly on the nature of himself. She glanced back at Clef. The ship’s boy was cautiously tonguing the split in his lip. His blue eyes were far away. She nudged him gently.

‘Best go get some sleep, boy. Your watch will roll around again soon enough.’

‘I spose,’ he agreed lackadaisically. He gazed at her absently for a moment; then seemed to focus on her. ‘I know I gotter take it from hem. I learnt that when I was a slave. Sometimes yer just got ter take it from someone and kip yer head down.’

Althea smiled mirthlessly. ‘Sometimes it seems to me there’s not much difference between being a sailor and being a slave.’

‘Mebbe,’ the boy agreed truculently. ‘Night, ma’am,’ he added before he turned and made his way forwards.

For a short time longer, she watched their wake widening behind them. They had left Bingtown far behind. She thought of her mother and sister snugly at home, and envied them. Then she reminded herself of how boring she had found shoreside life, and how the endless waiting had chafed on her. They were probably sitting in her father’s study right now, sipping tea and wondering how to bring Malta into Bingtown society on such a reduced budget. They’d have to scrimp and make do through the rest of the summer. To be fair, she decided they probably felt a great deal of anxiety for her, and for the fate of the family ship and Keffria’s husband and son. They would have to endure it. She doubted she would return, for good or ill, before spring.

For herself, she’d rather worry about the bigger problem; how was she to find her family liveship and return Vivacia safely to Bingtown? When Brashen had last seen the liveship, Vivacia had been in the hands of the pirate Kennit, anchored in a pirate stronghold. It was not much to go on. The Pirate Isles were not only uncharted and infested with pirates, they were also an uncertain place to visit, for storms and inland floods often changed the contours of the islands, river mouths and waterways. So she had heard. In her trading trips south with her father, he had always avoided the Pirate Isles, precisely because of the dangers that she now directly dared. What would her father think of that? She decided that he would approve of her trying to recover the family ship, but not on her choice of rescue vessel. He had always said that Paragon was not only mad, but also a bad-luck ship. When she was a girl, he had forbidden her to have anything to do with him.

She turned aside suddenly and walked forwards as if she could walk away from her uneasiness. It was a pleasant evening, she told herself, and the ship had been unusually stable and sailing well for the past two days. Lavoy, the first mate, had recently embarked on a storm of discipline and cleanliness, but that was not unusual. Brashen as captain had told him to break down the restraint between the sailors they had hired and those who had been smuggled aboard to escape from slavery. Any mate knew that the way to unite a crew was to keep them all on the ragged edge for a few days.

The crew as a whole could do with a bit more discipline and a lot more cleanliness. In addition to sharpening up their sailing skills, the crew had to learn to fight. And, she added morosely, not just to defend their ship, but to master the skills of attacking another vessel. Suddenly it all seemed too much. How could they hope to locate the Vivacia, let alone win her back with such a patchwork crew and an unpredictable vessel?

‘Good evening, Althea,’ Paragon greeted her. Without even thinking about it, she had come to the foredeck near the figurehead. Paragon turned his maimed face towards her as if he could see her.

‘Good evening to you, Paragon,’ she returned. She tried to put a pleasant note in her voice, but the ship knew her too well.

‘So. Which of our troubles torments you most this evening?’

Althea surrendered. ‘They all nip at my heels like a pack of yapping feists, ship. In truth, I don’t know which to worry about first.’

The figurehead gave a snort of disdain. ‘Then kick them away as if they were truly a pack of curs and fix your gaze instead on our destiny.’ He swivelled his bearded face away from her, to stare sightlessly towards the horizon. ‘Kennit,’ he said in a low and fateful voice. ‘We go to face down the pirate, and take back from him all that is rightfully ours. Let nothing stand between us and that end.’

Althea was stunned into silence. She had never heard the ship speak so. Initially, he had been reluctant even to venture out on the water again. He had spent so many years as a beached and blinded derelict that he had balked at the idea of sailing, let alone setting out on a rescue mission. Now he spoke as if he not only accepted the idea, but relished the chance for vengeance against the man who had seized Vivacia. He crossed his muscular arms on his broad chest. His hands were knotted into fists. Had he truly made her cause his own?