Ship of Destiny. Робин Хобб

he lay gasping on the deck, the ship righted herself. In an instant, all was as it had been before, save for the querying voices of crewmen raised in sudden alarm. A soft but melodious laugh from the figurehead taunted him. A smaller voice spoke by Kennit’s ear. The tiny wizardwood charm strapped to his wrist spoke abruptly. ‘Don’t walk away, you fool. Never turn your back on a dragon. If you do, she will think you are so stupid that you deserve destruction.’

      Kennit gasped in a painful breath. ‘And I should trust you,’ he grunted. He managed to sit up. ‘You’re a bit of a dragon yourself, if what she says is true.’

      ‘There are dragons and dragons. This one would just as soon not spend eternity tied to a heap of bones. Turn back. Defy her. Challenge her.’

      ‘Shut up,’ he hissed at the useless thing.

      ‘What did you say to me?’ the ship demanded in a poisonously sweet voice.

      With difficulty, he dragged himself up. When his crutch was in place again, he swung across the deck to the bow rail. ‘I said, “Shut up!”’ he repeated for her. He gripped the railing and leaned over it. He let every bit of his fear blossom as anger. ‘Be wood, if you have not the wit to be Vivacia.’

      ‘Vivacia? That spineless slave thing, that quivering, acquiescent, grovelling creation of humans? I would be silent forever rather than be her.’

      Kennit seized his advantage. ‘Then you are not her? Not one whit of you was expressed in her?’

      The figurehead reared her head back. If she had been a serpent, Kennit would have believed her ready to strike. He did not step back. He would not show fear. Besides, he did not think she could quite reach him. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Her eyes spun with anger.

      ‘If she is not you, then she has as much a right to be the life of this ship as you do. And if she is you…well, then. You mock and criticize yourself. Either way, it matters not to me. My offer to this liveship stands. I little care which of you takes it up.’

      There. He had put all his coins on the table. He either would win or be ruined. There was nothing else between those extremes. But then, there never had been.

      She expelled a sudden breath with a sound between a hiss and a sigh. ‘What offer?’ she demanded.

      Kennit smiled with one corner of his mouth. ‘What offer? You mean, you don’t know? Dear, dear. I thought you had always been lurking beneath Vivacia’s skin. It appears that instead you are rather newly awakened.’ He watched her carefully as he gently mocked her. He must not take it to the point where she was angry, but he did not wish to appear too eager to bargain with her either. As her eyes began to narrow, he shifted his tactic. ‘Pirate with me. Be my queen of the seas. If dragon you truly are, then show me that nature. Let us prey where we will, and claim all these islands as our own.’

      Despite her haughty stare, he had seen the brief widening of her eyes that betrayed her interest. Her next words made him smile.

      ‘What’s in it for me?’

      ‘What do you want?’

      She watched him. He stood straight and met her strange gaze with his small smile. She ran her eyes over him as if he were a naked whore in a cheap house parlour. Her look lingered on his missing leg, but he did not let it fluster him. He waited her out.

      ‘I want what I want, and when I want it. When the time comes for me to take it, I’ll tell you what it is.’ She threw her words down as a challenge.

      ‘Oh, my.’ He tugged at his moustache as if amused. In reality, her words trickled down his spine like icewater. ‘Can you truly expect me to agree with such terms?’

      It was her turn to laugh, a throaty chuckle that reminded him of the singsong snarl of a hunting tiger. It did not reassure Kennit at all. Nor did her words. ‘Of course you will accept those terms. For what other course is available to you? As little as you wish to admit it, I can destroy you and all your crew any time it pleases me. You should be content with knowing that it amuses me to pirate with you for a time. Do not seek more than you can grasp.’

      Kennit refused to be daunted. ‘Destroy me and you destroy yourself. Or do you think it would be more amusing to sink to the bottom and rest in the muck there? Pirate with me, and my crew will give you wings of canvas. With us, you can fly across the waves. You can hunt again, dragon. If the old legends be true at all, that should more than amuse you.’

      She chuckled again. ‘So. You accept my terms?’

      Kennit straightened. ‘So. I take a night to think about it.’

      ‘You accept them,’ she said to the night.

      He did not deign to reply. Instead he gripped his crutch and made his careful way across her deck. At the ladder, he lowered himself to the deck, and managed the steps awkwardly. He nodded curtly to two deckhands as he passed them. If they had overheard any of the captain’s conversation with the ship, they were wise enough not to show it.

      As he crossed the main deck, he finally allowed himself to feel his triumph. He had done it. He had called the ship back to life, and she would serve him once more. He thrust away her side of the bargain. What could exist that she could want for herself? She had no need to mate nor eat nor even sleep. What could she demand of him that he could not easily grant her? It was a good agreement.

      ‘Wiser than you know,’ said his own voice in small. ‘A pact for greatness, even.’

      ‘Is it?’ muttered Kennit. Not even to his good luck charm would he risk showing his elation. ‘I wonder. The more so in that you endorse it.’

      ‘Trust me,’ suggested the charm. ‘Have I ever steered you wrong?’

      ‘Trust you, and trust a dragon,’ Kennit retorted softly. He glanced about to be sure no one was watching or listening to him. He brought his wrist up to eye level. In the moonlight, he could make out no more of the charm’s tiny features than the red glinting of its eyes. ‘Does Wintrow have the right of it? Are you a leftover bit of a still-born dragon?’

      An instant of silence, more telling than any words. ‘And if I am?’ the charm asked smoothly. ‘Do I not still bear your own face? Ask yourself this. Do you conceal the dragon, or does the dragon conceal you?’

      Kennit’s heart lurched in his chest. Some trick of the wind made a low moaning in the rigging. It stood Kennit’s hair on end.

      ‘You make no sense,’ he muttered to the charm. He lowered his hand and gripped his crutch firmly. As he moved through his ship, towards his own bunk and rest, he ignored the minute snickering of the thing bound to his wrist.

      Her voice was rusty. She had sung before, to herself, in the maddening confinement of the cave and pool. Shrill and cracked had her voice been, crashing her defiance against the stone walls and iron bars that bound her.

      But this was different. Now she lifted her voice in the night and sang out an ancient song of summoning. ‘Come,’ it said, to any who might hear. ‘Come, for the time of gathering is nigh. Come to share memories, come to journey together, back to the place of beginnings. Come.’

      It was a simple song, meant to be joyous. It was meant to be shared by a score of voices. Sung alone, it sounded weak and pathetic. When she moved from the Plenty up to the Lack and sang it out under the night sky, it sounded even thinner. She drew breath again, and sang it out, louder and more defiantly. She could not say whom she summoned; there was no fresh trace of serpent scent in the water but only the maddening fragrance from the ship. There was something about the ship she followed that suggested kinship to her. She could not imagine how she could be kin to a ship, and yet she could not deny the tantalizing toxins that drifted from the ship’s hull. She took in air to sing again.

      ‘Come, join your kin and lend strength to the weaker ones. Together, together, we journey, back to our beginnings and our endings. Gather, shore-born creatures of the sea, to return to the shores yet again. Bring your dreams of sky and wings; come to share the memories of our lives. Our time