The Mad Ship. Робин Хобб

nor fresh, tasting of the barrel it had been stored in. It was nectar. He drank it down. ‘More,’ he croaked when she took the cup away.

      ‘Right away,’ she promised him.

      His eyes followed her as she returned to the water ewer. He noted in passing the limp boy on the floor. A moment ago, there had been something about him, something urgent he wished Etta to do. It had been important, but now he could not recall it. Instead, he was starting to float, rising off the bed. The experience was both unnerving and pleasant. The cup of water came back. He drank it all. ‘I can fly,’ he observed to the woman. ‘Now that the pain is gone, I can fly. The pain was anchoring me down.’

      She smiled at him fondly. ‘You’re light-headed. And perhaps a bit drunk still.’

      He nodded. He could not keep the foolish smile from his lips. A rush of gratitude suffused him. He had lived with the pain for so long and now it was gone. It was wonderful. His gratitude swelled to engulf his whole world.

      The boy had done it.

      He looked at Wintrow still sprawled on the floor. ‘He’s such a good boy,’ he said affectionately. ‘We care so much about him, the ship and I.’ He was getting very sleepy but he managed to bring his eyes back to the woman’s face. Her hand was touching his cheek. He reached up slowly and managed to capture it. ‘You’ll take care of him for me, won’t you?’ His eyes moved across her face, from her mouth to her eyes. It was hard to make his eyes see her whole face at once. It was too much work to refocus them. ‘I can count on you for that, can’t I?’

      ‘Is that what you want?’ she asked him reluctantly.

      ‘More than anything,’ he declared passionately. ‘Be kind to him.’

      ‘If that is what you want, I will,’ she said, almost unwillingly.

      ‘Good. Good.’ He squeezed her fingers gently. ‘I knew you would if I asked you. Now I can sleep.’ He closed his eyes.

      When Wintrow opened his eyes, there was a cushion under his head and a blanket thrown over him. He was on the deck of the captain’s stateroom. He tried to find his place in time. He had a fragmented dream of a stained-glass window. A frightened boy had been hiding behind it. The window had broken. Somehow, Wintrow had reassembled the window. The boy had been grateful. No. No, in the dream, he had been the boy…no, he had pieced the man back together, while Berandol and Vivacia advised him from behind a curtain of water. There had been a serpent and a dragon, too. A seven-pointed star that hurt horribly. Then he had wakened, and Etta had been annoyed with him and then…

      It was no good. He could not make it come together. The long day was broken into pieces that he could not reconcile. Some parts, he knew, were from his dreams. Others seemed relentlessly real. Had he actually cut off a man’s leg earlier this afternoon? That seemed the most unlikely recollection of all. He closed his eyes and groped towards Vivacia. He was aware of her, as he always was whenever he reached towards her. A wordless communion was constant between them. He could feel that much of her, but she seemed distracted. Not disinterested in him so much as intrigued with something else. Perhaps she was as disoriented as he was. Well. It was not going to do any good to lie here.

      He rolled his head and looked up at Kennit’s bunk. The pirate’s chest rose and fell reassuringly under his bedding. His colour was terrible, but he was alive. At least that much of Wintrow’s dream had been true.

      He drew a deep breath, and got his arms under him. He pushed up carefully from the deck, fighting his way through a wall of vertigo. Never had a working trance so weakened him. He still was not quite sure what he had done, or if he had truly done anything at all. In his work trances at the monastery, he had learned how to engage completely with his art. Immersed in it, the various tasks of creation became a whole act. It seemed he had somehow applied that to healing Kennit, but he did not understand how. He could not remember composing himself for a work trance.

      Once on his feet, he moved carefully towards the bed. Was this how it felt to be drunk, he wondered? Unsteady and dizzy, seeing colours as too bright, edges of objects sharply defined? It could not be. This was not pleasant. No one would willingly seek out these sensations. He halted at the edge of the bed. He dreaded checking the bandages on Kennit’s leg, but he knew he should. He might still be bleeding. If he was, Wintrow had no idea what he would do. Despair, he decided. He reached gingerly for the edge of the blanket.

      ‘Don’t wake him, please.’

      Etta’s voice was so gentle he almost did not recognize it. He turned his whole body towards her. She was seated in a chair in the corner of the room. There were hollows under her eyes that he had not noticed before. Dark blue fabric overlay her lap while she plied a busy needle. She looked up at him, bit off a thread, turned her work, and began a new seam.

      ‘I have to see if he’s still bleeding.’ His words sounded thick and misshapen to his ears.

      ‘He doesn’t seem to be. However, if you disturb the bandages to check the wound, you might start blood flowing. Best to leave well enough alone.’

      ‘Has he awakened at all?’ His mind was starting to clear itself.

      ‘Briefly. Right after you…brought him back. I gave him water, lots of it. Then he dozed off again. He’s slept ever since.’

      Wintrow rubbed at his eyes. ‘How long has that been?’

      ‘Nearly all night,’ she told him placidly. ‘It will be dawn soon.’

      He could not fathom her kindly manner towards him. It was not that she looked at him warmly or smiled. Rather something was gone from her voice, an edge of jealousy or distrust that had always been there before now. Wintrow was glad that she didn’t seem to hate him any more, but he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it. ‘Well,’ he said inanely. ‘I suppose I should go back to sleep for a while then.’

      ‘Sleep where you were,’ she suggested. ‘It’s clean and warm in here. You’re close to Kennit in case he needs you.’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly. He was not sure that he wanted to sleep on the deck here. His bed would be the deck no matter where he went on the ship, but the thought of having a stranger watching him while he slept was unnerving. What happened next was even stranger. She shook out the work on her lap, holding it up between them, her eyes going from him to her needlework and back again. It was a pair of trousers, and she was obviously eyeing him to see if they would fit. He felt like he should say something, but he did not know what. She folded it back into her lap without comment. She threaded her needle again and resumed her work.

      He returned to his blanket on the floor, rather like a dog returning to its designated spot. He sat, but could not bring himself to lie down. Instead, he shawled the blanket over his shoulders. He looked at Etta until she returned his gaze. ‘How did you become a pirate?’ he abruptly asked her. He hadn’t realized he was going to speak until the words popped out.

      She took a breath, then spoke thoughtfully. There was no trace of regret in her voice. ‘I worked as a whore in a house in Divvytown. Kennit took a liking to me. One day I helped him kill some men who attacked him there. Afterwards, he took me out of the whorehouse and brought me here. At first, I was not sure why he had brought me to his ship, or what he expected of me. However, after a time, his thought became clear to me. I could be much more than a whore, if I chose to. He was giving me the chance.’

      He stared at her. Her words had shocked him. Not her admission that she had killed men for Kennit; he had expected that of this pirate. She had called herself a whore. That was a man’s word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it. It roused a strange shivering of interest in him. She suddenly seemed a more powerful creature than she had just moments ago. ‘What were you before you were a whore?’ Unaccustomed to speaking the word, he put too much emphasis on it. He had not meant it to sound that way, he had not meant to ask that question at all. Had Vivacia nudged him to it?

      She