The Mad Ship. Робин Хобб

years, but they’d never sell him! Not to Amber, not to New Traders. They wouldn’t. He had known that all along.

      Amber continued doggedly. ‘I spoke directly to Amis Ludluck. It wasn’t easy to get to see her. When we did speak, she pretended to be shocked that I would make the offer. She insisted you were not for sale, at any price. She said the same things that you did, that no Bingtown Trader family would sell their liveship. That it simply wasn’t done.’

      Paragon could not keep down the slow smile that gradually transfigured his face. They still cared. How could he have ever doubted that? In a way, he was almost grateful to Amber for making the ridiculous offer to buy him. Maybe now that Amis Ludluck had admitted to a stranger that he was still a part of her family, she’d be moved to visit him. Once Amis had visited him, it might lead to other things. Perhaps he would yet again sail the seas with a friendly hand on the wheel. His imagination went afar.

      Amber’s voice dragged him back ruthlessly. ‘She pretended to be distressed that there were even rumours of selling you. She said it insulted her family honour. Then she said –’ Amber’s voice suddenly went low, with fear or anger. ‘She said that she had hired some men to tow you away from Bingtown. That it might be better all around if you were out of sight and out of mind.’ Amber paused significantly.

      Paragon felt something inside his wizardwood chest squeeze tight and hard.

      ‘So I asked her who she had hired.’

      He lifted his hands quickly and stuffed his fingers in his ears. He wouldn’t listen. She was going to play on his fears. So his family was going to move him. That didn’t mean anything. It would be nice to be somewhere else. Maybe this time, when they hauled him out, they would block him up level. He was tired of always being at a list.

      ‘She said it was none of my business.’ Amber raised her voice. ‘Then I asked her if they were Bingtown Traders. She just glared at me. So then I asked her where Mingsley was going to take you to have you dismantled.’

      Paragon began desperately to hum. Loudly. Amber went on talking. He couldn’t hear her. He would not hear her. He plugged his ears more tightly and sang aloud, ‘A penny for a sweet-bun, a penny for a plum, a penny for the races, to see the ponies run…’

      ‘She threw me out!’ Amber roared. ‘When I stood outside and shouted that I’d take it to the Bingtown Traders’ Council she set her dogs on me. They damn near caught me, too!’

      ‘Swing me low, swing me high, swing me up into the sky,’ Paragon sang the childish rhyme desperately. She was wrong. She had to be wrong. His family was going to move him somewhere safe. That was all. It didn’t really matter who they hired to do it. Once they had him in the water, he’d go willingly. He would show them how easy it could be to sail him. Yes. It would be a chance to prove himself to them. He could show them that he was sorry for all the things they had made him do.

      She wasn’t speaking any more. He slowed his singing, then let it die away to a hum. Silence, save for his own voice. Cautiously he unstopped his ears. Nothing, save the brush of the waves, the wind nudging sand across the beach and the crackling of Amber’s fire. A question occurred to him and he spoke it aloud before he remembered he was not speaking to her.

      ‘When I get to my new place, will you still come to see me?’

      ‘Paragon. You can’t pretend this away. If they take you away from here, they’ll chop you up for wizardwood.’

      The figurehead tried a different tack. ‘I don’t care. It would be nice to be dead.’

      Amber’s voice was low, defeated. ‘I’m not sure you’d be dead. I’m afraid they’ll separate you from the ship. If that doesn’t kill you, they’ll probably transport you to Jamaillia, and sell you off as an oddity. Or give you as a gift to the Satrap in exchange for grants and favours. I don’t know how you’d be treated there.’

      ‘Will it hurt?’ Paragon asked.

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t know enough about what you are. Did it…When they chopped your face, did that hurt?’

      He turned his shattered visage away from her. He lifted his hands and walked his fingers over the splintered wood where his eyes had once been. ‘Yes.’ His brow furrowed. Then in the next breath he added, ‘I don’t remember. There is a lot I can’t remember, you know. My logbooks are gone.’

      ‘Sometimes not remembering is the easiest thing to do.’

      ‘You think I’m lying, don’t you? You think I can remember, but I just won’t admit it.’ He picked at it, hoping for a quarrel.

      ‘Paragon. Yesterday we cannot change. We are talking about tomorrow.’

      ‘They’re coming tomorrow?’

      ‘I don’t know! I was speaking figuratively.’ She came closer suddenly and reached up to put her hands flat against him. She wore gloves against the night’s chill, but it was still a touch. He could feel the shapes of her hands as two patches of warmth against his planking. ‘I can’t stand the thought of them taking you to cut you up. Even if it doesn’t hurt, even if it doesn’t kill you. I can’t stand the thought of it.’

      ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ he pointed out. He suddenly felt mature for voicing that thought. ‘There’s nothing either of us can do.’

      ‘That is fatalistic twaddle,’ Amber declared angrily. ‘There’s a lot we can do. If nothing else, I swear I will stand here and fight them.’

      ‘You wouldn’t win,’ Paragon insisted. ‘It would be stupid to fight, knowing you couldn’t win.’

      ‘That’s as may be,’ Amber replied. ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want to wait for it to be that desperate. I want to act before they do. Paragon. We need help. We need someone who will speak to the Bingtown Traders’ Council for us.’

      ‘Can’t you?’

      ‘You know I can’t. Only an Old Trader can attend those meetings, let alone speak. We need someone who can go to them and convince them they should forbid the Ludlucks to do this.’

      ‘Who?’

      Amber’s voice was small. ‘I had hoped you knew someone who would speak for you.’

      Paragon was silent for a time. Then he laughed harshly. ‘No one will speak for me. This is a stupid effort, Amber. Think about it. Not even my own family cares for me. I know what they say about me. I am a killer. Moreover, it’s true, isn’t it? All hands lost. I rolled and drowned them all, and not just once. The Ludlucks are right, Amber. They should sell me to be chopped up.’ Despair washed over him, colder and deeper than any storm wave. ‘I’d like to be dead,’ he declared. ‘I’d just like to stop.’

      ‘You don’t mean that,’ Amber said softly. He could hear in her voice that she knew he did.

      ‘Would you do me a favour?’ he asked suddenly.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Kill me before they can.’

      He heard the soft intake of her breath. ‘I…No. I couldn’t –’

      ‘If you knew they were coming to chop me up, you could. I will tell you the only sure way. You have to set fire to me. Not just in one place, but many, to make sure they cannot put it out and save me. If you gathered dry wood, a little each day, and put it in piles in my hold…’

      ‘Don’t even speak of such things,’ Amber said faintly. Distractedly, she added, ‘I should put the mussels on to cook now.’ He heard her scratching at her fire, then the sizzle of wet seaweed steaming on hot coals. She was cooking the mussels alive. He considered pointing that out to her. He decided it would only upset her, not sway her to his cause. He waited until she had come back to him. She sat on the sand, leaning against his canted hull. Her hair was very fine. When it brushed against his planking, it snagged and clung to the wood.

      ‘You