Ship of Destiny. Робин Хобб

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       3 WINTROW

      THE CARVED FIGUREHEAD stared straight ahead as she sliced the waves. The wind at her back filled her sails and drove her forwards. Her bow cut the water in a near constant white spray. The flying droplets beaded Vivacia’s cheeks and the foaming black curls of her hair.

      She had left Others’ Island and then Ridge Island behind her. Vivacia moved west now, away from the open ocean and towards the treacherous gap between Shield Wall and Last Island. Beyond the ridge of islands was the sheltered Inside Passage to the relative safety of the Pirate Isles.

      Within her rigging, the pirate crew moved lively until six sails bellied full in the wind. Captain Kennit gripped the bow rail with his long-fingered hands, his pale blue eyes squinting. The spray damped his white shirt and elegant broadcloth jacket, but he took no notice of it. Like the figurehead, he stared longingly ahead, as if his will could wring more speed out of the ship.

      ‘Wintrow needs a healer,’ Vivacia insisted abruptly. Woefully, she added, ‘We should have kept the slave surgeon from the Crosspatch. We should have forced him to come with us.’ The liveship’s figurehead crossed her arms on her chest and hugged herself tightly. She did not look back towards Kennit, but stared over the sea. Her jaw clamped tightly shut.

      The pirate captain took in a deep breath and erased all trace of exasperation from his voice. ‘I know your fears,’ he told her. ‘But you must set them aside. We are days from a settlement of any size. By the time we get to one, Wintrow will either be healing, or dead. We are caring for him as best we can, ship. His own strength is his best hope now.’ Belatedly, he tried to comfort her. He spoke in a gentler tone. ‘I know you are worried about the lad. I am just as concerned as you are. Hold to this, Vivacia. He breathes. His heart beats. He takes in water and pisses it out again. These are all marks of a man who will live. I’ve seen enough of injured men to know that is so.’

      ‘So you have told me.’ Her words were clipped. ‘I have listened to you. Now, I beg you, listen to me. His injury is not a normal one. It goes beyond pain or damage to his flesh. Wintrow isn’t there, Kennit. I cannot feel him at all.’ Her voice began to shake. ‘While I cannot feel him, I cannot help him. I cannot lend him comfort or strength. I am helpless. Worthless to him.’

      Kennit fought to contain his impatience. Behind him, Jola bellowed angrily at the men, threatening to strip the flesh from their ribs if they didn’t put their backs into their work. Wasted breath, Kennit thought to himself. Just do it once to one of them and the first mate would never need to threaten them again.

      Kennit crossed his arms on his chest, containing his own temper. Strictness was not a tack he could take with the ship. Still, it was hard to leash his irritation. Worry for the boy already ate at him like a canker. He needed Wintrow. He knew that. When he thought of him, he felt an almost mystical sense of connection. The boy was intertwined with his luck and his destiny to be king. Sometimes it almost seemed as if Wintrow were a younger, more innocent version of himself, unscarred by the harshness of his life. When he thought of Wintrow that way, he felt an odd tenderness for him. He could protect him. He could be to Wintrow the kind of mentor that he himself had never had. Yet to do that, he had to be the boy’s sole protector. The bond between Wintrow and the ship was a double barrier to Kennit. As long as it existed, neither the ship nor the boy was completely his.

      He spoke firmly to Vivacia. ‘You know the boy is aboard. You caught us up and saved us yourself. You saw him taken aboard. Do you think I would lie to you, and say he lived if he did not?’

      ‘No,’ she replied heavily. ‘I know you would not lie to me. Moreover, I believe that if he had died, I would know of it.’ She shook her head savagely and her heavy hair flew with her denial. ‘We have been so closely linked for so long. I cannot convey to you how it feels to know he is aboard, and yet to have no sense of him. It is as if a part of myself had been cloven away…’

      Her voice dwindled. She had forgotten to whom she spoke. Kennit leaned more heavily on his makeshift crutch. He tapped his peg loudly thrice upon her deck. ‘Do you think I cannot imagine what you feel?’ he asked her.

      ‘I know you can,’ she conceded. ‘Ah, Kennit, what I cannot express is how alone I am without him. Every evil dream, every malicious imagining that has ever haunted me ventures from the corners of my mind. They gibber and mock me. Their sly taunting eats away at my sense of who I am.’ She lifted her great wizardwood hands to her temples and pressed her palms there. ‘So often I have told myself that I no longer need Wintrow. I know who I am. And I believe I am far greater than he could ever grasp.’ She gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘He can be so irritating. He mouths platitudes and ponders theology at me until I swear I would be happier without him. However, when he is not with me, and I have to confront who I truly am…’ She shook her head again, wordlessly.

      She began again. ‘When I got the serpent’s slime from the gig onto my hands –’ Her words halted. When she spoke again, it was in an altered voice. ‘I am frightened. There is a terrible dread in me, Kennit.’ She twisted suddenly, to look at him over one bare shoulder. ‘I fear the truth that lurks inside me, Kennit. I fear the whole of my identity. I have a face I wear to show the world, but there is more to me than that. There are other faces concealed in me. I sense a past behind my past. If I do not guard against it, I fear it will leap out and change all I am. Yet, it makes no sense. How could I be someone other than who I am now? How can I fear myself? I don’t understand how I could feel such a thing. Do you?’

      Kennit tightened his arms across his chest and lied. ‘I think you are prone to flights of fancy, my sea lady. No more than that. Perhaps you feel a bit guilty. I know that I chide myself for taking Wintrow to the Others’ Island where he was exposed to such danger. For you, it must be sharper. You have been distant with him of late. I know that I have come between you and Wintrow. Pardon me if I do not regret that. Now that you have been faced with the possibility of losing him, you appreciate the hold he still has on you. You wonder what would become of you if he died. Or left.’