The Mad Ship. Робин Хобб

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СКАЧАТЬ muttered assent, for no sooner was the question uttered than a pirate confronted him. ‘Are you talking mutiny?’ the grizzled tar demanded. “Cause if you are, you’ll go over the side before you take another breath.’ The man smiled in a decidedly unfriendly way that bared the gaps in his teeth. To his left, a tall pirate laughed gutturally. He rolled his shoulders as if stretching, a subtle display of strength for Sa’Adar’s map-faces. Both the tattooed men straightened, eyes narrowing.

      Sa’Adar looked shocked. Obviously, he had not expected this. He stood straight and began indignantly, ‘Why should it be a concern of yours?’

      The stocky pirate poked the tall priest in the chest. His jabbing finger stayed there as he pointed out, ‘Kennit’s our captain. What he says, goes. Right?’ When the priest did not answer, the man grinned. Sa’Adar stepped back from the pressure of his forefinger against his chest. As he turned to walk away, the pirate observed, ‘You’d do best not to talk against anything Kennit does. You don’t like something, tell the captain to his face. He’s a hard man, but fair. Don’t wag your tongue behind his back. If you make trouble on this ship, it will only come down on you.’

      Without a backward glance, the pirates went back to their work. Attention shifted to Sa’Adar. He did not mask the angry glint in his eyes, but his voice sounded thin and childish when he said, ‘Be assured I will speak to Kennit about this. Be assured I will!’

      Wintrow lowered his eyes to the deck. Perhaps his father was right. Perhaps there was a way he could regain his family ship from both slaves and pirates. In any conflict, there is opportunity for someone. His heart beat strangely faster as he walked away, and he wondered where such thoughts had bred in him.

      Vivacia was preoccupied. Although her eyes stared ahead over the water to the stern of the Marietta, her real attention was turned inward. The man on the wheel had a steady hand; the crew that sprang to her rigging were true sailors one and all. The crew was cleansing filth from her decks and holds, and repairing woodwork and polishing metal. For the first time in many months, she had no qualms as to the abilities of her captain. She could let her mind be completely occupied with her own concerns, trusting that those who manned her knew their trade.

      A quickened liveship, through her wizardwood bones, could be aware of all that happened aboard her. Much of it was mundane and scarcely worthy of attention. The mending of a line, the chopping of an onion in the galley need not concern her. Those things could not change her course in life. Kennit could. In the captain’s quarters, the enigmatic man slept restlessly. Vivacia could not see him, but she could feel him in a way humans had no words to describe. His fever was rising again. The woman who tended him was anxious. She did something with cool water and a cloth. Vivacia reached for details, but there was no bond there. She did not yet know them well enough.

      Kennit was far more accessible to her than Etta. His fever dreams ran out of him carelessly, spilling into Vivacia like the blood that had been shed on her decks. She absorbed them but could make no sense of them. A little boy was tormented, torn between loyalty to a father who loved him but had no idea how to protect him, and a man who protected him from others but had no love at all in his heart. Over and over again, a serpent rose from the depths of his dreams to shear off his leg. The bite of its jaws was acid and ice. From the depths of his soul, he reached towards her, towards a deep sharing that he recalled only as a formless memory from a lost infancy.

      ‘Hello, hello, what’s this? Or who is this, perhaps I should say?’

      The voice, Kennit’s voice, came to her in a tiny whisper inside her mind. She shook her head, tousling her hair into the wind. The pirate did not speak to her. Even in her strongest communions with Althea and Wintrow, their thoughts had not come so clearly into her mind. ‘That is not Kennit,’ she murmured to herself. Of that, she was certain. Yet, it was certainly his voice. In his stateroom, the pirate captain drew a deep breath and expelled it, muttering denials and refusals as he did so. He groaned suddenly.

      ‘No. Not Kennit,’ the tiny voice confirmed in amusement. ‘Nor are you the Vestrit you think yourself to be. Who are you?’

      It was disconcerting to feel a mind groping after her reaction. Instinctively she recoiled from the contact. She was stronger far than he was. When she pulled away from him, he could not follow her. In doing so, she severed her tentative contact with Kennit as well. Frustration and agitation roiled through her. She clenched her fists at her side and took the next wave badly, smashing herself into it rather than through it. The helmsman cursed to himself and made a tiny correction. Vivacia licked the salt spray from her lips and shook her hair back from her face. Who and what was he? She held her thoughts still inside herself and tried to decide if she were more frightened or intrigued. She sensed an odd kinship with the being who had spoken to her. She had turned his aggressive prying aside easily, but she disliked that someone had even tried to invade her mind.

      She decided she would not tolerate it. Whoever this intruder was, she would unmask him and confront him. Keeping her own guard up, she reached out tentatively towards the cabin where Kennit shifted in his sleep. She found the pirate easily. He still struggled through his fever dreams, hiding within a cupboard while some dream being stalked him, calling his name in a falsely sweet tone. The woman set a cool cloth on his brow, and draped another over the swollen stump of his leg. Vivacia almost felt the sudden easing it brought him. The ship reached out again, more boldly, but found no one else there.

      ‘Where are you?’ she demanded suddenly and angrily. Kennit jerked with a cry as the stalker in his dream echoed her words, and Etta bent over him, murmuring soothing words.

      Vivacia’s question went unanswered.

      Kennit surfaced, gasping his way into consciousness. It took him a moment to recall his surroundings. Then a faint smile of pleasure stretched his fever-parched lips. His liveship. He was on board his liveship, in the captain’s well-appointed chambers. A fine linen sheet draped his sweating body. Polished brass and wood gleamed throughout a chamber both cosy and refined. He could hear the water gurgling past as Vivacia cut through the channel. He could almost feel the awareness of his ship around him, protecting him. She was a second skin, shielding him from the world. He sighed in satisfaction, and then choked on the mucus in his dry throat.

      ‘Etta!’ he croaked to the whore. ‘Water.’

      ‘It’s right here,’ she said soothingly.

      It was true. Surprising as it was, she was standing right beside him, a cup of water ready in her hand. Her long fingers were cool on the back of his neck as she helped him raise himself to drink. Afterwards, she deftly turned his pillow before she lowered his head again. She patted the perspiration from his face and then wiped his hands with a moist cloth. He lay still and silent under her touch, limply grateful for the comfort she gave. He knew a moment of purest peace.

      It did not last. His awareness of his swollen leg rose swiftly to recognition of pain. He tried to ignore it. It became a pulsing heat that rose in intensity with every breath he took. Beside his bed, his whore sat in a chair, sewing something. His eyes moved listlessly over her. She looked older than he recalled her. The lines were deeper by her mouth and in her brow. Her face looked thinner under the brush of her short black hair. It made her dark eyes even more immense.

      ‘You look terrible,’ he rebuked her.

      She set her sewing aside immediately and smiled as if he had complimented her. ‘It’s hard for me to see you like this. When you are ill…I can’t sleep, I can’t eat…’

      Selfish woman. She’d fed his leg to a sea serpent, and now tried to make it out that it was her problem. Was he supposed to feel sorry for her? He pushed the thought aside. ‘Where’s that boy? Wintrow?’

      She СКАЧАТЬ