Ship of Magic - Робин Хобб

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sanded flesh had begun to flush pink. The silken fine grain of the wizardwood still remained, and always would, nor would the wood ever be as soft and yielding as human flesh. Yet it was unmistakable that life now pulsed through the figurehead, and to Althea’s heightened awareness, the entire ship rode differently on the quiet waves of the harbour. She felt as she imagined a mother must feel the first time she beholds the life that has grown within her.

      ‘Give me the peg,’ she heard herself say quietly. ‘I’ll quicken the ship.’

      ‘Why?’ Kyle asked suspiciously, but Ronica intervened.

      ‘Give her the peg, Kyle,’ she commanded him quietly. ‘She’ll do it because she loves the Vivacia.’

      Later Althea would recall her mother’s words, and they would rouse hate in her to a white-hot heat. Her mother had known all she felt, and still she had taken the ship from her. But at that moment, she only knew that it pained her to see the Vivacia caught between wood and life, suspended so uncomfortably. She could see the distrust on Kyle’s face as he grudgingly offered her the peg. What did he think she would do, throw it overboard? She took it from him and bellied out on the bowsprit to reach the figurehead. She was just a trifle short of being able to reach it safely. She hitched herself forward another notch, teetering dangerously in her awkward skirts, and still could not quite reach.

      ‘Brashen,’ she said, neither asking nor commanding. She did not even glance back at him, but only stayed as she was until she felt his hands clasp her waist just above her hips. He eased her down to where she could rest one hand on Vivacia’s hair. The paint flaked away from the coiling lock at her touch. The feel of the hair against her hand was strange. It gave way to her touch, but the carved locks were all of a piece rather than individual hairs. She knew a moment of unease. Then her awareness of Vivacia flooded through her, heightened as never before. It was like warmth, yet it was not a sensation of the skin. Nor was it the heat of whisky in one’s gut. This flowed with her blood and breath throughout her body.

      ‘Althea?’ Brashen’s voice sounded strained. She came back to herself, wondered how long she had been dangling almost upside-down. In a sleepy way she realized she had entrusted her entire weight to Brashen’s grip as she hung there. The peg was in her hand still. She sighed, and became aware of blood pounding in her face. With one hand she pushed the catch to one side; with the other she slid the peg in smoothly. When she released the catch, it seemed to vanish as if it had never been. The peg was now a permanent part of the figurehead.

      ‘What is taking so long?’ Kyle’s voice demanded.

      ‘It’s done,’ Althea breathed. She doubted if anyone but Brashen heard her. But as his grip on her tightened and he began to pull her up, Vivacia suddenly turned to her. She reached up, her strong hands catching hold of Althea’s own. Her green eyes met Althea’s.

      ‘I had the strangest dream,’ she said engagingly. Then she smiled at Althea, a grin that was at once impish and merry. ‘Thank you so for waking me.’

      ‘You’re welcome,’ Althea breathed. ‘Oh, you are more beautiful than I imagined you would be.’

      ‘Thank you,’ the ship replied with the serious artlessness of a child. She let go of Althea’s hands to brush flecks of paint from her hair and skin as if they were fallen leaves. Brashen drew Althea abruptly back up onto the deck and set her on her feet with a thump. He was very red in the face, and Althea was suddenly aware of Kyle speaking in a low, vicious voice.

      ‘… and you are off this deck for ever, Trell. Right now.’

      ‘That’s right. I am.’ Somehow the timbre of Brashen’s voice took Kyle’s dismissal of him and made it his own disdainful parting. ‘Fare well, Althea.’ Courtesy was back in his voice when he spoke to her. As if he were departing from some social occasion, he next turned and took formal leave of her mother. His calm seemed to rattle the woman, for though her lips moved, she spoke no farewell. But Brashen turned and walked away lightly across the deck, as if absolutely nothing had happened. Before Althea could recover from that, Kyle turned on her.

      ‘Are you out of your mind? What is wrong with you, letting him touch you like that?’

      She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. ‘Like what?’ she asked dazedly. She leaned on the railing to look down at Vivacia. The figurehead twisted about to smile up at her. It was a bemused smile, the smile of a person not quite awake on a lovely summer morning. Althea smiled sadly back at her.

      ‘You know very well what I speak of! His hands were all over you. Bad enough that you look like a dusty slattern, but then to let a deckhand manhandle you while you dangle all but upside-down…’

      ‘I had to put the peg in. It was the only way I could reach.’ She looked away from Kyle’s face, mottled red with his anger, to her mother and sister. ‘The ship is quickened,’ she announced softly but formally. ‘The liveship Vivacia is now aware.’

      And my father is dead. She did not speak the words aloud, but the reality of them cut her again, deeper and sharper. It seemed to her that each time she thought she had grasped the fact of his death, a few moments later it struck her again even harder.

      ‘What are people going to think of her?’ Kyle was demanding of Keffria in an undertone. The two younger children stared at her openly, while the older boy, Wintrow, looked aside from them all as if even being near them made him acutely uncomfortable. Althea felt she could not grasp all that was happening around her. Too much had occurred, too fast. Kyle attempting to put her off the ship, her father’s death, the quickening of the ship, his dismissal of Brashen, and now his anger at her for simply doing a thing that had needed doing. It all seemed too much for her to deal with, but at the same time she felt a terrible void. She groped inside herself, trying to discover what she had forgotten or neglected.

      ‘Althea?’

      It was Vivacia, calling up to her anxiously. She leaned over the railing to look down at her, almost sighing.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘I know your name. Althea.’

      ‘Yes. Thank you, Vivacia.’ And in that moment, she knew what the void was. It was all she had expected to feel, the joy and wonder at the ship’s quickening. The moment, so long awaited, had come and gone. Vivacia was awakened. And save for the first flush of triumph, she felt nothing of what she had expected to feel. The price had been too high.

      The instant her mind held the thought, she wished she could unthink it. It was the ultimate in betrayal, to stand on this deck, not so far from her father’s body, and think that the cost had been too high, that the liveship was not worth the death of her father, let alone the death of her grandfather and great-grandmother. And it was not a fair thought. She knew that. Ship or no, they all would have died. Vivacia was not the cause of their deaths, but rather the sum total of their legacies. In her, they lived on. Something inside her eased a bit. She leaned over the side, trying to think of something coherent and welcoming to say to this new being. ‘My father would have been very proud of you,’ she managed at last.

      The simple words woke her grief again. She wanted to put her head down on her arms and sob, but would not allow herself to, lest she alarm the ship.

      ‘He would have been proud of you, also. He knew this would be difficult for you.’

      The ship’s voice had changed. In moments, it had gone from high and girlish to the rich, throaty voice of a grown woman. When Althea looked down into her face, she saw more understanding than she could bear. This time she did not try to stop the tears that flowed down her cheeks. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ she said brokenly to the ship. Then she swung her gaze back to her family, who like her lined the railing and looked down at Vivacia’s face.

      ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said more loudly, although her thickened voice was not more clear. ‘Why did he do this? Why, after all the years, did he give Vivacia to Keffria and leave me with nothing?’

      She spoke her words to her mother’s stern anguish, but it was Kyle who dared to speak.

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