Ship of Destiny (58 page)

Trell’s eyes had narrowed as Kennit ordered him below, but he had gone. He had little choice, with three blades hemming him in. The hatch cover had closed off his angry shouts.

Kennit ordered his men back to his ship, detaining only three with a quiet order that they return with casks of lamp oil. They looked, but they did not question him. While they were gone, he walked a quiet turn about the decks. His own ship buzzed with victory, but this one muttered with muffled cries from below. Some of the men they had put down the hatches were badly injured. Well, they would not suffer for long.

On the deck were the bloody silhouettes of fallen bodies. The blood marked the scrubbed decks. A shame. This Captain Trell had run a clean ship. Paragon was as clean as Kennit had ever seen him. Igrot had run a tight ship, but had not been much for spit and polish. His father’s ship had been as cluttered as his home. Kennit walked to the door of the captain’s chamber and paused there. A strange fluttering seized his heart. For a mercy, the charm on his wrist was silent. He walked another turn about the decks. The men below the hatches were quieting. That was good. His three deckhands returned and presented themselves, each bearing a cask of oil.

“Splash it about, lads, rigging and house and deck. Then get back to our own decks.” He looked at them gravely, making sure that each knew the seriousness of his words. “I’ll be the last man to leave this ship. Do your tasks and get off him. Cast him loose save for a stern line, and then I want everyone on our ship to go below as well. Understand me? Everyone. I’ve a final errand of my own.”

Ducking and bobbing their obedience, they left him. Kennit stood well clear of them and let them perform their task. When the last empty cask was rolling on the deck, he motioned to them to leave. Finally, as he had not done in more than thirty years, he made his way forward through the buffeting wind and stood on the deck looking down on Paragon’s bowed head.

If the ship had been looking up at him, if he had had to meet eyes that were angry, defiant, sad or overjoyed to see him, he could not have spoken. But, foolish thought, that! Paragon could not look up at him with any sort of eyes. Igrot had seen to that years ago. Kennit had wielded the hatchet, standing on Paragon’s great hands to reach his ship’s face. Together, they had endured that, because Igrot had promised them both that if they did not, Kennit would die. Igrot had stood on this deck, where Kennit stood now, and looked down on Kennit and laughed while he did the dirty task. Paragon had already killed two good hands that Igrot had sent to blind him. But he would not hurt the boy, oh, no. He would stand the pain and even hold the boy close enough to reach his face so he could do the task, as long as Igrot promised not to kill Kennit. And as Kennit had looked deep into his dark eyes one final time and then ruined them with the rising and falling of his hatchet, he had known that no one should love anyone or anything that deeply. No one should have a heart that true. He had known then that never, never, never would he love anyone or anything as Paragon loved him. He had promised it to himself, and then he had lifted the shining hatchet and chopped into the dark eyes so full of love for him. Beneath them, he found nothing, not blood, not flesh, only silvery gray wood that splintered easily away under his small hatchet. Wizardwood, he had been told, was among the hardest woods a ship could be built from, but he chopped it away like cottonwood, falling in chips and chunks into the deep cold sea beneath his bare feet. Little cold feet, so callused against his warm palm.

The double strength of the mutual memory seared him. Kennit could recall vision falling from him in pieces, not at all as a man would have lost his sight. Rather it was like someone cut away pieces of a picture before his eyes, leaving him in blackness. In the aftermath of it, he trembled and vertigo took him for a moment. When he came back to himself, he was clutching the forerail. A mistake. He had not intended to touch any part of the ship with his bare hands, yet here he was. Linked again. Bound by blood and memories.

“Paragon.” He said the name quietly.

The ship flinched, but did not lift his head. A long silence wrapped them. Then: “Kennit. Kennit, my boy.” His deep gentle voice was choked. Incredulous recognition overwhelmed all other emotions. “I was so angry with you,” the ship apologized in wonder. “Yet, you stand with me, and I cannot even imagine ever feeling anger for you.”

Kennit cleared his throat. It was a little time before he could speak. “I never thought to stand here again. I never expected to speak to you once more.” Love was rising from the ship like a flood tide. He fought to hold his identity separate from Paragon’s. “This was not what we agreed upon, ship. This was not what we agreed upon at all.”

“I know.” Paragon spoke into his hands, cupped over his face. Shame swept through him and touched Kennit as well. “I know. I tried. I did try.”

“What happened?” Despite himself, Kennit spoke gently. He did not want to know. Paragon’s rich deep voice reminded him of thick treacle over morning cakes, of warm summer days running on his decks barefoot while his mother begged his father to make the boy be more cautious. Memories, all those memories, had soaked into the wood of this ship and were bleeding up into him.

“I went down to the bottom and stayed there. I did. Or I tried. No matter how much water I let in, I could not sink all the way. But I stayed under and I stayed hidden. Fish and crabs came. They picked clean the bones. I felt purified. All was silent, cold and wet.

“But then serpents came. They talked to me. I knew I could not understand them, but they insisted I did. They nagged me and pushed me, asking me questions, demanding things of me. They wanted memories, they asked me for memories, but I kept my word to you. I kept all our memories secret. It made them angry. They cursed me, and they taunted me and mocked me and . . . I had to, don’t you see? I knew I had to be dead and forgotten by all but they would not let me be dead and forgotten. They kept making me remember. The only way I could do as I had promised you was to rise again. And . . . then, somehow I was in Bingtown again, and they righted me and I feared they would sail me but they dragged me up on shore and chained me there. So I could not be dead. But I did my best to forget. And to be forgotten.”

The ship drew a ragged breath.

“And yet you are here,” Kennit pointed out to him. “And not only here, but bringing folk who would kill me to my own waters. Why, ship? Why did you betray me like that?” True agony was in his voice as he asked, “Why do you make us both face this all over again?”

Paragon reached up to seize handfuls of his own beard and drag at it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cried. The penitent boy’s voice came oddly from those bearded lips. “I did not mean to. They did not come to kill you. They said they only wanted Althea’s ship back. They were going to offer to buy Vivacia back from you. I knew they did not have enough coin for that, but at one point I hoped that when you saw me, you would want me back. That perhaps you would take me in trade.”

The voice was rising to an edge of anger now. Paragon’s shock at feeling his presence was wearing off. “I thought perhaps when you saw me, clean and well-rigged and riding level in the water, you would want me back. I thought a Ludluck might want the rightful ship of his own family instead of one he had stolen! Then I heard from the lips of a pirate that you had said you had always wanted a ship like her, a liveship of your own. But you’d had one. Me! And you’d cast me aside, told me to be dead and forgotten. And I’d agreed to it, I’d promised to die and take the memories with me. Remember that night? The night you said you could not live with such memories, that you had to kill yourself because you could not go on? And it was I who thought of it, I who said I would take all the memories, the pain memories, the bad memories, even the good memories of times that could never come again, and I would take them and die so that you could live and be free of them. And I thought of how we could end them all. I took them all with me, everyone who knew what had been done to you. Remember? I purified your life for you, so you could go on living. And you said you would never love another ship as you had loved me, that you would never want to love another ship as we had loved. Don’t you remember that?”

The memory burned up from Kennit’s clutching hands to his shaking soul and settled there. He had forgotten how painful such memories could be. “You promised,” Paragon went on in a shaking voice. “You promised and you broke that promise, just as I broke mine. So we are even.”

Even. A boy’s concept. But the soul of Paragon had always been a boy’s soul, abandoned and forsaken. Perhaps only another boy could have won his love and friendship as Kennit had. Perhaps only a boy who had been as abused and neglected as Paragon could have stood by Kennit’s side through the long days of Igrot’s reign over him. But Paragon had remained a boy, ever a boy with a boy’s logic, while Kennit had grown to be a man. A man could face hard truths, and know that life was seldom even or fair. And another hard truth: the shortest distance between a man and his goal was often a lie.

“You think I love her?” Kennit was incredulous. “How could I? Paragon, she is not blood of my blood. What could we share? Memories? I cannot. I have already entrusted them all to you. You hold my heart, ship, as you always have. I love you, Paragon. Only you. Ship, I
am
you, and you are me. Everything I am, or was, is locked within you. Safe and secret still . . . unless you have divulged it to others?” Kennit asked the question cautiously.

“Never,” the ship declared devoutly.

“Well. That is good. For now. But we both know there is only one way they can be truly safe forever. Only one way to keep our secrets hidden.”

A silence followed his words. Kennit let it be. A quietness was growing in him, a certainty. He should never have doubted Paragon. His ship was true to him, as it always had been. He seized that thought and let it grow in his heart. He basked in the warmth of it, and shared that security with Paragon. For this time only, he let himself love the ship as he once had. He loved him with the complete faith that Paragon would decide to do what was best for Kennit.

“What about my crew?” Paragon asked wearily.

“Take them with you.” Kennit made the suggestion gently. “They served you as best they could. Keep them safe forever inside you. Never be parted from them.”

Paragon took a breath. “They will not like dying. None of them want to die.”

“Well. But you and I know that dying only takes a little time for humans. They will get over it.”

His hesitation this time was even longer. “I don’t know if I really can die, you know.” A space of a breath. “Last time, I couldn’t even stay down there. Wood wants to float, you know.” A longer pause. “And Brashen is locked down below, too. I made a little promise to him, Kennit. I promised him I wouldn’t kill him.”

Kennit knit his brows thoughtfully and let Paragon feel his studied consideration of the matter. At last he offered kindly, “Do you want me to help you? Then you wouldn’t be breaking your promise. None of it would be your fault.”

This time the ship swiveled his great head toward Kennit. The chopped place that had been his eyes seemed to regard him. The pirate studied the features he knew as well as his own. The shaggy head, the lofty brow, the strong nose above the fine mouth and bearded chin. Paragon, his Paragon, best of all possible ships. His heart swelled painfully with love of his ship. Tears for both of them stung his eyes. “Could you?” Paragon pleaded quietly.

“Of course I could. Of course,” Kennit comforted him.

AFTER KENNIT LEFT HIS DECKS, SILENCE FLOWED IN AND FILLED
him. It was a silence not of the ears but of the heart. There were other noises in the world: the questioning cries of the crew inside his battened-down holds, the trumpeting of the serpents, the rising winds, the small sounds of a stern line being released, the crackling of flames conversing with one another. He swung free suddenly in a gust of wind. No one was on the wheel to check his motion as the building storm pushed against his venom-tattered sails. There was a sudden whoosh and a blast of heat as the fire suddenly ran up his rigging. More surefooted than ever sailor had been, the flames fanned out, devouring canvas and licking at wood.

He would have to be patient for a time. It would take time to spread. Wizardwood did not kindle easily, but once it took flame, the fire was near unquenchable. The other wood of his house and his rigging would burn first, but eventually the wizardwood would ignite. Patience. He had learned patience well. He could wait. The only distraction from his patience was his crew. Those inside his hold were hammering on the hatch covers now. No doubt they felt him drifting; perhaps they smelled the smoke.

Resolutely he turned his mind to more important things. His boy was a man now. Kennit had grown well. He was tall now, from the direction of his voice. And strong. The grip of his hands on the railing had been a man’s firm grip. Paragon shook his head in loving pride. He had succeeded. The sacrifice had not been in vain. Kennit had grown to be the man they had always dreamed he would be. Amazing, how the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand, even his scent on the breeze had brought it all back. All the things he had lost sight of Kennit had returned to him. And the sound of his voice saying “Paragon” had erased all the imagined slights and hoarded transgressions that had allowed the ship to be angry with him. Angry with him? The very thought now seemed foolish. Angry with the only one who had ever loved him wholeheartedly. That made no sense. Yes, Paragon had sacrificed for him, but what else could he have done? Someone had to set Kennit free. And he had. He had succeeded, and his boy would reign as King of the Pirate Isles. And someday, just as Kennit and he had planned, he would have a son and name him Paragon. Someday there would be a Paragon Ludluck who was loved and cherished. Perhaps there already was! Paragon wished desperately now that he had thought to ask Kennit if he had a son yet. It would have been comforting to know that the child they had imagined was real.