The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny. Robin Hobb
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one, nine fingers or ten. If you must lose a finger, then you must lose a finger. But do not use it as an excuse to stop being yourself.’ She paused, almost savouring the boy’s astonished silence. ‘I know little of your Sa, Wintrow. But I know much of the Vestrits. What you are born to be, you will be, whether it be priest or sailor. So step up and be it. Let them do nothing to you. Be the one who shapes yourself. Be who you are, and eventually all will have to recognize who you are, whether they are willing to admit it or not. And if your will is that you will shape yourself in Sa’s image, then do so. Without whimpering.’
‘Ship.’ He spoke the word softly, but it was almost like a benediction. He placed his good hand flat on her planking. After a moment’s hesitation, he placed his injured hand, palm down, beside it. For the first time since Althea had left the ship, she felt one of her own deliberately reach towards her for strength. She doubted that he knew that was what he did; perhaps as he bowed his head and spoke soft words, he thought he prayed to Sa. But no matter who he addressed his plea for strength to, she was the one who answered it.
‘Wintrow,’ she said quietly, when his soft words were finished. ‘Go to your father now and tell him it must be done. And demand that it be done here, beside me. In my name, if they will not heed your wish.’
She had feared he would hesitate. Instead he rose gracefully. Without a word to anyone else he made his way to the captain’s gallery, where he rapped smartly on the door with his good hand.
‘Enter,’ Kyle replied.
She could not see all that went on within herself, but she was aware of it in a way humans had never given her a word for. So she knew the thundering of Wintrow’s heart, and sensed too the small leap of triumph he felt when his father looked up from his bills of lading to startle at the sight of his son standing so boldly before him.
‘What do you do here?’ Kyle demanded harshly. ‘You’re the ship’s boy, no more than that. Don’t bring your whining to me.’
Wintrow stood quietly until his father was finished. Then in an even voice he spoke. ‘I need this finger cut off. It was crushed, and now it’s infected. I can tell already it won’t get better.’ He took a small, swift breath. ‘I’d like it done while it’s only the finger and not the whole hand.’
When Kyle finally replied, his voice was thick and uncertain. ‘You are sure of this? Did the mate tell you so? He does the doctoring aboard the ship.’
‘It scarcely needs a doctor’s eye. See for yourself.’ With a casualness Vivacia was sure Wintrow did not feel, he began to unwind the crusted bandaging. His father made a small sound. ‘The smell is bad, also,’ Wintrow confirmed, still in that easy voice. ‘The sooner you cut it off for me, the better.’
His father rose, scraping his chair back over the deck. ‘I’ll get the mate for you. Sit down, son.’
‘I’d rather you did it, sir, if it’s all the same to you. And up on deck, by the figurehead.’ She could almost feel Wintrow’s calculated glance about the room. ‘No sense in bleeding in your stateroom,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
‘I can’t… I’ve never…’
‘I can show you where to cut, sir. It’s not that different from boning out a fowl for the pot. It’s just a matter of cutting out the joint. That’s another thing they taught me in the monastery. Sometimes it surprised me, how much cooking had in common with medicine. The herbs, the knowledge of… meat. The knives.’
It was some kind of a challenge, Vivacia realized. She didn’t understand it in full. She wondered if even Wintrow did. She tried to work it through in her head. If Kyle refused to cut the infected finger from his son’s hand, he somehow lost. Lost what? She was not sure, but she suspected it had something to do with who truly controlled Wintrow’s life. Perhaps it was a challenge from the boy for his father to admit fully to himself the life he had forced his son into, to make him confront completely the harshness of it. There was in it also the foolish challenge to risk his body that he had refused in town. They had called him a coward for that, and deemed him fearful of pain. He would prove to them all now that it had not been pain he feared. A shiver of pride in him travelled over her. Truly, he was unlike any Vestrit she had ever carried before.
‘I’ll call the mate,’ Kyle Vestrit replied firmly.
‘The mate won’t do,’ Wintrow asserted softly.
Kyle ignored him. He stepped to the door, opened it and leaned out to bellow, ‘GANTRY!’ for the mate. ‘I’m captain of this ship,’ he told Wintrow in the intervening space of quiet. ‘And on this ship, I say what will or will not do. And I say who does what. The mate does this sort of doctoring, not I.’
‘I had thought my father might prefer to do it himself,’ Wintrow essayed quietly. ‘But I see you have no stomach for it. I’ll wait for the mate on the foredeck, then.’
‘It’s not a matter of stomach,’ Kyle railed at him, and in that moment Vivacia glimpsed what Wintrow had done. He had shifted this, somehow, from a matter between the ship’s boy and the captain to something between a father and a son.
‘Then come and watch, Father. To give me courage.’ Wintrow made his request. No plea, but a simple request. He stepped out of the cabin without waiting to be dismissed, not even pausing for an answer. As he walked away, Gantry approached the door, to be harshly ordered to fetch his surgeon’s kit and come to the foredeck. Wintrow did not pause but paced calmly back to the foredeck.
‘They’re coming,’ he told Vivacia quietly. ‘My father and the mate, to cut off my finger. I pray I don’t scream.’
‘You’ve the will,’ Vivacia promised him. ‘Put your hand flat to my deck for the cut. I’ll be with you.’
The boy made no reply to that. A light breeze filled her sails and blew to her the scent of his sweat and fear. But he spoke no more words. He only sat patiently picking the last of the bandaging from his injured hand. ‘No.’ He spoke the word with finality. ‘There’s no saving this. Better to be parted from it before it poisons my whole body.’ She felt him let go of the finger, felt him remove it from his perception of his body. In his mind, he had already done the deed.
‘They come,’ Vivacia said softly.
‘I know.’ He gave a nervous giggle, chilling to hear. ‘I feel them. Through you.’
It was his first acknowledgement of such a thing. Vivacia wished it could have come at a different time, when they could have spoken about it privately, or simply been alone together to explore the joining. But the two men were on the foredeck and Wintrow reflexively surged to his feet and turned to face them. His injured hand rested upon the palm of his good one like an offering.
Kyle jerked his chin toward his son. ‘Boy thinks you need to take his finger off. What do you think?’
Wintrow’s heart seemed to pause in his chest, then begin again. Wordlessly he presented his hand to the mate. Gantry glanced at it and bared his teeth in his distaste. ‘The boy is right.’ He spoke to his captain, not Wintrow. He gripped Wintrow’s right wrist firmly and turned his hand to see the finger from all sides. He gave a short grunt of disgust. ‘I’ll be having a word with Torg. I should have seen this hand before now. Even if we take the finger off now, the lad will need a day or so of rest, for it looks to me like the poison from the finger has worked into the hand.’
‘Torg knows his business,’ Kyle replied. ‘No man can predict everything.’
Gantry looked levelly at his captain. There was no argument in his voice as he observed, ‘But Torg has a mean streak to him, and it comes out worst when he thinks he has one who should be his better at his mercy. It’s what drove Brashen away; the man was a good hand, save when Torg was prodding him. Torg, he picks a man, and doesn’t know when to leave off riding him.’ Gantry went on carefully, ‘It’s not a matter of favouritism. Don’t fear that. I don’t care what this lad’s name is, sir. He’s a working hand aboard the ship, and a ship runs best when all hands can