12 OF DERELICTS AND SLAVESHIPS

      BELOW THE WATER. Not just for a breath, not engulfed in the moment of a wave, but hanging upside-down below the water, hair flowing with the movement of it, lungs pumping only saltwater. I am drowned and dead, he thought to himself. Drowned and dead as I was before. Before him was only the greenly-lit world of fishes and water. He opened his arms to it, let them dangle below his head and move with the waves. He waited to be dead.

      But it was all a cheat, as it was always a cheat. All he wanted was to stop, to cease being, but it was never allowed him. Even here, beneath the water, his decks stilled of battering feet and shouted commands, his holds replete with seawater and silence, there was no peace. Boredom, yes, but no peace. The silver shoals of fish avoided him. They came toward him like phalanxes of sea-birds, only to veer away, still in formation, as they sensed the unholy wizardwood of his bones. He moved alone in a world of muted sounds and hazed colours, unbreathing, unsleeping.

      Then the serpents came.

      They were drawn to him, it seemed, both repulsed and fascinated by him. They taunted him, peering at him, their toothy maws opening and closing so close to his face and arms. He tried to push them away, but they mobbed him, letting his fists batter at them as frantically as he might, and never showing any sign that they felt his strength as anything greater than a fish’s helpless flopping. They spoke about him to one another, submerged trumpeting he almost understood. That was the most frightening thing, that he almost understood them. They looked deep into his eyes, they wrapped his hull in their sinuous embraces, holding him tight in a way that was both threatening and reminiscent of… something. It lurked around the last corner of his memory, some vestige of familiarity too frightening to summon to the forefront of his mind. They held him and dragged him down, deeper and deeper, so that the cargo still trapped inside him tore at him in its buoyant drive to be free. And all the while they accused and demanded furiously, as if their anger could force him to understand them.

      ‘Paragon?’

      He startled awake, from a dream with vision into the eternal hell of darkness. He tried to open his eyes. Even after all the years, he still tried to open his eyes and see who addressed him. Self-consciously, he lowered his up-reaching arms, crossed them protectively over his scarred chest to conceal the shame there. He almost knew her voice. ‘Yes?’ he asked guardedly.

      ‘It’s me. Althea.’

      ‘Your father will be very angry if he finds you here. He will roar at you.’

      ‘That was a very long time ago, Paragon. I was just a girl then. I’ve come to see you a number of times since then. Don’t you remember?’

      ‘I suppose I do. You do not come often. And your father roaring at us when he found you here with me is what I remember best about you. He called me a “damnable piece of wreckage” and “the worst sort of luck one could have”.’

      She sounded almost ashamed as she replied, ‘Yes. I remember that too, very clearly.’

      ‘Probably not as clearly as I. But then, you probably have a greater variety of memories to choose from.’ He added petulantly, ‘One does not gather many unique memories, hauled out on a beach.’

      ‘I am sure you had a great many adventures in your day,’ Althea offered.

      ‘Probably. It would be nice if I could remember any of them.’

      He heard her come closer. From the shifting in the angle of her voice, he judged she had sat down on a rock on the beach. ‘You used to speak to me of things you remembered. When I was a little girl and came here, you told me all sorts of stories.’

      ‘Most of them were lies, I expect. I don’t remember. Or maybe I did then, but no longer do. I think I am getting vaguer. Brashen thinks it might be because my log is missing. He says I do not seem to recall as much of my past as I used to.’

      ‘Brashen?’ A sharp edge of surprise in her voice.

      ‘Another friend,’ Paragon replied carelessly. It pleased him to shock her with the news he had another friend. Sometimes it irritated him that they expected him to be so pleased to see them, as if they were the only people he knew. Though they were, they should not have been so confident of it, as if it were impossible a wreck such as he might have made other friends.

      ‘Oh.’ After a moment, Althea added, ‘I know him as well. He served on my father’s ship.’

      ‘Ah, yes. The… Vivacia. How is she? Has she quickened yet?’

      ‘Yes. Yes, she has. Just two days ago.’

      ‘Really? Then it surprises me you are here. I thought you would rather be with your own ship.’ He had had all the news from Brashen already, but it gave him an odd pleasure to force Althea to speak of it.

      ‘I suppose I would be, if I could,’ the girl admitted unwillingly. ‘I miss her so much. I need her so badly just now.’

      Her honesty caught Paragon off-guard. He had accustomed himself to think of people as givers of pain. They could move about so freely and end their lives at any time they chose; it was hard for him to understand that she could feel such a depth of pain as her voice suggested. For a moment, somewhere in the labyrinths of his memory a homesick boy sobbed into his bunk. Paragon snatched his consciousness back from it. ‘Tell me about it,’ he suggested to Althea. He did not truly want to hear her woes, but at least it was a way to keep his own at bay.

      It surprised him when she complied. She spoke long, of everything, from Kyle Haven’s betrayal of her family’s trust to her own incomplete grief for her father. As she spoke, he felt the last warmth of the afternoon ebb away and the coolness of night come on. At some time she left her rock to come and lean her back against the silvered planking of his hull. He suspected she did it for the warmth of the day that lingered in his bones, but with the nearness of her body came a greater sharing of her words and feelings. It was almost as if they were kin. Did she know that she reached toward him for understanding as if he were her own liveship? Probably not, he told himself harshly. It was probably just that he reminded her of Vivacia and so she extended her feelings into him. That was all. It was not especially intended for him.

      Nothing was especially intended for him.

      He forced himself to remember that, and so he could be calm when, after she had been silent for some time, she said, ‘I have no place to stay tonight. Could I sleep aboard?’

      ‘It’s probably a smelly mess in there,’ he cautioned her. ‘Oh, my hull is sound enough, still. But one can do little about storm waters, and blown sand and beach lice can find a way into anything.’

      ‘Please, Paragon. I won’t mind. I’m sure I can find a dry corner to curl up in.’

      ‘Very well, then,’ he conceded, and then hid his smile in his beard as he added, ‘if you don’t mind sharing space with Brashen. He comes back here every night, you know.’

      ‘He does?’ Startled dismay was in her voice.

      ‘He comes and stays almost every time he makes port here. It’s always the same. The first night it’s because it’s late and he’s drunk and he doesn’t