The Mad Ship

She did not recognize the woman rolling out dough on the tabletop, nor the boy turning the spit at the cook-fire. That was not unusual. Servants came and went in the Vestrit household. Trader families regularly ‘stole’ the best cooks, nannies and stewards from one another, coaxing them to change households with offers of better pay and larger quarters.

A serving girl came into the kitchen with an empty tray. She clattered it down and rounded on Althea. ‘What do you want here?’ Her voice was both chill and bored.

For once, Althea’s mind was faster than her mouth. She made a sketchy bow. ‘I’ve a message from Captain Tenira of the liveship Ophelia for Trader Ronica Vestrit. It’s important. He asked me to deliver it to her in private.’ There. That would get her some time alone with her mother. If there were guests in the house, she didn’t want to be seen by them while she was still dressed as a boy.

The serving girl looked troubled. ‘She is with guests just now, very important ones. It is a farewell gathering. It would be awkward to call her away.’ She bit her lower lip. ‘Can the message wait a bit longer? Perhaps while you ate something?’ The maid smiled as she offered this little bribe.

Althea found herself nodding. The smell of the newly-cooked food was making her mouth water. Why not eat here in the kitchen, and face her mother and sister with a full stomach? ‘The message can wait a bit, I suppose. Mind if I wash my hands first?’ Althea nodded towards the kitchen pump.

‘There’s a pump and trough in the yard,’ the cook pointed out, a sharp reminder of Althea’s supposed status. Althea grinned to herself, then went outside to wash. By the time she returned, a plate was ready for her. They had not given her choice cuts; rather it was the crispy outside end of the pork roast, and the heels of the fresh cooked bread. There was a slab of yellow cheese with it and a dollop of fresh churned butter for the bread and a spoonful of cherry preserves. It was served to her on a chipped plate with a stained napkin. The niceties of cutlery use were supposedly unknown to a ship’s boy, so she made do with her fingers as she perched on a tall stool in the corner of the kitchen.

At first, she ate ravenously, with little thought for anything other than the food before her. The crust of the roast seemed far richer in flavour than the best cut she had ever enjoyed. That crispy fat crunched between her teeth. The new butter melted on the still-warm bread. She scooped up the tart cherry preserves with folded bits of it.

As her hunger was sated, she became more aware of the kitchen bustle around her. She looked around the once familiar room with new eyes. As a child, this room had seemed immense and fascinating, a place she had never been allowed to explore freely. Because she had gone to sea with her father before she had outgrown that curiosity, the kitchen had always retained an aura of the forbidden for her. Now she saw it for what it was: a large, busy work area where servants came and went in haste while a cook reigned supreme. As every servant came in, he or she inevitably gave a brief report on the gathering. They spoke familiarly and sometimes with contempt of the folk they served.

‘I’ll need another platter of the sausage rolls. Trader Loud-Shirt seems to think we baked them for him alone.’

‘That’s better than doing what that Orpel girl is doing. Look at this plate. Heaped with food we worked all morning to prepare, she’s scarcely nibbled it and then pushed it aside. I suppose she hopes a man will notice her dainty appetite and think she’s an easy keeper.’

‘How’s the empress’s second choice faring?’ the cook asked curiously.

A serving man mimed the tipping of a wineglass. ‘Oh, he drowns his troubles and scowls at his rival and moons at the little empress. Then he does it all over again. All very genteelly, of course. The man should be on a stage.’

‘No, no, she’s the one who should be on a stage. One moment she’s simpering at Reyn’s veil, but when she dances with him, she looks past his shoulder and flutters her lashes at young Trell.’ The serving maid who observed this added with a snort of disgust: ‘She has them both stepping to her tune, but I’ll wager she cares not a whit for either of them, but only for what measures she can make them tread.’

For a brief time, Althea listened with amusement. Then her ears and cheeks began to burn as she realized that this was how the servants had always spoken of her family. She ducked her head, kept her eyes on her plate, and slowly began to piece the gossip into a bizarre image of the current state of the Vestrit family fortunes.

Her mother was entertaining Rain Wild guests. That was unusual enough, given that her father had severed their trading connections there years ago. A Rain Wild suitor was courting a Trader woman. The servants did not think much of her. ‘She’d smile at him more if he replaced his veil with a mirror,’ one servant sniggeringly observed. Another added, ‘I don’t know who’s going to be more surprised on their wedding night: her when he takes off his veil and shows his warts, or him when she shows her snake’s nature behind that pretty face.’ Althea knit her brow trying to think what woman was a close enough friend to the Vestrit family that her mother would host a gathering in her honour. Perhaps one of Keffria’s friends had a daughter of marriageable age.

A kitchen maid tugged her empty plate from her lax hands and offered her a bowl with two sugar dumplings in it. ‘Here. You may as well have these; we made far too many. There are three platters left and the guests are already starting to leave. No sense a young man like you going hungry here.’ She smiled warmly and Althea turned her eyes aside in what she hoped was a convincing display of boyish shyness.

‘Can I take my message to Ronica Vestrit soon?’ she asked.

‘Oh, soon enough, I imagine. Soon enough.’

The sweet gooey pastries were messy to eat but delicious. Althea finished them, returned her bowl and used her sticky hands as an excuse to go back to the yard pump. A grape arbour screened the kitchen yard from the main entrance, but the new leaves were still tiny. Althea could watch the departing carriages through the twining branches. She recognized Cerwin Trell and his little sister as they left. The Shuyev family had also come. There were several other Trader families that Althea recognized more by crest than by face. It made her realize how long it had been since she had truly belonged to their social circle. Gradually the number of carriages dwindled. Davad Restart was one of the last to depart. Shortly after that, a team of white horses arrived drawing a Rain Wild coach. The windows were heavily curtained and the crest on the door was an unfamiliar one. It looked something like a chicken with a hat. An open wagon was drawn up behind it and a train of servants began carrying luggage and trunks from the house to that conveyance. So. The Rain Wild Traders had been houseguests at the Vestrit home. Increasingly mysterious, Althea thought to herself. Crane her neck as she might, she got no more than a glimpse of the departing family. Rain Wilders were always veiled by day and this group was no exception. Althea had no idea who they were or why they were staying at the Vestrit home. It made her uneasy. Had Kyle chosen to renew their trading connections there? Had her mother and sister supported such an idea?

Had Kyle taken Vivacia up the Rain River?

She clenched her fists at the idea. When the kitchen maid tugged at her sleeve, she spun on her, startling the poor girl. ‘Beg pardon,’ Althea apologized immediately.

The maid looked at her strangely. ‘Mistress Vestrit will see you now.’

Althea suffered herself to be led back into her own home and down the familiar hallway to the morning room. Everywhere were the festive signs of guests and lively company. Vases of flowers filled every alcove and perfume lingered in the air. When she had left, this had been a house of mourning and family contention. Now the household seemed to have forgotten those difficult days and her with them. It did not seem fair that while she had toiled through hardship, her sister and mother had indulged in social celebration. By the time they reached the morning room, the simmering confusion inside her was so great she guarded against it breaking forth as anger.

The maid tapped at the door of the chamber. When she heard Ronica’s murmured assent, she stepped aside, whispering to Althea, ‘Go in.’

Althea bobbed a bow, then entered the room. She shut the door quietly behind herself. Her mother was sitting on a cushioned divan. A low table with a glass of wine upon it was close to hand. She wore a simple day-gown of creamy linen. Her hair was coiled and perfumed, and a silver chain graced her throat, but the face she lifted to meet Althea’s gaze was taut with weariness. Althea forced herself to meet her mother’s widening eyes with a direct look. ‘I’ve come home,’ she said quietly.

‘Althea,’ her mother gasped. She lifted a hand to her heart, and then put both hands over her mouth and breathed in through them. She had gone so pale that the lines in her face stood out as if etched. She dragged in a shuddering breath. ‘Do you know how many nights I have wondered how you died? Wondered where your body lay, if it was covered in a decent grave or if carrion birds picked at your flesh?’

The flood of angry words caught Althea off-guard. ‘I tried to send you word.’ She heard herself lying like a child caught in a misdeed.

Her mother had found the strength to rise and now she advanced on Althea, her index finger levelled like a pike. ‘No you did not!’ she contradicted her bitterly. ‘You never even thought of it until just now.’ She halted suddenly in her tracks. She shook her head. ‘You are so like your father, I can even hear him lying with your tongue. Oh, Althea. Oh, my little girl.’ Then her mother suddenly embraced her, as she had not in years. Althea stood still in the circle of her pinning arms, completely bewildered. A moment later she was horrified when a sob racked her mother’s body. Her mother clung to her and wept hopelessly against her shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ Althea said uncomfortably. Then she added, ‘It’s going to be all right now.’ A few moments later she tried, ‘What’s wrong?’

For a time, her mother did not reply. Then she drew a deep, rattling breath. Ronica stepped back from her daughter and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes like a child. It smeared the careful paint on her lashes and eyelids, marking the fabric of her sleeve. Her mother took no notice of that. She walked unsteadily back to her divan and sat down. She took a long drink of her wine, then set it down and tried to smile. The smeared paint on her face made it ghastly. ‘Everything,’ she said quietly. ‘Everything that could be wrong, is. Save for one thing. You are home and alive.’ The honest relief on her mother’s face was more searing than her anger had been.

It was hard to cross the room and seat herself on the end of the divan. Harder still to say calmly and rationally, ‘Tell me about it.’ For so many months, Althea had looked forward to coming home, to telling her story, to forcing her family to finally, finally listen to her view. Now she was here, and she knew with the unerring truth of Sa’s own revelation that duty demanded she listen first to all her mother would say.

For a moment, Ronica just looked at her. Then the words began to spill out. It was a disordered tale of one disaster after another. The Vivacia was late coming home. She should have been back by now. Kyle might have taken her straight on to Chalced to sell the slaves, but surely he would have sent word by another ship if he intended to do so. Wouldn’t he? He knew how poor the family finances were; surely, he would have sent word so that Keffria would have something to tell their creditors. Malta had been into one kind of mischief after another. She didn’t even know where to begin that tale, but the end of it was that a Rain Wild Trader was now courting Malta. As his family held the paper on the Vivacia, courtesy and politics dictated that the Vestrits at least entertain his suit, although Sa knew Malta was not truly a woman and old enough to be courted. Moreover, Davad Restart had leapt into the midst of that tangle, and had made one gaffe after another all week in his determination to wring a profit from the courtship. Just because the man was totally tactless did not mean he was without tactics. It had taken all her ingenuity to keep him diverted and to keep Reyn’s family from taking offence. Keffria was insisting on trying to manage the family businesses. That was her right, true, but she wasn’t giving them the attention they needed. Instead she was all caught up in the flowers and the frills of this courtship, and never mind that the grain fields were only half-ploughed and the planting moon was only a week away. A late frost had taken at least half the blooms from the apple orchards. The roof in the second bedroom in the east wing had begun to leak, and there was no money to have it seen to right now, but if it were not repaired soon, that entire ceiling would give way and…

‘Mother,’ Althea said gently, and then, ‘Mother! A moment! My head is reeling with all this!’

‘Mine, also, and for far longer than yours,’ Ronica pointed out wearily.

‘I don’t understand this.’ Althea tried to speak calmly although she wanted to shout. ‘Kyle is using Vivacia as a slave-ship? And Malta is being practically sold off to the Rain Wild Traders to pay our family debts? How can Keffria allow that, let alone you? Even if the Vivacia has not yet returned, how can our finances be so bad? Didn’t the shoreside properties used to pay their own way?’

Her mother made small patting motions at her with her hands. ‘Calm down. I suppose this is a shock to you. I have seen the gradual slide, but you return to see us at the bottom of our fortunes.’ Her mother pressed her hands to her temples for a moment. She looked at Althea absently. ‘How are we to get you out of those clothes and properly attired without the servants asking questions?’ she mused in an aside to herself. Then she drew a breath. ‘Just to explain all this to you wearies me so. It is like detailing the slow death of something you loved. Allow me to skip details and say just this instead: the use of slaves for field and orchard crops in Chalced and even in Bingtown lands has driven prices down. We have always hired workers for our fields; for years, the same men and women have ploughed, planted, and harvested for us. Now what are we to tell them? It would be more profitable to let the fields lie fallow or graze goats on them, but how can we do that to our farmers? So, we struggle on. Or rather, at my behest, Keffria does. She gives some heed to my counsel. Kyle, as you know, controls the ship. That was my error; I cannot bear to look you in the face over it. But Sa help me, Althea! I fear he is right. If the Vivacia succeeds as a slaver, she may yet save us all. Slaves, it seems, are the only way to prosper. Slaves as cargo, slaves in the grain fields…’

She looked at her mother incredulously. ‘I cannot believe I am hearing those words from you.’

‘I know it is wrong, Althea. I know. But what are our alternatives? Let little Malta unknowingly flirt herself into a marriage she isn’t ready for, simply for the sake of the family fortune? Surrender Vivacia back to the Rain Wilds in forfeiture of the debt, and live in poverty? Or perhaps we could just flee our creditors, leave Bingtown, and go Sa knows where…’

‘Have you truly considered such things?’ Althea asked in a low voice.

‘I have,’ her mother replied wearily. ‘Althea, if we do not take action on our own, then others will decide our fate. Our creditors will strip us of all we own, and then we might look back and say, well, if we had allowed Malta to wed Reyn, at least she would have been spared living in poverty. At least the ship would have been ours.’

‘“The ship would have been ours”. How?’

‘I told you. The Khuprus family has bought the note on Vivacia. They have as much as said that forgiving the debt would be Reyn’s wedding gift to the family.’

‘That’s crazy.’ Althea uttered the words flatly. ‘No one gives wedding gifts like that. Not even Rain Wild Traders.’

Ronica Vestrit took a deep breath. Changing the subject, she announced, ‘We have to sneak you up to your room and get you into some proper clothes. Though you look skinny as a rail. I wonder if anything you left here would still fit you.’

‘I can’t resume being Althea Vestrit just yet. I bring a message for you from Captain Tenira of the liveship Ophelia.’

‘That is true? I thought it was only a ruse to get in to see me.’

‘It’s true. I’ve been serving aboard the Ophelia. When we have more time, I’ll tell you all about that. But for now, I want to give you his message, and then take your reply back to him. Mother, the Ophelia has been seized at the tariff docks. Captain Tenira has refused to pay the outrageous fees they have demanded, especially all the ones they have tacked on to support those Chalcedean pigs tied up in the harbour.’

‘Tied up Chalcedean pigs?’ Her mother looked confused.

‘Surely you know what I mean. The Satrap has authorized Chalcedean galleys to act as patrol vessels throughout the Inside Passage. One of them actually attempted to halt us and board us on our way here. They are no more than pirates, and worse than the ones they are supposed to control. I cannot understand why they are tolerated in Bingtown Harbour, let alone that anyone would stomach the extra fees demanded of us!’

‘Oh. The galleys. There has been quite a stir about them lately, but I think Tenira is the first to refuse the fees. Fair or not, the Traders pay them. The alternative is no trade at all, as Tenira is finding out.’

‘Mother, that is ridiculous! This is our town. Why aren’t we standing up to the Satrap and his lackeys? The Satrap no longer abides by his word to us; why should we continue to let him leech away our honest profits?’

‘Althea…I have no energy left to consider such things. I don’t doubt you are right, but what can I do about it? I have my family to preserve. Bingtown will have to look after itself.’

‘Mother, we cannot think that way! Grag and I have discussed this a great deal. Bingtown has to stand united before the New Traders and the Satrap, and all of Jamaillia, if need be. The more we concede to them, the more they take. The slaves that the New Traders have brought in are at the bottom of our family problems right now. We need to force them to observe our old law forbidding slavery. We need to tell the New Traders that we will not recognize their new charters. We need to tell the Satrap that we will pay no more taxes until he lives up to the letter of our original charter. No. We need to go further than that. We need to tell him that a fifty percent tax on our goods and his limits on where we may sell our goods are things of the past. We have already let it go on too long. Now we need to stand united and make it stop.’

‘There are some Traders who speak as you do,’ her mother said slowly. ‘And I reply to them as I do to you: my family first. Besides. What can I do?’

‘Just say you will stand united with those Traders who refuse the tariffs. That is all I am asking.’

‘Then you must ask your sister. She has the vote now, not I. On your father’s death, she inherited. She is the Bingtown Trader now, and the council vote is hers to wield.’

‘What do you think she will say?’ Althea asked after a long silence. It had taken her a time to grasp the full significance of what her mother had said.

‘I don’t know. She does not go to many of the Trader meetings. She is, she says, too busy and she also says she does not want to vote on things that she has not had time to study.’

‘Have you spoken to her? Told her how crucial those votes can be?’

‘It is only one vote,’ Ronica said almost stubbornly.

Althea thought she heard a trace of guilt in her mother’s voice. She pressed her. ‘Let me go back to Trader Tenira and say this at least. That you will speak to Keffria, and counsel her both to attend the next Trader meeting, and to vote in Tenira’s support. He intends to be there and to demand that the Council officially side with him.’

‘I suppose I can do that much. Althea, you need not carry this message back yourself. If he is openly defiant of the tariff minister, then he could precipitate some sort of…of action down there. Let me have Rache fetch a runner to carry your word. There is no need for you to be in the middle of this.’

‘Mother. I wish to be in the middle of this. Also, I want them to know I stand firmly with them. I feel I must go.’

‘But not right now! Althea, you have only just come home. Surely you can stop to eat and bathe and change into proper clothes.’ Her mother looked aghast.

‘That I cannot. I am safer on the docks in these clothes. The guards at the tariff dock will not blink an eye at the errands of a ship’s boy. Let me return for now, and…there is one other person I must go and see. But right after that, I shall come back. I promise that by tomorrow morning, I shall be safely under your roof and attired as befits a Trader’s daughter.’

‘You’ll be out all night? Alone?’

‘Would you rather I was with someone?’ Althea asked mischievously. She disarmed her words with a quick grin. ‘Mother, I have been “out all night” for almost a year now. No harm has come to me. At least, nothing permanent…but I promise I shall tell you all when I return.’

‘I see I cannot stop you,’ Ronica said resignedly. ‘Well. For the sake of your father’s name, please do not let anyone recognize you! The family fortune is shaky enough as it is. Be discreet in whatever it is that you must do. And ask Captain Tenira to be discreet as well. You served aboard his ship, you said?’

‘Yes. I did. Moreover, I said I would tell you all when I return. The sooner I leave, the sooner I’m back.’ Althea turned towards the door. Then she halted. ‘Would you please tell my sister I’m back? And that I wish to speak to her of serious things?’

‘I will. Do you mean that you will try to, well, not make amends, or apologize, but make a truce with Kyle and your sister?’

Althea closed her eyes tight and then opened them. She spoke quietly. ‘Mother, I intend to take my ship back. I will try to make you both see that I am ready to do so and that I not only have the most right to her, but that I can do the most good for the family with her. But I do not want to say any more just yet, to you or to Keffria. Please do not tell her that. Say, if you would, only that I wish to speak to her of serious things.’

‘Very serious things.’ Her mother shook her head to herself. The lines on her brow and around her mouth seemed to deepen. She drank more wine, without relish or pleasure. ‘Go carefully, Althea, and return swiftly. I do not know if your coming home brings us salvation or disaster. I only know I am glad to know you are alive.’

Althea nodded abruptly and slipped quietly out of the room. She did not go back the way she had come, but went out the front door. She acknowledged a serving man who was sweeping scattered flower petals from the steps. The massed hyacinths by the steps gave off a rising tide of perfume. As she hurried down the drive towards Bingtown, she almost wished she were simply Athel, a ship’s boy. It was a beautiful spring day, her first day on shore in her homeport in almost a year. She wished she could take some simple pleasure in it.

As she hurried down the winding roads back to Bingtown proper, she began to notice that the Vestrit estate was not the only one that showed signs of disrepair. Several other great homes that she passed showed the neglect of a pinched purse. Trees had gone unpruned and winter wind damage unrepaired. When she passed through the busier streets of Bingtown’s market district, it seemed to her that she saw many unfamiliar folk.

It was not just that she did not recognize their faces; she had been so often away from Bingtown in the last ten years that she no longer expected to know many friends and neighbours. These strangers spoke with the accents of Jamaillia and dressed as if they were from Chalced. The men all seemed to be young, in their twenties or early thirties. They wore wide-bladed swords in filigreed sheaths, and hung their pouches at their belts as if to brag of their wealth. The rich skirts of the women who trailed after them were slashed to reveal filmy underskirts. Their vividly coloured cosmetics obscured rather than enhanced their faces. The men tended to speak more loudly than was necessary, as if to draw as much attention to themselves as possible. More often than not, the tone of their words was arrogant and self-important. Their women moved like nervous fillies, tossing their heads and gesturing broadly when they spoke. Their perfumes were strong, their bangled earrings large. They made the courtesans of Bingtown seem like drab pigeons in contrast to their peacock strutting.