“I’m sane enough, you raping, murdering bastard!” Althea snarled. Her words ran together. She thrashed about, trying to stand.

“Aunt Althea!” Wintrow was shocked. Kennit could see the horror in the boy’s face. He crouched down and helped the woman to stand. “You need to rest,” he offered her sympathetically. “You’ve had quite a shock.”

She held onto his shoulders and looked at Wintrow as if he were an insect. He stared back at her in consternation. But for their expressions, they looked very alike. It reminded Kennit of the old depictions of Sa, male and female, face-to-face on the ancient coins. Then Althea turned her look of disgust on Kennit. He saw her decide, and he was ready for her shambling charge. He thought he could avoid her dazed attack, but he did not have to try. With a furious screech, Etta sprang out in front of him.

The whore was larger than Althea, physically alert and more experienced in fighting. She knocked the Bingtown woman down effortlessly and then straddled her, pinioning her. Althea gave a full-throated roar of fury and struggled, but Etta held her easily. “Shut up!” the whore shrieked at her. “Shut your lying mouth! I don’t know why Kennit bothered saving your useless life. Shut up or I’ll break your teeth.”

Kennit stared in horrified fascination. He had seen women fight before; in Divvytown, it was so common a sight as to be unremarkable, but he had always considered it a tawdry spectacle. Somehow, this humiliated him. “Etta. Get up. Wintrow. Put Althea back in her room,” he commanded.

Althea gasped her words from beneath Etta’s weight. “I’m a stupid bitch? He raped me. Here, on my own family ship! And you, a woman, defend him?” She rolled her head and stared up wildly at Wintrow. “He’s buried our ship! How can you look at him and not know what he is? How can you be so stupid?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Etta’s voice slid up the scale, cracking on hysteria. She slapped Althea, an openhanded blow that rang in the confined companionway.

“Etta! Stop that, I said!” Kennit cried in horror. He seized the whore’s upraised hand by the wrist and tried to drag her off Althea. Instead, Etta only struck her with her other hand, and then, to Kennit’s complete mystification, burst into tears. Kennit lifted his eyes to find half a dozen sailors crowding the end of the hall, staring in openmouthed wonder at the spectacle. “Separate them,” he snapped. Finally, several men moved forward to do his bidding. Wintrow took Etta by the arm and pulled her from Althea. For a wonder, she did not fight him, but allowed him to hold her back. “Put Etta in my chamber until she calms herself,” he directed Wintrow. “You others, put Althea back in her room and fasten the lock. I will deal with her later.”

Althea’s brief struggle with Etta had consumed her resistance. Her eyes were open, but her head lolled on her neck as two men dragged her to her feet. “I’ll… kill… you,” she promised him gaspingly as they hauled her past him. She meant it.

He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his brow. The blood on the cloth was darker; the cut was clotting. He probably looked a sight. The prospect of confronting Etta did not appeal to him, but it could not be avoided. He would not walk about with blood dribbling down his face and spattered food on his clothing. He drew himself up straight. As the crewmen returned from locking Althea up, he managed a wry smile for them. He shook his head conspiratorially. “Women. They simply do not belong aboard a ship.” One crewman returned him a grin, but the others looked uneasy. That was not good. Was Etta that great a favorite with the crew? He’d have to do something about that. He’d have to do something about this whole situation. How had it become so untidy? He straightened his rumpled jacket and brushed food from the sleeve.

“Captain Kennit, sir?”

He looked up in annoyance at yet another rattled deckhand. “What is it now?” he snapped.

The man licked his lips. “It’s the ship, sir. The figurehead. She says she wants to see you, sir.” The sailor swallowed, and then went on, “She said, Tell him right now. Now!’ No disrespect intended, sir, but that was how she spoke, sir.”

“Did she?” Kennit managed to keep his voice coolly amused. “Well, you may tell her, with no disrespect intended, that the captain has another matter to tend to, but that he will be with her presently. At his earliest convenience.”

“Sir!” The man fumbled for a way to begin a desperate protest. Kennit speared him with a cold gaze. “Yes, sir,” he conceded. His step dragged as he departed.