“Wintrow!” Kennit gasped out the name as he dragged himself up the ladder to the foredeck. Wintrow turned sluggishly to watch him come. The pirate’s nightshirt, half-tucked into his trousers, billowed about him in the night breeze. His one foot was bare. A tiny part of Wintrow’s mind noted that he had never seen Kennit in such a state of dishevelment. There was panic in the captain’s ever-cool and sardonic glance. He feels us, Wintrow thought to himself. He is starting to bond with us; he senses something of what is going on, and it frightens him.

Etta passed the captain’s crutch up to him. He seized it and came swinging across the deck to Wintrow’s side. Kennit’s sudden grasp on his shoulder was the grip of life, holding him back from death. “What do you do, boy?” Kennit demanded angrily. Then his voice changed and he stared past Wintrow in horror. “God of Fishes, what have you done to my ship!”

Wintrow turned to the figurehead. Vivacia had twisted to stare back at the growing mob of disturbed sailors on the foredeck. One man shrieked aloud as her eyes went suddenly lambent green. The color of her eyes swirled like a whirlpool, while at the center was blackness darker than any night. Humanity left her face. Her black tresses blowing in the night breeze were more like a writhing nest of serpents. The teeth she bared at them in a parody of a smile were too white. “If I cannot win,” the lips gave voice to the dragon’s thought, “then no one shall.”

Slowly she turned away from them. Her arms lifted wide as if to embrace the night sea. Then slowly she brought them back, to clasp the hull of the ship behind her.

Wintrow; Wintrow, aid me! Vivacia pleaded only in his mind; the figurehead’s mouth and her voice were no longer at Vivacia’s command. Die with me, she begged him. Almost, he did. Almost, he followed her into that abyss. But at the last instant, he could not.

“I want to live!” he heard himself cry out into the night. “Please, please, let us live!” He thought, for an instant, that his words weakened her resolve to die.

A strange silence followed his words. Even the night breeze seemed to hold its breath. Wintrow became aware that somewhere a sailor gabbled out a child’s prayer but another, smaller sound caught his ears. It was a running, brittle sound, like the noise of cracking ice on the surface of a lake when one ventures out too far.

“She’s gone,” breathed Etta. “Vivacia’s gone.”

It was so. Even in the poor light of the lantern, the change was obvious. All color and semblance of life had drained from the figurehead. Gray as a tombstone was the wood of her back and hair. No breath of life stirred her. Her carved locks were frozen and immune to the breeze’s fingering touch. Her skin looked as weathered as an aging fence. Wintrow groped after her with his mind. He caught a fading trail of her despair, like a vanishing scent in the air. Then even that was gone, as if some tight door had closed between them.

“The dragon?” he muttered to himself, but if she was still within him, she had hidden herself too well for his poor senses.

Wintrow drew a deep breath and let it out again. Alone in his mind again; how long had it been since his thoughts had been the only ones in his head? An instant later he became aware of his body. The cool air stung his healing scalds. His knees jellied, and he would have sunk to the deck but for Etta’s cautious arm around him. He sagged against her. His new skin screamed at her touch, but he was too weak even to flinch away.

Etta looked past him. Her gaze mourned Kennit. Wintrow’s eyes followed hers. He had never seen a man look so grief-stricken. The pirate leaned far out on the bow railing to stare at Vivacia’s profile, his features frozen in anguish. Lines Wintrow had never noticed before seemed graven into Kennit’s face. His glossy black hair and moustache looked shocking against his sallow skin. Vivacia’s passing diminished Kennit in a way that the loss of his leg had not. Before Wintrow’s eyes, the man aged.

Kennit turned his head to meet Wintrow’s gaze. “Is she dead?” he asked woodenly. “Can a liveship die?” His eyes pleaded that it not be so.

“I don’t know,” Wintrow admitted reluctantly. “I can’t feel her. Not at all.” The gap within himself was too terrible to probe. Worse than a lost tooth, more crippling than his missing finger. To be without her was a terrible, gaping flaw in him. He had once wished for this? He had been mad.

Kennit turned back abruptly to the figurehead. “Vivacia?” he called questioningly. Then, “Vivacia!” he bellowed, the angry, forsaken call of a spurned lover. “You cannot leave me now! You cannot be gone!”