With a jerk of his head, Paragon turned his maimed face away from Amber’s words. “So you don’t like me anymore. Well, I don’t care. If I have to be weak so you can like me, then I don’t need you to like me. So there.” For him to revert to such childishness immediately after he had brutally killed a man paralyzed Althea with horror. What was this ship?

Amber didn’t reply with words. Instead, she sank slowly down until her brow rested on her hands as they gripped the railing. Althea did not know if she mourned or prayed. She clung tight to the wizardwood as if she could pour herself into it.

“I did nothing!” Lavoy protested. His words sounded cowardly to Althea. He looked at his Tattooed crew as he spoke. “Everyone saw what happened.

None of it was my doing. The ship took it into his own hands, in more ways than one.”

“Shut up!” Brashen ordered all of them. “Just shut up.” He paced a quick turn on the deck. His eyes traveled over the silently gathered crew on the foredeck. His eyes seemed to linger on Clef. The white-faced boy had both his hands clasped over his mouth. His eyes were bright with tears.

When Brashen spoke again, his voice was devoid of any emotion. “We’ll be making for Divvytown, with all speed. The performance of this crew during the attack was abysmal. There will be additional drill, for officers as well as crew. I will have each man knowing his place and duty, and acting promptly on that knowledge.” He let his eyes rove over them again. He looked older and wearier than Althea had ever seen him. He turned back to the figurehead.

“Paragon, your punishment for disobeying my orders is isolation. No one is to speak to the ship without my leave. No one!” he repeated as Amber took a breath to protest. “No one is even to be on this foredeck unless duty demands it. Now clear it, all of you, and get back to your tasks. Now.”

Brashen stood silent on the foredeck as his crew silently ebbed away, back to deck or bunk as their watches commanded. Althea, too, walked away from him. Right now, she did not know him at all. How could he have let all that happen? Didn’t he see what Lavoy was, what he was doing to the ship?

BRASHEN HURT. IT WASN’T JUST THE LONG GASH DOWN HIS RIBS, THOUGH SA knew that it burned and stung. His jaws, his back and his gut ached with tension. Even his face hurt, but he could not remember how to relax those muscles. Althea had looked at him with absolute loathing; he could not fathom why. His liveship, his pride, his Paragon had killed with a bestial savagery that sickened him; he had not thought the ship capable of such a thing. He was almost certain now that Lavoy was lining up not just men, but the ship himself to support the mate in a mutiny. Amber was right, though he wished she had not spoken it aloud. For reasons he did not completely grasp, Lavoy had seen to it that all their prisoners died. It was overwhelming to him. Yet he must deal with all that, and never show, not even by the twitch of a facial muscle., that it bothered him. He was the captain. This was the price. Just when he most wanted to confront Lavoy, or take Althea in his arms, or demand that Paragon explain to him what had just happened, instead he had to square his shoulders and stand straight. Keep his dignity. For the sake of his crew and his command, he must feel nothing.

He stood on the foredeck and watched them all obey him. Lavoy went with a resentful, backward glance. Althea moved awkwardly, her spirit broken. He hoped the other women would have the sense to give her some privacy for a time. Amber was the last to leave the foredeck. She paused beside him, as if she would speak. He met her eyes and silently shook his head. Paragon must not think that anyone opposed Brashen’s order to isolate him. He must feel the disapproval was universal. As soon as Amber was off the deck, Brashen followed her. He spoke no parting word to the ship. He wondered if Paragon even noticed it.

PARAGON SURREPTITIOUSLY WIPED HIS HANDS AGAIN DOWN THE BOW. BLOOD was such clinging stuff. So clinging, and so rich with memories. He fought against absorbing the man he had killed, but in the end, the blood had its way. It soaked into his wizardwood hands, rich, red and fraught with emotions. Terror and pain were the strongest. Well, how had the man expected to die, once he took up piracy? He’d brought it on himself. It was not Paragon’s fault. The man should have talked when Lavoy told him to. Then Lavoy would have killed him gently.

Besides, the pirate had lied. He had said that Kennit loved Vivacia, that he often said he’d always wanted a liveship for his very own. Worse, he said that Vivacia had bonded to Kennit. She could not. She was not his family. So the man had lied and he had died.

Brashen was very angry with him. It was Brashen’s own fault he was angry, because Brashen could not understand a simple thing like killing someone who had lied to you. There were many things, he was discovering, that Brashen did not understand. But Lavoy did. Lavoy came to him and talked to him, and told him sea tales and called him laddie. And he understood. He understood that Paragon had to be as he was, that everything he had ever done, he’d had to do. Lavoy told him he had nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to regret. He agreed that people had pushed Paragon into everything he had ever done. Brashen and Althea and Amber all wanted him to be like them. They wanted him to pretend he had no past. No pasts at all. Be how they wanted him to be, or they wouldn’t like him. But he couldn’t. There were too many feelings inside him that he knew they wouldn’t like. That didn’t mean he could stop feeling them. Too many voices, telling him his bad memories over and over and over, but in tiny little voices he could not quite hear. Tiny little blood voices, whimpering from the past. What was he supposed to do about them? They were never silent, not really. He had learned to ignore them, but that didn’t make them go away. But even they were not as bad as the other parts of himself.