In a quiet alley, Althea untied her pockets and considered their contents. It was as she had expected. She could have a room and a . meal tonight, or she could eat frugally for several days on what they held. She thought again of simply going home, but could not bring herself to do it. At least, not while Kyle might be there. Later, after he had sailed, if she had not found work and a place to stay by then, then she might be driven to go home and retrieve at least her clothes and personal jewelry. That much she surely could claim, without loss of pride. But not while Kyle was there. Absolutely not. She dumped the coins and notes into her purse and cinched it tight, wishing she could call back the money she had spent so carelessly on drink the night before. She couldn't, so best to be careful with what remained. She hung the pockets back inside her skirts.

She left the alley and found herself walking purposefully down the street. She needed a place to stay for the night and there was but one that came to mind. She tried not to think of the many times her father had sternly warned her about his company before he finally outright forbade her to visit him. It had been months since she had last spoken to him, but when she was a child, before she began sailing with her father, she had spent many summer afternoons in his company. Although the other children from town had found him both alarming and disgusting, Althea had soon lost her fear of him. She had felt sorry for him, truth to be told. He was frightening, true, but the most frightening part about him was what others had done to him. Once she had grasped that, a tentative friendship had followed.

As the afternoon sun dimmed into a long summer's evening, Althea left Bingtown proper behind her and began to pick her way down the rock-strewn beach to where the beached Paragon reposed on the sand.

CHAPTER TWELVE - 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 salt water. 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, was 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 sea water 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 colors, 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.' ”