“Good morning,” he greeted Paragon as he rounded the bow of the ship.

The figurehead looked permanently uncomfortable, fastened to the front of the heavily leaning ship. Brashen suddenly wondered if it made his back ache, but didn't have the courage to ask. Paragon had his thickly muscled arms crossed over his bare chest as he faced out over the glinting water to where other ships came and went from the harbor. He didn't even turn toward Brashen. “Afternoon,” Paragon corrected him.

“So it is,” Brashen agreed. “And more than time I got myself down to the docks. Have to look for a new job, you know.”

“I don't think she went home,” Paragon replied. “I think that if she went home, she would have gone her old way, up the cliffs and through the woods. Instead, after she said good-bye, I heard her walking away over the beach toward town.”

“Althea, you mean?” Brashen asked. He tried to sound unconcerned.

Blind Paragon nodded. “She was up at first light.” The words almost sounded like a reproach. “I had just heard the morning birds begin to call when she stirred and came out. Not that she slept much last night.”

“Well. She had a lot to think about. She may have gone into town this morning, but I'll wager she goes home before the week is out. After all, where else does she have to go?”

“Only here, I suppose,” the ship replied. “So. You will seek work today?”

“If I want to eat, I have to work,” Brashen agreed. “So I'm down to the docks. I think I'll try the fishing fleet or the slaughter boats instead of the merchants. I've heard a man can rise rapidly aboard one of the whale or dolphin boats. And they hire easy, too. Or so I've heard.”

“Mostly because so many of them die,” Paragon relentlessly observed. “That's what I heard, back when I was in a position to hear such gossip. That they're too long at sea and load their ships too heavy, and hire more crew than they need to work the ship because they don't expect all of them to survive the voyage.”

“I've heard such things, too,” Brashen reluctantly admitted. He squatted down on his haunches, then sat in the sand beside the beached ship. “But what other choice do I have? I should have listened to Captain Vestrit all those years. I'd have had some money saved up by now if I had.” He gave a sound that was not a laugh. “I wish someone had told me, all those years ago, that I should just swallow my stupid pride and go home.”

Paragon searched deep in his memory. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” he declared, and then smiled, almost pleased with himself. “There's a thought I haven't recalled for a long time.”

“And true as ever it was,” Brashen said disgruntledly. “So I'd best take myself down to the harbor and get myself a job on one of those stinking kill boats. More butchery than sailor's work is what I've heard of them as well.”

“And dirty work it is, too,” Paragon agreed. “On an honest merchant vessel, a man gets dirty with tar on his hands, or soaked with cold sea water, it's true. But on a slaughter ship, it's blood and offal and oil. Cut your finger and lose a hand to infection. If you don't die. And on those that take the meat as well, you'll spend half your sleeping time packing the flesh in tubs of salt. On the greedy ships the sailors end up sleeping right alongside the stinking cargo.”

“You're so encouraging,” Brashen said bleakly. “But what choice do I have? None at all.”

Paragon laughed oddly. “How can you say that? You have the choice that eludes me, the choice that all men take for granted so that they cannot even see they have it.”

“What choice is that?” Brashen asked uneasily. A wild note had come into the ship's voice, a reckless tone like that of a boy who fantasizes wildly.

“Stop.” Paragon spoke the word with breathless desire. “Just stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop being. You are such a fragile thing. Skin thinner than canvas, bones finer than any yard. Inside you are wet as the sea, and as salt, and it all waits to spill from you anytime your skin is opened. It is so easy for you to stop being. Open your skin and let your salt blood flow out, let the sea creatures take away your flesh bite by bite, until you are a handful of green slimed bones held together with lines of nibbled sinew. And you won't know or feel or think anything anymore. You will have stopped. Stopped.”

“I don't want to stop,” Brashen said in a low voice. “Not like that. No man wants to stop like that.”