“Take the ship's boy back to his quarters,” his father ordered Torg abruptly. “Keep a good watch on him and see he learns all his duties before we sail. And keep him out of my sight.” This last he uttered with great feeling, as if wronged by the world.

Torg gave a jerk of his head and Wintrow rose silently to follow him. With a sinking heart, he recognized the smirk on Torg's face. His father had given him over completely into this wretch's hands, and the man knew it.

For now the man seemed content to shepherd him forward to his miserable dungeon. Wintrow just managed to duck his head before the man pushed him across the threshold. He stumbled, but caught himself before he fell. He was too deep in despair to even pay attention to whatever mocking comment it was that Torg threw after him before slamming the door shut. He heard the man work the crude latch and knew he was shut in for the next six hours at least.

Torg hadn't even left him a candle. Wintrow groped through the darkness until his hands encountered the webbing of the hammock. Awkwardly he hauled his stiff body up into it and tried to arrange himself comfortably. Then he lay still. About him the ship moved gently on the waters of the harbor. The only sounds that reached him were muffled. He yawned hugely, the effects of his large meal and long day's work overwhelming both his anger and his despair. Out of long habit, he prepared both body and mind for rest. As much as the hammock would permit, he did the stretches of the large and small muscles of his body, striving to bring all back into alignment before rest.

The mental exercises were more difficult. Back when he had first come to the monastery, they had given him a very simple ritual called Forgiving the Day. Even the youngest child could do this; all it required was looking back over the day and dismissing the day's pains as a thing that were past while choosing to remember as gains lessons learned or moments of insight. As initiates grew in the ways of Sa, it was expected they would grow more sophisticated in this exercise, learning to balance the day, taking responsibility for their own actions and learning from them without indulging in either guilt or regrets. Wintrow did not think he was up to that tonight.

Odd. How easy it had been to love Sa's way and master the meditations in the quietly structured days of the monastery. Within the massive stone walls, it had been easy to discern the underlying order in the world, easy to look at the lives of the farmers and shepherds and merchants and see how much of their misery was self-generated. Now that he was out in the midst of it, he could still see some of that pattern, but he felt too weary to examine it and see how he could change it. He was tangled in the threads of his own tapestry. “I don't know how to make it stop,” he said softly to the darkness. Doleful as an abandoned child, he wondered if any of his teachers missed him.

He recalled his final morning at the monastery, and the tree that had come to him out of the shards of stained glass. He had always taken a secret pride in his ability to summon beauty and hold it. But had it been his skill at all? Or had it been something created instead by the teachers who insulated him from the world and provided both a place and a time in which he might work? Perhaps, given the right atmosphere, anyone could do it. Perhaps the only thing about him that had been remarkable was that he had been given a chance. For an instant, he was overwhelmed by his own ordinariness. Nothing remarkable about Wintrow. An indifferent ship's boy, a clumsy sailor. Not even worth mentioning. He would disappear into time as if he had never been born. He could almost feel himself unraveling into darkness.

No. No! He would not let go. He would hang on to himself, and fight and something would happen. Something. Would the monastery send anyone to inquire after him when he did not return? “I think I'm hoping to be rescued,” he observed wearily to himself. There. That was a high ambition. To stay alive and remain himself until someone else could save him. He was not sure if ... if ... if ... There had been the beginning of a thought there, but the upsurging blackness of sleep drowned it.

In the dark of the harbor, Vivacia sighed. She crossed her slender arms over her breasts and stared up at the bright lights of the night market. So engrossed was she in her own thoughts that she startled to the soft touch of a hand against her planking. She looked down. “Ronica!” she exclaimed in gentle surprise.

“Yes. Hush. I would speak quietly with you.”

“If you wish,” Vivacia replied softly, intrigued.

“I need to know . . . that is, Althea sent me a message. She feared all was not well with you.” The woman's voice faltered. “The message actually came some days ago. A servant, thinking it unimportant, had set it in Ephron's study. I only found it today.”