Wintrow's jaw went slack at the implication. But Mild was grinning again. “Hey, don't take it so serious. No wonder everyone loves to tease you, you're such a mark.”

“But he's my father,” Wintrow protested.

“Naw. Not when you're serving aboard his ship. Then he's just your captain. And he's an okay captain, not as good as Ephron was, and some of us still think Brashen should have took over when Cap'n Vestrit stepped off. But he's okay.”

“Then why did you say . . . that about him?” Wintrow was genuinely mystified.

“Because he's the captain,” Mild laboriously explained. “Sailors always say and do like that, even if you like the man. Because you know he can shit on you any time he wants. Hey. You want to know something? When we first found out that Cap'n Vestrit was getting off and putting a new man on, you know what Comfrey done?”

“What?”

“He went to the galley and took the cap'n's coffee mug and wiped the inside with his dick!” Delight shone in Mild's gray eyes. He waited in anticipation for Wintrow's reaction.

“You're teasing me again!” A horrified smile dawned on his face despite himself. It was disgusting, and degrading. It was too outrageous to be true, for a man to do that to another man he hadn't even met yet, just because that man would have power over him. It was unbelievable. And yet . . . and yet ... it was funny. Suddenly Wintrow grasped something. To do that to a man you knew would be cruel and vicious. But to do that to an unknown captain, to be able to look up at man who had life-and-death power over you and imagine him drinking the taste of your dick with his coffee . . . He looked aside from Mild, feeling with disbelief the broad grin on his face. Comfrey had done that to his father.

“Crew's gotta do a few things to the cap'n, and the mate. Can't let them get away with always thinking they're gods and we're dung.”

“Then . . . you think they know about stuff like that?”

Mild grinned. “Can't be around the fleet too long and not know it goes on.” He twanged a few more notes, then shrugged elaborately. “They probably just think it never happens to them.”

“Then no one ever tells them,” Wintrow clarified .for himself.

“Of course not. Who'd tell?” A few notes later, Mild stopped abruptly. “You wouldn't, would you? I mean, even if he is your Da and all . . .” His voice trailed off as he realized that he might have been very indiscreet.

“No, I wouldn't tell,” Wintrow heard himself say. He found a foolish grin on his face as he added wickedly, “But mostly because he is my father.”

“Boy? Boy, get your butt down here!” It was Torg's voice, bellowing up from the deck.

Wintrow sighed. “I swear, the man can sense when I'm not miserable, and always takes steps to correct it.”

Wintrow began the long climb down. Mild leaned over slightly to watch his descent and called after him, “You use too many words. Just say he's on your ass like a coat of paint.”

“That, too,” Wintrow agreed.

“Move it, boy!” Torg bellowed again, and Wintrow gave all his attention to scrambling down.

Much later that night, as he meditated in forgiveness of the day, he wondered at himself. Had not he laughed at cruelty, had not his smile condoned the degradation of another human being? Where was Sa in that? Guilt washed over him. He forced it aside; a true priest of Sa had little use for guilt. It but obscured; if something made a man feel bad then he must determine what about it troubled him, and eliminate that. Simply to suffer the discomforts of guilt did not indicate a man had improved himself, only that he suspected he harbored a fault. He lay still in the darkness and pondered what had made him smile and why. And for the first time in many years, he wondered if his conscience was not too tender, if it had not become a barrier between him and his fellows. “That which separates is not of Sa,” he said softly to himself. But he fell asleep before he could remember the source for the quote, or even if it were from scripture at all.

Their first sighting of the Barrens came on a clear cold morning. The voyage northeast had carried them from autumn to winter, from mild blue weather to perpetual drizzle and fog. The Barrens crouched low on the horizon. They were visible not as proper islands, but only as a place where the waves suddenly became white foam and spume. The islands were low and flat, little more than a series of rocky beaches and sand plains that chanced to be above the high tide line. Inland, Althea had heard there was sand and scrubby vegetation and little more than that. Why the sea bears chose to haul out there, to fight and mate and raise their young, she had no idea. Especially as each year at this time, the slaughter boats came to drive and kill hundreds of their kind. She squinted her eyes against the flying salt spray and wondered what kind of deadly instinct brought them back here every year despite their memories of blood and death.