A bit more pressure and Althea yelled, “Wah!” and suddenly batted his hand away. “What are you doing?” she demanded angrily, turning to glare up at him.

“I told you. I've got to stitch this shut.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I wasn't listening.” She rubbed at her eyes, then reached back to touch her own scalp cautiously. “I suppose you do have to close it,” she said ruefully. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. “I wish I could either pass out or wake up,” she said woefully. “I just feel foggy. I hate it.”

“Let me see what I have in here,” he suggested. He knelt on one knee to rummage through the ship's stores of medicines. “This stuff hasn't been replenished in years,” he grumbled to himself as Althea peered past his shoulder. “Half the containers are empty, the herbs that should be green or brown are gray, and some of the other stuff smells like mold.”

“Maybe it's supposed to smell like mold?” Althea suggested.

“I don't know,” he muttered.

“Let me look. I used to restock the Vivacia's medicines when we got to town.” She leaned against him to reach the chest in the small space between the bunk and the wall. She inspected a few bottles, holding them up to the lamp light and then setting them aside. She opened one small pot, wrinkled her nose in distaste at the strong odor, and capped it again. “There's nothing useful in there,” she decided, and sat back on the bunk. “I'll hold it closed and you just stitch it. I'll try to sit still.”

“Just a minute,” Brashen said grudgingly. He had saved part of the plug of cindin. Not a very large part, just a bit to give him something to look forward to on a bad day. He took it out of his coat pocket and brushed lint off it. He showed it to Althea and then carefully broke it in two pieces. “Cindin. It should wake you up a bit, and make you feel better. You do it like this.” He tucked it into his lower lip, packed it down with his tongue. The familiar bitterness spread through his mouth. If it hadn't been for the taste of the cindin, he thought ruefully, he might have tasted the drug in his beer. He pushed that aside as a useless thought and nudged the cindin away from the earlier sore.

“It'll taste very bitter at first,” he warned her. “That's the wormwood in it. Gets your juices going.”

She looked very dubious as she tucked it into her lip. She made a wry face and then sat meeting his eyes, waiting. After a moment she asked, “Is it supposed to burn?”

“This is pretty strong stuff,” he admitted. “Shift it around in your lip. Don't leave it in one place too long.” He watched the expression on her face slowly change, and felt an answering grin spread over his own. “Pretty good, huh?”

She gave a low laugh. “Fast, too.”

“Starts fast, ends fast. I never really saw any harm to it, as long as a man was finished before he came on watch.”

He watched her awkwardly move the plug in her lip. “My father said that men used it when they should have been sleeping instead. Then they came on watch all used up. And if they were still on it when they were working, they'd be too confident, and take unneeded risks.” Her voice trailed off. “ 'Risk-takers endanger everyone,' he always said.”

“Yes. I remember,” Brashen agreed gravely. “I never used cindin aboard the Vivacia, Althea. I respected your father too much.”

For a moment silence held, then she sighed. “Let's do this,” she suggested.

“Right,” he agreed. He took up the needle and thread again. She followed it with her eyes. Maybe he'd made her too alert. “There's no room in here to work,” he complained. “Here. Lie down on the bunk and turn your head. Good.” He crouched down on the floor beside the bunk. This was better, he could almost see what he was doing. He dabbed away the sluggishly welling blood and picked out a few stray hairs. “Now hold the gash shut. No, your fingers are in the way. Here. Like this.” He arranged her hands, and it was no accident that one of her wrists was mostly over her eyes. “I'll try to be quick.”

“Be careful instead,” she warned him. “And don't stitch it too tight. Just pull the edges together as evenly as you can, but not so they hump up.”

“I'll try. I've never done this before, you know. But I've watched it done more than once.”

She moved the plug of cindin in her lip, and he remembered to shift his own. He winced as it touched a sore from earlier in the evening. He saw her jaws clench and he began. He tried not to think of the pain he inflicted, only of doing a good job. He finally got the needle to pierce her scalp. He had to hold the skin firmly to her skull as he brought the tip of the curved needle up on the other side of the cut. Drawing the thread through was the worst. It made a tiny ripping noise as it slipped through, very unnerving to him. She set her teeth and shuddered to each stitch, but did not cry out.