Wintrow did not wait any longer. He leaped lightly from the foredeck to the waist of the ship. Head up, he strode across the deck to confront the pirates. He did not even look at Sa'Adar. The more he saw of the man, the less he thought of him as a priest.

The pirate chief was a large, well-muscled man. Dark eyes glinted above the burn scar on his cheek. A former slave himself, then. His unruly hair was caught back in a queue and further confined in a bright gold kerchief. Like his woman, his opulent clothing was soaked to him. A man who worked his own deck, then, Wintrow thought, and felt a grudging respect for that.

He met the man's gaze. “I am Wintrow Vestrit, of the Bingtown Trader Vestrits. You stand on the decks of the liveship Vivacia, also of the Vestrit Family.”

But it was a tall pale man next to the scarred man who replied to him. “I am Captain Kennit. You address my esteemed first mate, Sorcor. And the ship that was yours is now mine.”

Wintrow looked him up and down, shocked beyond speech. Numbed as his nose was to the stench of humans, this man reeked of disease. He glanced down to where Kennit's leg stopped, and took note of the crutch he leaned on, on the swollen leg that distended the fabric of his trousers as a sausage stuffs a casing. When he met Kennit's pale eyes, he noted how large and fever-bright they were, how the man's flesh clung to his skull. When Wintrow replied, he spoke gently to the dying man. “This ship can never be yours. She is a liveship. She can only belong to one of the Vestrit family.”

Kennit made a brief motion of his hand to indicate Kyle. “Yet this man claims he is the owner.” Wintrow's father yet managed to stand, and almost straight. Neither fear nor his physical pain did he permit to show. He was a man who waited now. Kyle spoke not a word to his son.

Wintrow shaped his words with care. “He 'owns' her, yes, in the sense that one can own a thing. But she is mine. I do not claim to own her, any more than a father can claim to own his child.”

Captain Kennit looked him up and down disdainfully. “You look a bit young of a pup to be claiming any kind of a child. And by the mark on your face, I would say the ship owned you. I take it your father married into a Trader family, then, but you are blood of that line.”

“I am a Vestrit by blood, yes.” Wintrow kept his voice even.

“Ah.” Again the small gesture of his hand toward Kyle. “Then we don't need your father. Only you.” Kennit turned back to Sa'Adar. “That one you may have, as you requested. And those other two.”

There was a splash, and a trumpeting from one of the serpents. Wintrow looked starboard just in time to see two map-faces tip the other Jamaillian sailor over the edge. He went screaming until the white serpent cut his cry short with a snap. Wintrow's own cry of “Wait!” went unheeded. Vivacia gave a wordless cry of horror, and flailed at the serpents, but could not reach them. Map-faces were laying hold of his father. He sprang, not towards them, but at Sa'Adar. He gripped the man by the front of his shirt. “You promised them they would live! If they worked the ship for you through the storm, you promised them they would live!”

Sa'Adar shrugged and smiled down at him. “It's not my will, boy, but that of Captain Kennit. He does not have to keep my word for me.”

“You spin your word so thin, I doubt anyone could be bound by it,” Wintrow cried furiously. He whirled on the men who had seized his father. “Set him free.”

They paid no attention to him as they forced his struggling father to the rail. Physically, Wintrow had no chance against them. He turned back to Captain Kennit, speaking quickly. “Set him free! You have seen how the ship is about the serpents! If you throw one of her own to them, she will be greatly angered.”

“No doubt,” the pirate captain replied lazily. “But he isn't truly one of her own. So she'll get over it.”

“I won't,” Wintrow told him furiously. “And you will soon discover that if you cut one of us, we both bleed.” His father was struggling, but wordlessly and without much strength. Beside the ship, the white serpent trumpeted eagerly. Wintrow knew he had not the strength to prevail against those two men, let alone however many would muster to Kennit's command.

Kennit, however, was another matter. Swift as a snake striking, Wintrow seized the pirate captain by his shirt front. He jerked him forward, so that his crutch fell to the deck and he must depend on Wintrow or fall also. The sudden motion wrung a low cry of pain from the man. The mate sprang forward with a snarl.

“Back!” Wintrow warned him. “And stop those men. Or I'll kick him in that leg and spatter his rotten flesh all over the deck.”