“Control,” the charm corrected him. “You will have left your mark on how they live their lives. I have decided that that is what you are all about, Kennit. Control. What do you believe, pirate? That if you get enough control, you can go back and control the past? Make it all unhappen? Put your father's precise plan back to work, bring his little paradise back to life? The blood will always be there, Kennit. Like a smear of ink on a perfect plan, the blood sinks in and stains. No matter what you do, when you walk into that house, you will always smell the blood and hear the screams.”

He had thrown down his pen in fury. To his disgust, it had left a snake's trail of blood across his plans. No, not blood, he told himself angrily. Ink, black ink, that was all it was. Ink could be blotted and bleached away. So could blood. Eventually.

He had gone to bed.

In the darkness, he had lain awake and waited for Etta to come in. But when she did come in, she came slinking in like a cat after a night's hunt. He knew where she had been. He listened to her disrobe in the darkness. She came softly to the side of the bed she slept in and tried to slip under the covers.

“So. How was the boy?” he asked her in a hearty voice.

She gasped in surprise. He saw her silhouette as she set her hand to her heart. “You startled me, Kennit. I thought you were asleep.”

“Obviously,” he observed sarcastically. He was angry, he decided, not because she had slept with the boy. He had intended that all along, of course. It was that she thought she could deceive him about it. That meant she thought he was stupid. It was time to divest her of that notion.

“Are you in pain?” she asked him. Her concern sounded genuine.

“Why do you ask?” he asked in return.

“I thought that might be what kept you awake. I fear Wintrow was injured more seriously than we thought. He did not complain this afternoon, but tonight his arm was so swollen he scarcely could get his shirt off.”

“So you helped him,” Kennit decided pleasantly.

“Yes. I made a poultice for him. It took the swelling down. Then I asked him some questions about a book I've been trying to read. It seemed to me a foolish book, for all it spoke about was how to decide what was real in one's life and what was the product of how one considered life. Philosophy, he named it. A waste of one's time, I told him. What is the good of pondering how one knows that a table is a table? He argued that it makes us think about how we think. I still think it is foolish, but he insists I should read it. I had not realized how long we had argued until I left his room.”

“Argued?”

“Not angrily. Discussed, I should have said.” She lifted the coverlet and slid into the bed with him. “I've washed,” she added hastily as he shrugged away from her touch.

“In Wintrow's room?” he asked nastily.

“No. In the galley, where the water can be kept hot more easily.” She settled her body against his and sighed. A moment later, she asked, almost sharply, “Kennit, why did you ask me that? Do you mistrust me? I am faithful to you.”

“Faithful!” The word shocked him.

She sat up abruptly in the bed, her action snatching the blankets off him. “Of course, faithful! Faithful always. What did you think?”

This could be a barrier to all his plans for her. He tugged at the blanket and she lay back down beside him. He formulated his words carefully. “I thought that you would be with me for a time. Until another attracted you.” He shrugged lightly, more disturbed than he liked to admit. Why should it be so hard to admit this? She was a whore. Whores were not faithful.

“Until another attracted me? Such as Wintrow, you mean?” She laughed a rich throaty chuckle. “Wintrow?”

“He is closer to your age than I am. His body is sweet and young, scarcely scarred and possessed, I might add, of two legs. Why would not you find him more desirable?”

“You are jealous!” She said it as if he had just presented her with a diamond. “Oh, Kennit. You are being silly. Wintrow? I started to be kind to him only because you asked it of me. Now, I have come to see his value. I see what you wanted to show me about him. He has taught me much, and I am grateful for that. But why would I trade a man for an untried youth?”

“He is whole,” Kennit pointed out. “Today he fought as a man. He killed.”

“He fought today, yes. But that scarcely makes him a man grown. He fought for the first time, with a blade we gave him and the skills I taught him. He killed, and that act consumes and torments him tonight. He spoke long about it, the wrong of taking from a man what Sa alone could give him.” She lowered her voice. “He wept about it.”