The disarray and crowding on the captured ship almost seemed normal now. His eyes no longer snagged on every splintered doorjamb. He could look past bloodstains on the decks and walls. As he emerged onto the deck, he pressed his back to the wall to make room for a couple to pass him. They were both map-faces. The man was a bit simple, Wintrow recalled. Dedge was his name. He was one of the map-faces Etta had chosen to hold Kennit down. He always seemed to be with the younger, quicker Saylah. They scarcely noticed Wintrow as they brushed past him, so caught up were they in one another. That, too, had begun to happen. He should have expected it. After any disaster, that was always the first sign of returning hope. Men and women paired off and coupled. He looked after them curiously, wondering where they would find privacy. Idly, he wondered if they had been slaves long, if privacy were of any concern to them any more. He realized he was staring after them. With a twitch of annoyance at himself, he called to mind his errands. Confer with Vivacia. Check on his father. Eat. Bathe. Sleep. Check on Kennit. His life suddenly assumed a shape, with a schedule to his hours and purpose to his acts. He made his way forward.

The Vivacia still swung at anchor in the small cove. Had it truly been just one night since they had hidden here? A mist was dispersing in the morning sunlight. Soon the sun might have enough strength to warm the day. The figurehead stared out toward the wide channel as if keeping watch. Perhaps she was.

“I worry that the other ship will never find us.” She spoke aloud in answer to his silent thought. “How will they know where to look?”

“I have the feeling that Kennit and Sorcor have sailed together for a long time. Such men have ways of doing things, ways they pass on to their crews. Besides, Kennit is still alive. Before long, he may feel well enough to guide us to Bull Creek himself.” Wintrow spoke reassuringly, attempting to comfort the ship.

“Perhaps,” Vivacia conceded grudgingly. “But I would feel better if we were underway already. He has survived the night, that is true. Nevertheless, he is far from strong, or cured. Yesterday, he died when he stopped struggling to live. Today, he struggles to cling to life. I do not like how his dreams twitch and dance. I would feel better if he were in the hands of a real healer.”

Her words stung, just a bit. Wintrow knew he was not a trained healer, but she might have spoken some word of admiration at how well he had done so far. He glanced down at the deck where he had performed his crude surgery. Kennit's flowing blood had followed the contours of his supine body. The dark stain was an eerie outline of his injured leg and hip. It was not far from Wintrow's own bloody handprint. That mark had never been erased from the deck. Would Kennit's shadow stay as well? Uneasily, Wintrow scuffed at it with his bare foot.

It was like sweeping his fingers across a stringed instrument, save that the chord he awoke was not sound. Kennit's life suddenly sang with his own. Wintrow reeled with the force of the connection, then sat down hard on the deck. A moment later, he tried to describe it to himself. It had not been Kennit's memories, nor his thoughts or dreams. Instead, it had been an intense awareness of the pirate. The closest comparison he could summon was the way a perfume or scent could suddenly call up detailed memories, but a hundred times stronger. His sense of Kennit had almost driven him out of himself.

“Now you glimpse how it is for me,” the ship said quietly. A moment later she added, “I did not think it could affect you that way.”

“What was that?”

“The power of blood. Blood remembers. Blood recalls not days and nights and events. Blood recalls identity.”

Wintrow was silent, trying to grasp the full import of what she was saying. He reached out a hand toward Kennit's spilled shadow on the deck. Then he pulled back his fingers. No amount of curiosity could draw him to experience that again. The potency of it had dizzied his soul and nearly displaced him from himself.

“And that is what you felt,” the ship added to his thought. "You, who have blood of your own. At least you possess your own body, your own set of memories and your own identity. You can set Kennit aside and say, 'He is not I.' I have none of that. I am no more than wood impregnated with the memories of your family. The identity you call Vivacia is one I have cobbled together for myself. When Kennit's blood soaked into me, I was powerless to refuse it. Just like the night of the slave uprising, when man after man entered me, and I was powerless to deny any of them.

“The night all that blood was spilled . . . Imagine being drenched in identities, not once or twice, but dozens of times. They collapsed on my decks and died, but as their blood soaked into me, they made me the reservoir of who they had been. Slave or crew member, it made no difference. They came to me. All that they were, they added to me. Sometimes, Wintrow, it is too much. I walk the spiral pathways of their blood, and I know who they were in detail. I cannot free myself from those ghosts. The only more powerful influences are those of you who possess me doubly: with your blood soaked into my planks and your minds linked to mine.”