“I do not know what to say,” Wintrow replied lamely.

“Do you think I do not already know that?” Vivacia replied bitterly.

A long silence fell between them. To Wintrow, it was as if the very planks of the deck emanated cold toward him. He crept away quietly, his new clothes bundled under his arm, but he took the knowledge with him that there was nowhere he could go that would free her from his presence. Accept life as it came. That was what Etta had said to him but a short time ago. Then, it had seemed brilliant. He tried to imagine accepting that their eternal fate was to be bound together. He shook his head to himself.

“If this be your will, O Sa, I know not how to endure it gladly,” he said quietly. It was pain to feel Vivacia echo the same thought.

IT WAS HOURS LATER AND THE SUN WAS HIGH WHEN THE MAR/ETTA FOUND them. She had a long scorched area along her starboard railing. Deckhands were already at work repairing it. An even plainer sign of both her encounter and her triumph was the string of severed heads that dangled from her bowsprit. The cry of the lookout had brought Wintrow out on deck. Now he stared in sick fascination as the ship drew nearer. He had seen carnage the night the slaves had risen and taken over the Vivacia. These trophies went beyond carnage into a planned savagery that he could not completely grasp.

The men and women that lined the railings alongside him lifted up a cheer at the bloody prizes. To them, the heads represented not only the Satrap who had condoned their slavery but Chalced, the most avaricious market for enslaved humanity. As the Marietta drew closer, Wintrow could see other signs of their battle with the patrol galley. Several of the pirates wore crude bandages. That didn't stop them from grinning and waving to their compatriots aboard Vivacia.

There was a tug at Wintrow's sleeve. “The woman says you're to come and wait on the captain,” Dedge told him dourly. Wintrow looked at him carefully, fixing the man's face and his name in his memory. He tried to look past the lineage of his slavery and see the man beneath the sprawling tattoos. His eyes were sea-gray, his hair no more than a fringe above his ears. Despite his years, muscle showed through his rags. Etta had already marked him as her own; he wore a sash of silk about his waist. “The woman” he had called her, like a title, as if she were the only woman aboard the ship. Wintrow supposed that in a sense, she was. “I'll come right away,” he responded to the man.

The Marietta was dropping anchor. Soon a gig would be lowered to bring Sorcor aboard to report to Kennit. Wintrow had no idea why Ken-nit had summoned him, but perhaps Kennit would allow him to be in the room when Sorcor reported. Earlier today, when he had checked on his father, Kyle had insisted Wintrow must gather as much knowledge of the pirates as he could. Wintrow tried to push the memory of that painful hour away.

Confinement and pain had made Kyle more of a tyrant than ever, and he seemed to believe Wintrow was his only remaining subject. In truth, the boy felt almost no loyalty to him at all, save for a residue of duty. His father's insistence that he must constantly spy and plot for a way to regain control of the ship struck him as laughable. But he had not laughed; he had merely let the man rant while he saw to his injuries and coaxed him to eat the dry bread and old water that were the only rations afforded him. It was easier to let his words flow past. Wintrow had nodded to them, but said little in reply. To try to explain their real situation aboard the Vivacia would only have angered Kyle. Wintrow had let him keep his far-fetched dream that they would somehow regain control of the ship. It seemed the easiest thing to do. Soon enough, they would reach Bull Creek, and then they both must confront what had befallen them. Wintrow would not battle his father to make him recognize reality; reality would do that itself.

He tapped at the door, then entered at Etta's soft response. Kennit was awake on the bunk. He turned his head to greet him with, “She won't help me sit up.”

“She is right. You should not sit up, not yet,” Wintrow replied. “You should lie still and rest completely. How do you feel?” He set his hand to the pirate's forehead.

Kennit rolled his head away from the touch. “Wretched. Oh, do not ask me what I feel. I am alive; what can it matter, what I feel? Sorcor is coming, fresh from triumph, and here I lie, mauled and stinking like a corpse. I will not be seen like this. Help me to sit up, at least.”

“You must not,” Wintrow warned him. “Your blood is quiescent just now. Lie still and let it remain so. To sit up will change the reservoirs of your organs, and may spill blood that then must find its way out through your wound. This I learned well at the monastery.”