“Shut the door,” his father replied gruffly. He unfolded his legs, stretched, and then stood. The rumpled bed behind him retained the imprint of his body. “What did you bring me this time? Sawdust cakes full of weevils?” He glared at the door that still stood open. In one angry stride he crossed the small room and slammed it shut.

“Turnip and onion soup and wheatcakes,” Wintrow replied evenly. “The same food that everyone else got today.”

Kyle Haven grunted in reply. He lifted the bowl of soup, poked it with a finger. “It's cold,” he complained, and then drank it where he stood. His whiskery throat moved as he swallowed. Wintrow wondered when he had last shaved. When he lowered the bowl, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He caught his son staring and glared back. “Well? What sort of manners do you expect of a man kept like a dog in a kennel?”

“There are no longer any guards on the door. I asked some days ago if you might be allowed out on deck. Kennit said you could, so long as I was with you and took responsibility for you. It is your own decision to remain in this room as if it were a cell.”

“I wish there were a mirror in here, so I could see if I look as stupid as you think I am,” his father retorted sourly. He snatched up a wheatcake and wiped out the bowl with it before he bit into it. “You'd like that, wouldn't you?” he muttered around a mouthful of food. “You could trot along beside me on deck, and be oh - so - surprised and horrified when some sneaking bastard put a knife in my ribs. Then you would be rid of me for good and all. Don't think that I don't know that's what you want. That's what this has all been about. Not that you have the guts to do it yourself. Oh, no, not the boy in the skirts. He prays to Sa, rolls his big brown eyes, and sets it up for others to do his dirty work. What's this?”

“Aide tea. And if I wanted so badly to be rid of you, I'd have poisoned it.” Wintrow heard with a shock the heartless sarcasm in his own voice.

His father halted with the mug halfway to his lips. He gave a hoarse bark of laughter. “No, you wouldn't. Not you. You'd get someone else to poison it, and then you would give it to me, so you could pretend none of it was your doing. Not my fault, you could whine, and when you crawled back to your mother, she would believe you and let you go back to your monastery.”

Wintrow pinched his lips together. I am living with a madman, he reminded himself. Conversing with him is not going to bring him to his senses. His mind has turned. Only almighty Sa can cure him and only in his own time. He found a modicum of patience within himself. He tried to believe it was not a show of defiance when he crossed the small room and opened the window.

“Shut that,” his father growled. “Do you think I want to smell that scummy little town out there?”

“It smells no worse than the stench of your own body that fills this room,” Wintrow countered. He walked two steps away from the open window. At his feet was his own pallet, seldom slept in, and the small bundle of clothes he could call his own. Nominally, he shared this small room with his father. The reality was that he slept most nights on the foredeck near Vivacia. The proximity made him uncomfortably aware of her thoughts, and through her, the presence of Kennit's dreams. Still, that was preferable to his father's irascible and critical company.

“Is he going to ransom us?” Kyle Haven demanded suddenly. “He could get a good price for us. Your mother probably could scrape up a bit, and the Bingtown Traders would come through with more, to get a liveship back. Does he know that? That he could get a good price for us? You should tell him that. Has he sent a ransom note yet?”

Wintrow sighed. Not this conversation again. He cut swiftly to the meat of it, hoping for a mercifully quick end. “He doesn't want to ransom the ship, Father. He intends to keep it. That means I have to stay with it. I don't know what he plans to do with you. I've asked him, but he doesn't answer. I don't want to make him angry.”

“Why? You never feared to make me angry!”

Wintrow sighed. “Because he is an unpredictable man. If I push him, he may take . . . rash action. To demonstrate his power. I think it is wiser to wait for him to see he has nothing to gain from holding you. As he heals, he seems more reasonable. In time-”

“In time I shall be little more than a living corpse, shut up in here, taunted and mocked and despised by all on this ship. He seeks to break me with darkness and poor food and no company save that of my idiot son!”

His father had finished eating. Without a word, Wintrow picked up the tray and turned to go. “That's right, run away! Hide from the truth.” When Wintrow made no reply as he opened the door, his father bellowed after him, “Make sure you take the chamberpot and empty it! It stinks.”