Ship of Destiny (61 page)

“A scrap of a charm, no bigger than a walnut, claims to be a dragon!”

“One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon. Take your hands off her.”

Kennit slowly complied. As he stood and took up his crutch, he observed, “I’m not afraid of you. As for Althea, I will have her. Of her own free will. You will see.” He breathed out a long, slow breath. “Ship, woman and boy. All will be mine.”

HOW HAD SHE KNOWN? PARAGON WONDERED MISERABLY. HOW
had Amber known just where to put her hands to reach each of them, both of them, all of him at once? Her bare fingers pressed his wood, and she was open to him now. If he had wanted, he could have reached into her and plumbed all of her secrets. But he did not wish to know any more of her than he already did. He only wanted her to give up and die peacefully. Why would not she do that for him? He had always been a friend to her. But she ignored him now, reaching past him to speak to the others that shared his wood. She spoke to him, but they listened, and their listening echoed through him, vibrating his soul.

“I need to live,” she begged. “Only you can help me. There is still so much I must do in my life. Please. If there is any bargain we can strike, tell me. Ask of me anything, and if it is in my power, it is yours. But help us live. Close up your seams, and stop the cold water flowing. Let me live.”

“Amber. Amber.” Against all wisdom, he spoke to her. “Please. Just let go. Be still. Be silent. We will die together.”

“Ship. Paragon. Why? Why do we have to die? What changed, why are you doing this? Why can’t we live?”

She would never understand. He knew it was foolish, but he tried anyway. “The memories have to die. If no one remembers them anymore, then he can live as if they never happened. So Kennit gave the memories to me, and I was to die with them. So that one of us could live free.”

They were listening still, both of them. The Greater spoke suddenly, his thoughts ringing through his half of the hull. “It doesn’t work that way. Silencing memories does not make them stop existing. Events cannot be undone by forgetting them.”

He felt Amber’s shock. Valiantly she tried to overcome it. She spoke to him as if she had not felt the Greater. “Why does Kennit do this to you? How can he? What is Kennit to you?”

“He is my family.” Paragon could not conceal his love for the pirate. “He is a Ludluck, like me. The last of his line, born in the Pirate Isles. A Bingtown Trader’s son took a Pirate Isles bride. Kennit was their child, his son, his prince. And my playmate. The one who finally loved me for myself.”

“You are not a Ludluck,” the Greater interrupted him. “We are dragons.”

“Yes, we are dragons, and we wish to live.” It was the Lesser, managing to insert a thought of his own.

“Silence!” the Greater one quashed him. Paragon’s list became more marked as the Greater asserted his control.

“Who are you?” Amber asked in confusion. “Paragon, why are there dragons in you?”

The Greater laughed. Paragon knew better than to try to reply.

“Please,” Amber begged of them now. “Please, help us live.”

“Do you deserve to live?” the Greater demanded of her. He spoke with Paragon’s mouth in Paragon’s voice, taking control of the figurehead and booming his voice into the wind. It did not matter to him that Amber heard his thought through her hands. He spoke as he did, Paragon knew, to prove to the ship how strong he had grown. “If you did, you would see it is right now within your power to save all of us. But if you are too stupid to see how, I think we should all die here together.”

“Tell her how,” pleaded the Lesser. “It is our time, come again, and you will let us die because a human is stupid? No! Tell her. Let her save us so we can go on and—”

“Silence, weakling! You have kept company with humans too long. The strong survive. Trapped as we are in this body, we are better off dead if the humans aboard us are stupid. So let her show us that she can make our life worth the living. If she can fathom how to live, we will let her give us eyes again. A Paragon we shall be, but not Paragon of the Ludlucks. Paragon of the Dragons. Two made into one.”

“What of me?” Paragon cried out wildly. Rain cascaded down his blind face and his chest. He gripped his beard and dragged at it fiercely. “But what of me?”

“Be with us,” the Greater said. “Or do not be. That is the only choice that remains to you. The serpent spoke true. There remains to us a duty to our own, and no other dragon or dragon-made-ship has the right to deny it to us. We can be only one. Be one with us, or do not be.”

“We’re dying!” Amber cried. Her voice was weak, hoarse from the smoke she breathed. “Fire burns above us, and water fills the hold. How can I save you, or myself?”

“Think,” the Greater one commanded her. “Prove yourself worthy.”

For an instant, Amber rallied. She reached strongly after the Greater, as if she would steal from him what she must know. Then, a fit of coughing shook her. Every spasm of it set her scalded flesh to screaming. As the coughing passed, Amber faded from Paragon’s awareness. He felt her pass to transparency, and then nothingness. As she died, he felt both grief and relief. The heaviness of the cold water in him dragged him down. The waves were getting taller. Soon they would wash over his deck. The fires would go out as the waves took him down, but that was all right. The fire and smoke had accomplished their work.

Then, like an arrow striking home to a target, Amber was suddenly within him. She gasped as she plunged deep into the memories of dragonkind. Paragon felt her floundering, overwhelmed by the unending chain of memories, going from dragon to serpent to dragon to serpent, back beyond to the very first egg. She could not hold it all. He felt her drowning in the memories. She fought valiantly, searching for what the Greater withheld from her as he allowed his memories to flood her.

“It is not in my memory, but in your own, little fool,” he told her. He witnessed her struggling as one watches tree sap flow over a trapped ant.

She wrenched clear of him as if she tore her own hands from the ends of her arms. Paragon felt her fall, and knew that she dragged in breath after smoky breath, striving for fresh air that was not there. She began to fade again, slipping below consciousness. Then, slowly, she lifted her head.

“I know what it is,” she announced. “I know how to save us. But I will not buy my life at Paragon’s expense. I will save us if you promise me this. You will be, not two made one, but three. Paragon must be preserved in you.”

He could feel her fear. It ran from her with her sweat, she expelled it with every breath. He was struck dumb by the idea that someone would be willing to die rather than betray him.

“Done!” the Greater announced. A faint thread of admiration shimmered through his words. “This one has a heart worthy of being partnered with a dragon-ship. Now let her prove she has a mind as well.”

Paragon felt Amber strive to rise, but she had spent the last of her strength. She fell back against him. For her, he tried to close up his seams. He could not. The dragons would not let him. So he fed her such strength as he could, pouring it from his wood into the frail body that rested against him. She lifted her head in the smoky darkness.

“Clef!” she called. Her great exertion produced such a weak call. “Clef!”

“
PUT YOUR BACKS INTO IT, DAMN YOU!
”
BRASHEN BELLOWED.
Then he went off into a fit of coughing. He let the makeshift ram come to a rest on the deck. The men who had been helping him pound on the underside of the hatch sank down around him. The hatch above was not surrendering and time was fleeting. He pushed his panic away. Wizardwood was hard to kindle. There was still a little time, still a chance for survival, but only if he kept trying.

“Don’t slack off on that pump! Drowning’s no better than burning.” At his shouted command, he heard the pump crew go back to work, but the tempo was half-hearted. Too many of the men had been killed, too many injured. The ship was alive with ominous sounds: the working of the bilge pumps, the moaning of the injured, and from above the faint crackling of flames. The bilges were rising, bringing their stink with them. The more water Paragon shipped, the more pronounced the tilt of the deck became. The smoke filtering down into the hold was getting denser, also. Time was running out for them.

“Everybody on the ram again.” Three of the men staggered to their feet and took a grip on the beam they wielded.

At that moment, Brashen was distracted by a tug at his sleeve. He looked down to find Clef. The boy cradled his injured arm across his belly. “It’s Amber, sir.” His face was pale with pain and fear in the uneasy lamplight.

Brashen shook his head. He rubbed at his stinging, streaming eyes. “Do the best you can for her, boy. I can’t come now. I’ve got to keep working on this.”

“No, it’s a message, sir. She said to tell you, try the other hatch. The one in your cabin.”

It took a moment for the boy’s words to penetrate. Then Brashen shouted, “Come on! Bring the ram!” He snatched down a lantern and staggered off without waiting to see if anyone followed. He cursed his own stupidity. When Amber had lived aboard the beached Paragon, she had used the captain’s quarters as her bedroom, but stored her woodworking supplies below in the hold. For her convenience, she had cut a trapdoor in the floor of the room. Both Althea and Brashen had been horrified when they discovered it. Amber had repaired the floor, bracing it from below and pegging it together well. But all the bracing for it was below and accessible from this level. Paragon’s hatch covers had been designed to withstand the pounding of the sea, but the trapdoor inside his stateroom had been nailed and braced shut only.

Brashen’s confidence ebbed when he looked up at the patched deck above him. Amber was a good carpenter and thorough in her work. The list of the ship made it difficult to work here. He was shoving vainly at a crate when his crew caught up with them. With their aid he stacked crates and barrels and then climbed up them to examine the patched floor above him. Clef passed up the tools.

With hammer and crowbar, Brashen pulled away the bracing. This close to the ceiling, the smoke was thicker. In the lantern light, he saw the drifting gray tendrils reaching down through the seams of the deck. If they broke through, they might find fire above them. He didn’t hesitate. “Use the ram, boys,” he directed them, scrabbling out of the way.

There was no strength behind their swing, but on the fourth attempt, Brashen saw the boards give way a bit. He waved the men aside and they fell back, coughing and wheezing. Brashen climbed his platform again and hammered at the wood blocking him from life. When it suddenly gave way, the planks of the patch cascaded bruisingly down around him. Yellow firelight illuminated the grimy faces below him.

He jumped, caught the edge of the hole, and hauled himself up. The wall of the room was burning, but the fire had not spread within yet. “Get up here!” Brashen shouted with as much force as he could muster. “Get out while you can!”

Clef was already at the lip of the hole. Brashen seized him by his good arm and hauled him up. The boy followed him as he made his way out onto the deck. Cold rain drenched him. A quick glance about showed him that Paragon was alone in the water. A single white serpent circled curiously. The pouring rain was an ally in putting out the fire, but by itself, it would not be enough. Flames still licked up the main mast and ran furtively along the sides of the deckhouse. Fallen rigging sheltered small pockets of burning wood and canvas. Brashen dragged smoldering debris off the top of the main hatch, undogged it and flung it open. “Get up here!” he shouted again. “Get everyone up on deck, except for the pump crew. Clear this—” He had to stop to cough his lungs clear. Men began dragging themselves up onto the deck. The whites of their eyes showed shockingly in their sooty faces. Groans and coughing came from below. “Clear away the burning stuff. Help the injured up on deck where they can breathe.” He turned and made his way forward through a litter of charred debris. He threw overboard a tangle of rope and a piece of spar that still burned merrily. The cold downpour was as blinding as the smoke had been, but at least the air was breathable. Every breath he drew helped to clear his lungs.

He reached the foredeck. “Paragon, close up your seams. Why are you trying to kill us? Why?”

The figurehead did not reply. The uneven light of flames danced illumination over the figurehead. Paragon stared straight ahead into the storm. His arms hugged his chest. The knotted muscles of his back showed the tension of his posture. As Brashen watched, the white serpent rose before them. It cocked its maned head and stared with gleaming red eyes up at the figurehead. It vocalized at the ship, but received no answer.

Clef spoke suddenly behind him. “I went back for Amber. She’s safe now.”

No one was safe yet. “Paragon! Close up your seams!” Brashen bellowed again.

Clef tugged at Brashen’s sleeve. He looked down at the boy’s puzzled, upturned face. “He awready did. Din’t you feel it?”

“No. I didn’t.” Brashen seized hold of the railing, trying to will contact with the figurehead. There was nothing. “I don’t feel him at all.”

“I do. I feel ’em both,” Clef said cryptically. An instant later, he warned, “Hang tight, ser!”

With a startling suddenness, the ship leveled itself. The sloshing of the bilge left the deck rocking. As it subsided, Brashen heard wild oaths of amazement from the deck behind him, but he grinned into the darkness. They were riding low in the water, but they were level. If the ship had closed up its seams, if they could keep the bilge pumps going, if the storm grew no more violent, they would live. “Ship, my ship, I knew you wouldn’t let us die.”

“It warn’t him. Least, not exactly.” The boy’s voice was dropping to a mumble. “It’s them and him. The dragons.” Brashen caught the boy as he sagged to the deck. “I bin dreamin’ ’em for a while now. Thought they was jes’ a dream.”

“
TAKE THEM UP,
”
KENNIT BARKED AT JOLA. HE WATCHED IN
annoyance as Wintrow and Etta were brought aboard. Frustration threatened to consume him. He had anchored in this cove to wait out the squall and decide what he wished to do. His initial plans to return to Divvytown might have to be changed. He had hoped to have more time alone with Althea, not to mention Bolt.