For a time longer she examined her treasure. Then she glanced furtively aft before she lifted it to her lips. She could not throw it away and she had no place to keep it, save one. She placed it in her mouth and swallowed. It tasted like his blood had smelled; of salts and copper and in an odd way, like the sea itself. She swallowed it down, to become part of herself. She wondered what would become of it, deep inside her wizardwood gullet. Then she felt it being absorbed, in much the same way the deck planks had soaked up his blood.
She had never eaten anything meat before. She had never known hunger or thirst. Yet in the taking of Wintrow's severed flesh into herself, she satisfied some longing that had gone nameless before. “We are one, now,” she whispered to herself.
In a bunk in the forecastle, Wintrow turned over restlessly. The laudanum could soften but not still the throbbing in his hand. His flesh felt hot and dry, tight over the bones of his face and arm. “To be one with Sa,” he said in a small cracked voice. The priest's ultimate goal. “I shall be one with Sa,” he repeated more firmly. “It is my destiny.”
Vivacia had not the heart to contradict him.
It was raining, the relentless pelting rain that was the hallmark of winter in Bingtown. It ran down his carved locks and dripped from his beard onto his bare chest. Paragon crossed his arms on his chest, and then shook his head, sending heavy drops flying. Cold. Cold was mostly something he remembered from sensations humans had stored for him. Wood cannot get cold, he told himself. I'm not cold. No. It was not a matter of temperature, it was just the annoying sensation of water trickling over him. He wiped a hand over his brow and shook the water from it.
“I thought you said it was dead.” A husky contralto voice spoke unnervingly near him. That was another problem with rain; the sound of it filled his ears, numbing them to important sounds like footsteps on wet sand.
“Who's there?” he demanded. His voice sounded angry. Anger was a better thing to show humans than fear. Fear only made them bolder.
No one replied. He hadn't expected anyone to answer, really. They could see that he was blind. They'd probably creep about and he'd never know where they were until the rock hit. He put all his concentration into listening for stealthy footsteps. But when the second voice spoke, it was not far from where the first had originated. He recognized it right away by the Jamaillian accent. Mingsley.
“I thought it was. It never moved nor spoke at all the last time I was here. Dav-my intermediary assured me that it was alive still, but I doubted him. Well. This puts a whole new slant on this.” He cleared his throat. “The Ludlucks have been reluctant to deal, and now I see why. I thought I was bidding on dead wood. My offer was far too low. I shall have to approach them again.”
“I think I've changed my mind.” The woman's voice was low. Paragon couldn't decide what emotion she was repressing. Disgust? Fear? He could not be sure. “I don't think I want anything to do with this.”
“But you seemed so intrigued earlier,” Mingsley objected. “Don't be squeamish now. So the figurehead is alive. That only increases our possibilities.”
“I am intrigued by wizardwood,” she admitted reluctantly. “Someone brought me a tiny piece to work on once. The customer wanted me to carve it into a shape of a bird. I told him, as I tell you, that the work I do is determined by the wood I am given, not by any whim of my own or the customer's. The man urged me to try. But when I took the wood from him, it felt . . . evil. If you could steep wood with an emotion, I'd say that one was pure malice. I couldn't bear to even touch it, let alone carve it. I told him to take it away.”
Mingsley chuckled as if the woman had told an amusing story. “I've found,” he said loftily, as if speaking in generalities, “that the finely tuned sensibilities of an artist are best soothed with the lovely sound of coins being stacked. I am sure we can get past your reservations. And I can promise you that the money from this would be incredible. Look at what your work brings in now, using ordinary wood. If you fashioned beads from wizardwood, we could ask . . . whatever we wanted. Literally. What we would be offering buyers has never been available to them before. We're two of a kind in this. Outsiders, seeing what all the insiders have missed.”
“Two of a kind? I am not at all sure we can even talk.” There was no compromise to the woman's tone, but Mingsley seemed deaf to it.
