“I’m sorry,” Althea said uncomfortably. Then she added, “It’s going to be all right now.” A few moments later she tried, “What’s wrong?”
For a time, her mother did not reply. Then she drew a deep, rattling breath. Ronica stepped back from her daughter and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes like a child. It smeared the careful paint on her lashes and eyelids, marking the fabric of her sleeve. Her mother took no notice of that. She walked unsteadily back to her divan and sat down. She took a long drink of her wine, then set it down and tried to smile. The smeared paint on her face made it ghastly. “Everything,” she said quietly. “Everything that could be wrong, is. Save for one thing. You are home and alive.” The honest relief on her mother’s face was more searing than her anger had been.
It was hard to cross the room and seat herself on the end of the divan. Harder still to say calmly and rationally, “Tell me about it.” For so many months, Althea had looked forward to coming home, to telling her story, to forcing her family to finally, finally listen to her view. Now she was here, and she knew with the unerring truth of Sa’s own revelation that duty demanded she listen first to all her mother would say.
For a moment, Ronica just looked at her. Then the words began to spill out. It was a disordered tale of one disaster after another. The
Vivacia
was late coming home. She should have been back by now. Kyle might have taken her straight on to Chalced to sell the slaves, but surely he would have sent word by another ship if he intended to do so. Wouldn’t he? He knew how poor the family finances were; surely, he would have sent word so that Keffria would have
something
to tell their creditors. Malta had been into one kind of mischief after another. She didn’t even know where to begin that tale, but the end of it was that a Rain Wild Trader was now courting Malta. As his family held the paper on the
Vivacia,
courtesy and politics dictated that the Vestrits at least entertain his suit, although Sa knew Malta was not truly a woman and old enough to be courted.
Moreover, Davad Restart had leapt into the midst of that tangle, and had made one gaffe after another all week in his determination to wring a profit from the courtship. Just because the man was totally tactless did not mean he was without tactics. It had taken all her ingenuity to keep him diverted and to keep Reyn’s family from taking offense. Keffria was insisting on trying to manage the family businesses. That was her right, true, but she wasn’t giving them the attention they needed. Instead she was all caught up in the flowers and the frills of this courtship, and never mind that the grain fields were only half-plowed and the planting moon was only a week away. A late frost had taken at least half the blooms from the apple orchards. The roof in the second bedroom in the east wing had begun to leak, and there was no money to have it seen to right now, but if it were not repaired soon, that entire ceiling would give way and …
“Mother,” Althea said gently, and then, “Mother! A moment! My head is reeling with all this!”
“Mine, also, and for far longer than yours,” her mother pointed out wearily.
“I don’t understand this.” Althea tried to speak calmly although she wanted to shout. “Kyle is using
Vivacia
as a slave ship? And Malta is being practically sold off to the Rain Wild Traders to pay our family debts? How can Keffria allow that, let alone you? Even if the
Vivacia
has not yet returned, how can our finances be so bad? Didn’t the shore-side properties used to pay their own way?”
Her mother made small patting motions at her with her hands. “Calm down. I suppose this is a shock to you. I have seen the gradual slide, but you return to see us at the bottom of our fortunes.” Her mother pressed her hands to her temples for a moment. She looked at Althea absently. “How are we to get you out of those clothes and properly attired without the servants asking questions?” she mused in an aside to herself. Then she drew a breath. “Just to explain all this to you wearies me so. It is like detailing the slow death of something you loved. Allow me to skip details and say just this instead: the use of slaves for field and orchard crops in Chalced and even in Bingtown lands has driven prices down. We have always hired workers for our fields; for years, the same men and women have plowed, planted and harvested for us. Now what are we to tell them? It would be more profitable to let the fields lie fallow or graze goats on them, but how can we do that to our farmers? So, we struggle on. Or rather, at my behest, Keffria does. She gives some heed to my counsel. Kyle, as you know, controls the ship. That was my error; I can not bear to look you in the face over it. But Sa help me, Althea! I fear he is right. If the
Vivacia
succeeds as a slaver, she may yet save us all. Slaves, it seems, are the only way to prosper. Slaves as cargo, slaves in the grain fields … ”
Althea looked at her mother incredulously. “I cannot believe I am hearing those words from you.”
“I know it is wrong, Althea. I know. But what are our alternatives? Let little Malta unknowingly flirt herself into a marriage she isn’t ready for, simply for the sake of the family fortune? Surrender Vivacia back to the Rain Wilds in forfeiture of the debt, and live in poverty? Or perhaps we could just flee our creditors, leave Bingtown, and go Sa knows where … ”
“Have you truly considered such things?” Althea asked in a low voice.
“I have,” her mother replied wearily. “Althea, if we do not take action on our own, then others will decide our fate. Our creditors will strip us of all we own, and then we might look back and say, well, if we had allowed Malta to wed Reyn, at least she would have been spared living in poverty. At least the ship would have been ours.”
“‘The ship would have been ours’? How?”
“I told you. The Khuprus family has bought the note on Vivacia. They have as much as said that forgiving the debt would be Reyn’s wedding gift to the family.”
“That’s crazy.” Althea uttered the words flatly. “No one gives wedding gifts like that. Not even Rain Wild Traders.”
Ronica Vestrit took a deep breath. Changing the subject, she announced, “We have to sneak you up to your room and get you into some proper clothes. Though you look skinny as a rail. I wonder if anything you left here would still fit you.”
“I can’t resume being Althea Vestrit just yet. I bring a message for you from Captain Tenira of the liveship
Ophelia.
”
“That is true? I thought it was only a ruse to get in to see me.”
“It’s true. I’ve been serving aboard the
Ophelia.
When we have more time, I’ll tell you all about that. But for now, I want to give you his message, and then take your reply back to him. Mother, the
Ophelia
has been seized at the tariff docks. Captain Tenira has refused to pay the outrageous fees they have demanded, especially all the ones they have tacked on to support those Chalcedean pigs tied up in the harbor.”
“Tied-up Chalcedean pigs?” Her mother looked confused.
“Surely you know what I mean. The Satrap has authorized Chalcedean galleys to act as patrol vessels throughout the Inside Passage. One of them actually attempted to halt us and board us on our way here. They are no more than pirates, and worse than the ones they are supposed to control. I cannot understand why they are tolerated in Bingtown harbor, let alone that anyone would stomach the extra fees demanded of us!”
“Oh. The galleys. There has been quite a stir about them lately, but I think Tenira is the first to refuse the fees. Fair or not, the Traders pay them. The alternative is no trade at all, as Tenira is finding out.”
“Mother, that is ridiculous! This is our town. Why aren’t we standing up to the Satrap and his lackeys? The Satrap no longer abides by his word to us; why should we continue to let him leech away our honest profits?”
“Althea … I have no energy left to consider such things. I don’t doubt you are right, but what can I do about it? I have my family to preserve. Bingtown will have to look after itself.”
“Mother, we cannot think that way! Grag and I have discussed this a great deal. Bingtown has to stand united before the New Traders and the Satrap and all of Jamaillia if need be. The more we concede to them, the more they take. The slaves that the New Traders have brought in are at the bottom of our family problems right now. We need to force them to observe our old law forbidding slavery. We need to tell the New Traders that we will not recognize their new charters. We need to tell the Satrap that we will pay no more taxes until he lives up to the letter of our original charter. No. We need to go further than that. We need to tell him that a fifty percent tax on our goods and his limits on where we may sell our goods are things of the past. We have already let it go on too long. Now we need to stand united and make it stop.”
“There are some Traders who speak as you do,” her mother said slowly. “And I reply to them as I do to you: my family first. Besides. What can I do?”
“Just say you will stand united with those Traders who refuse the tariffs. That is all I am asking.”
“Then you must ask your sister. She has the vote now, not I. On your father’s death, she inherited. She is the Bingtown Trader now, and the council vote is hers to wield.”
“What do you think she will say?” Althea asked after a long silence. It had taken her a time to grasp the full significance of what her mother had said.
“I don’t know. She does not go to many of the Trader meetings. She is, she says, too busy and she also says she does not want to vote on things that she has not had time to study.”
“Have you spoken to her? Told her how crucial those votes can be?”
“It is only one vote,” Ronica said almost stubbornly.
Althea thought she heard a trace of guilt in her mother’s voice. She pressed her. “Let me go back to Trader Tenira and say this at least. That you will speak to Keffria, and counsel her both to attend the next Trader meeting, and to vote in Tenira’s support. He intends to be there and to demand that the Council officially side with him.”
“I suppose I can do that much. Althea, you need not carry this message back yourself. If he is openly defiant of the tariff minister, then he could precipitate some sort of … of action down there. Let me have Rache fetch a runner to carry your word. There is no need for you to be in the middle of this.”
“Mother. I wish to be in the middle of this. Also, I want them to know I stand firmly with them. I feel I must go.”
“But not right now! Althea, you have only just come home. Surely you can stop to eat and bathe and change into proper clothes.” Her mother looked aghast.
“That I cannot. I am safer on the docks in these clothes. The guards at the tariff dock will not blink an eye at the errands of a ship’s boy. Let me return for now, and … there is one other person I must go and see. But right after that, I shall return. I promise that by tomorrow morning, I shall be safely under your roof and attired as befits a Trader’s daughter.”
“You’ll be out all night? Alone?”
“Would you rather I was with someone?” Althea asked mischievously. She disarmed her words with a quick grin. “Mother, I have been ‘out all night’ for almost a year now. No harm has come to me. At least, nothing permanent … but I promise I shall tell you all when I return.”
“I see I cannot stop you,” Ronica said resignedly. “Well. For the sake of your father’s name, please do not let anyone recognize you! The family fortune is shaky enough as it is. Be discreet in whatever it is that you must do. And ask Captain Tenira to be discreet as well. You served aboard his ship, you said?”
“Yes. I did. Moreover, I said I would tell you all when I return. The sooner I leave, the sooner I’m back.” Althea turned toward the door. Then she halted. “Would you please tell my sister I’m back? And that I wish to speak to her of serious things?”
“I will. Do you mean that you will try to, well, not make amends, or apologize, but make a truce with Kyle and your sister?”
Althea closed her eyes tight and then opened them. She spoke quietly. “Mother, I intend to take my ship back. I will try to make you both see that I am ready to do so and that I not only have the most right to her, but that I can do the most good for the family with her. But I do not want to say any more just yet, to you or to Keffria. Please do not tell her that. Say, if you would, only that I wish to speak to her of serious things.”
“Very serious things.” Her mother shook her head to herself. The lines on her brow and around her mouth seemed to deepen. She drank more wine, without relish or pleasure. “Go carefully, Althea, and return swiftly. I do not know if your coming home brings us salvation or disaster. I only know I am glad to know you are alive.”
Althea nodded abruptly and slipped quietly out of the room. She did not go back the way she had come, but went out the front door. She acknowledged a serving man who was sweeping scattered flower petals from the steps. The massed hyacinths by the steps gave off a rising tide of perfume. As she hurried down the drive toward Bingtown, she almost wished she were simply Athel, a ship’s boy. It was a beautiful spring day, her first day on shore in her homeport in almost a year. She wished she could take some simple gladness in it.
As she hurried down the winding roads back to Bingtown proper, she began to notice that the Vestrit estate was not the only one that showed signs of disrepair. Several other great homes that she passed showed the neglect of a pinched purse. Trees had gone unpruned and winter-wind damage unrepaired. When she passed through the busier streets of Bingtown’s market district, it seemed to her that she saw many unfamiliar folk. It was not just that she did not recognize their faces; she had been so often away from Bingtown in the last ten years that she no longer expected to know many friends and neighbors. These strangers spoke with the accents of Jamaillia and dressed as if they were from Chalced. The men all seemed to be young, in their twenties or early thirties. They wore wide-bladed swords in filigreed sheaths, and hung their pouches at their belts as if to brag of their wealth. The rich skirts of the women who trailed after them were slashed to reveal filmy underskirts. Their vividly colored cosmetics obscured rather than enhanced their faces. The men tended to speak more loudly than was necessary, as if to draw as much attention to themselves as possible. More often than not, the tone of their words was arrogant and self-important. Their women moved like nervous fillies, tossing their heads and gesturing broadly when they spoke. Their perfumes were strong, their bangled earrings large. They made the courtesans of Bingtown seem like drab pigeons in contrast to their peacock strutting.