Tavi's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"Those with us," she said. "Even many of the sailors. They recognize intelligence, competence, confidence. They regard you-and your evaluation of our situation-with more respect than they would another."
Tavi chewed on his lower lip, and murmured, I'm frightening them."
Isana saw no need to confirm what Tavi had finally realized. "If Gaius thought his people were all safest in the cabin, what do you think he would do?"
Tavi nodded slowly. "He'd go there. Give them a chance to protest. Save their pride. Help their morale. If he thought that was best."
Isana reached into the garment bag on the deck beside her and drew out one of Ehren's sets of trousers-all of which bore tears and ham-handed repairs that were arguably worse than the rips they'd replaced. "Well, then. It might be wise for you to practice. What do you think is the best thing to do?"
Her son shook his head. "That question has been on my mind a lot, lately."
Here it came. She steeled herself against another reflex-flutter of panic. That wasn't what Tavi needed right now. "Oh?"
"It's a lot," he said.
"Yes."
"It's big."
Isana nodded. "Oh, yes."
He whispered. "I'm scared."
Isana closed her eyes. The man's voice spoke with the child's aching fear, and it hurt to hear it, to feel it.
"The thing is," he said quietly, "that I'm not making this choice just for me. If I'm not killed today, or when we get to the capital, or in the fighting after that, or in the trial after the fighting, then… what I do will affect a lot of people."
"That isn't precisely uncommon, over the past few years," she pointed out.
"But this is different. This is more."
"Is it?"
Tavi looked up at her, searching her eyes with his. They looked brilliantly green against the dark brown wood stain of the ship's timbers. "What if I can't handle it?" he said quietly. "What if I'm not capable of it?"
"Tavi, you've never needed-"
"This isn't about furycraft," he said quietly, firmly. "It's about me." He leaned closer, whispering. "Do you think I could do this? Take… take his place?"
Isana's heart pounded. She set the trousers aside. The fear screamed at her to tell her son no. That he could not possibly enter the insanity that passed for government in Alera and survive. That he would bungle whatever he set his hand to, cause pain and grief to untold thousands.
Instead, she took his hand and held it in both of hers.
"I've had nightmares about this since you were an infant," Isana said quietly. "Every time you did something that… attracted the attention of the Crown, every time you threw yourself into harm's way for another, it felt like someone stabbing me with a knife. I was sure that if you kept it up, your father's enemies would see you. Recognize you. Kill you. That's all I could see."
She looked up at his eyes. "But I didn't see what was right in front of me." She clenched his hand hard, and her voice turned fierce. "You have proven, again and again, that you are his son. His son. Never let anyone tell you differently."
He stared at her with wide eyes. Then he nodded once, and his jawline suddenly firmed. "Thank you."
"Great furies, don't thank me for this," she said quietly. "I hate it. I hate everything about it."
"Will you stand with me?" he asked.
She leaned down and clasped him, hugging him as tightly as she could, and whispered, "Hail, Gaius Octavian."
Chapter 25
Tavi stood in the very bow of the ship, where he would be out of the way of any of the sailors laboring to coax every bit of speed from the Slive. The ship leapt forward through the waves, and salt spray occasionally misted over him. He felt Kitai's presence a breath before he heard her bare feet tread quietly on the deck behind him. She stepped up beside him, casually pressing her side against his, and followed his gaze off to the ship's port side.
There, visible even from the level of the deck now, was the recognizable shape of another ship, its sails gleaming white in the afternoon sun, its course steadily converging on theirs.
"They're going to catch up," Kitai said quietly.
"So it would seem," Tavi said. "The crew's getting anxious. They'll start sharpening their knives before much longer."
Kitai nodded. "I feel it, too." She was silent for a time more, and said, "Do these pirates always attack so far out at sea? It seems to me to be a troublesome way to seek a quarrel. We could have fought on the docks and settled it there. Then we could have enjoyed the voyage in peace."
"That would have been far more reasonable," Tavi agreed. "But I'm afraid they aren't reasonable people."
"No. They're Alerans." She shook her head, and Tavi suddenly noticed the absence of the usual good-humored twinkle in her eye when she made such observations. "Chala, there is something you should see."
Tavi nodded, and followed her the length of the deck, to a narrow staircase that led down into the dimly lit hold of the ship. Within, the ship looked like any rough wooden building, except for the odd contours of the outer wall and the low ceiling. They went through what looked like a larder, full of boxes and barrels of foodstuffs, and a small workshop where various woodworking tools were stored, along with spare lumber, evidently for repairs. Beyond that, the workshop doors opened into the cargo hold.
It was damp and musty, lit with only a single pair of tiny furylamps. The wooden beams of the ship creaked and groaned around them. Kitai slipped forward, through the mostly empty hold, until they reached the foremost part, just under where Tavi had been standing a few moments before.
There, the flat planks forming the floor of the hold had been left out, exposing the curve of the ship's hull-a space the size of a couple of large bathtubs that was full of what was apparently seawater. A pair of men knelt in the water. Both of them were bare-chested, and both had long hair worn in an odd style of dozens and dozens of tiny braids. Their skin was marked with dark ink formed into abstract swirls and curling patterns. Both men had their eyes closed, their hands spread with fingers wide in the seawater, and they both kept up a constant murmuring under their breath. Their skin had a shriveled look, and they shuddered with the cold.
"The witchmen," Tavi murmured.
"No," Kitai said. "Not them."
Tavi arched an eyebrow at her.
"I asked Demos to show me these witchmen," she said. She walked over to the thick shadows at one side of the hold. "That was when I noticed these."
Tavi followed her, squinting. It was difficult to make out anything in the thick shadows, but his night vision had improved markedly since the bond had formed between him and Kitai. She waited in patient silence for a moment, until his eyes adjusted, and he saw what she had brought him to see.
Chains.
Four heavy rings had been set into the side of the ship, spaced about a foot apart, four feet up from the floor. From each set of rings dangled two sets of manacles, heavy things that could never be broken without fury-assisted strength-and anyone locked into them would perforce be surrounded by the wooden hull of the ship and cut off from contact with the earth.
The hull of the ship, and the floor there beneath the rings was stained, and Tavi was glad that he couldn't see much of it. A faint scent lingered in the air, beneath the mustiness of the ship itself, the foulness of human waste-and blood. That was easily enough seen, dark blotches on the manacles.
"Demos is a slaver," Kitai said quietly.
Tavi took a step back before he took a deep breath. "It isn't uncommon in this part of the world. Most captains have transported slaves at one time or another."