Ship of Magic by Hobb Robin

alongside me during the mafe harvest. Up every morning before dawn, rousing the workers, getting them out to pick the ripe beans before the sun can touch them and shrivel them. Thirty-six years we've been married, and never once have you had to help me with that. Come to think of it, in all the years we've been married, you've never been home for the blooming of our wedding tree. You've never seen the pink buds swell and then open, so full of fragrance.”
    “Oh, there will be time enough for that. Time enough for posies and land work, when the girls are grown and the debts paid.”
    “And when they are, I'll have a year of you, all to myself,” she'd threatened him. And always he'd promised her, “A whole year of me. You'll probably be heartily sick of me before it's done. You'll be begging me to go back to sea and leave you to sleep nights in peace.”
    Ronica bowed her face into her hands. She'd had her year of him at home; woeful gods, but what a way to gain her wish. She'd had a fall of him coughing and fractious, feverish and red-eyed, lying in their bed all day and staring out the window at the sea whenever he was well enough to sit. “He'd best be taking care of them,” he'd growled whenever the sky showed a dark cloud, and Ronica had known that his thoughts were always with Althea and the
Vivacia.
He'd been so reluctant to turn the ship over to Kyle. He'd wanted to give it to Brashen, an untried boy. It had taken Ronica weeks of arguing with him to make him see how that would look to the town. Kyle was his own son-in-law, and had proved himself as captain on three other ships. If he'd passed him over to put Brashen in charge of the
Vivacia,
it would have been a slap in the face to his daughter's husband, to say nothing of his family. Even though the Havens were not Bingtown Traders, they were an old family in Bingtown nonetheless. And the way the Vestrit fortunes were faring lately, they could afford to offend no one. So last autumn she'd persuaded him to entrust his precious
Vivacia
to Kyle and take a trip off, to strengthen his lungs again.
    As winter had darkened their skies and whitened the streets, he'd stopped coughing. She had thought he was getting better, except that he couldn't seem to
do
anything. At first, when he walked the length of the house, he'd lost his breath. Soon he was stopping to breathe between their bedroom and the parlor. By the time spring came, he could not cover the distance unless he leaned on her arm.
    He'd finally been home for the blooming of their wedding tree. As the year warmed, the tree had budded. There had been a few weeks when, if Ephron was not getting better, at least he got no worse. She sat by his lounge and sewed or did the accounts while he did scrimshaw or made rope mats for the doorsteps. They had spoken of the future and he had fretted about his ship and daughter. The only times they had disagreed had been over Althea. But there was nothing new about that. They'd been disagreeing about her for as long as they'd had her.
    Ephron had never been able to admit that he spoiled their youngest child. The Blood Plague had carried off their boys, one by one, back in that hellish disease year. Even now, close to twenty years later, Ronica felt the squeeze in her chest when she thought of it. Three sons, three bright little boys, taken in less than a week. Keffria had barely come through it alive. Ronica had thought it would drive them both mad, to see the tree of their family stripped of every male flower. Instead, Ephron had suddenly turned his attention and hopes to the babe that had sheltered inside her womb. Attentive as he had never been during her other pregnancies, he had even tied up the ship for an extra two weeks to be sure of being home when the child was born.
    When the babe had been a girl, Ronica had expected Ephron to be bitter. Instead, he had given all his attention to his young daughter, as if somehow his will could make a man of her. He had encouraged her