Mad Ship recap

Althea, Brashen and Amber refit the mad blinded liveship Paragon and sail him out of Bingtown to hunt for the Vivacia. Aboard the Vivacia, Kennit builds a pirate kingdom on freed slaves and a growing legend, while Wintrow, bound to him by the life he saved, tries to work out what he owes a man who does good and evil with the same hand, and the ship herself changes into something older than a Trader family's memories. In Bingtown, the young Satrap Cosgo arrives with his Companion Serilla and the city detonates: Old Traders, New Traders, Chalcedean galleys and the Tattooed all at once, the Satrap kidnapped, the harbour burning. Malta takes the Satrap up the Rain Wild River to force the Rain Wilds' hand, and in the buried Elderling city beneath Trehaug an earthquake and a flood destroy the diggings. From the wizardwood log in the Crowned Rooster Chamber, Tintaglia, the last dragon, breaks free and flies. Malta is swept away and believed drowned, Reyn is left grieving, and the serpents that have swum north for a lifetime reach the river they must ascend.

Previously in the Liveship Traders: in the merchant city of Bingtown, old Ephron Vestrit died aboard his liveship Vivacia and she woke into consciousness, as liveships built of Rain Wild wizardwood do once three generations of the owning family have died on their decks. His younger daughter Althea, who had sailed with him for years, expected to inherit the ship; the will instead gave her to her sister Keffria and so to Keffria's husband Kyle Haven, who barred Althea from the deck, dragged his son Wintrow out of a monastery to serve aboard because a liveship needs family, and put Vivacia into the slave trade. Wintrow was tattooed as his father's property; Althea left, sailed disguised as a ship's boy aboard another liveship, and earned a mate's ticket. In the Pirate Isles, Captain Kennit set out to make himself king by freeing slaves, lost a leg to a sea serpent, and decided he needed a liveship; he took the Vivacia, put Kyle off her, kept Wintrow, who saved his life, and won the ship's affection for himself. The Vestrits were left ruined. In Bingtown, the foreign beadmaker Amber bought the mad blinded liveship Paragon; Malta Vestrit began a Rain Wild courtship with Reyn Khuprus; New Traders and Chalcedean escorts crowded the old charter; and out at sea a tangle of serpents led by Maulkin found one of their kind who remembered what they had all forgotten.

Althea is home in Bingtown with a ticket she cannot use and no ship to claim. Amber proposes the only hull nobody else wants: Paragon, blinded, beached and reputed to have drowned successive crews, whom she now owns and intends to refit. Brashen Trell, ashore, disowned and trying to break a drug habit, is the only sailor likely to take the berth. Paragon himself is enormous, lonely and violently unstable, and remembers his own past selectively. Out in the Pirate Isles, Kennit is convalescing from the loss of his leg aboard the Vivacia, with Wintrow keeping him alive and Etta keeping everyone else away from him; the ship has fastened on Kennit and Wintrow can feel her slipping away from the family she was built for. In the Rain Wilds, Reyn Khuprus works in the buried Elderling city beneath Trehaug, where a vast wizardwood log lies in a chamber and something inside it has begun speaking into his dreams.

Bingtown's quarrel with Jamaillia turns concrete: Chalcedean galleys, hired as the Satrap's escorts, begin boarding Trader ships in the harbour to collect tariffs the old charter never allowed, and the liveship Ophelia and her Tenira owners refuse to submit. Althea, who sailed with them, is pulled into the Traders' resistance. In Jamaillia the young Satrap Cosgo, drugged and bored, has been selling grants over Bingtown's head; his Companion Serilla, the court's expert on the Bingtown charter, argues for a state visit to settle the dispute, and it is agreed for reasons that have nothing to do with settling anything. In Bingtown, Malta pushes her way into adult society and plays her Rain Wild courtship as a game, indifferent to the debt behind it. In deep water, Maulkin's tangle immerses itself in memory and finds it is running out of time.

The Vestrits face what they have left: an old debt to the Khuprus family that could be settled by marrying Malta into the Rain Wilds, creditors who will not wait, and a city dividing into factions. Ronica and Keffria have to take up positions on the Traders' council themselves. Althea and Brashen begin the impossible work of making Paragon seaworthy, paid for by Amber, opposed by the Trader who beached him and doubted by everyone. Aboard the Vivacia, Kennit's campaign of taking slavers and freeing their cargo makes him famous throughout the Pirate Isles, and Wintrow, who despises the piracy and cannot deny the freed slaves, is drawn deeper into serving him. The ship's own nature begins to change, and Wintrow starts to suspect that what is surfacing in Vivacia was never a Vestrit at all.

Word reaches Bingtown that the Satrap is coming in person, and the city has to prepare to receive a ruler most of it now regards as the source of its troubles. Serilla accompanies him, having made a calculation about what the journey could be worth to her. Ronica and Keffria take charge of the family's affairs in earnest, and Althea's refit of Paragon becomes a public scandal and then, slowly, a real ship. Amber works the wood; Brashen assembles a crew that no respectable captain would sign; Paragon veers between delight and rage at being wanted again. Kennit's pirate confederation takes shape around him, with Wintrow increasingly acting as his conscience and his interpreter, and Etta increasingly resenting it.

Kennit consolidates by force and by theatre: those who will not come into his confederation are dealt with, and the stories about him grow faster than he has to work for. Wintrow, having saved the man's life and watched him free hundreds of slaves, makes a decision about where he stands and stops pretending he is merely a captive. In Bingtown, Malta's manoeuvres begin to produce consequences she did not want, and she gets several things she asked for in forms she did not expect. The Rain Wild courtship becomes serious, the family debt becomes urgent, and Reyn's dreams of the presence in the buried chamber become harder to distinguish from the woman he is courting.

Paragon is dug out, righted and hauled off the beach, which is as much an act of persuasion as of engineering: he has to consent to being a ship again, and he does so unevenly. Amber gives him something close to a face and asks nothing about what he did to his old crews. Althea and Brashen, working together at close quarters, stop pretending about each other. In the Rain Wilds, the presence in the wizardwood log makes its demands plainer: it wants to be cut out, it is running out of time, and the Rain Wilders' whole economy depends on cutting up exactly such logs. Reyn begins to understand what wizardwood actually is, and therefore what every liveship in Bingtown harbour is made from.

The Paragon is launched and crewed, with Brashen as captain, Althea as mate and Amber aboard as the ship's own advocate, and sails from Bingtown to find and retake the Vivacia. The shakedown is brutal: the crew is a scratch collection of the unemployable, and the ship's temper is worse than his reputation suggested. Meanwhile Kennit is acclaimed as king of the Pirate Isles in all but formal fact, with a fleet, a liveship and a legend built on freed slaves. In Bingtown the Satrap's arrival approaches and the city's factions arm themselves. Ronica and Keffria hold the Vestrit position, and Malta, in the middle of it all, is about to stop being a spectator.

The Satrap's visit destroys Bingtown. The confrontation between Old Traders, New Traders and the Satrap's Chalcedean escorts collapses into violence, the Satrap is seized in the chaos, and the city burns while Chalcedean galleys attack the harbour. The mob does not distinguish between factions, and the Vestrits lose people in it. Malta finds herself responsible for a kidnapped ruler and decides to take him up the Rain Wild River, where he cannot be reached and where his presence will force the Rain Wilds to commit to Bingtown's cause. At sea, the Paragon works up through storms and near-disasters into something like a functioning ship, and the strain begins to bring up what the ship has spent a generation refusing to remember about himself.

Malta gets the Satrap to Trehaug, where the Rain Wilders now have to decide what to do with the ruler of Jamaillia and with a Bingtown at war. Reyn takes Malta into the buried city, and the presence in the Crowned Rooster Chamber makes its case directly: it is a dragon, the log is a cocoon, wizardwood is what dragons make themselves from, and every liveship on the water was cut from one of her kin. Out at sea, Maulkin's tangle at last reaches the river they have swum a lifetime to find and cannot ascend it, because the way north depends on creatures that no longer know what serpents are. Aboard Paragon, Althea, Brashen and Amber close on the Pirate Isles, and the ship's own history begins to surface.

An earthquake brings down the buried city and the river floods the diggings, drowning the Elderling ruins for good. Malta, Reyn and the Satrap are trapped and have to find a way out through collapsing, flooding tunnels; Malta gets the Satrap clear and is then swept away downriver, and Reyn is left believing she has drowned. In the wreckage the great wizardwood log is freed, and out of it comes Tintaglia, a living dragon, the last of her kind, who takes wing over the Rain Wilds with no gratitude for anyone but with needs of her own that a bargain can be built on. Bingtown is burning behind them, with Chalcedean raiders in the harbour and the Old Traders, the Three Ships families and the Tattooed forced into an alliance nobody wanted. Ronica and Keffria hold what is left of the Vestrit name in a city that half suspects them. At sea, Paragon runs south under Brashen and Althea with Amber aboard, bound for the Pirate Isles and the Vivacia, while Kennit has his liveship, his fleet, his legend and Wintrow, and the serpents wait at the river mouth for someone to let them through.

The wizardwood log in the Crowned Rooster Chamber splits and Tintaglia comes out of it: a living dragon, the last of her kind, who takes wing over the Rain Wild River. She has no gratitude and no interest in the people who freed her, but she does have needs, and a bargain with the Rain Wilds and the serpents becomes possible. The buried city is destroyed in the process; the river floods the diggings and Malta, Reyn and the Satrap are trapped in the drowning tunnels. Malta gets the Satrap out and is then swept away downriver, and Reyn is left believing she is dead. Bingtown is in open war: the Satrap's visit has ended with him kidnapped and the city burning, Chalcedean galleys are raiding the harbour, and the Old Traders, the Three Ships families and the Tattooed have begun, reluctantly, to fight on the same side. Ronica and Keffria are holding what is left of the Vestrit interest in a city that half suspects them of treason. At sea, the Paragon is finally sailing, refitted with Amber's money and Brashen's crew, with Althea aboard and the ship's own history stirring under them, bound for the Pirate Isles to take the Vivacia back. Kennit, meanwhile, has what he wanted: a liveship, a fleet, a reputation as the liberator of slaves and the beginnings of a kingdom, with Wintrow at his side and Etta at his back. Maulkin's tangle has reached the mouth of the river and cannot get up it without help.