Ship of Magic recap

In the merchant city of Bingtown, old Ephron Vestrit dies aboard his liveship Vivacia and she wakes into consciousness, as liveships do when three generations of a family have died on their decks. His younger daughter Althea, who has sailed with him for years, expects to inherit her; instead the will gives the ship to her sister Keffria and so to Keffria's husband Kyle Haven, who bars Althea from the deck and drags his son Wintrow out of a monastery to serve aboard because the ship needs a Vestrit. Kyle puts Vivacia into the slave trade. Althea sets out to earn a mate's ticket and prove her claim, sailing disguised aboard another liveship. In the Pirate Isles, Kennit works to make himself king by freeing slaves, and decides that what he needs is a liveship of his own. Ashore, the mad blinded liveship Paragon acquires an unlikely new owner in the newcomer Amber, Malta is drawn into a Rain Wild courtship, and sea serpents search for a memory they have lost. Kennit takes Vivacia, breaks Kyle, keeps Wintrow, and leaves the Vestrits ruined and Althea determined to win her ship back.

The Liveship Traders begins a new story with a new cast, in a different part of the same world as the Farseer trilogy; no knowledge of those books is needed, and none of their characters appear here. All that carries over is the shape of the world. Far to the north lies the kingdom of the Six Duchies, which has spent recent years fighting a ruinous sea war against raiders from the Outislands, a war that has emptied its treasury and badly disrupted trade the length of the coast. South of it, past the Chalced States, lies Bingtown, a merchant city founded generations ago by settlers who took a charter from the Satrap of Jamaillia and pushed north into the Cursed Shores. Beyond Bingtown are the Rain Wilds, up a river whose water changes anyone who lives beside it, and where the wizardwood that liveships are built from is quarried. Magic in this world is real, rare and always paid for in one currency or another; in these southern lands dragons are a matter of legend rather than of living memory. Bingtown's Old Traders keep to a charter, their family debts and their own council, and they are being crowded by New Traders arriving with fresh grants from a young and spendthrift Satrap.

The Bingtown Trader Ephron Vestrit is dying aboard his liveship Vivacia on her last run home, tended by his younger daughter Althea, who has sailed with him for years and knows the ship better than anyone. Liveships are built of wizardwood bought at ruinous cost from the Rain Wilds and are said to wake into consciousness once three generations of the owning family have died on their decks; Ephron is the third. He dies, and Vivacia quickens, aware and newborn and reaching for whoever is nearest. Althea has always assumed the ship would be hers. Instead the will leaves the Vivacia to her elder sister Keffria, which in practice means to Keffria's husband, the outsider captain Kyle Haven, who has waited a long time to be given something by this family. Ronica Vestrit, who has quietly managed the family's debts for years, backs the arrangement.

Kyle bars Althea from the ship, offering her a place in the household but none on the deck. She refuses, walks out of the family house with nothing, and sets herself to earning a ship's ticket on her own merits so that she can come back with proof that she is a sailor rather than a sentimental girl. Kyle also sends for his son Wintrow, who has spent most of his life in a monastery of Sa and is a season from taking his final vows, and keeps him: a liveship needs a family member aboard, and Kyle intends to make a sailor out of the boy whether or not the boy consents. Wintrow is wretched and useless on deck, and Vivacia, who takes her sense of herself from whoever is closest, fastens on him. Meanwhile Brashen Trell, Ephron's competent, disowned, drug-chewing first mate, finds himself ashore with no berth and no name.

In the Pirate Isles, Captain Kennit intends to make himself king of the pirate towns and has worked out how: his mate Sorcor wants slavers taken and slaves freed, and freed slaves make a reputation. Kennit is elegant, controlled and secretive, and he wears a small carved wizardwood charm on his wrist that speaks to him with an unwelcome frankness. Out in the deep water a tangle of sea serpents led by Maulkin moves north, half-remembering that they were once meant for something else and searching for one who can tell them what. In Bingtown, the newcomer Amber sells carved beads on Rain Wild Street and scandalizes the Traders by being a foreigner who owns property, and takes an unexplained interest in Paragon, the blinded liveship beached outside the harbour who is said to have drowned crew after crew and who talks to anyone who walks out to him.

Kyle takes the Vivacia south and puts her into the slave trade, the one cargo that will pay off the Vestrit debts fastest and the one every Old Trader charter was written to forbid. Wintrow, forced aboard, watches slaves chained in the hold and cannot reconcile any of it with what he was taught; Vivacia has to carry their misery in her timbers and begins to come apart under it. Kyle answers his son's resistance with escalating brutality. Ashore, Althea works her way up through hard berths, learning what a woman without a name is worth on a working deck, and Malta Vestrit, thirteen and impatient, forces her way into adult society and attracts the attention of a veiled Rain Wild suitor whose family holds an old debt against hers.

Kyle has Wintrow tattooed with the ship's sigil across his face in the manner of a slave, marking him as property and ending any pretence that the boy is being made a sailor rather than broken into one. Wintrow's attempts to escape fail badly and cost him more each time, and the bond between him and Vivacia becomes the only thing either of them has. Althea, unable to get a fair berth as herself, signs aboard the liveship Ophelia in disguise as a ship's boy and finally gets to do the work she was raised to, well enough that the ship and her captain take her side. Brashen drifts through the same ports. Kennit, raiding steadily and building his legend, is attacked by a sea serpent and loses a leg, and comes to the conclusion that what his ambitions require is a liveship of his own.

Bingtown itself begins to crack. New Traders arrive with grants sold by the Satrap in defiance of the old charter, slavery spreads into a city whose founding agreement forbade it, Chalcedean galleys patrol the channel as the Satrap's hired escorts, and the Old Trader families argue about whether to petition, resist or simply survive. Ronica, calling in and putting off debts, finds the Vestrit position worse than she admitted even to herself, and the Rain Wild family that holds the family's oldest obligation makes it plain what payment they would accept. Malta, courted with formal Rain Wild gifts, treats the whole thing as a game she can win. Out at sea, Maulkin's tangle finds a white serpent who may hold what the others have forgotten.

Kennit sets his trap and takes the Vivacia. Kyle is defeated on his own deck and put out of the ship; the crew is disposed of or turned; and Vivacia, who was never given a reason to love the man who owned her, responds to Kennit's absolute certainty about himself in a way that frightens Wintrow badly. Kennit's leg has gone septic and is killing him, and Wintrow, the only person aboard with a healer's training, keeps him alive through it. The debt runs both ways from then on. Wintrow, tattooed as a slave and with no family left that can protect him, has to decide whether he is a prisoner, a hostage or something worse, and the ship he loves is drifting away from him towards a man who is very good at being loved.

The news reaches Bingtown as the ruin of the Vestrits: the liveship, the family's livelihood and its heir are all in a pirate's hands, and Ronica's creditors will not wait. Keffria is left to face what her husband did with the ship and with her son. Althea comes home with a mate's ticket earned the hard way aboard the Ophelia, sailing disguised as a boy, and finds there is no ship left to claim and no one who can give it back to her; she resolves to take Vivacia back herself, and Brashen, ashore and out of options, is the only sailor likely to help her. Amber buys the mad blinded Paragon outright, to the horror of Bingtown, for reasons she does not explain. Malta opens the Rain Wild gift she was warned to leave shut and steps into an entanglement she cannot see the shape of. And out in the deep water, the serpents have found one who remembers, and turn north.

Kennit gets what he has been manoeuvring for and takes the Vivacia. Kyle Haven is beaten and put off his own deck, and the ship, drawn to Kennit's certainty in a way she never was to Kyle's bullying, begins to belong to her captor. Wintrow, tattooed as his father's property and with nowhere to go, stays aboard and keeps Kennit alive by tending the ruined leg the serpent left him, which binds the pirate to him and him to the pirate. The Vivacia is out of the slave trade and into piracy, and the Vestrits have lost her. In Bingtown the news arrives as ruin: the family's ship, its livelihood and its heir are gone, Ronica's debts are called in, and the Trader families are quarrelling with the New Traders and the Satrap's grants while Chalcedean galleys move in the northern channel. Althea has earned a mate's ticket the hard way, sailing as a hand aboard another liveship, and has proof at last that she can do the work; she comes home to find there is no ship to claim and sets herself to getting Vivacia back. Brashen is ashore and out of prospects. Amber has bought the mad liveship Paragon outright, to Bingtown's scandal, and has her own reasons for wanting him afloat. Malta, courted by a veiled Rain Wilder, has opened a gift she was warned about and stepped into an entanglement she does not understand. Out at sea a tangle of serpents has found one who remembers, and has begun to move north.