Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders, #1)

by Robin Hobb

Many, of course, will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You…you would rather go naked into the storm.”

“Somehow,” she said coldly, “you have confused profitable and not profitable with right and wrong. I, however, have not.”

The sailors, however, were men who lived constantly with the knowledge that, sooner or later, the ocean would take them. The closest to winning they could come was to tell death, “Tomorrow.”