by Robin Hobb
‘Catch a line,’ someone shouted, and a rope slapped across my chest. Per caught hold of it and so did I. It had been thrown from one of our ship’s boats. I recognized the tattooed woman who held the other end of the rope.
‘There wasn’t enough,’ Per said sadly.
The woman began to take in line, dragging us toward the boat. The motion made the waves lap over us more strongly. Another slapped my face and when I blinked the water away it seemed that Paragon was falling to pieces. The masts were tilting and falling, the grand house aft was tipping into the bay. The railings were sagging and the planks loosening and drooping like snow on branches at the end of winter. Per spat out water. Only the hull was holding intact and some of the deck and railings.
‘Where’s Amber?’ Per called to our rescuers.
‘Not here,’ the woman said.
I watched a ripple of colour run along a plank section as I clung to a line dragging me through the water. Then hands were seizing me and I was hauled over the side and dropped into a few inches of standing water in the bottom of a crowded boat. The ribs of the boat bit mine as I thudded against them. But no one was paying attention to me. Ant and Per were clambering aboard, legs hooked over the sides. I pulled up Per and then Ant.
‘Paragon,’ Per gasped.
The wreckage of the Paragon was settling into the water. I saw someone clinging to a board and hoped it was Lant. My companions were not looking for survivors. Instead they were transfixed by the sight of a great struggle in the water. A green head broke the surface and then its flailing front legs caught at the wreckage. A green dragon dragged itself up onto the slowly sinking house of the ship. It spread its wings and shook water from them. Its wings were patterned with black and grey, the colours of scorched wood and dirty smoke. Abruptly, it threw its head high and gave a whistling cry. Words were mixed with her scream, for as her thoughts slapped my mind, I knew her for a queen.
‘VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE FOR ME AND MINE!’
Some of my companions covered their ears against that shrill cry but others raised a cheer. She beat her wings more strongly, stirring the water and wreckage around her. She was not a large dragon, not much longer than a horse and team, but when she roared again I saw her gleaming white teeth and the scarlet-and-yellow lining of her throat. She rose from her perch on the wreckage, fighting her way into the air until she was a green shape against a pale blue sky. She circled twice over us, and her wings seemed to grow stronger with every stroke.
Then she dived onto one of the fleeing boats. I saw her snatch one of the rowers. Three loosed arrows missed her and one bounced from her scales. She lifted the hapless man higher and as her jaws closed, his legs fell to one side and his head and shoulders to the other. We heard our enemies’ cries of horror, but no one in our boat cheered. It was too horrific, too great a reminder of what a dragon could do to any human. Even a small dragon.
‘A blue one!’ someone shouted. I had been so intent on watching the green one that I had missed the blue’s emergence from the wreckage. He stood spread-legged upon the wallowing pile of timbers, wings of smoke veined with red lifted wide. He was larger than the green, and the roar he gave was deep and full-throated. He tucked his head and lowered it. I did not realize the body of a man was beside him until he nosed it.
‘Oh, sweet Eda! That’s Boy-O. He’s going to eat Boy-O!’
As if in response to that thought, the blue dragon lifted his head again. His thoughts rode his roar and I began to understand that I ‘heard’ his speech in my mind while my ears heard his trumpet.
‘He lives. My friend is not my meat. I will feast on my enemies!’
His wings beat more powerfully and more slowly than the green’s had. He lifted deliberately into the air. Screams from across the water told me that the green was still feeding. We watched the larger blue rise. Our oarsmen were not rowing; we floated in a spreading raft of debris. Higher and higher the blue climbed and then he dived on his prey. He swamped the boat in passing but carried off a stout oarsman in his jaws. He carried the man up until we could barely hear his screams. Like the green had, he sheared off the dangling parts of the man. But then, in a spectacular display of agility, he swallowed and then dived again to catch the man’s falling legs and gulp them in passing.
The oarsmen in our boat suddenly seized their oars. I saw why. Another survivor had hauled himself up onto the wreckage. He was crawling toward Boy-O’s body across the bobbing planks and debris. ‘That’s Clef!’ Per shouted.
A sailor knelt in the bow of our boat, pushing debris from our path as we made our way toward the most densely packed raft of floating wreckage. Another of Paragon’s boats was swifter than we were. I saw Spark climb out, to dance and balance on the floating, tipping pieces until she knelt by the man’s body. ‘Alive!’ she cried and a cheer rose from our company. They rejoiced in the survival of their friends. In life.
I was not such a good person. I turned my eyes from the survivors and watched the two dragons harrying and chasing, feeding and soaring to let bloody bits rain down on the servants of the Servants.
I took my bitter satisfaction from their deaths.
THIRTY-NINE
* * *
The Vengeance
Of the Treasure Beach, this is known.
You must anchor in the small bay on the south shore. Watch the tides! A low tide will strand you. A high tide coming in may well drive you into the shore.
Walk the path through the forest with caution. Disaster befalls those who wander from the path.
When you reach the far shore, walk along the tideline in the bay. Do not leave the beach. All areas on Others’ Island are forbidden to humanity except the beach and the path.
You may find treasures washed up by the waves. The currents and wind seem to gather them from afar and deposit them there. Collect as many as you wish. None may you carry away.
At the correct time, a being will come to you. Treat the being with great respect. Present the treasures you have gathered. In his wisdom, the being will tell you of your future and suggest the best paths for you to follow. When the telling is done, you may leave each treasure in an alcove in the cliff.
You must not take with you anything you find on the Treasure Beach, no matter how tiny. To do so is to invite calamity upon yourself and all your descendants.
Aljeni’s List of Magical Places, translated by FitzChivalry Farseer
I was amazed at the destruction two dragons could wreak, but I was certain that the remainder of the Servants were even more astonished. The blue and the green drove away the small boats that had visited such disaster upon us. The other ships that had been in port raised their anchors and unfurled their sails and fled the incomprehensible destruction. They must have believed that the folk of Clerres had gone mad to visit flames upon a peacefully anchored ship. To have the ship suddenly birth two savage dragons was surely beyond their comprehension.
What shall I say of that chaotic afternoon? All my memories of it are sick and sodden with saltwater and grief and intense weariness. With our enemies fled, we gathered up our friends—living, dead and those in between. Our overladen boat made it to the end of a dock and we claimed that space. Three of our party including the tattooed woman seemed very familiar with battle. Deprived of weaponry, they still organized us in a defensible way and stood ready with knives drawn. Others set out with the boat again, to find our other ship’s boats and comrades clinging to the wreckage.
‘Will you feel safe if I leave you here and go look for the others?’ Per asked me, very seriously.
I shrugged. ‘None of us is safe, Per. This entire city hates us, and soon will find a way to show us.’ I gestured wide. ‘We have no means of escape. The ship became dragons; the other ships have fled or are destroyed by the dragons. We have few weapons and nothing to buy our lives with.’ It was all so clear to me. He gave me a stricken stare. I pitied him. Didn’t he know we were all going to die here? ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘See who you can find.’
Before he returned, another of our ship’s boats found us. Weary survivors straggled up onto the dock to join us. Spark was among them. Lant was not. Boy-O was the man with the burned face and ruined arm. Clef helped him up the ladder to the dock. I was surprised he could still speak, let alone stand. ‘Has anyone seen my parents?’ he asked. No one replied. His face went slack and he sat down where he was on the dock. Slowly he fell over. The sailor called Ant went to sit beside him. ‘Have we any water?’ she asked.
We didn’t.
Spark came to sit beside me. She was drenched and shaking, and we huddled together for warmth. ‘Amber?’ she asked me. ‘Per?’
‘Per is helping find the others. I don’t know Amber.’
Spark stared blankly at me. ‘Amber is the Fool. But only your father called him that. Or Beloved.’
‘Beloved,’ I said quietly. I added, ‘I have not seen him since we jumped from the ship.’
There seemed nothing else to say. We sat there. No one came to attack us. The Servants’ boats had scattered. Some few had fled to the castle, harried all the way by the blue and the green dragons. The dragons were circling the stronghold now, screeching their anger. The archers on the walls were wasting all their arrows with shots that fell short or bounced off the scaly hide. In the town, people watched from their rooftops and the windows of the upper storeys of their homes. We saw no one moving in the streets, and no one seemed to want to attack us. Perhaps the townsfolk did not even know if or why we were the enemy. The sun grew stronger in a bright blue sky, warming us and drying our clothing. I sat on the edge of the dock, swinging my bare feet over the water below, waiting. Waiting to find out who was still alive. Waiting for the townsfolk to attack us. Waiting for anything to happen at all.
‘I’m hungry and thirsty,’ I said to Spark. ‘And I wish I had shoes. That seems so wrong to me. So heartless that I can think of these things.’ I shook my head. ‘My father is dead, and I am wishing I had shoes.’
She put an arm around me. I found I didn’t mind that. ‘I wish I could brush my hair and tie it back from my face,’ Spark admitted. ‘I wish that even as I wonder if Lant is dead, and strange to say, I feel angry with him.’
‘That’s because if you felt sad and wept, you would be making him dead in your mind.’
She gave me a strange look. ‘Yes. But how do you know these things?’
I shrugged and said, ‘I’m very angry at my father. I don’t want to weep for him any more. I know I will, but I don’t want to.’ I rolled one shoulder. ‘And I am very angry at Beloved. Amber.’ I spoke the name with disdain.
‘Why?’ Spark was aghast.
‘I simply am.’ I didn’t want to explain. He was alive while my father was dead. He was the one who had brought it all down on us. Beloved. The one who led the Servants to the doors of Withywoods. The one who started it by making my father his Catalyst.
I looked at her. I asked a terrible question. ‘Do you know about Shun?’
‘Lant’s sister? Shine? She escaped. Your father found her. That’s how he knew you’d gone through the stone.’
‘His sister?’ I asked in confusion.
Her smile wavered. ‘He was as surprised as you are now.’ She hugged me closer. ‘And he told me that at first, you two did not get along at all. He told me a lot about you.’ Her voice trailed away. She shook her head suddenly. ‘I’m hungry. Thirsty. And angry at Lant. And ashamed of feeling those things at all.’ She gave me a sad smile. ‘When things are so immensely wrong, it seems cruel that I long for a cup of tea. And some bread.’
‘Ginger-cakes. My mother used to make them for my father.’ I covered my mouth. ‘My mother would be so furious with him right now.’ And the hated tears welled again.
A short time later I saw one of our boats coming back to the docks. Per was pulling one of the oars. We both stood up. There was a body in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in a piece of sail. ‘Oh, no,’ Spark moaned. Beloved was sitting beside the wrapped corpse.
They came alongside the dock and Spark’s first cry was, ‘Is it Lant? Is Lant dead?’
‘It’s Kennitsson,’ Per said in a dead voice as he looked up at us. ‘The flames took him.’
‘Oh!’ Spark covered her mouth. I wondered if she hid her face, so no one would know how relieved she was that Kennitsson was dead instead of Lant.
Per climbed up onto the dock. He came to me and opened his arms. We hugged one another tightly. He looked over my head and cried out, ‘Not Boy-O, too!’
‘He’s alive,’ Ant said from where she sat beside him. ‘But not doing well.’ Boy-O lifted his head and then let it drop again. ‘Kennitsson,’ he said dully. ‘He saved the ship.’
It was hard work to get the wrapped corpse up the ladder and onto the dock, taking the efforts of three of them. Beloved did his share, but it seemed to me that several of his crewmates regarded him oddly. He opened the canvas and stooped over the shrouded body to compose it.
Beloved shook his head wearily and looked over at me. A smile slowly curved his mouth, but his eyes were sad. ‘There you are. Once I saw Per, I knew you were safe.’ He took two steps toward me and opened his arms. I stood still. He let his arms fall to his sides, his embrace unclaimed. He stood looking down at me. ‘Oh, Bee. I will wait. I am a stranger to you. But I feel I know you very well.’ I do not think he could have said a more irritating thing. My thoughts flickered to my journal and book of dreams, now at the bottom of the harbour. No. No one could be so low as to read another’s journal … though of course, I had read my father’s papers. I looked past him and said nothing.
I was aware of Spark looking at me and then regarding him with sympathy. ‘How are you?’ she said, and it was a sincere question.
‘I am hollow inside,’ he said gravely. ‘So many masks I have worn, and now they are all empty. I cannot summon even anger to sustain me. The loss is so … I want to go back there, I want to look at his body, to make it real to myself …’ His words ran down.
‘You can’t.’ Spark spoke the words sharply. ‘We are too few to divide ourselves. Too poorly armed. And it serves no purpose other than to prolong your pain.’ She looked away from him.
‘He’s dead,’ I said softly. I looked up at both of them. ‘For a short time, I could feel him. Connected to me. I felt him and I felt Wolf Father. They are gone now.’
He glanced at his gloved fingers, and then cradled that hand to his chest. ‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘But it was a terrible place to leave him. Alone, with the water rising—’
‘Do we have a plan?’ Spark cut in sharply. ‘Or do we just sit on this dock until they come to kill us all?’ Her voice was hoarse but level. Her throat was probably as dry as mine, and her stomach as empty. I was coming to like her. She had the same steadiness that Per did. That same in-this-moment practicality. Her words snapped Beloved into a straighter posture. He looked over the huddled survivors and our thin line of protectors.
‘Yes. One that is subject to much change, I fear.’ He pushed his damp hair back from his face. ‘For now, yes, we remain on this dock. We are not a large enough force to protect ourselves if we venture into the town. Here and now, we have a somewhat defensible position.’
And no food. No water. No shelter from the sun. Injured folk. I did not think much of the plan of the man who had replaced my father.
He folded his legs and sat down beside me. Spark copied him and Per came to join us. Boy-O remained by the body. A muscled, scarred man was looking at Boy-O’s arm and the blistered burns on his face and elsewhere. Suddenly Boy-O sagged to one side; the man caught him and eased him down; he had fainted. Ant had a knife and was staring off toward the town. I did not know the names of the others. There were eleven of them. One kept watch out over the harbour. The afternoon sun beat down on all of us. The tide had turned and the waves were retreating, carrying the debris of our ship with them. The other large vessels that had been in the harbour were gone, save for one that was aground and listing.
<
br /> Per spoke. ‘If they come with archers as they did before, we have no cover. If they muster their courage and come by boat as well as on the shore, we will be quickly surrounded. If all they do is keep us here, we have no food and no water. No shelter from the sun. We will end here, I fear.’
‘Those things are true. But for now, they are far too busy dealing with dragons to bother with us. And it’s only to get worse for the castle. And then the town.’ Beloved turned his oddly pale eyes toward Clerres Castle. The blue and the green dragon had finished with the small boats, leaving only floating wreckage on the water. The green one was now high above Clerres Castle, wings spread, rocking in the air as an eagle does when it catches the wind and effortlessly rides it. The blue was actively harrying the castle, swooping and darting in a display of flight that mocked the archers’ efforts to hurt him. Arrows still flew but there were fewer in each volley.
As I watched, the blue suddenly changed tactics. Graceful as an alighting swallow, the dragon swept in and up, to perch atop one of the Four’s towers. It was not one of the outer watchtowers that he chose, but one of the taller structures within the stronghold. The blue trumpeted loudly as if calling to someone. Then he flung his head back and snapped it forward on his sinuous neck, mouth wide. Something sparkling flew from his open mouth. I heard distant cries.
‘He spits acid, in a fine spray. Nothing stands before it. Not flesh nor armour nor bone nor stone,’ Beloved told me.
I looked over at him. ‘Hap sang to me of dragons. I know what they do.’
I thought of the placid, cheerful Whites in their little cottages. Their spotless flowing garments and picnic meals under the blossoming trees. They would be punished alongside Capra and the Servants and their warrior guards. Did they deserve it? Did they know the harm their cached dreams had done to the rest of the world? I felt a twinge of pity for them, but no guilt. What was happening to them was as far beyond my control as a thunderstorm or an earthquake. Or my own kidnapping and the sacking of Withywoods.