The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  ‘What about our children?’ a woman cried from the back of the crowd.

  ‘If they’re old enough to tote a bucket, bring them with you. Leave the smallest ones here with the old and crippled. They’ll have to look after each other. Come on.’

  Little Selden stood beside her in the crowd. Ronica looked down at him. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. His eyes were huge. ‘Go into the Concourse, Selden,’ Keffria told him in a falsely cheerful voice. ‘We’ll be back for you soon.’

  ‘Shan’t!’ he declared in a brittle little voice. ‘I’m big enough to carry a bucket.’ He choked back a frightened sob and crossed his arms defiantly on his chest.

  ‘Malta will be with you,’ Keffria offered desperately. ‘She can help take care of the babies and old people.’

  ‘I’d rather carry a bucket,’ Malta declared sourly as she took Selden’s hand in hers. For a moment she looked and sounded almost like Althea. ‘We’re not going to hide here and wonder what is going on. Come on, Selden. Let’s go.’

  At the top of the Concourse steps, Trader Larfa was still shouting directions. ‘You. Porfro. Get word to the Three Ships Families. Someone take word to the New Traders’ Council.’

  ‘As if they would care! Let them watch out for themselves!’ someone shouted back angrily.

  ‘It’s their fault we have Chalcedeans in the harbour in the first place,’ someone added.

  ‘There’s no time for that now. We need to defend the city!’ Larfa argued. ‘Bingtown is what counts, not when we got here!’

  ‘Bingtown!’ someone shouted. Others took up the cry. ‘Bingtown! To Bingtown!’

  Wagons and carriages were already rattling out of the courtyard, headed down into the city proper. Ronica overheard someone arranging riders to take word to the outlying farms and settlements. There was no time to go home and change into different clothes, no time to wonder about missed breakfasts or shoes that were more sensible. She saw a woman and her grown daughter matter-of-factly tearing their voluminous skirts from their gowns. They discarded the hobbling fabric and in their long cotton pantaloons followed the men of their family.

  Ronica seized Keffria’s hand, counting on the children to follow. ‘Room for us?’ she shouted to a passing cart. The driver halted it without a word. They piled into it, heedless of the crowding. Three young men leaped in after them. One wore a pitted sword at his hip. They were all grinning like maniacs. Their eyes were bright, their movements swift and powerful like young bulls ready to challenge one another. They smiled wide at Malta, who glanced at them and looked aside. The cart started with a jolt and Ronica seized hold of the edge. They began the trip down to Bingtown.

  At one place in the road, the trees parted and Ronica had a brief glimpse of the harbour. The liveships were drawn up in the mouth of it. Men clustered on their decks, milling and pointing. Out beyond them, she saw the tall mast of a ship. The many-oared galleys of the Chalcedeans surrounded it like foul, scuttling bugs.

  ‘They were flying the Jamaillian standard!’ one young man in their cart cried out as they lost sight of the harbour.

  ‘Don’t mean a thing,’ another one sneered. ‘The cowardly buggers just want to get in close before they attack. There’s no other reason for that many ships to be heading into our harbour.’

  Ronica agreed. She saw a sickly smile blossom on Malta’s face. She leaned close to the white-faced girl. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked her quietly. She feared her granddaughter was about to faint.

  Malta laughed, a thin, near-hysterical sound. ‘It’s so stupid. All this week, I’ve been sewing on my dress, thinking about Reyn, and the flowers and lights and dancing. Last night I could not sleep because my slippers displeased me so. And now I’ve a feeling that none of it may ever come to be.’ She lifted her head and her wide eyes swept over the stream of wagons, carts, and the folk beside them on foot and on horseback. She spoke with a quiet fatalism. ‘Everything in my life that I was sure I would do someday has always been snatched away when it was almost within my reach. Perhaps it will happen again.’ A faraway look came into her eyes. ‘Perhaps by tomorrow we shall all be dead and our town a smoking ruin. Perhaps my Presentation will never even be.’

  ‘Don’t say such things!’ Keffria exclaimed in horror.

  Ronica said nothing at all for a time. Then she set her hand over Malta’s where she gripped the side of the cart. ‘This is today. And this is your life.’ They were comfortless words, and she was not sure where they came from. ‘It is my life, also,’ she added, and looked ahead of them, far down the winding road to Bingtown.

  Reyn stood on the afterdeck of the Kendry, watching the widening wake of the great liveship in the broad river. The coming of morning turned the milky water of the river to silver and made the ever-dripping canopy of the forested banks a shimmering curtain of falling jewels. The swiftness of the current and the ship’s great sails carried them downriver at an incredible rate. He drew in a great breath to try to lift the heaviness from his heart. It would not go away. He bowed his head into his hands. Sliding his hands up under his veil, he scrubbed at his sandy eyes. Deep sleep seemed like a nursery tale from his childhood. He wondered if he would ever sleep well again.

  ‘You look like I feel,’ a voice said quietly. Reyn startled and turned. In the dimness of the early morning light, he had not noticed the other man. Grag Tenira rolled a tiny parchment up and slipped it up the sleeve of his shirt. ‘But you shouldn’t,’ he continued, his brow creasing in a frown. ‘Are not you to be Malta Vestrit’s escort at the Summer Ball? What is there to sigh about in that?’

  ‘Very little,’ Reyn assured him. He plastered a smile onto his face. ‘I share her concerns for her father and their missing ship, that is all. But it is a heavy concern. I had hoped that her presentation ball would be a wholly festive occasion. I fear this will overshadow it.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort, the Kendry brought me word that the rescue expedition has already left Bingtown.’

  ‘Ah. I had heard your name linked with Althea Vestrit’s. This word comes directly from her then?’ Reyn nodded his veiled head towards the missive that still peeped from Grag’s sleeve.

  Grag gave a short sigh. ‘A farewell missive from her, before she set forth. She has great hopes for her expedition, but none at all for us. It’s a very friendly letter.’

  ‘Ah. Sometimes friendly is harder than cold.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Grag rubbed his forehead. ‘The Vestrits are a stiff-necked bunch. The women are too damn independent for their own good. So everyone has always said of Ronica Vestrit. I’ve discovered the hard way that the same is true of Althea.’ He gave Reyn a bitter grin. ‘Let’s hope your luck with the younger generation is better.’

  ‘She gives little sign of that,’ Reyn admitted ruefully. ‘But I think that if I can win her, the battle will have been worth it.’

  Grag shook his head and looked away from the other man. ‘I felt the same way about Althea. I still feel that way. Somehow, I doubt that I’ll get a chance to find out.’

  ‘But you’re returning to Bingtown?’

  ‘I won’t be stopping there, I’m afraid. Once we get to town, it’s belowdecks for me, until we’re out at sea.’

  ‘And then?’ Reyn asked.

  Grag gave a friendly smile but shook his head dumbly.

  ‘Quite right. The fewer who know, the better,’ Reyn agreed. He returned his gaze to the river.

  ‘I wanted to tell you personally how grateful the Teniras are for the support you’ve shown us. It is one thing to say you will back us. It’s another to put your family fortune on the line as well.’

  Reyn shrugged. ‘It is a time when the Rain Wilds and Bingtown must stand united, or give up who and what we are.’

  Grag stared at the ship’s white-edged wake. ‘Do you think enough of us will stand united for us to succeed? For generations, we have functioned as part of Jamaillia. All of our lives are patterned as closely as possible on Jamaillia City. It is not just o
ur language and our ancestry. It is all our customs; our food, our style of dress, even our dreams for our futures. When we stand apart from that and say, We are Bingtown, what will we really be saying? Who will we be?’

  Reyn concealed his impatience. What did it matter? He tried to formulate a more political answer. ‘I think we will simply be recognizing the reality of the last three or four generations. We are the folk of the Cursed Shores. We are the descendants of those brave enough to come here. They made sacrifices and we inherited their burdens. I don’t resent that. But I won’t share my birthright with those who will not make the same commitment. I won’t cede my place to people who don’t recognize what it cost us.’

  He glanced at Grag, expecting him to agree easily. Instead, the man only looked troubled. In a low voice, as if ashamed of the thought, Grag asked him, ‘Have you never thought of just kicking it all over and running away?’

  For a moment, Reyn just stared at him through his veil. Then he observed wryly, ‘Obviously, you have forgotten whom you are speaking to.’

  Grag gave a lop-sided shrug. ‘I’ve heard you could pass. If you wanted to. As for me…sometimes, when I am away from my ship for a while, I find myself wondering. What holds me here? Why do I stay in Bingtown, why must I be all a Trader’s son must be? Some folk have kicked over the traces. Brashen Trell for instance.’

  ‘I don’t believe I know him.’

  ‘No. You wouldn’t. And you never will. His family disowned him for his wild ways. When I heard about that, I halfway expected him to the from it. But he didn’t. He comes and goes as he pleases, lives where he wants, sails where the wind blows him. He’s free.’

  ‘Is he happy?’

  ‘He’s with Althea.’ Grag shook his head. ‘Somehow, the family picked him to captain the Paragon for them. And they entrusted him with Althea.’

  ‘From what I’ve heard of Althea, she needs no man’s protection.’

  ‘She would agree with that.’ Grag sighed. ‘I don’t. I think Trell has deceived her in the past, and may again…It eats at me. But do I rush off to find her and bring her back? Did I leap in and say, “I’ll go, I’ll captain your mad ship for you, so long as I can be with you?” No. I didn’t and Trell did. And that’s another difference between us.’

  Reyn scratched at the back of his neck. Was something growing there? ‘I think you make a fault of what is actually a virtue, Grag. You know your duty and you are doing it. It isn’t your fault if Althea can’t appreciate that.’

  ‘That’s just the trouble.’ He tugged the small missive from his sleeve, then pushed it back again. ‘She does. She praised me for it and wished me well. She said she admires me. That’s a poor substitute for love.’

  Reyn could think of nothing to say to that.

  Grag sighed. ‘Well. No point in dwelling on any of that now. If it comes to war with the Satrap, it will come soon enough. Either Althea will come back to me, or she won’t. It seems there is little I can do about my life; I’m like a leaf caught in a current.’ He shook his head, and grinned in embarrassment at his own melancholy words. ‘I’m going forward to talk to Kendry for a while. You coming?’

  ‘No.’ Reyn realized how abrupt he sounded and sought to soften it. ‘I’ve got some thinking of my own to do.’

  Reyn watched through a grey haze of veil as Grag walked forward to the figurehead. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Even with gloves on, he would not take a chance on leaning on the railing. The whole ship shouted to him as it was, and it was not ‘Kendry’ that spoke to him.

  He had travelled aboard liveships before and never had this problem. The dragon had done something to him. He wasn’t sure what, or how, but it frightened him. He had broken his bargain with his mother and elder brother to pay her a final visit. It was wrong, but so was abandoning her without trying to make her see that he had done his best. He had begged her to let him go; she had seen how hard he had tried. Instead, she had vowed that she would devour his soul. ‘As long as I am a prisoner here, Reyn Khuprus, so shall you be too,’ she had cursed him. She had twined herself through his mind like a black vein in marble, mingling with him until he was no longer certain where she left off and he began. It frightened him worse than anything else she had ever done. ‘You are mine!’ she had declared.

  As if to underscore her words, the entire floor of the chamber had trembled. It was only a tremor, a common occurrence on the Cursed Shores. It was not even a large one as quakes went, but never before had he been in the Crowned Rooster Chamber when one struck. His torch showed him the frescoed walls undulating as if they were draperies. He ran, fleeing for his life, with her laughter echoing inside his mind. He could not escape it. As he fled, he had heard the unmistakable sound of corridors giving way. The deadening rush of damp earth followed the clattering of falling tile. Even when he reached the outside and bent over, hands on his knees, trying to reclaim his breath, he could not stop shaking. There would be work tomorrow, and for days to come. Tunnels and corridors would have to be shored up. If it was bad, sections of the buried city might have to he abandoned. All would have to be inspected laboriously before there could he any new explorations. It was precisely the sort of work that he hated.

  ‘Toil away,’ the dragon’s voice had bubbled merrily in his mind. ‘You might be able to shore up the walls of this dead city, Reyn Khuprus. But the walls of your mind will stand no more against me or my kind.’

  It had seemed an idle threat. What worse could she do to him than she had already done? But since then, his dreams had been plagued with dragons. They roared and battled one another, they stretched out on rooftops to sun themselves, they mated upon the lofty towers of an exotic city. He was witness to it all.

  It was not a nightmare. No. It was a dream of extraordinary brilliance and complexity. They trafficked with beings that were almost human, yet were subtly different. They were tall, with eyes of lavender or copper and the shades of their flesh were subtly different from any folk he had ever encountered in his real life.

  His real life. That was the problem. The dreams were far more compelling than his waking hours. He saw cities of the Elderkind and came tauntingly close to understanding their history. He suddenly grasped the wideness of their streets and corridors, the broad yet shallow steps, the height of the doors and the generous windows. The vastness of their constructions had been to accommodate the dragons that shared the city. He longed to venture inside the buildings, to linger close to the people as they strolled in the markets or ventured out on the river in their gaily-painted boats. He could not.

  In the dream, he was with the dragons and of the dragons. They regarded their two-legged neighbours with tolerant affection. They did not consider them peers. Their lives were too short, their concerns too shallow. Reyn, while he dreamed, shared that attitude. It was the dragon culture he was steeped in, and their thoughts began to colour his, not just sleeping but in waking times as well. The emotions they felt were a hundred times as strong as anything Reyn had ever experienced was. Human passion, intense as it might be, was but a snap of the fingers compared to the enduring devotion of a dragon to his mate. They treasured one another, not just through years but through lives.

  He saw the world with new eyes. Cultivated fields became a patchwork quilt flung across the land. Rivers, hills and deserts were no longer barriers. A dragon, on a whim, went where a man might not venture in his entire lifetime. The world, he saw, was at once much greater and far smaller than he had known.

  The curse of such dreams manifested itself slowly. He awoke unrested, as if he had never slept at all. The potency of his other life drew him. He spent his human days in a fog of discontent and restlessness. He regarded his own existence with disdain. A double curse of weariness dogged him. He longed to sleep, but sleep gave him no rest. Yet he desired sleep, not to rest, but to leave his dreary human life behind and immerse himself once more in a draconian world. His life as a man had become a string of weary days. The only thoughts that could still stir
his heart at all were thoughts of Malta. Even in those fancies, he could not shake the dragon’s curse, for in his mind’s eye Malta’s hair shone like the scales of a black dragon.

  Behind all his thoughts and dreams, in words almost too soft to hear and yet never silent, came the mourning of the trapped dragon in the Crowned Rooster Chamber. ‘No more, no more, no more. They are all gone and dead, all the great bright ones. And it is your fault, Reyn Khuprus. You ended them, by cowardice and laziness. You had it in your power to create their world anew, and you walked away from it.’

  That had been the sharpest of his torments. That he had it within his power, she believed, to free her and bring true dragons back into the world.

  Then he had stepped aboard the Kendry, and his torment took an even more cruel turn. The Kendry was a liveship; the bones of the ship’s body were wizardwood. Generations ago, Reyn’s ancestors had pounded wedges into a great wizardwood log within the Crowned Rooster Chamber. They had split the immense trunk open, and plank after plank of lumber had been sawn and peeled from it. One immense chunk had been taken whole, to form the figurehead.

  The soft, half-formed creature within had been unceremoniously spilled out onto the cold stone floor of the chamber. Reyn twisted inside every time he thought of that. He had to wonder: had it squirmed? Had it mouthed airless cries of pain and despair? Or, as his brother and mother insisted, had it been a long dead thing, an inert mass of tissue and nothing more than that?

  If there was nothing for the Khuprus family to be ashamed of, why had it always been kept secret? Not even the other Rain Wild Traders knew the full secret of the wizardwood logs. Although the buried city was their mutual property, the Trader families had long ago established their territories within it. The Crowned Rooster Chamber and the odd sections of wood within it had long ago been ceded to the Khuprus family. It was ironic that, at the time, the immense logs had been considered of little value. An accident had revealed their unique properties; or so Reyn had always been told. Exactly how that had happened, he had never been able to discover. If any of his living family knew the tale, they had held it back from him.