The Liveship Traders Series

by Robin Hobb

  She chuckled again. ‘So. You accept my terms?’

  Kennit straightened. ‘So. I take a night to think about it.’

  ‘You accept them,’ she said to the night.

  He did not deign to reply. Instead he gripped his crutch and made his careful way across her deck. At the ladder, he lowered himself to the deck, and managed the steps awkwardly. He nodded curtly to two deckhands as he passed them. If they had overheard any of the captain’s conversation with the ship, they were wise enough not to show it.

  As he crossed the main deck, he finally allowed himself to feel his triumph. He had done it. He had called the ship back to life, and she would serve him once more. He thrust away her side of the bargain. What could exist that she could want for herself? She had no need to mate nor eat nor even sleep. What could she demand of him that he could not easily grant her? It was a good agreement.

  ‘Wiser than you know,’ said his own voice in small. ‘A pact for greatness, even.’

  ‘Is it?’ muttered Kennit. Not even to his good luck charm would he risk showing his elation. ‘I wonder. The more so in that you endorse it.’

  ‘Trust me,’ suggested the charm. ‘Have I ever steered you wrong?’

  ‘Trust you, and trust a dragon,’ Kennit retorted softly. He glanced about to be sure no one was watching or listening to him. He brought his wrist up to eye level. In the moonlight, he could make out no more of the charm’s tiny features than the red glinting of its eyes. ‘Does Wintrow have the right of it? Are you a leftover bit of a stillborn dragon?’

  An instant of silence, more telling than any words. ‘And if I am?’ the charm asked smoothly. ‘Do I not still bear your own face? Ask yourself this. Do you conceal the dragon, or does the dragon conceal you?’

  Kennit’s heart lurched in his chest. Some trick of the wind made a low moaning in the rigging. It stood Kennit’s hair on end.

  ‘You make no sense,’ he muttered to the charm. He lowered his hand and gripped his crutch firmly. As he moved through his ship, towards his own bunk and rest, he ignored the minute snickering of the thing bound to his wrist.

  Her voice was rusty. She had sung before, to herself, in the maddening confinement of the cave and pool. Shrill and cracked had her voice been, crashing her defiance against the stone walls and iron bars that bound her.

  But this was different. Now she lifted her voice in the night and sang out an ancient song of summoning. ‘Come,’ it said, to any who might hear. ‘Come, for the time of gathering is nigh. Come to share memories, come to journey together, back to the place of beginnings. Come.’

  It was a simple song, meant to be joyous. It was meant to be shared by a score of voices. Sung alone, it sounded weak and pathetic. When she moved from the Plenty up to the Lack and sang it out under the night sky, it sounded even thinner. She drew breath again, and sang it out, louder and more defiantly. She could not say whom she summoned; there was no fresh trace of serpent scent in the water but only the maddening fragrance from the ship. There was something about the ship she followed that suggested kinship to her. She could not imagine how she could be kin to a ship, and yet she could not deny the tantalizing toxins that drifted from the ship’s hull. She took in air to sing again.

  ‘Come, join your kin and lend strength to the weaker ones. Together, together, we journey, back to our beginnings and our endings. Gather, shore-born creatures of the sea, to return to the shores yet again. Bring your dreams of sky and wings; come to share the memories of our lives. Our time is come, our time is come.’

  The last piping notes of the song faded, carried away by the wind. She Who Remembers waited for an answer. Nothing came. Yet, as she sank disconsolately beneath the waves once more, it seemed to her that the toxins that trailed elusively from the ship ahead of her took on more substance and flavour.

  I mock and tease myself, she chided herself. Perhaps she was truly mad. Perhaps she had returned to freedom only to witness the end of all her kind. Desolation wrapped her and tried to bear her down. Instead, she fell back into her position behind the ship, to follow where it would lead her.

  8

  LORDS OF THE THREE REALMS

  TINTAGLIA’S SECOND KILL was a bear. She measured herself against him, predator against predator, the beat of her wings against the swipe of his immense clawed paws. She won, of course, and tore open his belly to feast on his liver and heart. The struggle satiated something in her soul. It was a proof that she was no longer a helpless, pleading creature trapped in a coffin of her own body. She had left behind the humans who had stupidly cut up the bodies of her siblings. It had not been their doing that had imprisoned her. They had acted in ignorance, mostly, when they slew her kin. Eventually, two of them had been willing to sacrifice all to free her. She did not have to decide if the debts of murder were balanced by the acts of rescue. She had left them behind, for all time. As sweet as vengeance could have been, it would not save those of her kind who might still have survived. Her first duty was to them.

  She had slept for a time athwart her kill. The honey sunshine of autumn had baked into her through the long afternoon. When she had awakened, she was ready to move on. While she slept, her next actions had become clear in her mind. If any of her folk survived, they would be at their old hunting grounds. She would seek them there first.

  So she had arisen from the bear’s carcass, its rank meat already abuzz with hundreds of glistening blue flies. She had tested her wings, feeling the new strength she had gained from this kill. It would have been far more natural for her to emerge in early spring, with all the summer to grow and mature before winter fell. She knew that she must kill and feed as often as she could in these dwindling harvest days, building her body’s strength against the winter to come. Well, she would, for her own survival was paramount to her, but she would seek her folk at the same time. She launched from the sunny hillside where the bear had met his end, and rose into the sky on steadily beating wings.

  She rose to where the wind flowed stronger and hung there on the currents, spiralling slowly over the lands below. As she circled, she sought for some sign of her kin. The muddy riverbanks and shallows should have borne the trampled marks of dragon wallows, yet there were none. She soared past lofty rock ledges, ideal for sun basking and mating, but all of them were innocent of the clawed territorial marks and scat that should have proclaimed their use. Her eyes, keener than any hawk’s, saw no other dragon riding the air currents over the river. The distant skies were blue, and empty of dragons all the way to the horizons. Her sense of smell, at least as keen as her eyesight, brought her no musk of a male, not even an old scent of territory claimed. In all this wide river valley, she was alone. Lords of the Three Realms were dragonkind; they had ruled the sky, the sea and the earth below. None had been their equal in magnificence or intelligence. How could they all have disappeared? It was incomprehensible to her. Some, somewhere, must have survived. She would find them.

  She flew a wide, lazy circle, studying the land below for familiar landmarks. All had vanished. In the years that had passed, the river had shifted in its wide bed. Flooding and earthquakes had reformed the land numerous times; her ancestral memories recalled many changes in the topography of this area. Yet, the changes she saw now seemed more radical than any her folk had ever seen. She felt that the whole countryside had sunken. The river seemed wider and shallower and less defined. Where once the Serpent River had raced strongly to the sea, the Rain Wild River now twined in a lazy sprawl of swamp and marsh.

  The human city of Trehaug was built beside the sunken ruins of old Frengong of the Elderlings. The Elderlings had chosen that site for the city so that they might be close to the dragons’ cocooning grounds. Once, there had been a wide shallows there in the bend of the Serpent River. There the memory stone had shone as silvery-black sand on a gleaming beach. In long-ago autumns, serpents had wallowed out of the river onto the sheltered beaches there. With the aid of the adult dragons, the serpents had formed their cocoons of lon
g strands of saliva mixed with the rich memory sand. Every autumn, the cocoons had littered the beach like immense seed pods awaiting the spring. Both dragons and Elderlings had guarded the hardened cases that protected the metamorphosing creatures all through the long winter. Summer light and heat would eventually come, to touch the cases and awaken the creatures inside.

  Gone, all gone. Beach and Elderlings and guardian dragons, all gone. But, she reminded herself fiercely, Frengong had not been the only cocooning beach. There had been others, further up the Serpent River.

  Hope battled misgiving as she banked her wings and followed the water upriver. She might no longer recognize the lie of the land, but the Elderlings had built cities of their own near the cocooning beaches. Surely, something remained of those sprawling hives of stone buildings and paved streets. If nothing else, she could explore where once her kind had hatched. Perhaps, she dared to hope, in some of those ancient cities the allies of the dragon folk still survived. If she could not find any of her kin, she might find someone who could tell her what had become of them.

  The sun was merciless in the blue sky. The distant yellow orb promised warmth, but the constant mists of the river drenched and chilled them all. Malta’s skin felt raw; the tattering of her ragged garments plainly showed that the mists were as caustic as the river water itself. Her body was pebbled with insect bites that itched perpetually, yet her skin was so irritated that any scratching made her bleed. The cruel glittering of light against the water dazzled her eyes. When she felt her face, her eyes were puffed to slits, while the scar on her brow stood up in ridges of proudflesh. She could find no comfortable position in the tiny boat, for the bare wooden seats were not big enough to lie down on. The best she could do was to wedge herself into a half-reclining position and then drape her arm over her eyes.

  Thirst was her worst torment. To be parched of throat, and yet surrounded by undrinkable water was by far the worst torture of all. The first time she had seen Kekki lift a palmful of river water to her mouth, Malta had sprung at her, shouting at her to stop. She had stopped her that time. From the Companion’s silence and the puffiness of her swollen and scarlet lips now, Malta deduced that Kekki had yielded to the taunt of the water, and more than once.

  Malta lay in the tiny rocking vessel as the river swept it along and wondered why she cared. She could come up with no answer, and yet it made her angry to know the woman would drink water that would eventually kill her. She watched the Companion from the shelter of her arm’s shade. Her fine gown of green silk would once have left Malta consumed with envy. Now it was even more ragged than Malta’s clothing. The Companion’s artfully coifed hair was a tangle of locks around her brow and down her back. Her eyes were closed and her lips puffed in and out with her breathing. Malta wondered if she were dying already. How much of the water did it take to bring death? Then she found herself wondering if she were going to die anyway. Perhaps she was foolish and it was better to drink, and no longer be thirsty, and die sooner.

  ‘Maybe it will rain,’ the Satrap croaked hopefully.

  Malta moved her mouth, and finally decided to reply. ‘Rain falls from clouds,’ she pointed out. ‘There aren’t any.’

  He kept silent, but she could feel annoyance radiating from him like heat from a fireplace. She didn’t have the energy to turn and face him. She wondered why she had even spoken to him. Her mind wandered back to yesterday. She had felt something brush her senses, clinging and yet as insubstantial as a cobweb against her face in the dark. She had looked all around, but seen nothing. Then she had turned her eyes upward and seen the dragon. She was sure of it. She had seen a blue dragon, and when it tipped its wings, the sun had glinted silver off its scales. She had cried out to it, begging it for aid. Her shouts had roused the Satrap and his Companion from their dozing. Yet, when she had pointed and demanded that they see it too, they had told her there was nothing there. Perhaps a blackbird, tiny in the distance, but that was all. The Satrap had scoffed at her, telling her that only children and ignorant peasants believed in dragon tales.

  It had angered her so much that she did not speak to him again, not even when night fell and he complained endlessly of the dark, the chill, and the damp. He had a knack for making every discomfort her fault, or the fault of the Bingtown Traders or the Rain Wild Traders. She had grown tired of his whining. It was more annoying than the shrill humming of the tiny mosquitoes that discovered them as darkness fell and feasted upon their blood.

  When dawn had finally come, she had tried to persuade herself that it brought hope. The lone board that she had to use as a paddle lasted less than half the morning. Her efforts to push them out of the main current of the river had been both exhausting and fruitless. It rotted away in her hands, eaten by the water. Now they sat in the boat, as helpless as children while the river carried them farther and farther from Trehaug. Like an uncomfortable and idle child, the Satrap picked at quarrels.

  ‘Why hasn’t anyone come to rescue us yet?’ he demanded suddenly.

  She spoke over her shoulder. ‘Why would they look for us here?’ she asked dryly.

  ‘But you shouted at them as we floated past Trehaug. We all did.’

  ‘Shouting and being heard are two different things.’

  ‘What will become of us?’ Kekki’s words were so soft and thick that Malta could barely make them out. The Companion had opened her eyes and was looking at Malta. Malta wondered if her own eyes were as bloodshot as Kekki’s.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Malta moved her mouth, trying to moisten her tongue enough to talk. ‘If we are fortunate, we may be carried to one side and caught in a shallows or backwater. If we are very lucky, we may encounter a liveship coming up the river. However, I doubt it. I heard they had all gone out to drive the Chalcedean ships away from Bingtown. Eventually, the river will carry us to the sea. Perhaps we will encounter other vessels there, and be rescued. If our boat holds together that long.’ If we live to see it, Malta added to herself.

  ‘We’ll likely die,’ the Satrap pointed out ponderously. ‘The tragedy of my dying so young will be vast. Many, many other deaths will follow mine. For when I am gone, there will be no one to keep peace among my nobles. No one will sit on the Pearl Throne after me, for I die in the flower of my youth, without heirs. All will mourn my passing. Chalced will no longer fear to challenge Jamaillia. The pirates will raid and burn unchecked. All of my vast and beautiful empire will fall into ruin. And all because of a foolish little girl, too ignorantly rustic to know when she was being offered the chance to better herself.’

  Malta sat up so fast that the little boat rocked wildly. She ignored Kekki’s frightened moans to turn and face the Satrap Cosgo. He sat in the stern of the boat, his knees drawn up under his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs. He looked like a petulant ten-year-old. His pale skin, sheltered so long from the elements, was doubly ravaged by his exposure to the water and the wind. At the ball in Bingtown, his delicate features and pallid skin had seemed romantic and exotic to Malta. Now he merely looked like a sickly child. She fought a sudden and intense urge to push him overboard.

  ‘But for me, you’d already be dead,’ she declared flatly. ‘You were trapped in a room that was filling with mud and water. Or had you forgotten that?’

  ‘And how did I get there? By the machinations of your people. They assaulted and kidnapped me, and for all I know, they have already sent ransom notes.’ He halted abruptly, coughed, and then forced the parched words out. ‘I never should have come to your ratty little town. What did I discover? Not a place of wonder and wealth as Serilla had led me to believe, but a dirty little harbour town full of greedy merchants and their unmannered, pretentious daughters. Look at you! A moment of beauty, that is all you will ever have known. Any woman is beautiful for a month or so of her life. Well, you are past that brief flowering now, with your dried-up skin and that crusty split down your brow. You should have seized your chance to amuse me. Then I might have taken you back to Court, out of pity f
or you, and you would at least have been able to glimpse what it was like to live graciously. But no. You refused me, and so I was forced to stay overlong at your peasant dance and become a target for ruffians and robbers. All Jamaillia will falter and fall into ruin without me. And all because of your inflated view of yourself.’ He coughed again, and his tongue came out in a vain effort to wet his parched lips. ‘We’re going to die on this river.’ He sniffed. A tiny tear formed at the corner of his eyes and trickled down beside his nose.

  Malta felt an instant of hatred purer than any emotion she had ever felt. ‘I hope you die first so I can watch,’ she croaked at him.

  ‘Traitor!’ Cosgo lifted a trembling finger and pointed at her. ‘Only a traitor could speak so to me! I am the Satrap of all Jamaillia. I condemn you to live-flaying and to be burnt afterwards. I swear that if we live, I will watch my sentence carried out on you.’ He looked past her at Kekki. ‘Companion. Witness my words. If I die and you survive, it is your duty to make my will known to others. See that bitch punished!’

  Malta glared at him but said nothing. She tried to work moisture into her throat but found none. It galled her to let his words stand, but she had no choice. She turned her back on him.

  Tintaglia sated her hunger with a foolish young boar. She had spotted him rooting at the edge of an oak grove. At the sight and scent of him, hunger had roared in her. The foolish pig had stood, staring at her curiously as she stooped down to him. At the last moment, he had brandished his tusks at her as if that would scare her off. She had devoured him in a matter of bites, leaving little more than blood-smeared leaves and detritus to show he had ever existed. Then she had taken off again.

  Her voracity almost frightened her. For the rest of the afternoon, she flew low, hunting as she travelled, and killed twice more, a deer and another boar. They were sufficient to her hunger, but no more than that. The grumbling of her belly kept distracting her from her avowed intention. At one point, she lifted her eyes to scan the general lie of the land and was suddenly aware she had been paying no attention to where she was flying. She could no longer see the river.