Dragon Keeper

by Robin Hobb

  SOMEHOW, GREFT HAD moved closer to her. He stared at her and she found herself meeting his gaze. There were blue Rain Wild lights behind his eyes, just like her own. Something changed in his smile and in his eyes as he said in a quieter voice, “I’d like to help you, Thymara.”

  “Oh, I’ll just ask Tats. But thank you for offering.” She turned hastily away from him, uncomfortable with her refusal but certain that accepting his offer would make her even more uncomfortable. She didn’t want to be out here alone with him.

  He refused her dismissal of him. “It will make no difference to you or your dragon who helps you,” he pointed out, his voice hardening as he spoke to her back. “I’m here, right now. I’m stronger than Tats. Together, we can get this meat back to the dragons much more swiftly than if you go there, get him, come back here, and then start hauling it. It only makes sense that two hunters such as ourselves should help each other. Why do you prefer him to me?”

  She didn’t have to answer him. She didn’t want to answer him, but the words came out anyway. “Tats and I have been friends for a long time. He used to work for my father sometimes.”

  “I see. You feel loyalty to him based on a shared past.” A lecturing note had come into his voice. She didn’t like his smile. It seemed cruel somehow. She didn’t like how he assumed he had the right to talk to her in such a tone, to keep her standing here when she wanted to leave. “You and he had a bond in the past. And you think that bond still binds you. But from what I’ve seen going on, he doesn’t feel the same. This life you are entering into now is not your past, and is nothing like your past. You are moving toward your future, Thymara. Sometimes I think you don’t comprehend your own freedom now.”

  He moved a few steps closer to her. “You can break free of everything you’ve always taken for granted. You can put aside rules that bound you and kept you from thinking for yourself, rules that kept you from doing what you wanted, rules that actually kept you from doing what was best for yourself. Tats was someone your father chose, Thymara. I’m sure he’s a very nice fellow in his own way, but he’s not one of us and never will be. It was kind of your father to take him on and give him work after his criminal mother abandoned him. It probably kept him from becoming a thief himself. But all of that is in the past, Thymara. I am sure your father is a good man. But you are under no obligation to continue his kindness to Tats. Surely your family has already done enough for him? If he cannot take care of himself by now, then your putting more effort into him is a waste of your time. You’ve left your old life behind, Thymara, with your father’s blessing.”

  He edged closer to her as he spoke. She stepped back. He halted where he was, considering her. He looked into her face, at the set, flat line of her mouth and her narrowed eyes and turned his head slightly, as if he would cajole her. Then he smiled and shook his head slowly. “Not yet, perhaps, Thymara, but eventually. You’ll see that you and I are more alike than any of the others. I’ll let you take your time to discover that. We have a lot of time ahead of us.”

  Then he dropped down on one knee beside her fallen elk and drew his knife. Without asking her permission, he began to work on cutting free a meaty hindquarter. He kept speaking to her as he worked, his voice deep and sometimes deeper with the effort of cutting. Her anger began to build, but he didn’t look at her and his words continued, his voice so reasonable. “You’ve struck out on your own, to build something new for yourself. As we all have! You are not established with a home and possessions like your family was. You are making your own way in the world. You are making your own future. You will need, eventually, a partner who can pull his own share. You won’t always be able to waste your time with half-wits and outsiders. You cannot afford to drag deadweight with you into that new future. I know you’re angry now about what I’m telling you. But I don’t have to prove it to you. The Rain Wilds will do that. All I have to do is wait.”

  She pushed out her words and they came more forcefully than she intended. “That is my kill and my meat. Get away from it.”

  His knife didn’t stop moving. “Thymara, haven’t you heard a word I said? We need to move into the future, not cling to a past that doesn’t apply to us anymore. Ask yourself honestly. Why are you so intent on running back to Tats and having him help you with this?”

  “I like him. He’s helped me in the past. He’s my friend. If he made a kill like this, he would share it with me.”

  He was still sawing away with his knife. She could tell it was dulling on the thick elk hide. He glanced up at her for a moment; there was no anger in his face, only interest. “Would he? Or would he share it with Jerd? Open your eyes. You have a choice here. You could like me. I could help you, a lot more than Tats could, because ultimately you and I are far more alike than you and he could ever be. I could be your friend. I could be more than your friend.” He lifted his eyes to meet hers. His voice went deeper and softer on the last words.

  Thymara hated how she reacted, how her belly clenched and a shiver went up her back. A handsome, older man had just as much as said that he wanted her. A man, not a boy. A powerful man, one who was assuming a leadership role among the keepers. “Tats is my friend,” she managed to assert. She turned, refusing to see if he would listen to her. “And that is my meat. Stay away from it.” She refused to think about his words, about any of his words. Jerd? Was there something Greft knew about Tats and Jerd that she did not? Push that thought away. Gripping her hunting weapons in one hand, she settled the loop of rope over her shoulder and trudged away from him. He let her go with no further words. She could not move swiftly; she had to push her way through low-growing bushes and dangling branches. She tried to move from hummock to hummock, avoiding the swampiest ground. It wasn’t easy.

  After a short time, the rope began to chafe on her shoulder. The meat she dragged seemed to snag on every stump or root tangle she passed, and she had to give a strong jerk to break it free. By the time she saw the lighter foliage that indicated she was nearly at the river, she was sweaty, scratched, and bitten by insects. She emerged into the swale of tall, coarse river grass and pushed on toward where she had left Skymaw sleeping. She’d give her dragon the meat first, and then go find Tats to help her bring the rest back. She smiled to herself, imagining Skymaw’s surprise at a second hearty meal in one day.

  But when she spotted her dragon, she wasn’t alone. Skymaw was awake, though she still sprawled comfortably on the deep grass. Seated near her head on a wooden box was the Bingtown woman, dressed in loose trousers and a sensible cotton blouse. Next to her Sedric perched uncomfortably on a wooden crate labeled salt fish. His lap desk was on his knees. Paper and ink bottle were before him; his pen was moving swiftly over the paper. His trimly fitting jacket was the color of a bluefly. The white shirt he wore was open at his neck. He’d folded the cuffs of it back over his jacket cuffs, leaving his lean wrists and capable hands free to work. A single line marred his smooth brow. His mouth was pursed slightly, his brows knit in concentration. Alise was apparently dictating the next phrase. Thymara heard “. . . crushing or severing the spine to kill it quickly.”

  As she scented the meat, Skymaw’s head turned and she lunged to her feet. That motion caused both Sedric and Alise to turn toward Thymara. Skymaw gave her no greeting but simply took three strides and then fell onto the meat and began feeding. Alise’s mouth went into an “O” of surprise and then she laughed merrily, as if watching a favorite child indulge in a sweet. “She’s hungry again!” she called to Thymara, as if expecting the girl to share her pleasure.

  “She’s always hungry,” Thymara replied, trying not to sound sour. She felt an echo of assent from the feeding dragon. Sedric, at least, looked happy to see her. His eyes lit, and his pursed lips became a welcoming smile.

  “I’m so glad you’re finally here. I looked everywhere for you earlier. This process will go a lot faster if you translate.”

  She hated to disappoint him. “I can’t. I mean, I only brought part of the meat back w
ith me. I have to find Tats and have him help me with the rest before scavengers take it.” She tried not to imagine that a two-legged scavenger was already hacking off parts of her kill. He wouldn’t dare, she told herself. They were too small a company for anyone to steal openly from another. No one would tolerate it.

  Would they?

  Sedric had said something else. He was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a reply. The twist of anxiety in her belly made her suddenly dismiss him and his concerns. “I have to find Tats and go back for the rest of the meat,” she said hastily, and she refused even to wonder if that answered his question at all. She left them and headed toward the shore and the other dragons.

  Behind her, Alise called out to her, “Rapskal is looking for you!”

  Thymara nodded and kept on going.

  Tats was not with Fente. The small green dragon was still dozing, and when Thymara tried to rouse her to ask if she knew where Tats was, the creature made a sincere snap in her direction. Thymara jumped back uninjured and left her quickly. She wondered uneasily if the dragon would have eaten her if she’d drawn blood. She knew from Skymaw that the green queen had a reputation for being vicious when provoked. It was something she should talk to Tats about. If she could find him.

  She found him and Sylve with the little silver dragon. Guilt tinged with annoyance suffused Thymara. She’d said she would care for the silver and Sylve had said she’d help. She’d only spoken out because Tats and Jerd had said they’d team up on the copper one. But she’d done little more than to check him for parasites around his eyes and nostrils each night. She hadn’t even thought to offer him some of the meat she’d brought back. Sylve was fussing over his tail. Nearby, a little fire smoldered reluctantly on a tussock of grass. A pot of foul-smelling soup had been set on it.

  “How is he?” she asked uncomfortably as she approached.

  “It’s as we feared,” Sylve said. “It looks like he let his tail dip below the surface of the river water, and more than once by the look of it. The cut is inflamed.” She opened the cloth she’d been trying to wrap around the injury, and Thymara winced. She wondered if her earlier ministrations hadn’t done him more harm than good. It must have been painful when the raw flesh met the acid river. She frowned: she couldn’t recall hearing him cry out. On a positive note, the dragon was sleeping heavily; from the scraps of gut under his front claws, he had evidently got at least a share of the fish run.

  “I wish there were a way to seal the bandaging around his tail to keep the water out,” she said hopelessly.

  Tats grinned at her. “Maybe there is. I asked Captain Leftrin for some tar or pitch, and he gave me a little pot of it. It’s heating now. He gave us canvas, too.” His grin grew wider. “I think Captain Leftrin likes that Bingtown woman. When I was asking for the stuff, I thought he was going to tell me to shove off. But that woman, that Alise, got all fluttery about the ‘poor little dragon’ and the captain came up with a solution pretty fast.”

  “Oh,” she said. Sylve was nodding approvingly at what Tats said.

  “The captain said we should wrap it well, and then tar over the canvas and over his scales to either side. We’re hoping that it will stick to his scales well enough to make a watertight bond.”

  The sheer strangeness of such a patch drove, for a moment, all other concerns out of her head. She stared at Tats. “Do you think it will work?”

  He shrugged and grinned. “Nothing to lose by trying. I think the tar is warm enough. I don’t want to burn him. In fact, I hope to do this without waking him up.”

  “How did you get involved in this?”

  Sylve answered. “I asked him.” Despite the scaling on her face, a blush rosed her cheeks. “I had to,” she added defensively. “I couldn’t find you, and I didn’t know what to do for him.” She looked down at the dragon’s injured tail. “So I went to find Tats.”

  As plainly as if she had spoken the words aloud, Thymara saw that the girl was infatuated with the tattooed boy. It almost made her laugh, except that it was so disturbing. Sylve could not have been more than twelve, even if her pink-scaled scalp and copper eyes made her seem older. Didn’t she know how hopeless it was for a girl like her to have a crush on someone like Tats? She could never have him; she could never have anyone, any more than Thymara could. What was she thinking?

  But Thymara knew the answer to that, too. She wasn’t thinking at all. Only yearning after a handsome young man who’d shown her kindness and made nothing of her differences. Thymara couldn’t fault her. Hadn’t she felt the same, sometimes?

  Didn’t she now?

  She must have been looking at him strangely, because Tats suddenly flushed and said, “I wanted to help. There wasn’t much I could do for the little copper one anyway. So I decided to put my time here.”

  “What’s wrong with the copper?”

  The grin had faded from Tats’s face. “The same things that have been wrong with him since he hatched. He’s dull-witted. And his body doesn’t work very well. I cleared a load of parasites from around his eyes and nose and, uh, other places. He didn’t even stir. I think he’s just exhausted from trying to keep up with the others today. I can’t even find out if he’s hungry. He’s that dead tired.”

  The words echoed through her like a prophecy. “I killed an elk,” she blurted out.

  In the shocked silence that followed her words, she quickly added, “I need help to bring the meat back. There would be some for each of our dragons, and some for us keepers, too. But we’d have to leave soon if we want to get back to camp before dark. It’s going to take us several trips back and forth to get it here.”

  Tats looked at the tar pot and then at Sylve’s face. “We’ve got to finish this first,” he decided. “Then maybe Sylve and some of the others would help us go for the meat. That way we’d only have to make one trip.”

  “The more people, the less meat for each dragon,” she pointed out bluntly.

  Tats looked surprised that she’d think of it that way. She was surprised that he’d think of it any other way. For a long moment, the silence held. Then Sylve said quietly, “I can do the silver’s tail alone. You can go get your meat.”

  Thymara relented. “Let’s just get it done and then we’ll all go.”

  Sylve kept her eyes down and her child’s voice thickened as she said, “Thank you. Mercor made a kill today and he didn’t complain of hunger, but I don’t think it really satisfied him. I tried to fish, but the boys had the best places all staked out. When Captain Leftrin said that there would be a serving of meat portioned out to each dragon tomorrow morning, I hoped it would be enough for him.”

  “Well, let’s get this dragon patched up and then we’ll go fetch meat for the others,” Thymara surrendered.

  The heat had loosened the tar. Sylve and Thymara held the bandage firm around the silver dragon’s tail while Tats daubed the tar on with a stick. He worked carefully, and to Thymara it seemed that it took an age before the entire bandage was well covered with tar and sealed to the dragon’s thick tail. The silver, thank Sa, hadn’t even fluttered an eyelid. That thought gave her a moment’s concern. The two least-capable dragons seemed more exhausted every day. How long could they keep up this pace? What would happen to them when they could not? She had no answer to that. She forced her mind back to today’s problem.

  Tats could almost keep up with her as she led them through the forest, moving through the trees rather than on the ground. Sylve trailed him, but not by much. It was easy to find the way back; she just watched for the trail she had made dragging the meat back to Skymaw. She judged they were about halfway there when she heard voices below her. She moved down the tree trunk, her heart sinking. Her worst fears were realized. Greft was below her. He was dragging a hindquarter of her elk. Behind him came Boxter and Kase. Boxter had the other front leg of the elk, and Kase had taken part of a hind leg but not the full quarter. They were chattering about something to one another, their voices full of triumph when she dro
pped out of her tree and into the path before them. Greft stopped short in front of her.

  She didn’t mince words. “What do you think you’re doing with my kill?”

  She heard Tats coming quickly down the tree. So did Greft. He looked up to watch Tats’s descent, his face deceptively mild. “I’m taking it back to the dragons. Isn’t that what you intended?” He managed to put a mild rebuke into his voice.

  “I intended to take it back to my dragon. Not yours.”

  He didn’t reply right away. He gave time for Tats to reach the ground and take a stance behind Thymara. There was a shower of twigs, a brief shriek, and then a thud as Sylve half fell and half slid the rest of the way down. Once she was there, Greft glanced up at the tree, as if to assure himself that this was the whole of their party. Behind him, Boxter and Kase had halted. Boxter looked confused, Kase defiant.

  Greft’s eyes roved over them. He seemed to be making a mental tally of who they were and how each could best be played, as if he were studying a game board. When he spoke, his voice was calm, his words reasonable. “You took a quarter of the kill for your dragon and left the rest here. You told me you were going to go get Tats. But I knew from looking at it that there was more than you and Tats could haul back in a single trip. Even recruiting Sylve doesn’t change that! So I went back, got Boxter and Kase, and started in on the work. I don’t understand why you seem to be upset, Thymara. Isn’t this what Tats advocated, quite some time back? Surely that is what you told me, that you’d give a share to those who helped bring the meat back. It seemed fair to me.”

  She stood her ground. “That isn’t what I said. I said I intended to get Tats, and that he and I would haul my kill back to our dragons. I intended to keep back some of the meat for the other keepers to eat tonight. But I didn’t offer to share my kill with you, or with your friends.”

  Greft looked surprised, almost hurt. “But surely we’re all friends here, Thymara! We are too small a company not to be. You told me yourself, at the campfire one evening, that you’d never before had friends such as you had now! I thought you meant it.”