by Robin Hobb
He took a slow turn around the deck, checking things that didn’t need checking and finding all exactly as it should be. Jess and his canoe were gone. Good. He considered for a moment, then took out his rum flask and upended it over the side of the barge and into the water below. “That he may not come back,” he offered El savagely. It was well known that that particular god wasn’t moved by prayer but sometimes succumbed to bribery. Ordinarily, Leftrin worshipped Sa, when he worshipped anything. But sometimes the harshness of a pagan god was a man’s last resort.
Well, not quite his last resort. He could always murder Jess himself…
He didn’t like to think about it, and not just because he was pretty certain the man would be hard to kill. He didn’t like to think of himself as a man who killed inconvenient people. But Jess had indicated that he was going to be much worse than inconvenient.
There were, he reflected, lots of ways to kill a man on the water, and many of them could be made to look accidental. He considered it coldly. Jess was tough and sagacious. Leftrin had been foolish to growl at him today. He should have pretended interest in his offer, should have chummed him in close. He should have invited him to make a midnight raid on the sleeping dragons. That would have been the prime opportunity to do him in. But the man had irritated him beyond any sort of strategic thinking. He hated how Jess snickered around Alise. The rat knew how Leftrin felt about her. Leftrin had a feeling that Jess would be happy to ruin all that simply because he could. And he’d seen Jess’s face when Alise had come back on board with the dragon scale and so delightedly exhibited it to all of them. He’d seen the fires of greed kindle in the man’s eyes and worried for her then. Leftrin walked a few more steps down the deck and then stooped to tidy a coil of line that was already tidy enough.
Two nights ago, Jess had come to Leftrin with his new scheme. He’d maddened Leftrin with his insistence that Sedric would be amenable to “their” plans. He refused to say what he based that opinion on, but twice Leftrin had caught him lurking around the sick man’s room. He only smiled that sneery smile; it was plain that he thought Leftrin and Alise and Sedric were conspiring together about the dragons. He thought it was an alliance he could break into and use for himself. Sooner or later, he’d talk to Sedric. Sedric would easily believe that Leftrin was complicit with Jess’s plotting. He could just imagine the Bingtown man’s reaction to Jess’s suggestion that Leftrin could kidnap Alise and carry her off to Chalced, with the understanding that, given enough money, Sedric would also be happy to go to Chalced. Or Alise’s reaction to the idea that Leftrin was just waiting for an opportunity to butcher up a dragon.
The man was a loose cannon. Leftrin had to do away with him. A cold certainty welled up in him; he could feel Tarman accede to the decision. Almost, it was a relief to reach it.
There would be consequences to killing Jess, he supposed, even if he made it look like an accident. The Chalcedean merchant Sinad Arich would wonder what had become of his hireling when Jess failed to contact him. Well, let him wonder! The Rain Wild River was a dangerous place. Men just as competent as Jess and a lot nicer had died there. He felt the decision settle in him and sink down to his bones. Jess was going to die.
But he’d have to set him up for it. And that would mean trying to convince him that he’d had a change of heart. He wondered if he could make him believe that he’d lost interest in Alise as well. If Jess didn’t see her as a weapon he could use against Leftrin, he might stop haunting her. After that, it would be a matter of waiting for the right opportunity.
Tarman nudged him. “What?” he demanded of his ship and stood. A quick scan around betrayed no perceptible danger. Despite his excuse to Alise, this part of the river was a fairly easy stretch. It was edged with reed beds that ventured out into the channel, so that the barge moved through them. The fishing would be good, and he suspected that the dragons would feed fairly well along today’s path.
Then he saw a shivering in the trees behind the reed banks. Every tree shook, and a few dropped yellowed leaves and small twigs. An instant later, the reed bank rippled like a wave, a wave that moved out into the river, trembling water and grasses. The motion slapped the barge’s hull and then moved past it, almost vanishing in the deeper water.
“Quake!” Swarge raised the cry from the stern.
“Quake!” Big Eider bellowed the warning to the keepers in their small boats.
“So it is!” Leftrin shouted back. “Move Tarman away from the banks as much as you can, but don’t lose our grip on the bottom. “Ware, now!”
“Ware!” his polemen cried him back.
As Tarman edged away from the bank, Leftrin watched another rippling move the trees. On the shore, small debris of leaves, twigs, and old birds’ nests showered down. An instant later, rank after rank of reeds bowed to the river, followed by a wavelet that rocked the boat. Leftrin scowled but kept his eyes on the trees. Quakes were frequent in the Rain Wilds, and for the most part, little tremors were ignored by everyone. Larger ones endangered not only the underground workers in the buried Elderling cities, but could also bring down old or rotten trees. Even if a tree didn’t hit the barge directly, he’d heard of falling trees that swamped boats. In his grandfather’s time, supposedly a tree had fallen that was so large it had actually stopped all traffic on the river and had taken workers nearly six months to clear away. Leftrin was a bit skeptical about the full truth of that tale, but every legend had a grain of truth. Doubtless a very big tree had come down somewhere to spark that one.
“What’s going on?” Alise sounded apprehensive. She’d heard the shouts and come out on the deck.
He answered without looking at her. “We’ve had a quake, and a pretty good one. No problem for us right now, and it looks like it didn’t do much more than give the trees a good shake. None fell. Unless we get a second bigger shake, we’ll be just fine.”
To her credit, Alise simply nodded. Quakes were common all along the Cursed Shores. No Bingtown resident would be surprised by one, but he doubted she’d ever experienced one on the water, nor had to worry about a big tree coming down. And it came to him that the next warning would probably be new to her as well. “Sometimes a quake will wake up the acid in the river. But it doesn’t happen right away. The theory is that it does something way upriver, releases the white somehow. In a couple or three days, we may suddenly find the river is running white again. Or it may not. A really bad quake may warn of a dirty rain to follow.”
She realized the danger instantly. “If the river runs acid, what will the dragons do? And can the small boats the keepers use withstand it?”
He took a deep breath and exhaled it through his nose. “Well, an acid run is always a danger on the river. The small boats could probably stand up to it for a time, but for safety’s sake, if the acid was strong, we’d bring the small boats on deck, stack them, and have the keepers ride with us.”
“And the dragons?”
He shook his head. “From what I’ve seen, they’ve got tough hides. Some of the animals, fish, and birds in the Wilds can deal with the acid. Some creatures avoid the river when it runs white; others don’t seem to notice the difference. If the river runs white, a lot will depend on how white it is, and how long the run lasts. If it’s only a day or so, my guess is that the dragons will be able to take it. Much longer than that, and I’d be concerned. But maybe we’ll be lucky and find ourselves near a fairly solid bank where the dragons could haul out and wait for the worst to pass.”
“What if there isn’t a bank?” Alise asked in a low voice.
“You know the answer to that,” Leftrin replied. So far in their journey, that had only happened once. One night, evening had come with no resting place in sight. There had been only marshlands as far as the eye could see, nowhere for the dragons to get out of the water. Despite their grumbling, the dragons had had to stand overnight in the water, while the keepers had taken refuge on Tarman’s deck. The dragons hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but they had surv
ived. But the water had been mild then, and the weather kind. “They’d have to endure it,” Leftrin said, and neither one spoke of how the acid might eat at injuries and tender tissue.
After a few moments of silence, Leftrin added, “That’s always been a danger to this journey, Alise. The most obvious danger, actually, and one we’ve always had to live with. The first ‘settlers’ in the Rain Wilds were actually abandoned here; no one in their right mind would come here of their own accord.”
“I know my history,” Alise interrupted a bit brusquely, but then added with a small smile, “and I definitely came here of my own accord.”
“Well, it’s so that Bingtown’s history is the Rain Wilds’s history. But I think we live it here a bit more than you folks do.” He leaned on the railing, feeling Tarman sturdy beneath him. He glanced up and down the current of his world. “Strangeness flows with the water in this river, and it affects us all, one way or another. Trehaug might not be the easiest place in the world to live, and Cassarick is no better. But without those cities, Bingtown wouldn’t have Elderling magic to sell. So, no Rain Wilds, no Bingtown is how I see it. But what I’m trying to say is that generation after generation, decade after decade, young explorers have set out vowing they’re going to find a better place to settle. Some don’t come back. And those who do report the same thing. Nothing but an immense wide valley, with lots of trees and lots of wet ground. And the deeper you go into the forest, the stranger it gets. All the expeditions that have gone up this river have come back saying that they either ran out of navigable waterway, or that the river just flattened out, wider and wider, until it seemed there were no real banks to it anywhere.”
“But they just didn’t go far enough, did they? I’ve seen enough references to Kelsingra to know that the city existed. And somewhere, it still does.”
“The sad truth is that it could be under our hull right now, and we’d never know. Or it could be half a day’s journey away from us, back there in the trees, cloaked in moss and mud. Or it could have been up one of the tributaries we’ve passed. Two other Elderling cities either sank or were buried. No one is sure just exactly what befell them, but we know they’re underground now. The same thing could have happened to Kelsingra. Probably did happen. We know that something big and bad happened here a long time ago. It ended the Elderlings and nearly ended the dragons. It changed everything. All we’re really doing right now is following the dragons up the most navigable waterway, and hoping we come to something.”
He glanced at her, saw her face pale under her freckles and her set mouth. He tried to speak more gently. “It only makes sense, Alise. If Kelsingra had survived, wouldn’t the Elderlings have lived? And if the Elderlings had survived, wouldn’t they have kept dragons alive somehow? In all the tapestries, they’re always together.”
“But…if you don’t believe we can find Kelsingra, if you never believed we could find Kelsingra, why did you undertake this expedition?”
He looked at her then, full in her gray-green eyes. “You wanted to go. You wanted me to go. It was a way to be with you, even if only for a time.” Her heart was in her eyes as he spoke those words. He looked aside from her. “That was what decided me. Before, when I first heard of it, I thought to myself, ‘Well, there’s a mission for a madman. Small chance of success, and so I’ll bet they pay accordingly.’ A chunk of money up front, and a big promise of lots more ‘when all is done.’ And a good adventure along the way. There isn’t a man on the river who doesn’t wonder where it comes from. Here was a chance to find out. And I’ve always been a bit of a gambler. Everyone who works the river plays the odds one way or another. So I took the bet.”
He dared himself and took his own wager. Her hands were resting on the railing next to his. He lifted his hand and set it down gently upon hers. The effect on him was almost convulsive. A shiver ran over his body. Her hand was trapped under his and beneath her touch, there was Tarman. A thought floated through his mind. The whole of everything I want in this world is right here, under my hand.
The thought echoed through him, to his very bones and out to Tarman’s timbers and back again until he couldn’t define where it had originated.
Day the 12th of the Prayer Moon
Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown
To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug
Enclosure in sealed tube, highly confidential, to be delivered to Trader Newf. An extra fee has been paid to assure that this message is delivered with the stamped seal intact.
Detozi,
My apprentice continues to do his tasks very well. My compliments to your family on a young man well raised. There will soon be a vote of the bird keepers, but it is likely he will be raised to the status of journeyman. I tell you this in confidence, of course, knowing that no word of it will reach him until the finding is official.
He has excelled at his tasks so well that I am considering taking some time to myself. I’ve long considered a trip to the Rain Wilds and its wonders. I would not, of course, presume upon your family’s hospitality, but I would greatly enjoy meeting you in person. Would you be amenable to this?
Erek
CHAPTER THREE
FIRST KILL
Every one of the keepers had instantly recognized the danger when the shuddering water had rippled against their small boats. Ahead of them, the dragons had suddenly halted, spreading their legs wide and digging their feet into the riverbed as the wave of motion passed. The silver dragon had trumpeted wildly, flinging his head about as he tried to look in every direction simultaneously. Dislodged birds burst upward from the trees and flew out over the river, croaking and squawking their distress.
When the second quake hit and branches and leaves showered down in the forest and on the shallows, Rapskal had exclaimed, “Good thing we didn’t run for the shore. Think any of the trees will fall on us?”
Thymara hadn’t worried about it until he mentioned it. She had been caught up in comparing how a quake felt on water to how it felt when one lived high in a treetop. She wondered if her parents had felt it; up high in the canopy of Trehaug, in the flimsy cheap houses known as the Cricket Cages, a quake would make everything dance. People would shout and grip a tree limb if they could. Sometimes houses fell during quakes, heavy ones as well as flimsy ones. The thought had filled her with both worry for her parents and homesickness. But Rapskal’s wondering snapped her out of that as she realized that being crushed under a falling tree might be just as dangerous as tumbling out of one. “Move away from the shore,” she directed him, digging her own paddle into the water more vigorously. They had nearly caught up with the waiting dragons. Around them, the scattered flotilla of keeper boats moved chaotically.
“No. It’s all over now. Look at the dragons. They know. They’re moving on again.”
He was right. Ahead of them, the dragons made small trumpeting sounds to one another as they resumed their slogging march through muck and water. They had bunched up around Mercor when they first halted. Now they spread out again. Mercor led the way and the others fell in behind him. Thymara had almost become accustomed to the daily sight of dragons wading upriver in front of her. At that moment, as they resumed their trek, she saw them afresh. There were fifteen of the creatures, varying in size from Kalo, who was almost the size of a proper dragon now, down to the copper, who was barely taller than Thymara at the shoulder. The sun glinted on the river’s face and on their scales. Gold and red, lavender and orange, gleaming blue black to azure, their hides threw the glory of the sun back up into the day. It made her realize that their colors had deepened and brightened. It was not just that the immense dragons were cleaner now; it was that they were healthier. Some of them were developing secondary colors. Sintara’s deep blue wings were laced with silver, and the “fringes” on her neck were turning a different shade of blue.
All of them moved with ponderous grace. Kalo and Sestican followed behind Mercor. T
heir heads wove back and forth as they moved, and as she watched them, Sestican darted his head into the water and brought up a fat, dangling river snake. He gave his head a sharp shake and the writhing creature suddenly hung limp in his jaws. He ate it as he walked, tilting his head back and swallowing it as if he were a bird with a worm.
“I hope my little Heeby finds something to eat on the way. She’s hungry. I can feel it.”
“If she doesn’t, we’ll do our best tonight to come up with something for her.” She spoke the words almost without thinking. She was becoming resigned, she suddenly realized, to sharing whatever she could bring back from her evening hunt. Most often it went to whichever dragon was hungriest. That did not endear her to Sintara, but the blue queen had not been exactly generous with Thymara. Let her find out that loyalty was supposed to run both ways.
The rest of that day, Thymara expected to feel echoing quakes, but if they came, they were so small that she didn’t notice them. When they camped that night on a mud bank, the main topic of discussion had been the quake, and whether a rush of acid water would follow it. After spending the meal hour chewing over the potential threat to all of them, Greft had suddenly stood and dismissed the topic. “Whatever will happen is going to happen,” he said sternly as if expecting them to argue. “It’s useless to worry and impossible to prepare. So just be ready.”
He stalked away from their firelit circle into the darkness. No one spoke for a few minutes after he left. Thymara sensed awkwardness; doubtless Greft was still smarting from his misspoken words about the copper dragon. His pronouncement of the obvious seemed a feeble attempt to assert his leadership over them. Even his closest followers had seemed embarrassed for him. Neither Kase nor Boxter followed him or even looked in the direction he had gone. Thymara had kept her eyes on the flames, but from the corner of her eyes, she marked how shortly after that Jerd stood up, made a show of stretching, and then likewise wandered away from their company. As she passed behind Thymara, she bid her “Good night” in a small catty voice. Thymara gritted her teeth and made no response.