by Robin Hobb
“Did Sintara go with them?”
“They all went, each more jealous than the next, to be sure of getting a fair share. What did you bring?”
“Bread leaf and sour pear. My shirt is full of sour pear. I couldn’t think of any other way to carry them.”
Sylve laughed. “We’ll be glad to have them, no matter how you got them here. Greft and Tats are trying to get enough of a fire going that we can cook the fish. If it doesn’t work, I suppose raw will have to do.”
“Better than nothing, certainly.”
Harrikin had been quiet through their conversation. He was never much of a talker. The first time she had seen him, he had reminded her of a lizard. He was long and slender, and much older than Sylve, but she seemed very comfortable with him. Thymara had not realized that he, too, had claws, until she watched him using them. He looked up from his task, caught her eyes on his hands, and nodded an acknowledgment to her.
A little silence fell over the group. Unanswered questions were answered by it. No one spoke of Rapskal, and in the distance, she heard Alum’s dragon give a long, anxious cry. Arbuc still called for his missing keeper. Warken’s red dragon, Baliper, held his mourning silence. The remaining keepers were still marooned on a raft of floating debris. Nothing had changed. Thymara wondered in passing what would become of them if their dragons abandoned them here. Would they? Did the dragons need them any longer? What if they decided to travel on without them?
She looked up to see Tats coming toward them and wondered if she looked as bad as he did. His skin was scalded red from the river water, and his hair stuck up in tufts. The water had attacked his clothing as well, mottling the already-worn shirt and trousers. He looked haggard, but he still managed to put on a smile for her. “What are you wearing?” he asked her.
“Our breakfast. Bread leaf and sour pear. Looks like you have a fire going for the fish.”
He glanced back to the little blaze that Greft tended. Jerd had come from somewhere to join him. She leaned against him quietly as he broke dry bits of root from the end of the snag and fed it to the small fire he’d kindled in the main nest of roots. “It wasn’t easy to get it going. And the fear is that if we succeed too well, it may spread to the rest of the debris pack and send us fleeing again. We don’t have much security here, but at least we’re still afloat.”
“And the water is going down. But if we must, we would take to the trees. Here. Hold your shirt out.”
Tats lifted the front of his shirt to form a sling, and Thymara reached down her own shirt front to extract the sour pears she had carried inside her shirt against her belly. The wrinkled fruit were no relation to true pears, but she had heard that the flavor was similar. When she had emptied her shirt into his, she followed him back to Greft’s fire. She feared there would be awkwardness when she got there, comments or mockery, but Jerd only turned away from her while Greft said simply, “Thanks. Any chance of more?”
“These are past the season, but I could probably find more on the tree. And where one bread leaf vine grows, there are usually others.”
“That’s good to know. Until we know more of our situation, we’re going to have to manage whatever food we can acquire carefully.”
“Well, there’s plenty of dead fish floating in the river. The current is pushing the floaters up against the debris pack.” This was from Sylve. She and Harrikin carried a line of fish suspended by a stick shoved through their gills.
“They won’t be good much more than a day or so,” Harrikin observed quietly. “The acid in the water is already softening them. We probably shouldn’t try to eat the skin, only the meat.”
Thymara removed her garland of bread leaf vine and began to strip the leaves from them methodically. Tats had already divvied the fruit into piles. Now he began to deal the leaves out as well. With the fish, each keeper would have an adequate breakfast. There was no sense worrying about dinner just yet.
Greft seemed to have the same thought. “We should hold some food back for later,” he suggested.
“Or we can give each keeper a share and tell them, ‘that’s it for the day, ration yourself,’” Tats countered.
“Not everyone will have the self-discipline to be wise about it,” Greft spoke the words, but it didn’t sound like an argument. Thymara suspected they were continuing an earlier discussion.
“I don’t think any one of us has the authority to ration the food,” Tats said.
“Not even if we’ve provided it?” Greft pushed.
“Thymara!”
She turned her head to Alise’s voice. The Bingtown woman teetered awkwardly along one of the logs. Thymara winced to look at her. Her face was pebbled with blisters and her red hair was a tangled mat that dangled halfway down her back. Always before, Alise had been so clean and well groomed. “Where did you go?” she demanded when she was still most of a log away.
“Out to look for food.”
“By yourself? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Not usually. I almost always hunt or gather alone.”
“But what about wild animals?” Alise sounded genuinely concerned for her.
“Up where I travel, I’m one of the larger creatures. As long as I watch out for the big snakes, tree cats, and little poisonous things, I’m pretty safe.” She thought briefly of Nortel. No. She didn’t intend to mention that incident at all.
“There are other dangers besides wild animals,” Greft observed darkly.
Thymara glanced at him in annoyance. “I’ve been moving through the trees all my life, Greft, and usually much higher in the canopy than I went today. I’m not going to fall.”
“He’s not worried about you falling,” Tats said in a quiet voice.
“Then someone should say plainly what he is worried about,” Thymara observed sourly. They seemed to be talking about her and deliberately making the words go past her without meaning.
Greft glanced at Alise and away. “Perhaps later,” he said, and Thymara saw Alise bridle. His words and look had pointed her out as an outsider, someone not to be brought into keeper affairs. Whatever it was that was chafing him, Thymara already wanted to defy whatever older, male wisdom he intended to inflict on her. From the look on Jerd’s face, he had annoyed her as well. She shot Thymara a look that was full of venom, but Thymara could not master the coldness to be angry at her. Grief for her missing dragon had ravaged Jerd. Her tears had left scarlet tracks down her face. Impulsively, she addressed her directly.
“I’m sorry about Veras. I hope she manages to rejoin us. There are already so few female dragons.”
“Exactly,” Greft said, as if that proved some point for him.
But Jerd looked at her, weighed her comment, and decided Thymara was sincere. “I can’t feel her. Not clearly. But it doesn’t feel like she’s gone, either. I’m afraid that she’s injured somewhere. Or just disoriented and unable to find her way back to us.”
“It will be all right, Jerd,” Greft said soothingly. “Don’t distress yourself. It’s the last thing you need right now.”
This time both Thymara and Jerd shot him furious looks.
“I’m only thinking of you,” he said defensively.
“Well, I’m thinking and speaking about my dragon,” Jerd replied.
“Perhaps we’d best get the fish cooking before the fire burns too low,” Sylve suggested, and the alacrity with which the fish were taken up and fixed on wooden skewers over the fire attested to how uncomfortable the near quarrel was making everyone.
“Have you asked the other dragons if they can feel her?” Sylve asked Jerd as they began to ferry the cooked fish and other foods from the fire to the main raft. Boxter had found shelf mushrooms and onion-moss to share, welcome additions to an otherwise bland meal.
Jerd shook her head mutely.
“Well, my dear, you should!” Alise smiled at her. “Sintara and Mercor would be the best ones to approach with this. I’ll ask Sintara for you, shall I?”
The words were sai
d so innocently, with such a hopeful helpfulness. Thymara bit down on her anger. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Well, because she is Sintara,” Thymara replied, and Sylve laughed.
“I know what you mean. Just when I think I understand Mercor and that he will do any simple favor I ask of him, he asserts he is a dragon and not my plaything. But I think he might help with this.”
Jerd struggled for a moment and then asked quietly, “Would you ask him, then? I didn’t think to ask the other dragons. It just seemed to me that I should know if she is alive or dead. I should be able to feel it, without help.”
“Are you that close to Veras?” Thymara asked and tried not to let envy creep into her voice.
“I thought I was,” Jerd said quietly. “I thought I was.”
ALISE LOOKED AROUND the circle of dragon keepers. In her hands, she held two broad, thick leaves topped with a piece of partially cooked fish. A mushroom and a tangle of shaggy greenery topped the fish. She balanced a fruit that Thymara had called a “sour pear” on her leg. They’d given her the same share that any other keeper had received. She’d slept alongside them and now ate with them, but she knew that, despite her efforts, she was not one of them. Thymara did not make as much of their differences as the others did, but the girl still deferred to her in a way that kept her at a distance. She felt that Greft resented her, but if she’d had to say why, the only reason she would come up with was that she was not of the Rain Wilds. It made her feel desperately alone.
And being so useless did not make it any easier.
She envied how quickly the others seemed to have adapted and then reacted to their situation. They shifted their lives and responded to recover from the disaster so quickly that she felt both old and inflexible in comparison. And they spoke so little of their losses. Jerd wept, but she did not endlessly rant. The calm the keepers showed seemed almost unnatural. She wondered if it was the response of people who had grown up with near disaster at every turn. Quakes were not a rarity to them, any more than they were to the people of Bingtown. But all knew that in the Rain Wilds, quakes were more dangerous. So many of the Rain Wilders worked underground, salvaging Elderling artifacts as they unearthed the buried halls and chambers of the ancient cities. Cave-ins and collapses were sometimes triggered by quakes; had the keepers been inured to loss from an early age?
She wished they had been less reticent. She wanted to howl at the moon, to shake and rant, to weep hopelessly and fall apart. She longed to talk about the Tarman and Captain Leftrin, to ask if they thought the ship had survived, to ask if they expected the captain to come searching. As if talking about rescue could make it a reality! It would have been strangely comforting to discuss it all, over and over. Yet in the face of all these youngsters simply dealing with this disaster, how could she?
She picked the steaming fish apart with her fingers and ate it with bites of the mushroom and strands of the onion-moss. It did, indeed, have the flavor of onions. When she finished, she ate the “plate” it had been served on. The bread leaf was untrue to its name; there was nothing of “bread” about it. It was thick and starchy and crisp, but to her palate, unmistakably vegetable. When she finished it, she was still hungry. The sour pear at least helped her with her thirst. Despite its wrinkled skin, the fruit was juicy. She ate it right down to its core and only wished there was more.
Yet with every bite, her thoughts were elsewhere. Was Leftrin all right? Had the Tarman weathered the wave? Poor Sedric would be frantic with worry about her. Were they looking for them right now? She wanted to believe that, wanted to believe it so desperately that she realized she hadn’t been exerting herself to better their situation. Captain Leftrin and the Tarman would come to rescue them. Ever since Sintara had plucked her out of the water, she’d believed that.
“When the water goes down, do you think there will be solid land here?” she asked Thymara.
Thymara swallowed her food and considered the question. “The water is going down, but we won’t know about land until it goes all the way down. Even if there is land, it will be mud for some time. Floods come up quickly in the Rain Wilds, and go away slowly, because the earth is already saturated with water. We won’t be able to walk on it, if that is what you are thinking. Not for any great distance.”
“So. What are we going to do?”
“For now? For now, those of us who can forage or hunt will. The others will do what they can to make things more comfortable here. And when the water goes down, well, then we’ll see what else is to be done.”
“Will the dragons want to continue our journey?”
“I don’t think they’ll want to stay here,” Tats said. Alise realized he was not the only one listening in on their conversation. Most of the keepers within earshot were focused on his words. “There’s nothing for them here. They’ll want to move on, if they can. With us or without us.”
“Can they survive without us?” The question came from Boxter.
“Not easily, not well. But they’ve mostly led the way, and mostly found the resting places each night. They’ve learned to hunt a bit. They’re stronger and tougher now than when we started. It wouldn’t be easy, but none of this journey has been easy for them. I don’t say they’d choose to go on without us.”
Tats paused. Alise waited, but Thymara was the one to continue his thought. “But if we cannot go on with them, if we have no way to accompany them, then they’ll really have no choice. Food will run short here for them. They’ll have to leave us.”
“Couldn’t they carry us?” Alise asked. “Sintara rescued Thymara and me and carried both of us to safety. It wasn’t easy for her to swim with us. But if they were wading through the shallows as they usually do…”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Greft decided.
“It would compromise their dignity too much,” Thymara said quietly. “Sintara saved us. But to her, that is different from acting as a beast of burden and carrying us along.”
“Mercor might carry me,” Sylve injected. “But he has a different nature from the others. He is kinder to me than most of the dragons are to their keepers. Sometimes I feel like he is the eldest of them, even though I know he came out of his case on the same day.”
“Perhaps because he remembers more,” Alise dared to suggest. “He seems very wise to me.”
“Perhaps,” Sylve agreed and for the first time shared a shy smile.
“If the dragons go on without us, what becomes of us?” Nortel asked suddenly. He had moved closer to Thymara. He seemed focused on the discussion, but his proximity still made her uncomfortable.
“We survive as best we can,” Tats said. “Right here. Or in whatever place we can find.”
“It would not be so different from how Trehaug was founded,” Greft pointed out. “The original population of the Rain Wilds were forcibly marooned here by the ships that were supposed to help them find a good spot to start a colony. Of course, there were more of them, but still, it’s similar.”
“Wouldn’t you try to return to Trehaug?” Alise asked. “You have three boats.” To her, it seemed the obvious course of action, if the dragons abandoned them. It would be an arduous trek, either slogging through mud and swamp or traveling through the trees, but at least safety beckoned at the end.
“I wouldn’t,” Greft said quietly. “Not even if we had enough boats to carry us all and paddles to steer them.”
“Nor I,” Jerd echoed him. After a moment, with a small catch in her throat, she added, “I couldn’t.”
Alise watched as Greft took her hand. Jerd turned her head away from him and looked out across the water. Alise noticed unwillingly that some of the keepers openly spied on the two while others looked away. Plainly they were a couple, and it was equally plain that this bothered some of the keepers. Thymara watched them, her eyes hooded and her thoughts private.
“That’s a decision that’s a long ways from now,” Tats declared. “I’m more co
ncerned about what we’re going to do today and tonight.”
“I’m going foraging,” Thymara said quietly. “It’s what I’m good at.”
“I’ll go with you, to help carry,” Tats declared. Across the circle, several of the young men glanced at him and then away. Nortel looked down, glowering. Boxter looked thoughtful. Greft opened his mouth as if to say something and then closed it again. Then he said, “A good plan,” but Alise was certain that was not what he had originally planned to say.
“Is there any way that we can have a fire tonight?” Sylve asked. “The smoke might keep off some of the insects, and the fire might be a beacon if anyone is trying to find us.”
“I could help with that,” Alise declared instantly. “We could construct a little raft, like the sleeping raft, only smaller, and put the fire on that, so there’d be no chance of it spreading to where we’re sleeping. We could tether it with some of these creepers.” She leaned over and picked up one of the bread leaf vines, now stripped of food. “We’d need more, of course.”
“We’ll bring back more vines,” Tats volunteered.
“Harrikin and I can dive for mud. If we can find a way to bring it up, we’ll plaster mud on the fire platform, and it will last longer,” Lecter said.
“But the water’s so acid!” Alise objected, thinking of their eyes. Both of the youths were so scaled she didn’t think their skin would take much harm.
“It’s not so bad.” Lecter shrugged his spiny shoulders. “Acid level is going down all the time. Sometimes it’s like that after a quake. Big gush of acid water, then back to almost normal.”
Almost normal was still enough to scald Alise’s skin, but she nodded. “Build a platform, plaster it with mud, gather the driest wood we can find, and braid a good tether so it doesn’t get away from us. That’s a lot to get done before nightfall.”