by Robin Hobb
“Picking fruit,” Tats replied before she could say anything.
“How can you think that’s fair?” he asked Tats. “You heard what Greft said. We all agreed. She gets to make her decision and then we all abide by it.”
“I didn’t—” Tats began, but Thymara raised a sudden hand, halting his words. She looked from one to the other. “What Greft said,” she repeated, making the words a demand for clarification.
Nortel let his gaze settle on Thymara. “He said we all had to play fair, and not take advantage of your situation.” He shifted his eyes back to Tats. “But that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Taking advantage of being old friends, of her mourning Rapskal. You’re using every excuse to be around her all the time. Not letting anyone else even get the chance to talk to her.”
“I went with her to pick fruit. We’ve lost a lot of hunting equipment. We need to gather what food we can, while we can.” Tats spoke in a flat voice. His words were reasonable, but the sparks in his eyes were not. They were, she suddenly knew, a challenge. She saw how Nortel swelled his chest, and she saw a pale lavender light kindle behind the green of his eyes. He reminded her, she thought, of his dragon and suddenly recognized what she was seeing; here was a male, come to challenge all comers for the right to be her mate. A strange thrill went through her. Her heart leaped and raced, and she felt her skin flush.
“Stop it,” she growled low, to herself as much as to the males. She did not have to turn to know that Tats was responding to Nortel’s challenge. “I don’t care what stupid things Greft says. He can’t set rules about who talks to me or when. Nor can he insist that I make some ‘decision’ that exists only in his mind. I have no intention of choosing anyone. Not now, perhaps not ever.”
Nortel licked his narrow lips and then accused Tats, “You said something to her, didn’t you? Something to set her against the idea.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Nortel! Talk to me, not him!”
His eyes shifted between them. “That’s exactly what I’d like to do. Leave, Tats. Thymara wants to talk with me.”
“Make me.”
“Stop it!” She hated that her voice rose to a shriek and broke on the words. She sounded hysterical and frightened, when in truth she was angry. “I don’t want this,” she said and tried to make her voice calm and reasonable. “This isn’t going to convince me of anything.”
It was as if she hadn’t spoken. Nortel squared his shoulders and leaned slightly to one side to stare past her at Tats. “I can make you, if that’s how you want it,” he offered.
“Let’s find out, then.”
She was suddenly disgusted with both of them. “Fight if you want to,” she declared. “It won’t prove anything to me or anyone else. And it won’t change anything.” She tucked her carry-sack tight to her ribs, measured the distance to the next lower branch and leaped. It was not that far of a leap, and her claws were out and ready. Perhaps it was the bag that threw her balance off. In any case, she landed slightly off center on the branch, slipped, and, with an outraged cry, was suddenly falling.
She only fell perhaps a dozen feet before her outstretched hands caught another branch. With a practice born of years, she dug in claws, swung herself around, and was suddenly up and on it. Even so, she hunkered down, teeth gritted against the pain in her back. When she’d missed her grip and twisted, in her panic her back muscles had spasmed. The wound on her back felt as if it had torn. Her injury had not been comfortable, but at least it had been quiescent and perhaps beginning to heal. Now it felt not only torn but as if something were jammed in it. She reached back a cautious hand, but found that the motion hurt too badly for her to complete it. She couldn’t even touch it to see if it was bleeding.
Above her, both boys were yelling her name, and then accusing each other of making her fall. Let them fight then. It meant nothing to her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And stupider yet was that tears stung her eyes.
THEY’D HEARD THE horn long before they saw anything. The three short blasts proclaimed that Carson was returning and that he had found someone. Leftrin watched as the keepers gathered on the deck of his barge, straining their eyes downriver and talking to one another in low voices. Rapskal and Heeby? The copper dragon? Jess? Sedric?
Personally, he doubted it was Jess. He’d done his best to make certain that the hunter would never return before the wave struck. But if he had survived, what then? How much would he say, and to whom? When the copper dragon came in sight, trudging alongside the two boats, there were cries of relief and joy from the keepers. He squinted, surprised to see that there were two boats. He stared for some time at the figure paddling the second boat and then bellowed out, “It’s Sedric! He’s found Sedric! Alise! Alise! Carson’s found Sedric! He’s alive and it looks like he’s unhurt.”
He heard the patter of feet on his deck and a few moments later, she joined him on top of the deckhouse. “Where? Where is he?” she demanded breathlessly.
“There.” He pointed. “Paddling the second boat.”
“Sedric paddling a boat?” she said doubtfully, but a moment later she said, “Yes, that’s him. I recognize the color of his shirt. I can’t believe it! He’s alive!”
“He is,” Leftrin said. Unobtrusively, he took her hand. He didn’t want to ask her in words, but he had to know. Did Sedric’s survival change things between them?
She squeezed his hand. Then she let go of it. His heart sank.
ALISE WATCHED THE two boats approach and tried to separate her emotions. She rejoiced that her friend Sedric had survived. She dreaded the return of her husband’s witness. She was angry at him that he had withheld Hest’s token from her and amazed to see him engaged in such a physical endeavor as paddling a boat.
The dragons were trumpeting to the copper, and Relpda was responding joyously. At such times, Alise heard their sounds only as sounds. She felt that she understood the dragons only when they intended that humans should hear and understand them. She was not positive that was so, but she suspected that there were some communications they kept to themselves. She should make a note of that idea in her journal, she thought, and instantly felt guilty. It had been days since she had updated her journal or added any new observations about the dragons. She’d been too busy surviving and discovering herself, she decided. Of her time in the water and how the dragon had saved her, she would write. But of last night? That would remain hers and hers alone, forever.
She and Leftrin had not spoken of it. Today, when they had met at the galley table, and later as she strolled the deck with him, they had maintained their decorum. She had tried not to blush, tried not to stare meaningfully into his eyes. Their silences had spoken more than their words. She did not intend to become a figure of speculation and gossip among the keepers, and she suspected that Leftrin would just as soon keep his privacy from his crew intact. Now she wondered if she would ever again have the opportunity to be alone with him, to speak of what it had meant to her.
Sedric returning was like all her Bingtown past coming back to envelope her. Once he stepped onto the deck again, she was no longer simply Alise. She was Alise Finbok, wife to Hest Finbok, who would some day be Trader Finbok and control the Finbok vote on the Bingtown Traders’ Council. By virtue of their marriage, she owed him not just fidelity but the hope of an heir, and beyond that, she owed him and his family and her own family the decorum and propriety that was necessary for everyone’s social survival.
She didn’t want Sedric to come back. She didn’t want him to be dead, but if by a wish she could have safely transported him back to Bingtown, she would have done so in a breath.
Day the 26th 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
A message from Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown, to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug. In a sealed case, the travel arrangements for Apprentic
e Reyall to return home to his family to observe a period of mourning, at the expense of the bird keepers. A shipment of twenty-five swift pigeons and six kings has been entrusted to his care on the way. With our deepest sympathy and warmest regards.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE LOCKET
I ate a man! I ate the hunter!” Relpda was triumphant. She blasted the news to all of them, trumpeting it out before she even reached them. She waded out of the shallows and onto the mucky beach to greet them. “He threatened my keeper! We fought him and we ate him!” Her next words unsettled the disrupted dragons even more. “My keeper has proven himself worthy. He drank my blood to speak to me, and now he is mine. I shall make him an Elderling, the first of a new kind.”
“This has not been discussed!” Mercor objected.
“You gave him your blood?”
“How will you make him an Elderling?”
“What is she talking about?”
“SILENCE!” Ranculos blasted them with a roar. And when the other dragons fell into a stunned quiet, he rounded on the little copper female. “What have you done?” he demanded of her. “You, with less than half the proper wits of a dragon, you have given blood to a human? You have begun to change him? It is bad enough that so many have begun to change, simply from proximity to us. Do you not recall what was decided, ages ago? Have you forgotten the Abominations? Would you bring more of them into existence?”
“What are you talking about?” Sintara exploded. “Stop speaking in riddles! Is there a danger here for us? What has she done?”
“She’s eaten a hunter, for one thing. A hunter who was supposed to help provide food for us!” Ranculos sounded outraged.
Spit snorted. “Feed myself now. Don’t need hunter or keeper.”
“No human has brought us food of any kind for several days now,” Veras pointed out quietly.
“They haven’t needed to. There has been plenty of dead fish for us,” Sestican said.
As the long afternoon had approached evening, the dragons had returned to the vicinity of the barge. The river had continued to drop. Mud-laden bushes and clumps of grass were reappearing as the water continued to retreat. Tonight, at least, Sintara was looking forward to sleeping in a relatively dry spot. And tomorrow, they would resume their upriver journey. Life had almost seemed to be returning to normal before the copper reappeared.
“One of us should speak to her, not all of us, or we will get no sense at all out of her.” Sintara left the other dragons to approach the copper. She regarded her closely. Relpda had changed. She moved her body with more certainty, and she communicated more clearly. Something had happened to her. She focused herself on the little copper dragon. “Relpda. Why did you eat the hunter? Was he dead already?” she asked the smaller female.
Relpda considered the question as she waded out of the water and up the mud beach toward the gathered dragons. “No. But he wanted to kill me. And so my keeper attacked him. And then, when I saw that my keeper was trying to kill him, I took him for meat. It was a good kill for me.” The copper looked around. “There was fish?”
“The fish is eaten. Tomorrow we will have to move on.” Sintara tried to bring her back to the topic. She noticed that the other dragons had quietened to listen. “What do you mean, your keeper drank blood? And who do you claim as your keeper?”
Relpda bent her head to rub her muzzle against her front leg. It put more mud on her face than it cleaned off. “Sedric,” she said. “Sedric is my keeper now. He came to me and took my blood and drank it, to be closer to me. We think together now. All is clearer to me than it was. I shall make him my Elderling. That is my right to do.”
“You will make an Elderling?” Sestican was confused.
“I am trying to get sense out of her! Be quiet!” Sintara hissed.
“We cannot change humans unless we are willing to be changed by them.” Mercor spoke wearily, ignoring her request. His words stilled her. There was something there, something to be remembered.
“Cannot or should not?” Sestican demanded.
“I do not understand!” Fente lashed her tail.
“Then be quiet and listen!” Sintara opened her jaws on the smaller female, a threat that venom might follow. Fente slunk aside from her, then spun and hissed at her.
“Stop it!” Ranculos roared. “Both of you!”
Mercor looked around at them sadly. His eyes, black on black, whirled slowly. “So much has been lost. Even as we grow stronger and move closer to becoming true dragons, I am frightened every day by the holes in our memories. I know I should not assume that each of you remembers what I do, but I continue to make that mistake. It appears, Fente, that Relpda recalls that which some of the rest of you have forgotten. Elderlings can be created by dragons, deliberately. Sometimes, as is happening with our keepers, humans undergo changes simply by virtue of extensive contact with us. In the days when Elderlings and dragons shared cities and lives, Elderlings were shaped by the dragons who favored them, much as a human gardener might prune a tree. Deliberately and carefully, choosing well what they began with, a dragon created an Elderling. In the lifetimes that our kinds have been apart, many of the Rain Wilders have taken on some of the lesser aspects of Elderlings, with few of the benefits.”
“How?” Sintara demanded. “With no dragons about, why should they change?”
“It served them right,” Ranculos said in a low voice. “Those who killed dragons in their cases, those who handled and carved what should have become dragons, those who stole and used the artifacts and magics of the Elderlings, they are the ones who have suffered the consequences most deeply. It is fitting. They took what was not theirs to take. They meddled in the stuff of dragons. The changes came upon them, and upon their offspring. They suffered shorter lives and stillborn children. They deserved it.”
“You speculate,” Mercor cautioned him.
“I speculate with reason. It is no coincidence. In their heart of hearts, the humans know what is true. Look whom they chose to give us as our ‘keepers.’ They gave us the ones so deeply changed that they scarce can live among the other humans. They have scales and claws, it is hard for them to breed, and their life spans are shortened. That is what befalls humans who meddle in a magic that has not been freely given to them. They used the stuff of dragons, our blood and bones, and they changed. But with no dragons to guide the change, they became monstrous.”
“And the Abominations,” Mercor asked in his deep, rolling voice. “What of them? Are they, too, a punishment well deserved?”
“Perhaps,” Ranculos replied recklessly. “For it is as you said. Dragons cannot change humans without risk that they will change us. It was long suspected that dragons who associated too much with Elderlings and humans would harm themselves or their offspring. An egg hatches and it is not what it should be…”
“Must we speak of obscenities? Is there no decency left among us?” Their words had wakened memories in Sintara, memories long dormant. Once, one of her ancestors had chosen a human and shaped an Elderling for herself. The physical changes in such a creature were less than half of it. Properly prepared, an Elderling gained a life span that, while not even close to that of a dragon, was sufficient to allow at least some wisdom and sophistication to accrue. It was amusing, even comforting, to have such an Elderling. It was pleasant to be flattered, to be “immortalized” in verse and paintings and poetry. Elderlings became companions for dragons in a way that other dragons could not be. With an Elderling, there was no competition, only the comfort of their admiration, the pleasures of grooming, and, yes, the stimulation of conversations.
But in every pleasure there is a danger, and some dragons spent too much time with their Elderlings and were, in turn, changed by them. It was not something that was lightly spoken of. No dragon wished to accuse another of such an obscenity, but it was undeniable. Dragons who spent too much time in the company of humans changed. The changes were not as obvious as what befell humans who spent too much time in the c
ompany of dragons, but the evidence was there, all the same. And in the next generation, when eggs hatched from, it was suspected, two such dragons, the offspring were not serpents but Abominations.
It was not a thing for dragons to admit to outsiders. It was not even a thing for dragons to discuss among themselves. Sintara turned aside from them all, affronted by the coarseness of the conversation. Mercor ignored her disdain as he spoke severely to Relpda.
“I think you have done a foolish thing, Relpda. I am not sure you are capable of guiding a human to an Elderling state. If you are careless, or unskilled, or even forgetful, the consequences for the human can be dire, even fatal. This is a human who had not even begun on a path of change. What entered your mind to make you choose him for such an honor?”
“He could not even hear us speak when first he walked among us,” Sintara interjected. “He thought us beasts, like cows. He was very arrogant, and extremely ignorant. I cannot think of a human less deserving of such an honor.”
Relpda lashed her tail warningly. “It was my decision. It is my right. He came to me, seeking the contact. When I felt his mind brush mine, I chose him. And now he is chosen by me. That is all any of you need to know. I do not recall that the decision to create an Elderling was ever a shared decision. It is not one now.”
“In your anger, your words and thoughts come clear,” Mercor observed mildly.
“I use his mind. It is nothing to you.”
“It is something to you, something you may regret depending upon. What if he should decide he does not wish to be bound to you? What if he should decide to leave and return to his Bingtown?”
“He will not.” Relpda spoke with finality.
Sintara, disturbed, moved away. It was not the first time she had been forced to confront the idea that her memories were incomplete. She tried to focus her mind on the floating fragments of recall the talk had stirred in her. One of her ancestors had willingly and consciously created an Elderling. Could she recall how it was done?