The Dragon Keeper trwc-1

by Robin Hobb

  Even if she took it back now, even if she broke it faithlessly, she'd still be a mousy little Bingtown woman, not what she longed to be. She could scarcely bear to consider what she longed to be, not only because it was so far beyond her but because it seemed such a childishly extravagant dream. In the dark circle of her arms, she closed her eyes and thought of Althea, wife to the captain of the Paragon. She'd seen that woman dashing about the deck barefoot, wearing loose trousers like a man. She'd seen her standing up by her ship's figurehead, the wind stirring her hair and a smile curving her lips as she exchanged some jest with the ship's boy. And then Captain Trell had bounded up the short ladder to the fore-deck to join them there. She and the captain had moved without even looking at one another, like a needle drawn to a magnet, their arms lifting as if they were the halves of the god Sa becoming whole again. She'd thought her heart would break with envy.

  What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man who had to embrace you when he saw you, even if you'd just risen from a shared bed a few hours earlier? She tried to imagine herself as free as that Althea woman, running barefoot on the decks of the Tarman. Could she ever lean on a railing in a way that said she completely owned and trusted the ship? She thought of Leftrin and tried to see him dispassionately. He was uncouth and unschooled. He told jokes at the table and she'd seen him laugh so hard that the tea spewed from his mouth, at a coarse jest from one of his sailors. He didn't shave every day, nor wash as often as a gentleman should. The elbows of his shirts and the knees of his trousers were scuffed with work.

  The short nails of his wide hands were broken and rough. Where Hest was tall and lean and elegant, Leftrin was perhaps an inch taller than she was, wide-shouldered and thick-bodied. Her female friends in Bingtown would turn aside if a man like that spoke to them on the street.

  Then she thought of his grey eyes, grey as the river he loved and her heart melted. She thought of the ruddy tops of his unshaven cheeks, and how his lips seemed redder and fuller than Hest's sophisticated smile. She longed to kiss that mouth, and to feel those callused hands clasp her close. She missed sleeping in his bunk, missed the smell of him in the room and on the bedding. She wanted him as she'd never wanted anything or anyone before. At the thought of him, her body warmed even as tears filled her eyes.

  She sat up straight and dashed the useless water from her eyes. 'Take what you can have, for the short time you can have it,' she counselled herself sternly. She wondered briefly why the ship hadn't left the beach yet. She dried her eyes more thoroughly, smoothed her wayward hair and then stepped to the door. She would not break her word to Hest. They had made an agreement to be faithful to one another. She would honour it.

  The brightness of full day was dazzling after the dimness of her room. She came out onto the deck and was surprised to see Sedric standing at the railing with Leftrin. They were both staring toward shore. 'I'm going to see what's going on,' Leftrin announced and headed toward the bow. Alise hurried over to join Sedric.

  'What is the matter?' she asked him.

  'I don't know. Some sort of ruckus among the keepers. The Captain has gone to see what it is about. How are you this morning, Alise?'

  'Well enough, thank you.' On the shore, voices were raised in alarm. She saw some of the young keepers running. Sleepy dragons were lifting their heads and turning them toward the disturbance. 'I think I'd best go see what that is about,' she excused herself. She started down the deck after Leftrin. He hadn't seen her arrive. As she watched, he climbed over the bow railing and started down the rope ladder to the shore.

  'I think it would be better if you didn't,' Sedric suggested strongly.

  She halted reluctantly and turned back to face him. She studied his face for a moment and then asked him, 'Is something wrong?'

  His gaze met hers, studying her face. 'I'm not sure,' he said quietly. 'I hope there isn't.' He glanced away from her and for a moment they shared an uncomfortable silence. On the shore, the keepers seemed to be gathering around the small brown dragon. She knew he hadn't been well lately and felt a sudden clutch of fear. 'You don't have to protect me, Sedric. If the dragon has died, he has died. I know the others will eat him, And, believe it or not, I feel that I need to witness that. There will be parts of dragon behaviour that men will find distasteful, but that doesn't mean that I should avoid learning about them.'

  She turned to go, but his voice halted her again. 'That's not at all what I'm concerned about. Alise, I feel I must speak bluntly. And confidentially. Please, come back here where we can discuss this quietly.'

  She didn't want to. 'Discuss what?'

  'You,' he said in a soft voice. 'You and Captain Leftrin.'

  For a time, she stood frozen. There was a hubbub of voices on the shore. She glanced that way, and saw Leftrin hastening toward the group. Then she turned back and wearing her calmest expression, walked back toward Sedric. 'I don't understand,' she offered him, trying to sound puzzled. Trying to keep breathing, to keep the blood from rushing to her face.

  He wasn't fooled. 'Alise, you do. We've known one another too well for too long for you to be able to hide it from me. You're infatuated with that man. Why, I can't imagine. I compare him to Hest, to what you already have and—'

  'Shut up.' The harshness of her own voice shocked her, as did the bluntness of her words. She couldn't recall that she'd ever spoken to anyone like that. It didn't matter. It had worked to silence him. He stared at her, his mouth slightly ajar. The words tumbled from her lips, boulders carried on a torrent. 'What I already have, Sedric, is nothing. It's a sham of Hest's devising, one I agreed to because I could not imagine that there would ever be anything better. Our marriage is a travesty. But I'm aware that I agreed to it. I took his damn bargain; we shook hands on it, like good Traders, and I've lived up to my end of it. Far more than he has, I might add. And I will continue to live up to my word. But don't, do not, ever, compare Leftrin to Hest. Never.'

  The vehemence in her voice rasped her throat. She'd thought she'd had more to say but the shocked look on his face drained her words and thoughts from her. The uselessness of ranting against her fate to anyone suddenly exhausted her. 'I'm sorry I spoke so roughly to you, Sedric. You don't deserve it.' She turned to walk away from him.

  'Alise, we still need to talk. Come back here.' His voice shook, making his words more a plea than a command.

  She halted, not looking back at him. 'There's nothing to talk about, Sedric. We've just said it all. I'm imprisoned in a marriage to a man I don't like, let alone love. I know he feels the same way about me. I'm infatuated with Captain Leftrin. I am revelling in the attention of a man who thinks I'm beautiful and desirable. But that's all. I won't act on it. What else is there you want to know?'

  'I've told Leftrin that we have to leave. Today. I've asked him to find one of the hunters who will volunteer to take one of the small boats and escort us back to Trehaug. We'll be travelling with the current, so it shouldn't take us long. We may have to camp once, but I doubt we'd camp more than twice.'

  His words turned her back to him. Her heart leapt against the ribs that encaged it. Despair rose in her. 'What? Why would we do that?'

  'To remove you from a temptation before you fall to it. To remove a temptation from the captain before he yields to his urges. Forgive me, Alise, but you don't know much about men. You so blithely admit that you are infatuated but assure me that you won't act on it. Captain Leftrin knows how you feel. Can you truly say that if he pressed you, you'd be able to say no to him?'

  'He wouldn't do that.' Her voice grated low. No matter how much she longed for him to, he wouldn't press her. She knew that.

  'Alise, you cannot take a chance. By staying here, you invite ruin, not just on yourself but on Leftrin as well. Your dalliance — is still innocent. But people see you and people will talk. You cannot be so selfish as to think only of yourself. Consider how such a rumour would shame your father and distress your mother! And what must it mean to Hest, to wear the horns of a cucko
ld? He could not let it pass! A man in his position has to be seen as shrewd and powerful, not as a duped fool. I do not know what it would lead to… would he demand satisfaction of Leftrin? And then, even if you did not consummate this ill-advised romance, what good would it do you? Alise, you must see that my solution, dangerous as it is, is the only one. We should leave today, before we get any farther away from Trehaug.'

  She sounded calm, even to herself. 'And Leftrin has already agreed to this?'

  Sedric folded his lips and then sighed. 'Agree or not, it must happen. I think he was on the point of agreeing when he heard some sort of outcry from the keepers and went to check on them.'

  She knew he was lying. Leftrin hadn't been on the point of agreeing to anything. The current that had caught them was sweeping them together, not apart. She seized the opportunity to change the subject. 'What was the outcry about?'

  'I don't know. The keepers looked as if they were all gathering…'

  'I'm going to go and see,' she announced and turned away from him in mid-speech. She was halfway to the bow before he overcame his astonishment.

  'Arise!'

  She ignored him.

  'Alise!' He put every bit of command into the shout that he could muster. He saw her shoulders twitch. She'd heard him. He watched her seize the bow railing in both hands and swing a leg over it. Her walking skirts wrapped and tangled. Patiently, she shook them out and then clambered over the railing and down the rope ladder to the muddy shore. She vanished from his view, and then in a few moments he saw her hurrying across the tramped grass and patches of mud toward the clustered keepers. A dragon was moving slowly to join them. Sedric's breath caught for a moment in his chest. Would it be able to tell?

  Me watched them gather; he could hear the sounds of their voices but couldn't make out the words. His anxiety built and he suddenly turned from the railing and hurried to his crude cabin. He opened the door, stepped into the dim, close chamber, and shut the door firmly behind him. He fastened the simple hook that was the only way to secure the door and then dropped to his knees. The 'secret' drawer in the bottom of his wardrobe suddenly looked pathetically obvious. He unlatched it and dragged it open, all the while listening for the sound of footfalls on the deck outside. Was there a better place to hide his trove? Should he keep it all together or scatter it amongst his possessions? He bit his lip, debating.

  Last night, he had added two items to his store. He held up to the dim light in the cabin a glass flask. The dragon blood filled it, smoky red and swirling when he held it to the light. Last night, he'd thought he'd imagined that motion, but he hadn't. The stuff in the flask was still rich red, liquid and moving as if it were itself alive.

  For several days, he had been watching the small brown dragon and daring himself to act. Each morning, the hunters departed before dawn, leading the way up the river in the hope of bagging game before the dragons could frighten it away. When the sun was higher and the day warmer, the dragons awoke. Usually the golden one was the first one to seek the water's edge. The others soon trailed after him. The keepers followed in their small boats and behind them all came the barge.

  Yesterday and the day before, the little brown dragon had lagged badly. He had not kept up with the other dragons but had waded alone between them and the keepers who followed them. Yesterday, even the keepers had passed him. The brown dragon had barely stayed ahead of the barge. Sedric's attention had been attracted to it when he found Alise and Leftrin on the bow, looking down on it and commiserating with one another over how pitiable it was. He joined them there, leaning on the bowrail and watching the stunted dragon slog drearily against the river's pale flow. For a moment, the colour of the water caught his attention. It was not nearly as white as it had been during the Paragon's upriver journey. It looked almost like ordinary river water. The captain had made some comment to Alise; Sedric heard only her response.

  'It is harder for him. Look at how short his legs are. The other dragons are wading but he's nearly swimming.'

  Leftrin had nodded agreement. 'Poor thing never had a chance, really. He was doomed from the day he hatched. Still, I hate to see him die this way.'

  'Better that he die trying to make something of his life than that he die in the mud near Cassarick.' Alise had spoken with such passion that Sedric had turned to look at her. It was then that he realized with some alarm the depth of her attraction to Leftrin. It was not difficult to see how her words applied to her own life. She is daring herself to act on her urges, he'd realized in awe. Given all he knew of Alise, it would be a matter of when, not if, she would give herself to Leftrin. The thought of how Hest would react to that sent a finger of cold tracing his spine. Hest might not be in love with Alise, but he regarded her as he did all his possessions, with jealous ownership. If Leftrin 'took' her, Hest would be infuriated. And he would blame Sedric almost as much as he'd blame her.

  The discomfort he'd felt that every passing day took them deeper into wilderness and farther away from home suddenly became pressing. It was time to get Alise and himself out of here and back to Bingtown.

  Then he thought of his paltry collection of dragon bits and scowled. He'd been checking them daily. They didn't look like anything he'd be willing to include in a medicine or tonic. The flesh that Thymara had carved away from the silver dragon's injury had been half-putrefied to begin with. Despite his efforts at preservation, the samples smelled foul and looked as one would expect any sort of decayed meat to look. The last time he had looked at them, he had very nearly thrown them away. Instead, he had resolved only to keep them until he had the opportunity to replace them with something better, something specific from the list of dragon items that he knew he could sell.

  Somehow, that thought had surfaced again in his mind as he stared down on the feeble brown dragon struggling to stay ahead of them. And suddenly he had known that he would never have a better chance than that night.

  It had not been that hard to slip away from the ship at night. Each evening, Leftrin nosed the Tarman onto the muddy banks of the river as close as he could get to wherever the dragons were sleeping. Some nights the keepers slept on board; sometimes they bedded down near their dragon wards. He had been fortunate. The dragons had settled for the night on a grassy shore and their keepers had decided to collect driftwood and sleep near them. Leftrin himself had taken the watch. Alise had been his unwitting accomplice for she had distracted the captain so completely that Sedric had no problem in stealthily leaving the ship.

  The dying glow of the keepers' bonfire and the nearly full moon had been enough to light his way. He'd slogged over trampled grass and through puddles as best he could, resigned that his boots and trousers would be sodden and caked with mud by the time he returned. He'd taken care earlier in the evening to watch the dragons as they settled, so he knew approximately where the exhausted brown was sleeping. It had been late and both the keepers and their dragons had been sleeping soundly as he moved cautiously among and then past them. The sickly dragon slept alone on the outskirts of the group. It hadn't stirred as he'd drawn near it. At first, he'd thought it was already dead. He could detect no movement and heard no sign of it breathing. He'd forced himself to boldness, and cautiously set a hand to the creature's filthy shoulder. It made no response. He gave it a slight push, and then a harder shove. It made a wheezing sound but did not move. Sedric had taken out his knife.

  His first ambition had been to claim a few scales. The shoulder was perfect; he'd used his opportunity to observe the dragons while Alise attempted to talk to them to good use. He knew that the larger scales were usually on their shoulders, hips and the broadest parts of their tails. By the moonlight's feeble gleam, he had slipped the edge of his knife under a scale, pinched it hard against the blade with his thumb and jerked. The scale did not come out easily; it was rather like pulling a plate from the bottom of a stack. But it came, edged with gleaming blood. The dragon gave a twitch but slept on, apparently too feeble to care.

  He'd extrac
ted three more scales from the creature, each about the size of the palm of his hand, wrapped them carefully in a kerchief and tucked them into the breast of his shirt. He'd nearly returned to the barge then, for he knew that even one of the scales should bring him a rich price. But while a rich price might be enough to win their freedom, he doubted it would long keep Hest at his side. No. He had taken the risk already. He would either gain enough from this gamble to live like a king or he'd not bother. He'd be a fool to stop now when he was so close to making his fortune.

  He'd chosen his tools carefully. The little knife he took out now was a butcher's tool, one used for sticking a pig and draining off the fresh blood for pudding. He'd been surprised to find that such a tool existed, but the moment he'd seen one, he'd bought it. It was short and sharp, with a fuller that passed through a tunnel in the knife's hardwood handle and acted as a passage for the flow of blood.

  He had moved to a fresh spot on the dragon's body, on the neck just behind the jaw. He slapped at the mosquitoes that had found him and were now buzzing hungrily about his own ears and neck. 'Just a very big mosquito,' he suggested to the comatose dragon. He lifted one of the heavy scales on its neck, took a firm grip on his tool and punched it into its flesh.

  The tool was as sharp as a grindstone could make it. Even so, it didn't go in easily. The dragon gave a squeak in its sleep, a comical sound from so large a creature. Its clawed feet twitched against the muddy ground and Sedric knew a moment's terror and very nearly fled. Instead, hands shaking, he'd taken a glass flask from his small pack and drawn the glass stopper out of it. He waited. After a moment, the blood began to fall, drop by shining drop. He manoeuvred his flask's mouth under the falling drops and caught them, one by one.

  His hands were shaking too much. He'd never done this sort of thing and found it much more distressing than he had imagined. A drop of blood missed the mouth of the flask and ran greasily over his fingers. He grimaced and then braced the neck of the flask against the end of the knife. In that instant, the drips became a trickle and then a sudden flow of blood. 'Merciful Sa!' he exclaimed in terror and delight. The flask grew heavy in his hand and then suddenly overflowed. He snatched it away. He had to pour out some of the blood before it would admit the stopper, and wished in vain that he had brought a second flask. He wiped his bloody hands on his trousers and then carefully stowed the flask in his pack. A quick tug freed the knife from the dragon's flesh and he added it to the pack.