by Robin Hobb
She pushed the thought out of her mind and immersed herself in her hunting. She could find peace in this hour. Few of the other keepers roused so early. The dragons might stir but were not active, preferring to let the sun grow strong and warm them before they exerted themselves. She had the riverbank to herself as she quietly stalked the water’s edge, spear poised. She forgot everything else but herself and her prey as the world balanced perfectly around her. The sky was a blue stripe above the river’s wide channel. Along the river’s edge, knee-high reeds shivered in water that was almost clear. The smooth mudbank of the river had recorded every creature that had come and gone in the night. While the dragon keepers had slumbered, at least two swamp elk had come down to the water’s edge and then retreated. Something with webbed feet had clambered out on the bank, eaten freshwater clams and discarded the shells, and then slid back in.
She saw a large whiskered fish come groping into the shallows. He did not seem to see her. His barbels stirred the silt, and with a snap he gobbled some small creature he had ousted. He ventured closer to where she stood, spear poised, but the instant she jabbed with her weapon, he was gone with a flick of his tail, leaving only a haze of silt floating around her spear.
“Damn the luck,” she muttered and pulled her spear back out of the silt.
“That doesn’t sound like a prayer,” Alise rebuked her gently.
Thymara tried not to be startled. She brought her spear back to the ready, glanced at the woman over her shoulder, and resumed her slow patrol of the riverbank. “I’m hunting. I missed.”
“I know. I saw.”
Thymara kept walking, her eyes on the river, hoping the Bingtown woman would take the hint and leave her alone. She didn’t hear Alise following her, but from the corner of her eye, she was aware of Alise’s shadow keeping pace with her. After holding her silence for a time, Thymara defiantly decided she wasn’t afraid of the woman. She spoke to her. “It’s early for you to be out and about.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been up since before dawn. And I confess that a deserted riverbank can be lonely after an hour or so. I was relieved to see you.”
The comment was far friendlier than she had expected. Why was the woman even speaking to her? Could she truly be that lonely? Without pausing to think she said, “But you have Sedric to keep you company. How can you be lonely?”
“He still isn’t well. And, well, he has not been as friendly to me of late. Not without cause, I’m ashamed to say.”
Thymara stared into the river, glad that the Bingtown woman could not see her expression of astonishment. Was she confiding in her? Why? What could she possibly think they had in common? Curiosity dug its claws into her and hung on until she asked, in what she hoped was a casual voice, “What cause has he to be unfriendly to you?”
Alise sighed heavily. “Well, you know he hasn’t been well. Sedric usually has excellent health, so it would be hard for him to be ill at any time. But it is especially hard for him when he is in what he regards as very uncomfortable living circumstances. His bed is narrow and hard, he doesn’t like the smell of the boat or the river, the food either bores or disgusts him, his room is dim, there is no entertainment for him. He’s miserable. And it’s my fault that he’s here. He didn’t want to come to the Rain Wilds, let alone embark on this expedition.”
Another big lunker had come into the shallows, investigating the silt. For an instant, he seemed to see her. Thymara stood perfectly still. Then, as he began to sift the silt with his whiskers, she struck. She was so sure that she had hit him, it was a surprise to have the silt clear and find that her spear was simply dug into the mud. She pulled it out.
“You missed again,” the Bingtown woman said, but there was genuine sympathy in her voice. “I was so sure you got that one. But they’re very quick to react, aren’t they? I don’t think I could ever manage to spear one.”
“Oh, it just takes practice,” Thymara assured her, keeping her eyes on the water. No, it was gone, long gone. That one wouldn’t be back.
“Have you been doing this since you were a child?”
“Fishing? Not so much.” Thymara continued her slow patrol along the water’s edge. Alise kept pace with her. She kept her voice soft. “I hunted in the canopy mainly. Birds and small mammals up there, some lizards and some pretty big snakes. Fishing isn’t that different from hunting birds when it comes to the stalking part.”
“Do you think I could learn?”
Thymara halted in her tracks and turned around to face Alise. “Why would you want to?” she asked in honest confusion.
Alise blushed and looked down. “It would be nice to be able to do something real. You’re so much younger than I am, but you’re so competent at taking care of yourself. I envy you that. Sometimes I watch you and the other keepers, and I feel so useless. Like a pampered little house cat watching hunting cats at work. Lately I’ve been trying to justify why I came along, why I dragged poor Sedric along with me. I said I was going to be collecting information about dragons. I said I’d be needed here to help people deal with the dragons. I told my husband and Sedric that this was a priceless opportunity for me to learn, and to share what I’d learn. I told the Elderling Malta that I knew about the lost city and could possibly help the dragons find their way back. But I’ve done none of those things.”
Her voice dropped on her last words and she sounded ashamed.
Thymara was silent. Was this grand Bingtown lady looking to her for comfort and reassurance? That seemed all wrong. Just when the silence would have become too obvious, she found her tongue. “You have helped with the dragons, I think. You were there when Captain Leftrin was helping us get the snakes off them, and before, when we were bandaging up the silver’s tail. I was surprised, I’ll admit. I thought you were too fine a lady for messy work like that—”
“Fine a lady?” Alise interrupted her. She laughed in an odd shrill way. “You think me a fine lady?”
“Well…of course. Look at how you dress. And you are from Bingtown, and you are a scholar. You write scrolls about dragons and you know all about the Elderlings.” She ran out of reasons and just stood looking at Alise. Even today, to walk on the beach at dawn, the woman had dressed her hair and pinned it up. She wore a hat to protect her hair and face from the sun. She wore a shirt and trousers, but they were clean and pressed. The tops of her boots were gleaming black even if fresh river mud clung to her feet. Thymara glanced at herself. The mud that caked her boots and laces was days, not hours, old. Her shirt and her trousers both bore the signs of hard use and little washing. And her hair? Without thinking, she reached up to touch her dark braids. When had she last washed her hair and smoothed it and rebraided it? When had she last washed her entire body?
“I married a wealthy man. My family is, well, our fortune is humbler. I suppose that I am a lady, when I am in Bingtown, and perhaps it is a fine thing to be. But here, well, here in the Rain Wilds I’ve begun to see myself a bit differently. To wish for different things than I did before.” Her voice died away. Then she said suddenly, “If you wanted, Thymara, you could come to my cabin this evening. I could show you a different way to do your hair. And you’d have some privacy if you wished to take a bath, even if the tub is scarcely big enough to stand in.”
“I know how to wash myself!” Thymara retorted, stung.
“I’m sorry,” Alise said immediately. Her cheeks had gone very red. She blushed more scarlet than anyone Thymara had ever known. “My words were not…I didn’t express what I was trying to say. I saw you look at yourself, and thought how selfish I’ve been, to have privacy to bathe and dress while you and Sylve and Jerd have had to live rough and in the open among the boys and men. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” Were they the hardest words Thymara had ever had to say? Probably not, but they were hard enough. She didn’t meet Alise’s eyes. She forced out other words. “I know you meant it kindly. My father often told me that I take offense too easily. That not everyone wants to
insult me.” Her throat was getting smaller and tighter. The pain of unsheddable tears was building at the inner corners of her eyes. From forcing words, suddenly she couldn’t stop them. “I don’t expect people to like me or be nice to me. It’s the opposite. I expect—”
“You don’t have to explain,” Alise said suddenly. “We’re more alike than you think we are.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Sometimes, do you find reasons to disdain people you haven’t met yet, just so you can dislike them before they dislike you?”
“Well, of course,” Thymara admitted, and the laughter they shared had a brittle edge. A bird flew up from the river’s edge, startling them both, and then their laughter became more natural, ending as they both drew breath.
Alise wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I wonder if this is what Sintara wanted me to learn from you. She strongly suggested this morning that I seek you out. Do you think she wanted us to discover that we are not so different?” The woman’s voice was warm when she spoke of the dragon, but a chill went up Thymara’s back at her words.
“No,” she said quietly. She tried to form her thought carefully, so as not to hurt Alise’s feelings. She wasn’t sure, just yet, if she wanted to be as friendly as the Bingtown woman seemed inclined to be, but she didn’t want to put her on her guard again. “No, I think Sintara was manipulating you, well, us. A couple of days ago, she pushed me to do something, and well, it didn’t turn out nicely at all.” She glanced at Alise, fearing what she’d see, but the Bingtown woman looked thoughtful, not affronted. “I think she may be trying to see just how much power she has over us. I’ve felt her glamour. Have you?”
“Of course. It’s a part of her. I don’t know if a dragon can completely control the effect she has on humans. It’s her nature. Just as a human dominates a pet dog.”
“I’m not her pet,” Thymara retorted. Fear sharpened her words. Did Sintara dominate her more than she realized?
“No. You’re not, and neither am I. Though I suspect she considers me more her pet than anything else. I think she respects you, because you can hunt. But she has told me, more than once, that I fail to assert myself as a female. I’m not sure why, but I think I disappoint her.”
“She pushed me to go hunting his morning. I told her I preferred to fish.”
“She told me to follow you when you hunted. I saw you here on the riverbank.”
Thymara was quiet. She lifted her fish spear again and walked slowly along the river’s edge, thinking. Was it betrayal? Then she spoke. “I know what she wanted you to see. The same thing I saw. I think she wanted you to know that Jerd and Greft have been mating.”
She waited for a response. When none came, she looked back at Alise. The Bingtown woman’s cheeks were pink again, but she tried to speak calmly. “Well. I suppose that, living like this, with no privacy and little supervision, it is easy for a young girl to give in to a young man’s urging. They would not be the first to sample the dinner before the table is set. Do you know if they intend to marry?”
Thymara stared at her. She put her words together carefully. “Alise, people like me, like them, people who are already so heavily touched by the Rain Wilds, we are not allowed to marry. Or to mate. They are breaking one of the oldest rules of the Rain Wilds.”
“It’s a law, then?” Alise looked puzzled.
“I…I don’t know if it’s a law. It’s a custom. It’s something everyone knows and does. If a baby is born and it’s already changed so much from pure human, then its parents don’t raise it. They ‘give it to the night’ they expose it and try again. Only for some of us, like me, well, my father took me back. He brought me home and kept me.”
“There’s a fish there, a really big one. He’s in the shadow of that driftwood log. See him? He looks like he’s part of the shadow.”
Alise sounded excited. Thymara was jolted at the change of subject. On an impulse, she handed her spear to Alise. “You get him. You saw him first. Remember, don’t try to jab the fish. Stab it in like you want to stick it into the ground beyond the fish. Push hard.”
“You should do it,” Alise said as she took the spear. “I’ll miss. He’ll get away. And he’s a very big fish.”
“Then he’s a good big target for your first try. Go on. Try it.” Thymara stepped slowly back and away from the river.
Alise’s pale eyes widened. Her glance went from Thymara to the fish and back again. Then she took two deep shuddering breaths and then suddenly sprang at the fish, spear in hand. She landed with a splash and a shout in ankle-deep water as she stabbed the spear down with far more force than she needed to use. Thymara stared openmouthed as the Bingtown woman used both hands to drive the spear in even deeper. Surely the fish was long gone. But no, Alise stood in the water, holding the spear tightly as a long, thick fish thrashed out its death throes.
When it finally stilled, she turned to Thymara and cried breathlessly, “I did it! I did it! I speared a fish! I killed it!”
“Yes, you did. And you should get out of the water before you ruin your boots.”
“I don’t care about them. I got a fish. Can I try again? Can I kill another?”
“I suppose you can. Alise, let’s get the first one ashore, shall we?”
“Don’t lose it! Don’t let it get away!” This she cried as Thymara waded out and put a hand on the spear.
“It won’t get away. It’s very dead. We have to pull the spear out of the ground so we can get the fish to shore. Don’t worry. We won’t lose it.”
“I really did it, didn’t I? I killed a fish.”
“You did.”
It took some effort to free the spear from the mud. The fish was bigger than Thymara had expected. It took both of them to drag it back to shore. It was an ugly creature, black and finely scaled with long teeth in its blunt face. When they flipped it up onto the shore, it had a brilliant scarlet belly. Thymara had never seen anything like it. “I’m not sure if this is something we can eat,” she said hesitantly. “Sometimes animals that are brightly colored are poisonous.”
“We should ask Mercor. He’ll know. He remembers a great deal.” Alise crouched down to examine her prize. She reached out a curious finger and then pulled it back. “It’s strange. All of the dragons seem to have different levels of recall. Sometimes I think Sintara refuses to answer my questions because she cannot. But with Mercor, I always feel like he knows things but won’t share them. When he talks to me, he talks about everything except dragons and Elderlings.”
“I’m not sure we should touch it before we know.” Thymara had remained crouched by the fish. Alise nodded. She rose, took up the spear, and began prowling along the river’s edge. Her excitement was palpable.
“Let’s see what else we can kill. Then we’ll ask Mercor about that one.”
Thymara stood up. She felt a bit naked without her spear. It was odd to be the one trailing after someone else who was hunting. She didn’t much like the feeling. She found herself talking, as if it would restore her sense of importance. “Mercor seems older than the other dragons, doesn’t he? Older and more tired.”
“He does.” Alise spoke quietly. She didn’t move as smoothly as Thymara did, but she was trying. Thymara realized that her tiptoeing and hunched stance was an exaggerated imitation of Thymara’s prowl. She couldn’t decide if she was flattered or insulted. “It’s because he remembers so much more than the others. I sometimes think that age is based more on what you’ve done and what you remember than how old you are. And I think Mercor remembers a lot, even about being a serpent.”
“He always seems sad to me. And gentler, in a way that the other dragons are not gentle at all.”
Alise hunkered down on her heels, peering under a tangle of branches and fallen leaves. She sounded both intent and distracted as she replied. “I think he remembers more than the others. I had one good evening of talking to him. When he spoke to me, he was far more open and direct than any of the other dragons had been. Even so, he only spoke in generalities rath
er than of his specific ancestral memories. But he expressed things I’ve never heard the other dragons say.” She extended the spear and tried to lift some of the weed mass out of her way. As she did so, a fish darted out. She lunged at it with a splash and a shout, but it was gone.
“Next time, if you think a fish might be there, just stab down. If you move the water anywhere near a fish looking for it, it’s gone. Might as well risk a jab and maybe get something.”
“Right.” Alise expended an exasperated breath and continued to stalk down the shore.
Thymara followed. “Mercor said unusual things?” she prompted Alise.
“Oh. Yes, he did. He spoke quite a bit about Kelsingra. He said it was a significant city for both dragons and Elderlings. There was a special kind of silvery water there that the dragons especially enjoyed. He couldn’t or wouldn’t explain that to me. But he said it was an important place because it was where the Elderlings and dragons came together and made agreements. The way he spoke, it gave me a different view of how Elderlings and dragons interacted. Almost like adjacent kingdoms making treaties and having accords. When I mentioned that to him, he said it was more like symbiosis.”
“Symbiosis?”
“They lived together in a way that benefited both. But more than benefited. He did not say it directly, but I think he believes that if Elderlings had survived, dragons would not have vanished from this world for as long as they did. I think he feels that restoring Elderlings will be key to the dragons continuing to survive in this world.”
“Well, there is Malta and Reyn. And Selden.”
“But none of them is here,” Alise pointed out. She started to step into the water and halted. “Do you see that speckled place? Is that a shadow on the river bottom or a fish?” She tilted her head the other way. “So the dragons now depend on their keepers for what Elderlings did for them, once upon a time.” She cocked her head. “Hmm. I wonder if that was why they insisted on having keepers accompanying them, as well as the hunters? I’ve wondered about that. Why did they want so many keepers but were content with only three hunters? What could all of you do for them that the hunters didn’t do?”