by Robin Hobb
Sintara opened her wings and stretched her neck. She felt what would one day be the frilled spines of her neck stand out. Even so, Mercor was still larger than she was. A glint of amusement in his black eyes only incensed her more. “You will never take charge of my keeper,” she hissed. The barest threat of venom floated on her words. “What is mine, I keep.” Thymara lifted her arms to shield her face and eyes and retreated a few steps.
“See that you do,” Mercor replied affably. “Keep your keeper as you should, and you have nothing to fret about, little queen.”
The diminutive infuriated her beyond reason. She shot her neck out, jaws wide. Mercor whirled, and a snap of his larger wing slammed the bony joint knob of it against her ribs. She slapped ineffectually at him with her smaller wings as she staggered back. Thymara let out a shriek. All around them on the muddy delta, dragons were lifting heads and opening wings, staring toward the altercation. Keepers darted about like ants in a disturbed nest, squawking at one another.
“Do you require help, Sintara?” Sestican asked. The large blue advanced a step toward them, his own wings lifting and the frill on his neck standing out in challenge.
“Sestican, no!” his keeper shouted, but the dragon paid no attention to Lecter. His spinning eyes were fixed only on Mercor. The two dragons, wings lifted, heads swaying, regarded one another balefully.
“I am a queen! I require no help from anyone,” Sintara replied disdainfully. “Keeper! I wish to go to the freshwater river to be cleaned. Get your tools and follow me there.”
It was not a retreat, she thought angrily as she stalked haughtily away. She was simply not interested in anything either of them might do or say. She would not allow the males to fight over her on the ground, as if such an earthbound battle could prove something or win favor with her. No. When the time came, she would soar in flight, and all the males, every one of them, would vie for her and beat one another bloody in an attempt to catch her eye. And when they were eliminated to one, then she would outfly and defy him. Mercor would never master her.
“PERHAPS YOU COULD reason with him.”
Leftrin glared at Skelly. She folded her lips and turned away. He wasn’t angry with her, but the idea that Tarman could be reasoned with only irritated him. He’d gone out on deck in the morning to discover that the barge had only hunkered down deeper into the mud in the night. Leftrin had had every hand he could muster straining to shove the ship off for half the morning. It was impossible to ignore that the barge was deliberately resisting efforts to move him. Every member of the crew knew it; the confusion and worry were painted in their eyes.
The keepers were beginning to pick up on the uneasiness. It was strange for him to realize that every one of them must know that Tarman was a liveship, but so few of them seemed to grasp fully what that meant. They seemed to have forgotten that at his core, Tarman was kin to the dragons and just as capable of being cantankerous. Or dangerous.
Leftrin glanced over at Skelly, who was not looking at him. She had her pole over the side again, positioned and ready for when he might demand another effort from them. He pitched his voice for her ears alone. “I’ll try. You come with me.”
“Hold on to this for me, will you?” she asked Bellin, surrendering her pole to her crewmate. She followed her captain forward. “He showed us Kelsingra,” she whispered. “Why would he do that, and then wedge himself in the mud here? Why would he make us want to go there, and then refuse to budge?”
“I don’t know, but I do know we’re wasting daylight. It won’t be long before the dragons decide they’re ready to go, and we have to be ready to follow them. Not stuck in the mud.”
“What happened with the dragons earlier this morning?”
“No idea. Some sort of a dustup. Not too serious, I suspect, as it was over so fast. Probably just a bit of sorting out as to who’s on top. Happens in any group of creatures, animal or humans. Or dragons.”
He heard his own words and realized a truth he hadn’t before. Dragons were not animals to him in the way that deer or birds were animals. But they weren’t humans, either. It suddenly seemed a very large truth to him. When he had been a boy growing up, he had divided creatures that lived and moved into two groups: animals and humans. And now there were dragons in his life. When, he wondered, had that distinction formed in his mind? When they had begun this expedition, they had been animals to him. Oddly intelligent animals who spoke. But now they were dragons, not animals and not humans.
And what about Tarman, then?
He’d reached the bow and been on the point of putting his hands on the railing. Skin to wood, he’d always felt, was how he heard Tarman best. But now he folded his arms and stood, reordering his thoughts, wondering just how much of them he wanted his ship to know. Tarman reached right into his dreams with apparent ease. How much of his day-to-day thoughts was the ship aware of?
Skelly already had her hands on the railing. “Kelsingra was beautiful,” she said quietly. “The best place I could imagine. I wanted to be there. I want to be traveling to Kelsingra now. So, Tarman, old friend, why are we stuck here in the mud? What’s the problem?”
She didn’t expect a direct answer to her query. Neither did Leftrin. Direct answers were not in a dragon’s nature, and that, Leftrin suddenly knew, was what he was dealing with here. He was as much a keeper as any of the youngsters were. Only his dragon had the form of a barge. He was reaching for the railing to put his hands on it when Tarman answered. The whole ship lurched. With a surprised curse, Leftrin’s reach for the railing became a grab. He hung on, hearing the confused shouts from the crew and the keepers aboard as Tarman lurched again. And again. The ship heaved up and settled, heaved up and settled. He could imagine those squat wizardwood legs and the finned feet shoving and shifting, not unlike a toad resettling itself in the mud. But with every heave and lurch, the Tarman was shifting his bow.
“What is going on?” Greft was grabbing at the railing as he came staggering down the deck. His teeth were bared behind his narrow silver lips as if he were in pain.
“Don’t know. Hang on,” Leftrin said sharply. Something was happening with his ship, and he wanted to focus his attention on Tarman, not some cocky young man.
Perhaps Greft picked up a hint of that, or perhaps the glare that Skelly shot him silenced him. He clung to the railing grimly as Tarman continued to heave and lurch along. When at last he settled, Leftrin waited a few minutes longer before he spoke. The ship had reoriented himself until his stern floated free. The merest push of the poles would now be enough to free the barge’s bow from the muddy bank.
But the most important change was that the Tarman’s bow now pointed up the freshwater river rather than toward the main channel. For a short time Captain Leftrin mulled over what he was seeing. He reached a conclusion and received the assent of his ship.
“Nothing’s wrong!” He bellowed at the rising babble and clamor of voices from crew and keepers alike. In the shocked lull that followed his shout, he spoke clearly. “We were about to go the wrong way. That’s all. Kelsingra is up this river, not that one.”
“How can you possibly know that?” Greft demanded.
Leftrin gave him a chill smile. “My liveship just told me so.”
Greft gestured to the dragons gathering on the shore. “And will they agree?” he asked him snidely. A dragon’s sudden roar broke the relative quiet.
“DID YOU SEE THAT?”
Thymara had. She had been on her way back to the vessel, having given Sintara a hasty scrubbing with cold river water. She was soaked and cold. She didn’t believe the dragon had wanted or enjoyed the washing; she suspected that Sintara had used it as an excuse to flee the snorting males and their aggressive display. She had spoken very little to her keeper through the whole process, and Thymara had kept her questions to herself. Sylve, she decided, would be her best source of information. She had an uneasy feeling that there was something more to the increase in her scaling. Harrikin had dropped a careless
remark about his scaling and his dragon, but he had become very quiet when she wanted to know what the connection was. And Sintara had been no help at all.
So, cold, wet, still half frightened, and with her injured back hurting more than it had in days, she had begun her dash back to the boat. She hoped to get on board and cozy up to the fire in the galley stove before the day’s travel began. It was her turn to be in one of the remaining keeper boats, and she wanted to be warm again by then.
Instead, she had seen the boat suddenly heave itself up as if a wave had risen up under it. She had heard the cries of those on board. All the dragons had turned at the sound; she heard Mercor trumpet in surprise. Ranculos roared a response as he looked all around, seeking a source of the supposed danger. The ship suddenly settled again, sending a little wash of water out from his sides.
She had halted an arm’s length away from Sedric. She hadn’t realized he’d come ashore. He turned to her and said, “Did you see that?” His damp sleeves were rolled back to his elbows, and he carried a ship’s bucket and a scrub brush. She suspected he had borrowed them without asking to aid in his grooming of his copper. She hoped Captain Leftrin would not be angry at him.
“I did,” she replied. At that moment, the ship again lifted, lurched and rocked, and then resettled.
“Is one of the dragons behind the ship? Are they pushing it?”
“No.” Mercor had overheard her question as the golden dragon arrived to stand near her. “Tarman is a liveship and a most unusual one at that. He moves himself.”
“How?” she demanded, but in the next instant she had her answer. The ship rocked from side to side and then, with tremendous effort, heaved himself up. For a moment, she had a glimpse of squat front legs. Then they bent and the ship settled once more in the shallow water and mud. She stared in astonishment and then her gaze wandered to the ship’s painted eyes. She had always thought they looked kind. Now they seemed determined to her. Water had splashed up over them in his latest effort. She stared at him, meeting his gaze and trying to decide if she looked at more than paint.
A moment later the ship gathered himself and again lifted, shifted, and dropped. He was unmistakably moving his bow.
“He’s trying to free himself,” Sedric suggested shakily. “That’s all.”
“I don’t think that’s all,” Thymara muttered, staring.
“Nor I,” Mercor added.
Ranculos had come closer. This time, as the ship lifted, he flared his nostrils and lifted the fringes on his neck. “I smell dragon!” he proclaimed loudly. He lifted his wings slightly and craned his head about.
“You smell the ship. You smell Tarman,” Mercor corrected him.
Ranculos lowered his head and extended his neck. With his wings slightly lifted, he reminded Thymara of a courting bird as he approached the liveship, nostrils flared.
Mercor spoke in a voice that seemed resigned to foolishness. “Tarman is a liveship, Ranculos. His hull was made from a dragon’s case, one that never hatched.” He paused, watching the ship again gather himself, lift, and then shift the direction of his bow as he lowered himself again. “But that old case has a more recent overlay. Part of him comes from the case of a dragon who would have come to be from the same tangle of serpents we came from. Tarman is as much one of us as a being of his kind can be.”
“A being of his kind? A ‘being’ of his ‘kind’? And what is that, Mercor? A ghost trapped in the body of a slave?” The silver eyes of the scarlet dragon flashed as Ranculos raised his head high, rearing up briefly on his hind legs. Arbuc trumpeted shrilly, echoing his feelings while Fente lashed her tail and rumbled a growl.
Baliper spoke. “He is wrong. He smells wrong. He exists wrong. It is wrong for humans to ride on a dragon in any form, let alone for them to enslave the ghost of one. We should tear him apart and eat him. The memories trapped in his ‘wood’ should come back to us, for they belong to us.” He snapped open his scarlet wings and reared back briefly in a show of size and aggression.
“I think not.” This came in a roar from Kalo. The great blue-black dragon, largest of the drakes, waded forward through the gathered dragons, forcing the smaller ones to step aside or be trodden on. When Baliper did not give way, Kalo shouldered him roughly aside, sending him crashing against Fente. The little green queen screamed in fury and struck at Baliper, lightly scoring his shoulder with her teeth. In turn, the red clapped his wing at her, sending her sprawling into the mud. At this threat to Fente, a yell of outrage from Tats reached Thymara’s ear. He stood on board the Tarman, eyes wild with panic as he stared down at the conflict that threatened to engulf all the dragons.
“Stop!” Mercor cried out, but the golden went unheeded.
“Stop or I’ll kill you all!” Kalo roared.
A stillness froze them. The immense drake turned his head slowly, surveying the gathered dragons. A few of the keepers stood among them. Sedric had moved closer to Thymara. Sylve huddled by Mercor’s front leg.
Fente began to get to her feet.
“Don’t!” Kalo warned her. He opened his jaws wide and displayed to all of them the bright green poison sacs inside his throat. They were swollen and full, pulsing with his anger. “I am not Spit, to show my power before I need it. Oppose me now and I’ll let you feel the strength of my venom.”
The dragons were still. Kalo closed his jaws, but the spiny ruffs on his throat still stood out. He spoke slowly. “I do not recall all that a dragon should. And I recall much that a dragon should not. Kelaro I was, of Maulkin’s Tangle. And I followed Maulkin, a great golden serpent, without question.” His silvery gaze suddenly fixed on Mercor. The golden dragon looked puzzled for a moment, then bowed his head in assent. “Kelaro I was, and Sessurea was a companion to me.” He looked now at Tarman. “I was the stronger, but sometimes he was the wiser.” His gaze moved over the gathered dragons. “If we tear that wisdom to pieces and share it amongst us, will any of us have the whole of it? Will any of us know what Tarman seems to know? Open your mouths and your nostrils, dragons. There is more than one way for a dragon to communicate. Or a serpent.”
Thymara was shocked to discover that she had taken Sedric’s arm and was holding it firmly. Something was happening here, something that frightened her. There were shrieks and shouts from the barge as he once more heaved himself high. For an instant, she clearly saw the squat powerful front legs and had a glimpse of the folded and flippered hind legs. A waft of stench, not unlike the smell she recalled from the day the dragons had emerged from their cases, enveloped her. Her eyes stung and she put her shirtsleeve over her mouth and nose, gasping for breath. Then, the barge wheeled, and Tarman’s bow slapped down onto the river. As his powerful hind legs pushed him away from the delta of river mud, a wave of dirty water washed up onto the beach.
The barge moved out into the river. It nosed, not toward the swift-flowing acid river with the wide open channel but toward the long green tunnel of the fresh water that she had explored yesterday. She realized what was happening at the same moment Sedric did.
“Tarman is leaving without us!”
“Wait!” This came in a wild shriek from Sylve. Thymara glanced in her direction, but she could not tell if Sylve called to the ship or Mercor, for the dragons were in motion, moving to follow the barge. Tarman had wallowed out into deeper water. None of the polemen was at their posts, but he was moving determinedly against the current. Thymara saw a disturbance in the water behind him and guessed at the presence of a tail.
“We’re being left behind. Come on!” She had been the one clutching at Sedric. But now he shrugged free of her hold on his arm, caught her by the hand. Her free hand snagged the still-staring Sylve. “Run!” he told them. “Come on!”
They pelted down the beach toward the shore. Shouts of both anger and dismay from Tarman’s deck told her that there was nothing that the crew or keepers could do to detain the barge. She wondered briefly about the hunters. As was their wont, they had set out before dawn to look f
or meat, and they had doubtless headed up the other tributary of the river. How long would it take them to realize that the barge and the dragons had gone off in a different direction?
They were not the only keepers left onshore. All of them were converging on the three small boats that remained onshore. Kase and Boxter had claimed Greft’s boat, but they stood by to see if they’d have to make room for another keeper. Alum was in one of the other boats, and as she watched, Harrikin spoke with him. The third boat was empty. “Go!” Thymara shouted at them. “We’ll take the other boat.”
“Right!” Alum shouted back to her, and in moments they were launched. The barge was moving with swift certainty up the waterway. The dragons split and went around the small boats, waded out into the water, and followed. They would soon pass the barge. Kase and Boxter had taken up their paddles and were moving out into the river.
By the time Thymara, Sylve, and Sedric reached the final boat, they were alone on the shore. Thymara glanced back at the campsite. No, nothing left behind. A fire smoldered on the wet muddy flat. Nothing remained to show they had been there but trampled ground and the rising smoke.
“Will it hold three?” Sedric asked worriedly.
“It won’t be comfortable, but we’ll be fine. Besides, there’s no choice. You can turn your bucket upside down and perch on that. I suspect we’ll come alongside Tarman before too long, and we can ask them to take you up then, if you’d like.” She turned to a strangely quiet Sylve. The girl looked stricken. “What’s the matter?”
Sylve shook her head slowly. “He just went with the others. Mercor didn’t even wait to see if I had a way to follow. He just left.” She blinked her eyes and one pink-tinged tear trickled down her cheek.
“Oh, Sylve.” Thymara felt sorry for her, but also impatient. Now was not the time for indulging in emotion. They had to catch up with the ship.