by Robin Hobb
No one had.
“I tried to make him stop,” he said. Then he wondered why he pointed out his own failure to her. He got himself to his feet and crossed the short space to the divan, catching at furniture as he went. When he reached it, he fell more than sat on it.
Chassim watched him accomplish this, then went to the hearth’s edge and added a stick or two of wood. In a few moments, flame woke and ran along the stick. In the additional light, he could see her cheek starting to purple. “Yes. You did,” she said, as if there had been no gap in their conversation. Then she turned to look at him directly. Sitting on the floor, with her braids falling down, her pale nightdress catching light and shadow from the fire, she looked more childish than ever. Like Malta, when she was a girl and he a small boy and they had sometimes crept down to the kitchen at night to see what treats the cook might have tucked away in the pantry. It had been a very long time ago, he suddenly realized. A tiny bit of a pampered childhood that had lasted only a short time before war and hardship had shattered it forever.
Chassim’s eyes were not a child’s as she asked him, “Why? Why did you do that? He might have killed you.”
“He was hurting you. It was wrong. And you had been kind to me . . .” He was shocked that she would ask him why he had tried to help her. Was it such a strange act? He reached deeper, pulled up a painful honesty. “It happened to me once.” He blurted out the words and then was horrified. He had never intended to speak of it to anyone. Having someone else know about it made it real.
She stared at him, her blue eyes wide, and he wondered what she thought of him now. How much less human did it make him in her eyes?
“How?” she said at last, and he saw that she did not grasp what he was saying.
He spoke roughly and suddenly understood her own callousness when she had spoken of what Ellik had just done to her. “There was a man who wanted me. As a novelty, I think, as when some men mate with an animal, just to see what might be different. He paid the man who kept me captive well. My keeper let him into my cage and walked away. And . . . it was like he was insane. Like I was a thing, not even an animal. I defied him, and I fought him, and then, eventually, I pleaded, when I knew he was far stronger than I was. It didn’t help. He hurt me. Badly. And then he got off me and walked away. There is something about knowing that someone is taking pleasure in giving you incredible pain . . . with no remorse. It changes how you see yourself; it changes what you can believe of other people. It changes everything.” His words ground to a halt.
“I know,” she said simply.
A silence fell. The fire crackled, and he felt more naked than he had when he was displayed bare for all to see. “I was sick for days afterward. Really sick. I had so much pain. I bled and I had a fever. I don’t think I’ve been completely healthy since then.” The words tumbled out of him. He lifted his hand, covered his own mouth to stop them. Tears he had not shed then nor since burned in his eyes. The tears of a torn and battered child, helpless against violence done to him. With his last shred of manhood, of dignity, he fought to hold them back.
“Flesh rips when you are forced.” She spoke the harsh fact quietly. “I have heard people, other women, make mock of it. As something that some women deserve, or as a fillip of excitement to the act. Something to pretend, for titillation. I cannot understand it. It makes me want to slap them and choke them until they understand.” She stood up slowly and he could see the pain it cost her. She took a few breaths and then leaned over him to pull a blanket around him. “Go to sleep,” she suggested.
“Maybe tomorrow will be a better day,” he dared to say. He coughed again.
“I doubt it,” she said, but without bitterness. “But whatever it is, it will be the only day we have.” She left the room slowly, pausing at the door. “Your dragon,” she said. She cocked her head at him. “Did it hurt when she changed you?”
He shook his head slowly. “Sometimes the changes are uncomfortable. But what we shared was worth it. I wish I could explain it better.”
“Does she know where you are now? Does she know how they hurt you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If she did, would she come here? To help you?”
“I’d like to think so,” he said quietly.
“So would I,” she replied. And on those odd words, she left him.
Day the 5th of the Plough Moon
Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Jani Khuprus, of the Rain Wild Traders, Trehaug
To Ronica and Keffria Vestrit of the Bingtown Traders, Bingtown
Keffria, I have taken your advice. A lengthy explanation of Malta’s absence is on its way to you in a wax-sealed packet sent on the liveship Ophelia and entrusted to Captain Tenira. He is, as we all well know, a man of impeccable honor.
I beg you to hold the information in deepest confidence. I myself am still awaiting more tidings, but I have shared what I know with you. I regret that I must be so evasive and leave you to endure the wait for the packet’s arrival. Right now I share your reluctance to entrust information about confidential family business to Guild birds.
I share your agony over Selden’s fate. Would that we had even one scrap of certainty of what has befallen him. We have sent a response to Wintrow, telling him we still await news.
All else here is the best that it can be, given the daily worries that we share for Selden.
I pray you, if you receive good tidings about our boy, send them as swiftly as possible, by bird. That would be a message I would wish to share with the world.
May Sa shelter us all!
Jani
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dragon Warrior
The endless pursuit dragged on and on and on. Hest was sickened by it. It was not that he felt any sympathy for the creature they hunted. It was the utter boredom spiked with sudden uncontrollable danger that roiled his belly.
The Chalcedean and his fellows were determined to take the dragon, to harvest blood, scale, eyes, flesh, tongue, liver, and spleen. And whatever other bits of her they salivated over each night as he waited on them at the galley table. Tonight, the Chalcedean and his cohorts were full of wild optimism. They slammed their mugs on the table for emphasis and praised their own cleverness and courage in persevering so long. The dragon was theirs, and with her death, fame and glory would come to them. They would kill her, plunder her body, and go home to fame and riches and, sweetest of all, safety for themselves and their families. The Duke would cease his threats and shower them with gifts and favors. Cherished sons long held hostage in horrific conditions would be restored to them.
So they spoke by night when darkness forced them to cease their drudging hunt and tie up for the night. By dawn, they would once more stalk the dragon. The damned beast refused to die. She trudged away from them, day after day and possibly long into the night. Each day, the impervious ships battled the current until they caught up with her. Twice she had lain in wait for them and sprung out in a wild attempt to capsize their vessels. She had splintered oars, and eaten two rowers who had fallen or been flung overboard by her attacks. She seemed to take great pleasure in crushing them slowly in her jaws as they shrieked in agony.
It had not discouraged the Chalcedean. Lord Dargen was relentless.
Captives had been taken from belowdecks to replace the rowers who had been lost, chained to oars as if they were slaves. The merchants and Traders were poor replacements for the work-hardened slaves and sailors that had perished. Yet the Chalcedean and his followers seemed not to care that nineteen of twenty arrows shot at the dragon either missed or splashed uselessly into the river. If the twentieth one loosened a scale or stuck for even a moment in a tender part of her body, they roared and screeched victoriously.
Hest did not see why they put so much effort into it. It seemed plain to him that the dragon was dying. Daily she looked more dilapidated. She was obviously incapable of flight. She carried one of her wings partially open at an
odd angle. Her colors were faded and the smell of her was terrible, a stench of rotten meat. Rousted from wherever she had finally taken rest at night, she now put most of her energy into staying out of range of their arrows. Sometimes she sought refuge in the marshy reed beds at the swampy edge of the river. Lying down, she became almost invisible to them. Then Lord Dargen would force some of his men over the side to harry and taunt her into showing herself. Some of those men became food. Privately, Hest believed that if the Chalcedean would stop feeding his henchmen to the dragon, she would sooner succumb to her injuries and die.
But he did not say so. He did not wish to end up on the end of an oar. Yet he feared that, at the rate the Lord Dargen was spending men, it would be inevitable. The Chalcedean seldom gave him an order anymore. Hest kept himself busy and out of the man’s sight, making every effort to be both useful and invisible. For hours every day, he carried out menial tasks, wiping tables, stirring porridge or soup, and any other work he could find to occupy himself. He had, he thought bitterly, adapted himself into the ideal slave, endlessly laboring without need of direction.
The only thing worse than the constant drudgery were the times of absolute terror when the dragon attacked the ship. Those could happen at any moment, he had discovered. Pestered and poked enough, she would turn and lash out. Her roars lacked spirit, more the response of a cornered rat than an enraged predator. Yet even so, every attack damaged one ship or another and often enough claimed a life.
“Hest!”
He jerked at the sound of his shouted name, and the men gathered at the table roared with laughter. The Chalcedean did not. He was scowling, displeased with his servant. Hest tried not to cower. He had several reasons to fear. He had stolen two pieces of bacon that morning on the pretense of cleaning the pan. And he had purloined a water-stained cloak that one of the Chalcedeans had thrown to the deck after the dragon had given them an unexpected drenching. It served as his bedding now and he was pathetically grateful for its thin comfort. But now, as dread rose in him, he cursed himself for a fool. He had not been that cold nor were the deck planks that hard. That discomfort was not worth his life!
The Chalcedean’s cheeks and nose were red with drinking, or perhaps just from recent splashes of river water. They all looked the worse for wear by now, and Hest dared not imagine how he appeared. His hands and arms were scalded red to the elbows just from his cleaning tasks. But his master only took a heavy brass key from the pouch at his belt and said, “Go to the second aft hatch and bring us back that little keg of Sandsedge brandy.” He looked around the table at his men, swaying slightly. “I don’t think it’s too early for us to celebrate. Tomorrow she will surely fall to us. That spear from Binton went deep today, did it not? Did you see how her blood bubbled as it met the water? Dragon blood! Soon enough, we’ll have plenty of it. So emptying the keg to hold it tonight might be a wise course of action!”
Two men cheered, but the others at the table shook their heads. Hest’s heart sank as one of them snatched the key back from him and stuffed it back into his master’s pouch. Anger blossomed on the Chalcedean’s face, and Hest knew he would bear the brunt of it. “Your master is drunk. Only a fool celebrates a victory before it is in his hands. Take him back to his bed for the night. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will have to bring us that cask.”
Lord Dargen rose unsteadily. His hand hovered over one of his vicious little knives. “You are not in command here, Clard. It is something for you to remember.”
The man did not lower his gaze. “I know it well, Lord Dargen. You lead us, and you have borne the hardship of doing so. But I follow you, and not the wine in your belly!” He grinned as he added this, and after a moment, the fury melted from the Chalcedean’s face. He nodded slowly, and relieved smiles broke on the faces of the other men at the table.
Lord Dargen turned to Hest. “I am going to bed. Take a candle and precede me, Bingtown Trader. When we go back to Chalced, perhaps I will make you my valet. I have never had a valet, but you appear well suited to the task. As long as you keep your hands to yourself.”
The men at the table roared with laughter. Fury burned in his heart, but Hest bent his mouth in an approximation of an appreciative smile. Dismay that such a fate could await him warred with hatred for the man. Would it be much worse to be eaten by the dragon or drowned in the river? As he sheltered their candle from the wind on the way back to the deckhouse and his stateroom, he wished he had the courage to push the drunk overboard, even as his wiser self reminded him of how his companions would react to the loss of their leader.
Death was not far away. They knew it, the carrion eaters and blood drinkers, and they swarmed around her. Some did not wait, but darted forward to try for a chunk of her flesh or the opportunity to latch onto one of her wounds. She longed to shake them off, to dart her head down and make her predators her own meal, but she did not. Let them come. Tintaglia moved in silence, ignoring the swarms of small vampire worms and the fish that kept trying to take a bite of her. They might feed on her tonight; they would almost certainly feast on her tomorrow. But no human would draw her blood or slice her scales free; no human would lay her belly open and take her heart with bloody hands. No. If she could not escape them, she would at least ensure that they joined her in death.
She had taken some rest earlier in the day, if it could be called that. As evening fell, she had found a gap in the forest wall and crept back among the trees. She could not go far, but she had stiffly wound her aching body among the trunks and tree roots and, for a short time, closed her eyes.
And dreamed.
That had surprised her. Of late, when she found a place and a moment to sleep, exhaustion dragged her under into a dark cavern that could scarcely be called rest. More like a bite of death, she thought to herself. But that brief rest had brought her a gobbet of an idea. Some ancient ancestral memory had uncoiled in her mind, and when she awoke, it awaited her. Ships had a vulnerable point. Every ship needed a rudder, be it a sweep or a steering oar. Destroy those, and neither vessel could maneuver well.
She had been stupid to flee them, to let them attack and chase her. The only times she had gained any blood from them was when she had lain in wait and attacked them. But they had learned to anticipate those ambushes. She had attacked them when they were awake and alert, their arms ready to hand, and the light helping them to see. Now as she paced slowly and silently through the water back toward the ships, she hissed in silent satisfaction. The lights of the anchored vessels beckoned her, spilling a pale betrayal of their silhouettes onto the river’s face. But she would be almost invisible to them, a black shape in the black water.
She did not deceive herself. This was her last bid at survival. If she did not destroy or at least disable her foes tonight, she did not think she could live through another day of their harrying. The infection from her original wound seemed to have spread to all the minor injuries they had dealt her since then. She was not healing; daily her injuries worsened and she weakened. If she could only rest, make a kill, eat and rest, then perhaps she could muster the strength to plod on toward Kelsingra. Flight was beyond her now. She could scarcely move one wing, and the thought of springing into the air, snapping it open, and beating her way up into the sky seemed no more than a long-ago dream.
They had moored their boats with their noses upstream. She would have to pass them as silently as possible, then turn and attack. She hoped to disable both ships and then flee before they could retaliate. It was not a dragon’s way of fighting, to strike and then run, but she was not living in ordinary times for dragons. She carried within her eggs that would mature and eventually be ready for laying. She had caught the scent of dragons on the one damaged vessel; there was a faint chance that there was a colony of viable dragons at Kelsingra. But it was hard to believe, and until she knew, she felt that the fate of her race rested on her. If these stupid men so bent on killing her succeeded, they might well eradicate dragons forever.
The thought steeled her
resolve. She would disable their ships and escape. And when she was healed, she would return to destroy not just them but the evil nest that had bred them. She had heard their speech and recognized words from her ancient memories. I know where you spawn, she thought at them. I and my offspring will fall upon your land and leave not one of your nests standing. We will feast on your kine and your children, and foul your drinking places with carrion. You will be the ones eradicated, and no memory of your ways will descend from you.
She was so close now that she could hear their muffled voices and stupid laughter. Laugh well, for a final time, she thought at them. Her path would take her between the two moored vessels, in water deep enough to conceal her and shallow enough that her claws would not lose their grip on the river bottom. She bent her legs slightly, crouching so that only her eyes and nostrils remained above the water and began her stealthy approach.
Lord Dargen breathed out the fumes of Hest’s own wine as he staggered along beside him. He gripped Hest’s shoulder and leaned on him, cursing him when his stumbling feet jostled him against the railing. “Stop. Stop!” he commanded Hest suddenly. “Need to piss. Stay and watch, Bingtown Trader, and see the weapon a Chalcedean bears.” He was, Hest thought, very drunk indeed.
He kept his grip on Hest’s shoulder as he staggered to the railing and Hest had perforce to move with him. He moved aside in distaste as the man made lewd comments about Hest’s supposed desire for him and Hest’s lack of endowment. The night was not peaceful. Animals called to one another in the nearby forest, and ghostly gleams of luminescent hanging moss made mad ghosts in the trees. The yellow lamplight from the windows of the ship streamed in long bars of light on the river’s face. A ripple in the water’s surface caught Hest’s eye. He stared, wondering what disturbed the slack current between the two vessels. A large gleaming eye glared up at him and then was lidded abruptly.