Rain Wilds Chronicles

by Robin Hobb

  “Freedom to come and go as I please?”

  He smiled again, but he was wearying of her. “In time, perhaps. For now, I think you will be too busy taking care of our special guest. Occupy your time and thoughts with tending to him. As you can see, my health is improving. Soon I will begin instructing you in the ways of power. Before I can formally declare you my heir, I must show you well groomed for the position. It has been long since a woman has come to power in Chalced. The way must be prepared for you, my dear.”

  He took a breath. Tired. Time to return to his bed, to sleep. Tired, yes, but not sickened with weariness. Only tired as any man would be after having to deal with a witch. She opened her mouth to speak. He lifted a cautioning finger. “Later,” he said. “After you have had time to think well, and have shown me, yet again, that you can employ your skills for love of me.” He nodded toward the supine dragon man. Then he lifted his voice. “Guards! I wish to return to my rooms.”

  They entered with alacrity. Had they feared for his safety? Good. To his daughter he said, “You see. They respect your abilities as I do.” As they lifted his chair, he leaned back on his cushions. Let her ponder what he meant by that.

  “You are awake.”

  He opened his eyes. The room seemed very bright, and he quickly lidded them again. He felt her hands on him. They were light and cool as she felt his brow and then slipped her fingers down to his throat to touch his pulse.

  “Don’t go back to sleep. Not until you’ve eaten and drunk.”

  “To make me strong.” He could manage no more than a hoarse whisper. “So your father can bleed me again.”

  She didn’t deny it. “I knew you were awake and listening. And yes, for now, that is what we must do, to buy time for ourselves.”

  “I must live, waiting for him to want to use me again? That is why I should get better?” He did not have the strength to put the full outrage he felt into his voice.

  “Not so different from what I have had to do, and more than once,” she hissed back at him. “Do you think that to be kept in a pen and fed like a fattened bullock is so different from being confined until you are bred like a cow for the calf you may drop? Yes. It will be hard for you. It has been hard for me. But we are both still alive. And that is what it will take for both of us to remain alive long enough for us to make a different plan.”

  “What plan?” He hated that her words made sense to him. He wanted her to be wrong, wanted to be offered a future that did not include the ghastly old man’s withered lips sucking at his wrist.

  “If I knew already, we would not have to make it. Here. Let me help you to sit up a little. I want you to drink some wine and eat something. It seems you can have whatever you wish to eat or drink now. Is there anything you would fancy? Anything that would tempt your appetite?”

  “Meat. Fresh meat,” he demanded. He spoke the words without thinking and then fell suddenly silent. He looked up to find her staring at him quizzically.

  “Just a touch of the dragon speaking,” he said, meaning it as a jest. But he wondered.

  Day the 12th of the Plough Moon

  Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

  From Sealia Finbok, of the Bingtown Traders

  To Hest Finbok, of the Bingtown Traders

  To be held at the Cassarick Traders’ Hall.

  My dearest son, how can you leave us in such suspense? All matter of strange tidings have my friends received from the Rain Wilds, and yet not a word from you! My dear, it is humiliating that I must hear tales of dragons sighted, and the mysterious and sudden departure, upriver, of the very impervious ship that you were on! I am told that it set off without a word to anyone, and that several very important Traders appear to have departed with it! If you know anything of this delicious bit of gossip, I implore you, send me tidings by bird at your earliest possible opportunity! All my friends are boiling with curiosity. Some are saying it was an incredible trading opportunity that led the boat to depart immediately, and others that it has to do with the other ship that followed the Tarman upriver.

  My friends are speculating that you have dashed off on a mad adventure to find your missing Alise. They imagine all sorts of romantic reunions and rescues, but I will tell you again, I have always found her an unsuitable match for you. I do hope you will not put yourself into any danger or great inconvenience for her sake.

  I am trusting that you will contact me almost immediately, by the swiftest messenger bird that can be hired!

  Your loving mother

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Hostages

  We’re wasting our time, Cap,” Skelly said. She stood squarely before Captain Leftrin as she spoke. “It’s too dark down there, the drop is too long, and the Silver too shallow. We’ll never bail up any Silver dropping that bucket. It lands wrong every time. Weight it to tip on its side, and it’s going to stay tipped on its side, spilling out any Silver it might take in as we haul it back up.”

  She paused to draw breath. All around the well mouth, the few keepers who had gathered remained silent. Three fruitless days of fishing for Silver had brought them only discouragement. Carson had insisted today that regular work be resumed. So some had gone to the hunt to add meat to their stores while most of Tarman’s crew was back at the docks, tending Tarman or working on reinforcing the dock. Thymara and Tats had returned to the well to see if any progress had been made.

  “You saying we should give this up?” Leftrin scowled down at her.

  “No, sir. I’m saying, it’s going to take hands. You have to let me try. I’m the smallest and lightest of the crew. And you need someone with some muscle in her arm for the climbing part. It has to be me. Sir.”

  Tats lowered his eyes, and beside him, Thymara was silent. She knew they both agreed with the deckhand. Skelly was the one for the job. At the same time, she suppressed a shudder. She could not imagine trusting her life to a length of rope, let alone descending so deep into a cold, lightless hole in the ground. Just the thought of it made her queasy. The job might need hands, but they wouldn’t be hers.

  “I’m not going to trust your life to a piece of line that long.” Captain Leftrin was blunt. “Your rigging skills won’t be much use to you if your hands are numb from cold. If the rope breaks, you die from touching the Silver. We heard that from Mercor himself. So. That’s not going to happen.”

  “Then you’re saying we’re giving up?” She was so astounded that she forgot the “sir.”

  “Not giving up. Just not doing it your way. We’ve got a lot of salvaged chain. In pieces. I don’t know what broke it into lengths, but whatever did it is a lot stronger than a man with a hammer. I had Big Eider working on some last night, trying to see if he could open some links and hammer it back together. No luck so far. But once we get it mended, if we can make it long enough, then I might trust it to take someone down that hole. Not you, but someone.”

  “Sir, I—”

  Her offended protest was cut short. Distant trumpets were sounding. Everyone froze, and then the meaning dawned on them.

  “The dragons are coming back!” Lecter shouted. “Sestican! Sestican!”

  “Fente will want a hot soak and a grooming.” Tats sounded almost apologetic.

  “As will Sintara.” Thymara knew what it meant. Until the dragons were bathed and groomed, their lives would not be their own. And as Sintara did not enjoy the company of any of the other queens, chances were that she would not see Tats for that time. She felt a pang that surprised her. Had she so quickly become accustomed to spending her days with him? It had been simpler without Rapskal and her feelings for him complicating her life. And with that thought came another on its heels. She would have to deal with Rapskal again and what he was becoming. A shiver of dread went through her. Each time she saw him, he was stranger. And more of a stranger.

  “Are you coming?”

  The others, keepers and ship’s crew, had already begun hurrying back toward the Square of the Dragons. Tats had pa
used to wait for her. “I’m coming,” she replied, and she hurried to catch hands with him before they ran together.

  By twos and threes, the dragons arrived. The boasting and trumpeting and the cries for attention from the keepers made it nearly impossible to get a coherent account of what had happened. Fente was disgusted that she had had to land in the river and walk about on the mud. She had made several kills on the journey home, all in the muddy margins of the river, and insisted that she was filthy even though, to Tats’s eyes, she was her green gleaming self.

  Her account of how the dragons had flown into battle, cowing the evil humans into submission by virtue of their glittering beauty, seemed far-fetched to him. “So you captured them all without shedding a drop of blood?” he asked as he inspected her claws after her long soak in the hot water.

  She stretched her toes languorously. He found a bit of grit caught between two of them and diligently brushed it away.

  Some died. One demanded to be eaten, so Spit ate him. Some jumped in the river and drowned. Some ran off in the forest, and so we left them. Then they had a fight among themselves on the way here, and some of them were injured. Stupid humans.

  “I see,” Tats said quietly. “And Tintaglia, who you went to rescue?”

  “Dead by now. We were too late. All we could do was avenge her. Kalo remained behind with her, to eat her memories when she was gone.”

  Tats looked away from her. Tears stung his eyes. So the firstborn child of the king and queen of the Elderlings must perish as well. “That will be hard for Malta to hear.”

  “She is deaf now?” Fente asked, her curiosity idle. Tats shook his head and gave it up. From the way she dismissed the events, he knew there was no use in asking for details. She would be far more interested in telling him what she killed and exactly how it tasted than in explaining to him how a battle had been won and two ships captured.

  Or so they claimed. Not all the dragons had returned yet. Of the ships and Rapskal and Heeby there was no sign, nor of Kalo, Mercor, and Baliper. They are coming, very slowly, she had explained to him. And then she demanded that he clean very carefully around her eyes, for she feared she had picked up water ticks from hunting in the river.

  He had just finished that task when he heard more trumpeting from the river. The others have returned, she told him. He followed Fente out to the square where she launched into the air without a word of farewell. She was off to the hunt. She had no interest in ships or homecomings, not while her stomach was empty. He watched her depart and then followed the other keepers down toward the city docks.

  That area had changed substantially since Tarman’s return. Leftrin and his crew had turned to, making a dozen small changes to Carson’s handiwork and expanding it in other ways. Tarman was now tied securely within a slip, his lines run to stout shore anchors as well as to an anchor set in the river to keep him from being driven against the shore. It looked to Tats as if the ship could not possibly be torn free, but Leftrin insisted that two hands be aboard him at all times, and none of the crew seemed to think that odd.

  When the dragons had arrived and told them that they could expect two more vessels to dock soon, the first reaction had been disbelief. It had been followed by activity that reminded Tats of a stirred-up wasps’ nest as keepers and crew frantically tried to make space for two more boats at their ramshackle dock while dealing with the demands of the dragons.

  Mercor had been the first of the dragons to land. He came in gracefully, landing against the river’s current and sending a plume of water rooster-tailing behind him. He had calculated his speed precisely and emerged quickly from the water to Sylve’s shouts of admiration.

  But his first words had not been a greeting but a query. “Have you found Silver yet? Is the well cleared?”As the other dragons landed and made their way to shore, he listened gravely as he was told that only a small quantity of the precious stuff had been pulled up from the well, and that efforts to reach the bottom of the well had been suspended by news of the dragons returning with two ships.

  “And the Silver you did find?” he asked avidly.

  The small quantity of the precious stuff had been carefully poured into an Elderling flask made of heavy glass and placed in the center of the table where the keepers dined. There it sat and shimmered, casting an unearthly glow of its own into the room. Tats had been certain that Malta and Reyn would try to apply it directly to the child, but they had not. Perhaps Kase’s small mishap had persuaded them of its danger. In the transfer from the large bucket to the much smaller flask, a single drop of Silver had fallen onto the back of his forearm. He had exclaimed in fear, and then as the others drew near, he bent his head over his arm and stared at the Silver as it shimmered.

  “Wipe it off !” Tats had exclaimed, tossing him a rag.

  He had dabbed at it, to no effect. “It doesn’t hurt,” he had told them. “But it feels very wrong, all the same.” They had all watched in silent fear as the Silver spread on his skin, outlining the scales on his arm and then almost disappearing.

  “Nothing happened,” Sylve said hopefully.

  Kase had shaken his head. “Something’s happening there. It doesn’t hurt, but something is happening.” He’d swallowed uneasily and then added, “I hope Dortean comes back soon. He’ll know what to do about this.” In the day since then, he had shed all his scaling where the Silver touched him, and the skin beneath it looked raw and angry. And remained a dull, silvery gray.

  Mercor had listened attentively to their tale. “Yes. Dortean will be able to deal with that much Silver, if Kase goes to his dragon promptly.” The golden dragon’s eyes had whirled slowly. “And that was all the Silver you were able to bring up?” he asked again.

  “I’m sorry,” Sylve had told him, and her dragon had wheeled away from her in silent disappointment.

  The other dragons soon knew the full tale and had unhappily conceded that until all the dragons had returned, the vial of Silver would remain untouched. They had accepted the news that the well was all but dry and that the Elderlings would have to work on a device that would lower one of them down to harvest what little Silver there might be. They had not seemed very excited at the news and he guessed the reason. The well was already incredibly deep. They surmised, as he did, that the Silver was all gone.

  “Tats!” Thymara called, and he glanced back to see her running toward him. The back of her Elderling tunic stirred as her wings struggled to open. She had confided to him that sometimes that happened when she hurried, as if some part of her thought she should take flight. Now as she came toward him, smiling, the wind lifting her hair, he saw how much the wings were changing her. She carried them, a weight on her back, and even folded, their angles projected up higher than her ears. Lovely as they were, he suddenly wished she did not have them, for they forced him to recognize that all of them were changed as much as she was, just as far from the humans they had been. And all were just as much at risk from the lack of Silver as the dragons were. He thought of Greft, dying of his changes on the journey to Kelsingra. Did such an end await all of them?

  “You look so solemn,” Thymara said as she caught up with him.

  “I’m a bit worried about Rapskal,” he said, and it was not a lie even if it was not the immediate truth.

  They crested the last hill and looked down at the docks. Sintara and Baliper were wheeling overhead, and Spit had flown up to join them. Rapskal circled them on his scarlet dragon. His shouted victory song reached them as a thin whisper on the wind.

  Oars powered the two ships that were coming in to dock. They were long and lean, low to the water. Their masts were stripped of sail and folded down to the deck. The oars rose and fell in an uncertain rhythm that spoke either of weariness or of clumsy oarsmen. “Catch a line!” Big Eider’s cry rang out as he threw a coiled line to them, and the men who scrambled to catch it were certainly not sailors. They caught it, and then stood staring at it until one of the oarsmen jumped up to take it from their hands.


  The rest of the docking proceeded with similar awkwardness. Some of the men on the ships were doing nothing to help, only standing and shouting that they were innocent men, honest Traders from Bingtown, and that they had done nothing to hurt a dragon or to deserve to have their ship stolen from them. Tats and Thymara halted where they stood to watch the spectacle. As the second ship ran into the first, tangling oars and breaking several, the shouts and curses rose in a storm. Other lines were thrown, and a man stood on the raised deck of one of the ships screaming orders that either his crew ignored or did not know how to obey. On the other, a reasonably competent crew ran about frantically trying to protect their vessel.

  “This is bad,” Tats said in a low voice. “Fente told me the dragons conquered evil warriors. They don’t look like warriors. They look like merchants.”

  “Trouble will come of this,” Thymara agreed.

  Slowly they moved down the hill to see what the river had brought them.

  “Like a courting bird,” Big Eider said, and Leftrin growled in agreement. It had driven him nearly mad to see ships handled so. They might not be alive, but they were gracious, well-built craft and they did not deserved to be run into pilings or each other in the course of a simple docking. As they were finally being secured to the dock that he did not completely trust for one ship, let alone three, Heeby landed Rapskal nearby. The young Elderling slid down from the scarlet dragon’s shoulder, patted her, and suggested she “go take a long soak, my lovely, and I’ll be along to scrub you down soon.” As his darling lumbered off, Rapskal promenaded down to the tethered ships. He stood, looking at his prizes and nodding to himself, prompting Big Eider’s remark.

  As Rapskal’s fellow keepers began to close in around him, he lifted up his hands and his voice. “Hostages! Disembark and show yourselves.”

  “Hostages?” Skelly asked in disbelief.

  “That’s what he said,” Leftrin growled at her, and then went forward to be certain the captured ships were not left completely unmanned. Hennesey had followed him, and with a shrug and a jerk of her head, Skelly had motioned to Big Eider. They trailed their captain while Swarge looked on from Tarman’s deck, smoking a pipe and shaking his head in disapproval. Leftrin glanced back once at his own vessel. Alise, still looking pale, had come out of their stateroom and onto the deck. She was freshly attired in a long, pale-green tunic over leggings and boots of darker green. Her long red hair, freshly plaited, hung in loops to her shoulder and was secured with rows of bright pins. He knew that style. He had seen it portrayed in mosaics in the city. It worried him that she had unthinkingly adopted it, as did the preoccupied look on her face. He wished she had stayed in bed. Since her excursion into the memory stones of Kelsingra, she had seemed distracted and weary. He had begged her to stay out of the city for a few days, to rest on Tarman and be away from the stone. She had complied, but even so, she didn’t seem quite herself yet.