Rain Wilds Chronicles

by Robin Hobb

  “You were unfaithful. From the very first night you made her your bride. I will testify to that.”

  She scarcely recognized Sedric’s voice. It thrummed with deep passion. He pushed his way past the staring keepers to stand beside her, where he lifted her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. She clutched at him and felt his unseen trembling as they confronted together the man who had dragged them both through so much misery.

  Hest drew himself up straight, and sparks of scorn danced in his eyes. “Ah. My valet. My runaway servant. Do you think I don’t know of your private bargains? Your disgusting dealings with Chalcedean merchants to sell them dragon parts? Do your friends know of that? Now that they do, will they believe you? A man who lies once will lie often.”

  Sedric went even whiter, but his voice was steady. “My friends know all, Hest. My dragon knows all. And she has forgiven me.”

  That rattled Hest. Alise’s thoughts scattered as one part of her mind rejoiced. You never saw that he might have a dragon, did you, Hest? You saw his changes, but you could not truly imagine how much he had changed.

  But Hest had not changed. He recovered as neatly as a tumbling acrobat who comes to his feet again. Only those who knew him well recognized the tiny pause of uncertainty before he spoke. He still played to the crowd as he disbelievingly asked, “And knowing of your treacherous nature, you think they will believe whatever foul thing you say? You will testify against me? You, Sedric Meldar, a lowly servant? Then do so now, before all of us. Tell us then, give us one instance of my unfaithfulness to my wife. Just one will do.” His gaze was sharper than a knife. Alise saw victory dancing in his dark eyes.

  Sedric drew a breath. The trembling she had felt as she gripped his arm stilled. He spoke clearly, his voice pitched to carry to everyone there. “I shared your bed for years, before you took Alise as your wife, and for years afterward. You spent your wedding night with me. And in the years that followed, you made her a laughingstock among our fellows. In that circle, all knew that you disdained the company of women for that of men. I was your lover, Hest Finbok. I helped you deceive her, and I did not speak up when you mocked her.

  “And if need be, I will stand before all of Trehaug and all of Bingtown and attest to that. You were an unfaithful husband to her, and I, I was a treacherous friend.”

  Alise stared at Sedric as he committed social suicide. But he turned and met her gaze and said, “And again, Alise, I am so sorry. Would that I could take back those years of your life and give them to you unscathed.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. Sedric had just destroyed all chance that he could ever return to Bingtown and resume his life. Even if he remained in Kelsingra forever, if even one Trader returned to Bingtown, all would know not only what he had done to her, but what he was. “I forgave you, Sedric. I told you that a long time ago.”

  “I know that,” he said very quietly. His hand covered hers as he added, “But I did not deserve your forgiveness then. Perhaps I can say I have earned it now?”

  “You have,” she said quietly. “And more. But Sedric, what have you done? All will know that you . . .”

  “That I am what I am,” he said calmly. “I do not apologize for that. Ever.”

  She sensed someone behind them and turned slightly, thinking it might be Leftrin. It was not. Carson was grinning, but as he stepped forward, a single tear tracked down his sunburned cheek. He folded Sedric into an embrace from behind that lifted the smaller man off his feet. “Proud of you, Bingtown boy,” he said huskily. He set him down on his feet and leaned down to kiss him. The kiss did not end quickly, and Sedric’s hands came up to cradle Carson’s bearded face to his own. Several of the keepers favored the couple with knowing whoops that drowned out the incredulous muttering from the watching prisoners. Alise found herself smiling, as much for joy for them as for the stunned expression on Hest’s face.

  She felt a nudge and turned to see Leftrin. He stuck out the crook of his elbow, and she took his arm in his ragged coat sleeve. “I think we were going to get some tea?” he asked her conversationally. She nodded, and instantly forgave him the triumphant look he shot over her head at Hest. She walked a dozen steps with Leftrin before she glanced back. Hest was standing alone, staring after them.

  “How is he?” Reyn asked as he took a seat beside his wife. He spoke quietly, not to interrupt the conversation going on in the central part of the gathering room of the baths. A strange site selection, he thought, but at least it offered ample space. Every keeper and the full crew of the Tarman, except for Big Eider and Bellin, sat in rapt attendance. Reyn wondered if the chaotic discussion was similar to how the earliest Rain Wild Council had begun. Every keeper had an opinion and seemed intent on airing it. Leftrin and his crew seemed likewise focused on having a say.

  Several of the dragons, still steaming gently from their baths, had remained as well. Reyn wondered if they were really interested in how the humans settled things, or simply hoping for an easy meal if executions were indeed the final decision. Spit had stretched out alongside the captives, who were seated in a group on the floor. From time to time he extended his neck and took a deep snuffling breath as if savoring the aroma of their fear. Mercor, gold and dignified, made up for the smaller dragon’s lack of gravitas. Baliper was present as well, eyeing the captives thoughtfully. The presence of the dragons threw the room into its rightful perspective. Humans and even Elderlings seemed small and transient in the massive gathering space.

  Malta looked down on the quiet bundle in her arms. “He nursed for a short time. He’s not asleep. He seems too tired to eat or to cry right now.”

  “The quiet is a relief,” Reyn said honestly and then wished he could bite the words back. She gave him a stricken look, and he read her thought: Soon enough, it would always be quiet. “Let me hold him for a time,” he said, to soothe the hurt, and she gave the baby over so readily that he knew she had already forgiven his thoughtless words. The bundled child was lighter than he had been the week before. He was losing flesh, and his dark eyes were dull. Reyn began the methodical rocking that holding the child seemed to trigger in him, and Malta smiled faintly.

  “Have they made any progress over there?”

  He nodded. “Most of the talking now is just the keepers agreeing with themselves and saying why they think they’ve reached the right decisions. But that’s an important step for them, too. Sometimes I forget how young most of them are. There was some hot talk at the beginning. It almost made me smile. Some of them seemed to echo what their dragons were saying. Leftrin said, several times, that people should decide the fates of humans, not dragons. I don’t think that that sentiment was completely accepted, but it cooled things down. They’ll take a final vote soon. But I think the slaves will be freed and allowed to determine what they want to do. Leftrin has said that the next time Tarman goes down to Trehaug, the slaves can ride for free. From there, it would be up to them what they did. Some spoke of families, long lost to them. Others seemed dazed at their sudden freedom. They were offered the chance to stay in the village across the river. Not sure if they completely understood what they were being offered. My Chalcedean is rudimentary at best, and pretty rusty.”

  Malta nodded. “Mine is the same. Selden was the only one of us who ever learned our father’s language. I think he did it to impress him. But it didn’t.” Her eyes had gone far as she thought of her vanished brother. Reyn waited. After a moment, she stirred herself. “Selden is gone, along with Tintaglia. I suppose that’s fitting, somehow.” She sighed, dragging herself back to the present. “And the other prisoners?” she asked.

  “That was harder. Leftrin accused Trader Candral to his face of being part of a conspiracy to slaughter dragons and sell the flesh to Chalced. Evidently there was a woman, Trader Sverdin, who was also involved. The Chalcedeans threw her overboard before they even left Cassarick. She probably drowned. Some of the keepers were for letting the dragons eat Candral, but Leftrin talked long and hard that Candral ne
eded to be taken back to Cassarick and put before the Council there. He told them that unless they did so, the Council would never confront the corruption within their own ranks. Candral begged for his life and promised he would this very night write out who was involved and how. Evidently he had a hand in the hiring of some hunter who was part of the Tarman expedition and had made a try to kill Relpda.”

  She nodded at his words, and he wondered if she was really hearing them. He spoke on anyway. “The Chalcedeans are claiming they were forced to come here, that their families are hostage back in Chalced. I find that believable, but the dragons are finding it hard to understand that perhaps that means they deserve mercy. They drew dragon blood. There is no denying that. Then there are the crewmen from the ships. Some say that they were only obeying their captains’ orders. Well and good, I suppose, but at least one of their captains was a traitor to the Traders.

  “There are two merchants from Jamaillia who seem to have just got caught up in the whole mess, as well as several investors from Bingtown who thought they were making a maiden run on their wonderful new vessel. The keepers won’t compromise that they are keeping the ships; they do seem to be impervious to the water from what Swarge told us after a look at their hulls. I’m not sure it’s fair for them to seize the ships, but I suspect that before all is done, some deals and bargains will be negotiated. The Jamaillians already asked about future trading treaties. And that led to the Bingtown Traders interrupting and saying that only a true council could negotiate such things. And then several keepers asserted that neither Bingtown nor either of the Rain Wild Councils had any authority over them. That led to some very interesting discussion.”

  Malta nodded and her smile touched her eyes. “I heard. You didn’t even ask me if I wanted to be queen before you told them all that wasn’t why we had come here.”

  Reyn lifted a hand from their child to caress her golden hair. It was coarse under his touch, but his memory told him it was spun gold. “That was because I was sure you would say yes.” He smiled at her. “And they would have let us simply walk in and take charge of all this.” He took a deep breath. “I never want to be the one to say ‘this man lives and that man dies.’ I am glad they think so highly of us, and I am glad that they listened to me when I pleaded for clemency for the prisoners. But I am even gladder that they are talking and reaching the same conclusions on their own.”

  “Negotiation. It’s the Trader way of solving things,” she said, and he smiled.

  “I haven’t forgotten all you did for Bingtown when you faced down the Satrap of Jamaillia and the Pirate King.”

  She returned his smile faintly. “That seems a very long time ago. Where did I get that energy?” She shook her head. “Trader Finbok?”

  “Claims to have simply been on his way to look for Alise and Sedric before he was abducted with the other passengers. Some of the others dispute that; Candral says that a note from Finbok lured him down to the vessel. Hest denies it. Right now, there’s no hard evidence and no reason to charge him with anything.”

  “It doesn’t quite add up somehow. But I’m too tired to put my mind to work on it.” Malta frowned. “Candral must go back. Someone must pay for what those horrid men did to me the night Phron was born.” She looked down at her baby. “If I must go back to stand before the Council and speak about what I did that night, I will.”

  “I’ve no desire to put you through that. Sooner or later, the truth will out,” Reyn told her.

  She nodded slowly. All spirit had gone out of her since she had heard of Tintaglia’s death. The dragons had not wished to discuss it, other than to say that Kalo had stayed behind to eat her memories. He had not returned with the others; Reyn privately suspected that devouring a dragon the size of Tintaglia would take even Kalo several days. He was surprised at the depth of loss he felt at her death. Tintaglia had abandoned the other dragons to their fates years ago. She had left without a word of farewell to either Malta or him. Not even Selden, her beloved poet, had she warned before she vanished. For a short time, they had heard reports of her, including one that she had found a mate in the far north. What she had been doing for all those absent years they would never know, nor why she had decided to come back to the Rain Wilds. It sounded as if she had died but a day’s flight from Kelsingra.

  He thought of her as he had last seen the dragon. Tintaglia had been arrogant and full of vitality, a queen in every sense of the word. She had left her mark plainly on himself and Malta and Selden. And, he now realized, on their children. Malta had miscarried several times. He tried to imagine himself as he could have been, a father surrounded by children, if only the dragon had been there to change the babes in Malta’s womb so they could survive. It was a useless fantasy.

  “Tintaglia,” Malta said suddenly.

  He nodded. “I was just thinking of her, too. She was not so bad, for a dragon.”

  Malta sat up straighter. “No. I feel her. Reyn, she’s not dead. She’s coming here.”

  Reyn stared at her, his heart breaking. When they had first received the news that Tintaglia was dead, Malta had screamed like a madwoman. He had gathered her up and taken her away from all the others, even Tillamon. They had sat together with their doomed child, sat and rocked and wept and ranted behind closed doors. And when it was done, a strange calm had fallen over her. He thought perhaps it was a woman’s way, to come out of such a storm of emotion and pain as if she were a ship emerging onto calm seas. She had seemed, not at peace, but emptied of sorrow. As if she had run out of that particular emotion and no other one arose to take its place. She had tended Ephron with gentleness, even during the long hours when his shrill keening nearly drove Reyn mad. She had seemed to be absorbing every sound, every scent, every sight of her child back into herself, as if she were a stone taking his memories into her.

  It had frightened him, but this was worse.

  “She’s dead, Malta,” he said gently. “Tintaglia’s dead. The dragons told us so.”

  “The dragons were wrong!” she insisted fiercely. “Listen, Reyn! Reach out to her. She’s coming, she’s coming here! She’s in a lot of pain, she’s hurt, but she’s alive and coming here.” She reached for the baby and whisked him out of Reyn’s arms, standing suddenly. “There’s a chance, just a chance she can save him. I’m going to meet her.”

  He watched her stride away from him. Then he glanced back at the others gathered at the other end of the hall. They were still deep in their discussion. None of them seemed aware of anything unusual. But Malta had seemed so certain. He stood still and let his eyes close. He reached out, opening himself, trying to still all his own thoughts.

  Tintaglia?

  Nothing. He sensed nothing. Nothing except the pain of looming death. His pain or a dragon’s pain?

  He threw the thought aside and, catching up the cloak Malta had left behind, hurried after his wife and son. In the distance, he heard a dragon trumpet. Another replied, and another, and suddenly a chorus of dragon cries were resounding. As he stepped out into the early evening, the city seemed to light itself more brightly. Dragon cries came from every direction. Malta was a thin figure hurrying toward the center of the Square of the Dragons, her baby a tiny bundle in her arms. The wind whipped her hair. He looked up to see dragons against the reddening sky of evening, flying in like a murder of crows summoned by the caws of one.

  Not much farther.

  Hurts too much.

  Look. Look there, that haze on the horizon. Those are the lights of Kelsingra, welcoming you home. Think of nothing else, Tintaglia queen. Get there and you will find hot water and Elderlings to tend you, and Silver. They were descending into the well to repair it when last I was there.

  Silver. There was a thought she could hold to. Silver could do marvels when administered by a skilled Elderling. She had ancestral memories of a drake struck by lightning. He had crashed to earth, his wing a scorched framework of bone and little more. It had taken over a year, but he had flown again. They had hea
led his burns with a spray of Silver. An Elderling artisan had built him a wing of Silver, light, thin panels that articulated on tiny gears. It had not been his own wing, but he had flown again.

  Just fly. I will summon them to meet you. Then Kalo trumpeted an alarm cry such as she had never heard. She heard it taken up in the distance, by dragons hunting on the wing, by dragons roused from sated slumber, and by dragons that were on the ground within the city. She thought she heard it echo from the distant hills and then knew that it was no echo. The dragons were continuing the calls as they began to gather. More dragons than ever she had seen in her life were welcoming her.

  “Down there!” Kalo trumpeted it to her. “You see it now, don’t you? You remember it?”

  “Of course.” If she had not been in so much pain, his query would have annoyed her. She had been here before, even in this lifetime. She’d found it dead and deserted and had left it in anger. Now it was warm with light and welcoming sounds.

  “Go there. They will help you. I go to hunt.”

  She already knew of his hunger. She wondered why he chose to tell her obvious things and decided it had to do with his daily exposure to humans. They were always speaking the obvious to one another, as if they had to agree a thing was so before they could act on it. Below her, she saw the open square. Two Elderlings stood in the center of it, pointing up at her. “Tintaglia! Tintaglia!” They were shouting her name in voices full of joy. Others were just starting to pour out the doorway of . . . of the baths. Yes. The baths had been there. Hot water and soaking. The thought almost made her woozy, and then flapping her injured wing just became something she could no longer do. She was falling, trying to swing her body’s weight toward her good wing, trying to spiral down to land gently. Then she realized who it was standing to meet her. The relief that washed through her slacked all her muscles.