by Robin Hobb
Thread by thread, compliment after compliment, the Silver was persuaded to merge with the wood. When the final dancing drop was stilled, Harrikin rocked back on his heels. He heaved a sigh. He drew the glove off slowly and offered it back to Thymara. She took it slowly. He stood, flexing his back and shaking his head. “Alum was right. Look how long it took to persuade one gloveful of Silver to bond with the wood. There it is, a stripe that’s barely a finger wide. It’s going to take days to finish that well cap!”
“Seems likely,” Carson replied thoughtfully.
“And it seems likely that if we do it, it may last a hundred years,” Tats added.
Thymara was gazing around at the city. “How did they do it? How did they raise it all?”
“Very slowly,” Carson replied. “And not with magic alone.” He seemed to be thinking something through and then he added, “I don’t think they used it because magic made it easier or quicker. I think they used it to do things that otherwise couldn’t be done. Then the effort would be worth it.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Obviously, we’ve a lot left to learn.”
Malta looked up from perusing the empty beds of soil. Through the glass panels overhead, she could see the sun venturing toward the horizon. Another day gone, and no word from the dragons or any of the keepers. How many times a day did she stop whatever she was doing and scan the skies? The rooftop hothouse offered her a view in every direction, but the skies remained stubbornly empty of dragons.
“I’m sorry,” Alum said as he shut the glass door behind him. “Am I disturbing you?”
“Not really,” Malta said. “As long as we speak softly. Phron is sleeping.” She nodded toward him. She had spread an Elderling robe out on one of the hothouse benches and put him down there. He looked like a different child. He was still not the chubby pink infant she had dreamed of cradling, but she suspected that, for an Elderling’s child, he was very healthy. Tintaglia’s influence was more obvious on him than it was on her or Reyn. His scaling was a decided blue, as were his eyes. His body shape was more lithe than rounded. She did not care. His eyes were bright; he slept deeply, ate eagerly, and stared at her with wide trusting eyes while he nursed. Every day he grew, and every day she wished his father were there to see it.
The tall youth advanced hesitantly and then perched on the edge of a bed. “I thought we didn’t have any seeds to plant?” Alum studied the soil Malta had loosened in one of the long, narrow beds. She realized that, with Skelly gone with Tarman, he was probably as lost as she was.
“We don’t,” she admitted. “But it’s something we used to do in our gardens back in Bingtown in springtime. We loosened the soil in the beds and renewed it before the seeds were planted or the young plants set out.”
Alum tilted his head at her. “But you were a Trader’s daughter. Surely you had servants for that sort of work?”
“We did,” she admitted easily. “But my grandmother spent time in her own hothouses when I was very small. And by the time I was older, we no longer had servants, and we were growing not flowers but vegetables for the table. I admit I did as little of the dirty work as I could; I had a horror of ruining my hands then and I could not understand the pleasure my grandmother took in nurturing growing things. Now, I think, I understand her better. And so I ready seedbeds even when we don’t have seeds yet.”
Alum idly stirred the soil with a long-fingered, silvery green hand. “I thought all Trader-born were wealthy.”
“Some are. Others, less so. But wealth doesn’t mean idleness. Look at Leftrin. Or Skelly.” She suspected she knew why he had sought her out. She’d lead him right to it, then.
“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “She works, and she works hard. For years now, she’s been working toward a dream. Taking over the family liveship when Leftrin . . . when he was finished with it.”
“When he died,” Malta said easily. “When he goes, he’ll die on the deck of his ship, Alum. And everything he was and all he knows of the river and the ways of Tarman will go back into the liveship. It’s how it’s done. And it’s important that there is someone there who is ready and willing to take over the captaining of the ship.”
“I know,” he replied quietly. “We’ve talked about it.” He fell silent.
Malta waited. It was coming.
“This time, when she’s in Trehaug, she promised she’d talk to her family, with or without Leftrin. She’s going to tell them that Leftrin and Alise want to get married and maybe have a child and so she wouldn’t be his heir anymore. To see if she can break her engagement to that Rof fellow that her family promised her to. She thinks that he won’t want to marry her if it’s not certain that she’ll inherit.”
“And then what?” Malta prodded him gently when he fell silent.
“She’d come back here, to me.” He sounded confident of that part.
“And then?”
“That’s the hard part. I’m an Elderling. Ranculos says I’m going to live a long, long time. Hundreds of years, perhaps.”
“And she isn’t,” Malta said ruthlessly.
“No. Not unless Arbuc will turn her into an Elderling, too. It must be possible! Tintaglia has you and Reyn and now Phron. So, if he wanted to, he could make her an Elderling, too. Then we both could have a long life. Together.”
“I suppose he could. I still don’t understand everything about it. But I know that he would have to want to do it.” She watched Alum’s face and added, “And she would have to desire it, also.”
“She says she’d feel disloyal to Tarman. That in some ways, the liveship is her dragon.”
She knew what he would next ask her. She wasn’t surprised when he said, “You came from a liveship family. You chose Reyn over your family ship. Reyn and Tintaglia. Could you talk to her for me? Tell her there’s nothing wrong with choosing her own happiness?”
He was so earnest. His eyes were fixed so hopefully on her that she hated to disappoint him. But “It wasn’t that simple, Alum. I did not have a close bond with my family’s ship. Truth to tell, I had little interest in Vivacia. I thought my aunt or my brother would inherit her—”
“But Selden became Tintaglia’s as well. And Skelly told me that Althea chose Paragon, not her own family ship. So it doesn’t always happen that a liveship trader stays with her own liveship!”
Malta sighed. “It was very complicated, Alum. And some of us did not have as much of a say in what we ‘chose’ as you might think. Tintaglia never asked me or Reyn if we wanted to be her Elderlings. She took us. Nor did my elder brother, Wintrow, want to be bonded to a liveship. Yet he is, and content with it now, I imagine.”
Her heart sank as she thought of her brothers. Wintrow long gone to the Pirate Isles and seldom even visiting Bingtown these days. And Selden, gone Sa knew where. Her mother alone in Bingtown. And all at the whim of dragons and liveships. How little of her life path had been determined by what she thought she had wanted. And now, once more, she and Reyn were separated by a dragon’s decision.
She swung her gaze back to Alum and spoke her truth. “There can be much more to a decision than you can know at this stage of your life. Wise or foolish, well thought or on the impulse of a moment, Alum, the decision must belong to Skelly.”
He dragged his hand again through the soil and then admitted, “She still dreams of captaining Tarman. She loves the ship and she said that if Leftrin doesn’t have a child, or if he dies before his child is ready to captain the ship, she would want to step in.” He squirmed uncomfortably. “I asked her if she couldn’t be an Elderling and a liveship captain, and she said—”
“Tarman would hate it. As would Arbuc.” To his unwilling nod, Malta added, “Dragons in any form are jealous creatures, Alum. You have given your life over to one, and with it, you have surrendered many choices . . .”
“Arbuc is worth it!” he declared before she could say more.
“I am sure he is, to you,” Malta went on implacably. “And Skelly might say the same about Tarman. Would you
leave Arbuc to follow Skelly to a life on the river with her liveship?”
The look on his face confirmed for her that he had never even considered such a choice. “Don’t rush her,” Malta suggested quietly. “As you have said, you have scores of years before you. Possibly hundreds. You have more time to wait than she does to decide. If she waits ten years to decide, will you no longer want her? And if that is true, if she became an Elderling for you, would you still want her in ten years? Do not be too hasty to cut her off from what she has in favor of what you think you could make of her.”
His mouth had gone flat, and there was a resentful sadness in his eyes that had not been there before. Malta tried not to regret that she had put it there.
“I know you are right, Elderling Queen,” he said huskily. “I was afraid to consult you, without knowing why. Well, now I do. I was going to ask you if I should request this of my dragon when he returned. I was going to ask if you had ever resented sharing Tintaglia.” He shook his head at himself. “It’s not my choice, is it?”
Malta shook her head slowly.
He stood up and then bowed to her gravely. She thought of telling him she was not queen of anything, and then decided that, for now, perhaps it hurt nothing if he thought of her that way. He turned to go, and then suddenly halted. He reached into a pouch at his hip.
“Carson and I hiked up into the hills. It’s spring up there. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. The ground is dry and you can walk over it, and plants cover it everywhere. I thought I understood dry land after being here most of winter, but . . .” He shook his head in wonder at it. “Carson found these and gathered them. He said we should give them to you since you were spending so much time in the hothouses.”
From his pouch, he took a small prickly branch. Shriveled brown husks clung to the end of it. “Rose hips. From wild roses.”
“Yes! That’s what he said, too. He said you might want to try planting them.”
She took them from him and looked at them in her palm. Three shriveled rose hips. She turned and looked back at the scores of empty gardening beds. “It’s a start,” and smiled at him.
“A start,” he agreed.
It had become almost a ritual for her. Every evening before the sun went down, Thymara climbed the map tower and looked out.
It was a different place compared to the first time she had seen it. She had spent a day helping Alise clean all the windows, inside and out. Alise had been very unhappy with the crude cover of scraped leather that covered the broken pane, but Carson had apologetically assured her it was the best he could do. It kept out the wind and rain.
The table he had devised to support the ancient map that had fallen to the floor was likewise rough, but at least it raised it out of danger from errant feet. The long-ago fall had cracked it and parts of it had crumbled, but it was correctly oriented to the city, and it had been useful to the keepers any number of times. Carson never seemed to tire of studying it, and he repeatedly insisted that it was capable of telling them far more than they were capable of asking of it. Thymara had dismissed that possibility. She climbed the endless stairs, not for the map but for the view.
She stared out over the ever-changing terrain. The sere grasses of the wild meadows beyond the city had gone green. The forested hills had taken on new colors as trees leafed out. Even the color of the river seemed different; it was certainly not the chalky gray of the Rain Wild River that she had known. Here it appeared a silvery brown between verdant banks.
But it was the sky she scanned, looking for signs of returning dragons each evening.
She heard the scuff of feet on the stone steps and turned to see Tats emerge from the stair. “See anything?” he greeted her.
“Only sky. Coming here is a bit silly, I know. Why would they be coming home at sunset rather than any other time?” She shook her head at herself. “And even if they were, likely I’d see them from the ground almost as soon. Sometimes it seems like worrying is something I feel like I have to do, that maybe worrying about them actually keeps them alive and real.”
Tats gave her an odd look. “Girls think strangely,” he observed without malice, and then stepped to the windows to scan the world outside. “No dragons,” he confirmed needlessly. “I wonder if they’ve reached Chalced yet.” His eyes wandered to the panels between the window frames. They, too, were decorated to be a continuation of the map on the wall. He studied them idly. “They built this room for a reason.”
“Probably a lot of reasons. But it’s like Carson says. It can’t give us answers until we know what questions to ask.”
Tats nodded. He gazed out over the river as he asked her, “You miss him a lot, don’t you?”
She tried to think of how to answer. “Rapskal? Yes. Tellator? Not at all.” She lifted a hand to her chest. Anxiety squeezed her heart. It was becoming too familiar a sensation. “Tats. Which of them do you think will come back to us? Rapskal or Tellator?”
He didn’t turn to look at her. “I don’t think there’s any separating them anymore, Thymara. I think that it’s useless to think of him that way.”
“I know you are right,” she said unwillingly. She told herself it wasn’t true, that she would never think of Rapskal and Tellator as one and the same. Then she recognized it for what it was. Like her worrying, a useless belief that by thinking a certain way, she could make it so. Tats said something in a gruff, low voice.
“What?”
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “I said, I thought you loved Tellator. That he was the love of Amarinda’s life. Lovers never to part in that life or this one.” He hesitated, refusing to meet her shocked stare, and then muttered, “Or so Rapskal explained it to me.”
She bit down on her anger, refusing to give it voice. After a long, tight pause, she said unevenly, “Rapskal? Or Tellator?”
“Does it matter?” The misery in his voice was plain.
“It does.” Her voice came out more strongly. “Because Tellator is a bully. And perfectly capable of deceiving anyone to get what he wants.” She walked away from Tats to look out a different window. “The night he asked me to go for a walk and then took me to the Silver well . . . that’s not something Rapskal would have done. I even think he knew that if Rapskal went down the well, I’d follow him.” She had not spoken of her last encounter with Rapskal to anyone. Did not ever intend to.
“Thymara, they’re the same person now.”
“You’re probably right. But even if Amarinda loved Tellator, I don’t. I am not Amarinda, Tats. I went down that well for Rapskal, not Tellator.”
He didn’t respond. When she looked over her shoulder, he was silently nodding as he stared out the window. “For Rapskal,” he said, as if that confirmed something.
She reached a decision. “Would you come for a walk with me?”
Tats stared at her. The daylight was fading, and the city itself did not gleam yet. He squinted at her through the gathering dimness in the tower, his own face an unknowable landscape of lines and shadows. She thought he would ask her where or why. He didn’t. “Let’s go, then,” was all he said.
The coming of evening seemed always to stir the ghosts of the city. As they descended, they walked through three errand boys running up the steps, yellow robes hiked up around their knees. Thymara strode through them, and only afterward thought how strange it was that it was no longer strange.
The twilight outside was partly of the sky and partly of the city itself. Daylight gave way to stone light. The insubstantial throngs that milled in the city became less transparent, their music stronger, the smells of their food more alluring. “I wonder if this city will ever again swarm with so many Elderlings.”
“I wonder if it ever did,” Tats countered.
“What?” His words almost startled her out of her determination.
“Just something I speculate about. All these people . . . are we passing through one night of Elderling time here, or the overlay of years?”
Sh
e pondered his question and some time later realized that they were walking in silence. She led him away from the heart of the city, into a district of fine homes. The streets grew quieter, with less public memory stone, and only a few private monuments to haunt them. There an elderly dragon slept near a fountain while a woman played upon a flute nearby. The music followed them and then faded as they reached the cul-de-sac at the top of the hill. She halted for a moment. Thin moonlight poured down. The double row of pillars marched to the front door, one line marked with shining suns, the others with the round-faced moon.
“I know this place,” Tats said. A chill had come into his voice.
“How?”
He didn’t reply, and she sighed. She didn’t want to hear him say that he had once followed her and Rapskal here. Had he watched them touch the pillars, hands joined, observed as they sank into sensual dreams of another time, other lives? He had halted as if turned to stone.
“I’m going inside,” she told him.
“Why? Why bring me here?” There was pain in his voice.
“Not to rub salt in a wound. Only to have someone with me. While I finish something. I won’t be long. Will you wait here for me?” She didn’t want to come out alone to the black stone pillars veined with Silver. Even as she stood there, the memories tugged at her mind, beckoning her. She dreaded walking inside alone.
“What are you going to do?”
“I just . . . I’ve never been inside their house.”
“Never?”
“No.” She couldn’t explain it and she wouldn’t try. Perhaps it had been that while she didn’t walk where they had lived, she could pretend that their lives were still real, still existing in some “now” that was just around the corner.
“Why now? Why with me?”
Time for honesty. “Because I have to. And to give me courage.” She turned from him and started the long walk between the pillars. The Silver was strong here, the stone of the finest quality. Only the best for Amarinda the Silver-worker. As Thymara passed each pillar, the memories tugged and snagged at her. By night she glimpsed them, over and over. Tellator in evening dress, leaning on one of his pillars, an insouciant smile on his perfect face. Amarinda, wearing a summer dress of white and yellow. Flowers studded her flowing hair, and a breeze that Thymara could not feel stirred her dress. Tellator, grave of mien, standing bold in armor, gripping a scroll of paper. Amarinda in a casual robe, perched on a stool, barefoot and playing a small stringed instrument. Thymara passed incarnation after incarnation of the two lovers until she came to their door.