by Robin Hobb
Her hand found wood softened with age to the consistency of a sponge; her memory told her it was dark, polished panels embellished with suns and moons. She pushed it open; it scraped over the floor and she stepped inside. After a few steps into the room, the house roused to her and lit unevenly. She glanced around, her memory imposing order on the room’s chaos.
Time had not treated their love nest kindly. All the furniture was long gone, collapsed into wood dust, and the draperies that had graced the wall were now only threadbare shadows. She more felt than saw that Tats had followed her. Don’t hesitate now, she told herself. The archway in the wall led to a hall. She walked hastily, denying the ghosts that plucked at her. That darkened room would have been a bath, that one the bedchamber they had shared. This door at the end of the hall was the one she wanted. The broken slab hung unevenly. She did not think Rapskal had ever come here. She pulled the pieces of wood down and stepped through.
It took a moment to adjust to the reality. The ancient quake had tumbled the back wall of the room into her little garden. Her fountain with the statue of the three dancers was buried under rubble. The ceiling hung in jagged teeth against the sky. Winter storms had rained into her wardrobe, and summer sun had baked the wreckage. Next to nothing had survived in this room. But in her mind’s eye, she could still see it as it had been. There had been expensive paintings and rich hangings on the walls. A little vanity table, the surface cluttered with pots of cosmetics had been there. An enameled shelf had held her collection of spun-glass sculptures.
All gone. She reminded herself that none of it was hers, and she could not miss what she had never owned.
She turned her back to the gaping hole in the wall. Her fingers walked over the chill stone of the interior wall. There was the indentation, and when she pressed with three fingers, she heard the familiar click. As the concealed compartment swung open, light blossomed from it. Gleams of yellow and blue reflected on the dusty wall. She leaned forward and looked in. Oh, yes. She recalled it now. Flame jewels awoke after lifetimes of slumber. She heard Tats gasp, heard him step forward to glimpse the treasure.
Thymara allowed her eyes to linger on it. The significance of each piece swelled forth. The lavender circlet Tellator had given her on their anniversary, the earrings of topaz that he had brought her when he returned after nearly a year’s absence . . . She pushed back at the memories, reached into her pouch, and took out the softly shining moon pendant. A last time she looked at it. Tellator had worn a matching one, a gleaming golden sun. She had seen it often against his naked chest, felt its press against her breast when they made love.
No. She had never felt that.
Thymara lowered the pendant into the hidden compartment, let the fine silver chain slither in after it. A moment longer she stared at the mementos of another woman’s passion. Another woman’s life. Amarinda’s. Not hers. Gently, she pushed the drawer back into alignment with the rest of the wall and heard it latch.
She turned back to Tats. “I’ve finished,” she said quietly.
Puzzlement showed on his face. “What were you doing? Is that where you keep your—”
She shook her head and turned away from it. As she led the way back through the hallway she said, “No. As I told you, I’ve never been here before. I don’t keep anything there. I was just returning something that wasn’t mine. Not ever.”
In the dimness she reached out to find his hand waiting for hers. Together, they walked out into the night.
“It’s a different world,” Alise said.
“It’s my world,” Leftrin asserted quietly. “The world I know best.”
She looked up at the small houses perched in the branches overhead. In a few more minutes, they’d be at the docks of Cassarick. She had resolved that once they tied up she would disembark and confront her old life. She’d go with Leftrin to the Traders’ Hall, not just to confirm his stories that dragons had left Kelsingra to attack Chalced, but to stand before the Council and demand her wages. She would go with Leftrin when he informed them that he had Chalcedean captives to transfer to their custody, be with him when he handed both Trader Candral and his written confession over to Trader Polsk, head of the Council.
Several hours ago, the small fishing boats that plied the river had discovered Tarman. Some had shouted greetings and questions, while others had stopped their fishing and now trailed behind them. At least two of them had raced ahead of them to spread the word that the Tarman was returning. Leftrin had responded to each of them in an identical manner: a smile, a wave, and a toss of his head toward Cassarick. Alise knew their curiosity would be boiling over. There would be questions and interest in every detail.
With every passing tree trunk, she held tighter to her resolution to face it all squarely. It was time to stop running away, time to prove she had begun a new life on her own terms. As she looked up at the more numerous houses they passed, folk were coming out to point and shout to one another. She had expected their arrival to stir interest, but not on this scale.
“I’m not sure I belong here anymore,” Alise said quietly.
Tillamon came out on deck and advanced to stand by the railing next to her. Alise glanced over at her. She had gathered her hair back from her face, and then pinned it to the top of her head. Every scale on her brow, every wattle along her jawline was bared. She wore an Elderling gown that was patterned in gold and green. Matching slippers shod her feet. Earrings dangled beside her pebbled neck. She answered Alise’s smile with “Hennesey and I are going with Big Eider to visit his mother. Then I’m taking Hennesey to Trehaug to meet my mother and little sister.”
“And your older brother?” Alise asked her teasingly.
Tillamon only smiled wider. “Bendir will, I think, be pleased for me. At first. When he and Mother discover that I’ve decided to live in Kelsingra when I’m not traveling on Tarman, they’ll fuss. But once I tell them that Reyn has gone off to Chalced on a dragon to destroy the city, they’ll probably forget all about me.” She smiled as she said it, and added, “For years, Bendir has used our younger brother to distract Mother from his ventures. Now it’s my turn.”
Leftrin grinned, but her words had turned Alise’s mind to the dragons and their mission.
“I wonder if they’re there yet,” Alise ventured.
Leftrin took her arm. “There’s no point in worrying. We won’t know anything until they come back. For now, all we can do is take care of our own business here. And we’ve plenty of that.”
“What do you think will become of them?” Tillamon nodded toward the Chalcedean captives. They sat on the deck, glumly watching Cassarick draw closer. A length of anchor chain was coiled in a circle, and each man’s ankle was manacled to it. Alise had not witnessed the “incident” that had led to that drastic solution. She had awakened in the dark of night as Leftrin sprang out of bed and raced out of the door. An instant later, she heard shouts and impacts, flesh on flesh and bodies on wood. By the time she had flung on clothes and followed the noise, it had all subsided. A furious Skelly was helping Swarge drag out chains while Big Eider sat at the galley table, head bowed and barely conscious, with a cold wet cloth on the back of his head. Bellin stood, feet spread wide, with a fish club in her hand, glowering at the Chalcedean captives. Several of them showed the marks of her club, while Hennesey, with blood running over his chin, sported a brass fid for mending lines. The former slaves had stood alongside the crew, one of them holding an obviously damaged fist to his chest. The looks of satisfaction on his face made little of his pain.
“We had a little mutiny,” Leftrin had explained to her as he guided her back to their cabin. “They thought they could take over Tarman and make the ship their own. Ignorant fools. I can’t believe they thought they could get away with that on a liveship.”
The Chalcedeans had traveled in chains on the deck since then, wearing the slave manacles that Hennesey had quietly transferred to Tarman before they departed Kelsingra. It horrified Alise, but she was mo
re horrified by the injury to Big Eider, who had been dazed for several days afterward. Several of the former galley slaves had stepped forward to help man the ship during his convalescence. The crew had hesitantly accepted their aid at first; now they almost seemed to belong on Tarman’s deck.
Leftrin looked over at the captives and shook his head. “Traders don’t execute anyone,” he said. “They’ll be condemned to work off their crime, possibly in the excavations. Cold, hard work that grinds a man down. Or maybe they’ll be ransomed back to Chalced, with extra penalties for being spies.”
Alise looked away from them. Not executions but death sentences, she thought to herself. It wasn’t fair, not for men forced by threats to do as they had done.
“Looks like they have room for us at the end,” Hennesey called back to them. He was standing ready with a mooring line as Swarge guided Tarman in. Alise craned her neck and saw substantial sections of the old dock had been replaced with new planks.
“Let’s tie up,” Leftrin grumbled, and then he left her side, and she and Tillamon moved up onto the roof of the deckhouse to be out of the way of the crew working the deck. The two Jamaillian Traders were already up there, as well as the other merchants. The remaining members of the impervious boats’ crews had been pressed into service for the journey down, and they worked alongside the Tarman’s crew and the former slaves. Alise was well aware that the liveship needed little help from humans when traveling with the current, but as Leftrin had observed, “A busy sailor has less time to get into mischief. And there isn’t a man among them who hasn’t dreamed of working on a liveship. Maybe we’ll find a lively one or two to take back to Kelsingra with us, to crew the keepers’ vessels.”
Trader Candral was there, too, looking pale with dark-circled eyes. He had been an especially unpleasant passenger, weeping or complaining how he had been tricked into his treachery and once trying to bribe Leftrin with promises of later riches if he would just let him off the ship without “betraying” him. Alise found it hard even to look at him. It had been a crowded journey, and Alise was looking forward to having them all off Tarman’s decks.
A sizable crowd had gathered to meet them. Alise recognized Trader Polsk, and perhaps a few others from the Traders’ Council. Several were dressed formally in their Trader robes; all watched them approach gravely. Others seemed to be just gawkers and bystanders, drawn down to the dock for whatever spectacle the Tarman might offer.
Skelly jumped from the boat to the docks with the first mooring line and quickly made Tarman fast. She caught the second line that Hennesey tossed, and in moments the liveship was secured. The Council members surged forward to meet them, and at once the Jamaillian merchants began shouting that they had been kidnapped and held against their will and their investment, a lovely impervious ship, had been stolen from them. Trader Candral joined his voice to theirs, exhorting them not to believe a word of what Leftrin or anyone else said of him: he had been forced to pen a false confession.
In the midst of the general cacophony, Alise saw the Chalcedean prisoners come to their feet, lift the length of anchor chain that joined them, and begin their dull shuffle to the gangplank. Their heads were bowed. One man was muttering something in a low voice, perhaps a prayer. As they neared the gangplank, one at the end of the line began shouting frantically and trying to pull away. The other men looked at him, grim faced, and then two of his fellows seized him and dragged him along.
“Sit down. Not ready for you yet,” Hennesey told them irritably. His lower lip was still bruised and swollen, and his tone plainly conveyed his dislike for his charges. But if they understood that he spoke to them, they gave no indication. If anything, they stepped up their pace. Trader Candral was now shrieking almost hysterically that it was all a lie, he had never betrayed the Rain Wilds, while the Jamaillians were trying to outshout him with their badly accented accusations of piracy and kidnapping.
Alise divined their intention a moment too late. “Don’t let them!” she shouted, even as the first four Chalcedean captives stepped up on to the gangplank. And then off, into the river.
Connected by their chains, the others followed them, some willingly, others not. Hennesey and Skelly caught hold of the last two, but the weight of the chained men and the pull of the current snatched them out of their hands and into the water. The gray river closed over the last man’s scream, cutting it off as if it had never been.
Silence cloaked the dock.
Skelly stared, stricken, at her empty hands and scratched wrists. The last man had not wanted to go into the river.
“No one could have stopped that,” Hennesey told her. “And it was probably a better death than they would have faced back in Chalced.” A muttering began from the shore. Before it could rise any louder, Leftrin stepped to his ship’s railing. “Dragons are on their way to attack Chalced, to punish them for hunting dragons! Send word to Bingtown that they must be braced for retaliation.”
A breathless quiet followed his words.
Tillamon shocked everyone when she lifted her voice. “And perhaps Cassarick and Trehaug may wish to consider well what happens to cities that harbor dragon killers!”
Day the 21st of the Plough Moon
Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Kerig Sweetwater, Master of the Birds, Bingtown
To Erek Dunwarrow of Trehaug
Erek, old friend, this is not an official notification. It will take the Guild masters here a month of dithering before they can decide to take the action, but I am sure it will be approved. Your name is almost the only one that has come up to fill the recently vacated post of Bird Master at Cassarick. Kim had risen to control his own coop and oversee those of his journeymen. There will be fewer birds and journeymen under your supervision than in your Bingtown post, but I feel it will be every bit as difficult a task. It is a large responsibility and to be honest, you will be stepping into a shambles of dirty coops, unhealthy birds, poorly kept records, and undisciplined apprentices.
So, of course, I consider you precisely the man for the job!
But if, by any chance, this is not something you would take on, please notify me immediately via a Dunwarrow carrier, and I shall withdraw my advocacy of you.
Not likely, say I!
With pride in my former apprentice,
Kerig
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Chalced
Reyn felt slightly queasy. He took a deep breath, then reached for his water skin and took a sip. It helped. A little. This mode of traveling by dragon was, as he had hoped, much different from when Tintaglia had once carried him clutched in her claws. Back then, his fear and worry that Malta was already dead and the clench of the dragon’s powerful feet on his ribs had distracted him from the actual flight. This time he rode high, between her wings, the wind in his face; and always aware of how high above the ground he was and how much his seat swayed with the motions of her flight. His back ached and his stomach was very unhappy.
He tried not to think of how old was this contraption in which he sat. Tried not to wonder how strong those peculiar straps and buckles were, and if it had been built more for show than strength. It was too late to worry about such things, and still too early to worry about the war they were bringing to Chalced. Far below him, the world was spread out like a lumpy carpet. The first day they had flown over rolling meadows and forested hills. Then they had crossed a region of swamps full of fronds and reeds and sloughs with still brown water and dead trees jutting from them. There had been a river they’d crossed, running shallow over its rocky bed, its face broken by white plumes of spray. Beyond the narrow river there had been a range of flatlands and broken hills, with trees and rushing streams in gullies. He knew by the rising of the sun that at least twice the dragons had made sharp course corrections. They were not flying directly to Chalced, but following some incomprehensible dragon route, probably one that maximized hunting opportunities and places for landing and resting. It made sense. It wou
ld have made more sense if the dragons had deigned to discuss it with the humans. Since their council of war, they’d been remarkably uncommunicative with the humans, with the possible exception of Rapskal.
Or perhaps it was only Heeby who made no barrier between herself and her keeper. Whatever the reason, Rapskal had started to irritate Reyn with his martial airs. Late last night, he had put his finger on the source of his annoyance. It was that Rapskal spoke and carried himself as if he were a man older and more experienced than Reyn. Some of the keepers seemed to have accepted him in that role. Nortel seemed to have attached himself to Rapskal as his lieutenant, passing on his tolerantly received orders about how camp was to be set up and nightly weapons drill. Of the other keepers, Reyn felt that only Kase and Boxter had fully fallen in with Rapskal’s insistence that they must now begin to conduct themselves as dragon warriors. The four of them spent much time of an evening sharpening knives and polishing armor and checking dragon harnesses.
Today, Reyn looked down on a harsh rolling brown land with upthrusts of rock and random patches of dusty green brush. He’d never imagined such a place and knew that it appeared on no map he had ever studied. Chalced might claim to rule the lands right up to the edge of the Rain Wild River, but these regions, he would wager, had seen little of men in the last hundred years.
To either side of him, in front of him and behind him, dragons flew, some with riders and harnesses, some bare of any adornment. Despite Rapskal’s posturing in Kelsingra, he and Heeby did not lead the way. Ranculos was out in front most often, though sometimes it was Mercor, and for a time it had been Tintaglia. All the dragons seemed to know whence they were bound, whether from ancient memories or from shared thoughts, he did not know. Reyn had thought that Icefyre as the eldest dragon and the one hottest for vengeance would lead the dragons. Instead, he was uncomfortably aware that both Icefyre and Kalo constantly vied for a spot just behind and above Tintaglia. He suspected he knew the significance of that, for several times Tintaglia had caused him to roar with terror as she folded her wings to drop down and then come up behind both of them, or suddenly put on a surge of wing beats that carried him up so high he felt he could not breathe. He knew from conversations with Davvie at night that the drakes’ open rivalry for that position terrified him.