ROBIN HOBB

Dragon Keeper

COPYRIGHT

Harper

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Copyright © Robin Hobb 2009

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016. Illustration © Jackie Morris.

Calligraphy by Stephen Raw. Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (background)

Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007342594

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007290253

Version: 2015-12-01

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Serpents’ End

Chapter One: The Riverman

Chapter Two: The Hatch

Chapter Three: An Advantageous Offer

Chapter Four: Vows

Chapter Five: Blackmail and Lies

Chapter Six: Thymara’s Decision

Chapter Seven: Promises and Threats

Chapter Eight: Interviews

Chapter Nine: Journey

Chapter Ten: Cassarick

Chapter Eleven: Encounters

Chapter Twelve: Among Dragons

Chapter Thirteen: Suspicions

Chapter Fourteen: Scales

Chapter Fifteen: Currents

Chapter Sixteen: Community

Chapter Seventeen: Decisions

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

DEDICATION

To the memory of Spot and Smokey,

Brownie-butt and Rainbow, Rag-Bag and Sinbad.

Fine pigeons, one and all.

Day the 2nd of the Plough Moon

Year the 6th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

This night have dispatched to you four birds, bearing in two parts our agreement with the Dragon Tintaglia, to be ratified by the Rain Wild Council. Trader Devouchet, leader of the Bingtown Traders’ Council, suggested that duplicates be sent. They sum up the formal agreement between the Traders and the Dragon. We are to aid her serpents in travelling up the Rain Wild River in exchange for her assistance with defending the Trader cities and waterways against the Chalcedean invaders.

Please dispatch a bird as soon as possible to confirm receipt of this message.

Detozi,

A brief message of my own, penned in haste in a very small space. All is chaos here. My bird coop scorched in the fires the invaders set, many of my birds dead from smoke. I’m sending Kingsly as one of the messenger birds tonight. You know I raised him from a squab by hand after his parents died. Please keep him safe there and do not return him until we know that all is well. If Bingtown falls, treat him well and keep him as your own. Pray for us here. I do not know that Bingtown will survive this invasion, dragon or no.

Erek

PROLOGUE
Serpents’ End

They had come so far, yet now that she was here, the years of journeying were already fading in her mind, giving way to the desperate needs of the present. Sisarqua opened her jaws and bent her neck. It was hard for the sea serpent to focus her thoughts. It had been years since she had been completely out of the water. She had not felt dry land under her body since she had hatched on Other’s Island. She was far from Other’s Island’s hot dry sand and balmy waters now. Winter was closing in on this densely forested land beside the chill river. The mudbank under her coiled length was hard and abrasive. The air was too cold and her gills were drying out too quickly. There was nothing she could do about that except to work more swiftly. She scooped her jaws into the immense trough and came up with a mouthful of silver-streaked clay and river water. She threw her great head back and gulped it down. It was gritty and cold and strangely delicious. Another mouthful, another swallow. And again.

She had lost count of how many gulps of the grainy soup she had ingested when finally she felt the ancient reflex trigger. Working the muscles in her throat, she felt her poison sacs swell. Her fleshy mane stood out all around her throat in a toxic, quivering ruff. Shuddering down her full length, she opened her jaws wide, strained, gagged, and then met with success. She clamped and locked her jaws to contain the liquid, releasing it only as a thin, powerful stream of clay, bile and saliva tinged with venom. With difficulty, she turned her head and then coiled her tail closer to her body. The extrusion was like a silvery thread, thick and heavy. Her head wove as she layered the wet winding over herself.

She felt a heavy tread nearby and then the shadow of the walking dragon passed over her. Tintaglia paused and spoke to her. ‘Good. Good, that’s right. A nice even layer to begin with, one with no gaps. That’s right.’

Sisarqua could not spare a glance for the blue-and-silver queen who praised her. Creating the case that would shelter her during the remaining months of winter took all her attention. She focused on it with a desperation born of weariness. She needed sleep. She longed to sleep; but she knew that if she slept now, she would never wake again in any form. ‘Finish it,’ she thought to herself. ‘Finish it, and then I can rest.’

All around her on the riverbank other serpents laboured at the same task, with varying degrees of success. Between and amongst them, humans toiled. Some carried buckets of water from the river. Others mined chunks of silvery clay from a nearby bank and loaded it into barrows. Youngsters trundled the barrows to a hastily constructed log enclosure. Water and clay were dumped into the immense trough; other workers used shovels and paddles to break up the lumps of clay and render the water and clay into a loose porridge. It was this slurry that Sisarqua had consumed as the major ingredients for manufacturing her case. The lesser ingredients were just as essential. Her body added the toxins that would plunge her into a sleep half a breath above death. Her saliva contributed her memories to the keeping of her case. Not just her own memories of her time as a serpent, but all the memories of those of her bloodline spooled around her as she wove her case.

Missing were the memories she should have received from watchful dragons tending the serpents as they made their cases. She had enough memories to recall that there should have been at least a score of dragons present, encouraging them, chewing the memory sand and clay and contributing their own regurgitated saliva and history to the process. But there weren’t, and she was too tired to wonder how that lack might affect her.

A great weariness washed over her as she reached the neck of her case. It had to be constructed in a way that would eventually allow her to draw her head in and then seal it behind her. It came to her, slowly, that in previous generations, the dragons that had tended the serpents had sometimes helped them seal their cases. But Sisarqua knew better than to hope for that help. Only one hundred and twenty-nine serpents had massed at the mouth of the Serpent River to begin the desperate up-river migration to the traditional cocooning grounds. Maulkin, their leader, had been gravely concerned that so few of them were female: less than a third. In any cocooning year, there should have been hundreds of serpents, and at least as many females as males. They had waited so long in the sea, and then come so far in the hope of restoring their species. It was hard to hear that they might be too few and too late.

The difficulties of the river journey had reduced the number still further. She was not certain how many had reached the cocooning beach. About ninety, she thought, but the graver news was that fewer than twenty of the survivors were female. And all around her, exhausted serpents continued to die. Even as she thought of it, she heard Tintaglia speak to a human worker. ‘He is dead. Bring your hammers and break up his cast. Work it back into the troughs of memory clay. Let the others keep alive the memories of his ancestors.’ She could not see, but she heard the sounds of Tintaglia dragging the dead serpent from his unfinished cocoon. She smelled his flesh and blood as the dragon devoured his carcass. Hunger and weariness cramped her. She wished she could share Tintaglia’s meal but knew that it was too late for eating now. The clay was in her gut and must be processed.

And Tintaglia needed the food. She was the sole dragon left alive to shepherd all of them through this process. Sisarqua did not know where Tintaglia got her strength. The dragon had been flying without rest for days to shepherd them up the river, so unfamiliar to them after decades of change. She could not have many reserves left. Tintaglia could offer them little more than encouragement. What could one dragon do when faced with the needs of so many sea serpents?

Like the gossamer recollection of a dream, an ancestral memory wafted briefly through her mind. ‘Not right,’ she thought to herself. ‘None of this is right; none of it is as it should be.’ This was the river, but where were the broad meadows and the oak forests that had once edged it? The lands that bounded the river now were swamp and boggy forest, with scarcely a bit of firm ground to be seen. If the humans had not laboured to reinforce the bank of this beach with stone before the serpents arrived, they would have churned it to mud. Her ancestral serpent memories told her of broad sunny meadows and a rich bank of clay near an Elderling city. Dragons should have been clawing chunks of clay free and churning the clay and water to slurry, dragons should have been putting the final seals on the serpents’ cases. And all of this should have been happening under a bright summer sun in the heat of the day.

She gave a shudder of weariness, and the memory faded beyond her recall. She was only a single serpent, struggling to weave the case that would protect her from winter’s cold while her body underwent its transformation. A single serpent, cold and weary, finally come home after an eternity of roaming. Her mind drifted back over the last few months.

The final leg of her journey had seemed an endless battle against the river current and the rocky shallows. She was a newcomer to Maulkin’s tangle and astonished by it. Usually a tangle numbered twenty to forty serpents. But Maulkin had gathered every serpent he could find and led them north. It had made foraging for food along the way far more difficult, but he had deemed it necessary. Never had she seen so many serpents travelling together as a single tangle. Some, it was true, had degenerated to little more than animals, and others were more than half-mad with confusion and fear. Forgetfulness shrouded the minds of too many. Yet as they had followed the prophet-serpent with the gleaming gold false-eyes in a long row down his flanks, she had almost recalled the ancient migration route. All around her, both spirits and intelligence had rallied in the embattled serpents. This arduous journey had felt right, more right than anything had for a very long time.

Yet even so, she had known moments of doubt. Her ancestral memories of the river told her that the waterway they sought flowed steady and deep, and teemed with fish. Her ancient dreams told her of rolling hills and meadows edged with open forests replete with game for hungry dragons. This river had a deep channel that a ship could follow, but it threaded a wandering way inland through towering forest thick with creepers and brush. It could not be the way to their ancient cocooning grounds. Yet Maulkin had doggedly insisted that it was.

Her doubt had been so strong that she had nearly turned back. She had almost fled the icy river of milky water and retreated to the warmer waters of the oceans to the south. But when she lagged or started to turn aside from the path, others of the serpents came after her and drove her back into the tangle. She had had to follow.

But though she might doubt Maulkin’s visions, Tintaglia’s authority she had never questioned. The blue-and-silver dragon had recognized Maulkin as their leader and assisted the strange vessel that guided his tangle. The dragon had flown above them, trumpeting her encouragement, as she shepherded the tangle of serpents north, and then up this river. The swimming had been good as far as the two-legs city of Trehaug. Wearily but without excessive difficulty, they had followed the ship that led the way.

But past that city, the river had changed. The guiding ship had halted there, unable to traverse the shallows beyond. Past Trehaug, the river spread and widened and splintered into tributaries. Wide belts of gravel and sand invaded it, and dangling vines and reaching roots choked its edges. The river they followed became shallow and meandering, toothed with rocks in some places and then choked with reeds in the next stretch. Again Sisarqua had wanted to turn back, but like the other serpents, she had allowed herself to be bullied and driven by the dragon. Up the river they had gone. With more than one hundred of her kind, she had flopped and floundered through the inadequate ladder of log corrals that the humans had built in an attempt to provide deeper water for their progress through the final, killing shallows.

Many had died on that part of their journey. Small injuries that would have healed quickly in the caressing salt water of the sea became festering ulcers in the river’s harsh flow. After their long banishment at sea, many of the great serpents were feeble both in mind and spirit. So many things were wrong. Too many years had passed since they had hatched. They should have made this journey decades ago, as healthy young serpents, and they should have migrated up the river in the warmth of summer, when their bodies were sleek with fat. Instead they came in the rains and misery of winter, thin and battered and speckled with barnacles, but mostly old, far older than any serpents had ever been before.

The single dragon that watched over them was less than a year’s turning out of her own cocoon. Tintaglia flew overhead, glinting silver whenever the winter sunlight broke through the clouds to touch her. ‘Not far!’ she kept calling down to them. ‘Beyond the ladder the waters deepen again and you can once more swim freely. Keep moving.’

Some were simply too battered, too weary, too thin for such a journey. One big orange serpent died draped across the log wall of the penned water, unable to drag himself any farther. Sisarqua was close to him when his great wedge-shaped head dropped suddenly beneath the water. Impatiently, she waited for him to move on. Then his spiky mane of tendrils suddenly spasmed and released a final rush of toxins. They were faint and feeble, the last reflexive defences of his body, yet they clearly signalled to any serpents within range that he was dead. The smell and taste of them in the water summoned her to the feast.

Sisarqua had not hesitated. She had been the first to tear into his body, filling her mouth with his flesh, gulping it down and tearing another chunk free before the rest of the tangle even realized the opportunity. The sudden nourishment dizzied her almost as much as the rush of his memories. This was the way of her kind, not to waste the bodies of the dead but to take from them both nourishment and knowledge. Just as every dragon carried within him the memories of his entire line, so every serpent retained the memories of those who had gone before. Or was supposed to. Sisarqua and every other serpent wallowing dismally alongside her had remained in serpent form too long. Memories had faded and with them, intelligence. Even some of those who now strove to complete the migration and become dragons were reduced to brutish shadows of what they should have been. What sort of dragons would they become?

Her head had darted in, mane abristle, to seize another sizeable chunk of the orange serpent’s flesh. Her brain whirled with memories of rich fishing and of nights spent singing with his tangle under the jewel-bright skies. That memory was very old. She suspected it had been scores of years since any tangle had risen from the Plenty to the Lack to lift their voices in praise of the star-speckled sky above them.

Others had crowded her then, hissing and lifting their manes in threat to one another as they strove to share the feast. She tore a final piece of flesh free and then wallowed over the log that had stopped the orange. She had tossed the hunk of warm meat down whole and felt it distend her gullet pleasantly. The sky, she thought, and in response felt a brief stir of the orange serpent’s dim dragon-memories. The sky, open and wide as the sea. Soon she would sail it again. Not much farther, Tintaglia had promised.

But distance is measured one way by a dragon a-wing and quite another way by a battered serpent wallowing up a shallow river. They did not see the clay banks that afternoon. Night fell upon them, sudden as a blow, the short day spent almost before it had begun. For yet another night, Sisarqua endured the cold of the air that the shallow river did not allow her to escape. The water that flowed past was barely sufficient to keep her gills wet; the skin on her back felt as if it would crack from the dry cold that scoured her. And in the late morning, the sun that found its way down onto the wide river between the jungled banks revealed more serpents that would never complete the migration. Again, she was fortunate enough to feed from one of the corpses before the rest of the horde drove her away from it. Again, Tintaglia circled overhead, calling down the promise that it was not far to Cassarick and rest, the long peaceful rest of the transformation.

The day had been chill and the skin of her back dried by a long night spent above water. She could feel the skin cracking beneath her scales, and when the river deepened enough to allow her to submerge and soak her gills, the milky river water stung her split skin. She felt the acidic water eat at her. If she did not reach the cocooning beach soon, she would not make it.

The afternoon was both horribly short and painfully long. In the deeper stretches where she could swim, the water stung her breached skin. But that was preferable to the places where she crawled on her belly like a snake, fighting for purchase on the slimy rocks at the bottom of the river bed. All around her, other immense sea serpents squirmed and coiled and flexed, trying to make their way upriver.

When she arrived, she did not know it. The sun was already westering behind the tall banks of trees that fronted the river. Creatures that were not Elderlings had kindled torches and stuck them in a great circle on a muddy river bank. She peered at them. Humans. Ordinary two-legs, little more than prey. They scampered about, apparently in service to Tintaglia, serving her as once Elderlings would have done. It was oddly humiliating; was this how low dragons had fallen, to be reduced to consorting with humans?

Sisarqua lifted her maned head high, tasting the night air. It was not right. It was not right at all. She could find no certainty in her hearts that this was the cocooning place. Yet on the shore she could see some of the serpents who had preceded her. A few were already encapsulated in cases spun from the silver-streaked clay and their own saliva. Others still struggled, wearily, to complete the task.

Complete the task. Yes. Her mind jolted back to the present. There was no more time for these memories. With a final heave, she brought up the last of the clay and bile that remained to her and completed the thick lip of her case’s neck. But she was empty now; she had misjudged. She had nothing left to seal her case. If she tried to reach the slurry, she would break the coiled cocoon she had made, and she knew with painful certainty that she would not have the strength to weave it again. So close she had come, so close, and yet here she would die, never to rise.

A wave of panic and fury washed through her. In one instant of conflict, she decided to wrest herself free of the cocoon, but stillness won, bolstered by a flood of memories. That was the virtue of having the memories of one’s ancestors; sometimes the wisdom of old prevailed over the terrors of the present. In the stillness, her mind cleared. She had memories to draw on, memories of serpents who had survived such an error, and dying memories of ones who had not. The corpses of the failed serpents had been devoured by those who survived. Thus even the memories of fatal errors lived on to serve the needs of survivors.

She clearly saw three paths. Stay within her case and call for a dragon to help her finish sealing her case. Well, that was of no use to her. Tintaglia was already overwhelmed. Break free of her case and demand that the dragon bring her food, so that she might eat and regain her strength to spin a new case? Another impossible solution. Panic threatened again. This time it was an act of her own will that pushed it aside. She was not going to die here. She had come too far and struggled through too many dangers to let death claim her now. No. She was going to live, she was going to emerge in spring as a dragon and take back her mastery of the skies. She would fly again. Somehow.

How?

She would live to rise as a queen. Demand that which was owed to a queen dragon now. The right of first survival in hard times. She drew what breath she could and trumpeted out a name. ‘Tintaglia!’

Her gills were too dry, her throat nearly destroyed from the spinning of the coarse clay into thread. Her cry for aid, her demand was barely a whisper. And even her strength to break free of her case was gone, fading beyond recall. She was going to die.

‘Are you in trouble, beautiful one? I feel your distress. Can I help you?’

Inside the restrictive casing she could not turn her head. But she could roll her eyes and see the one who addressed her. An Elderling. He was very small and very young, but in the touch of his mind against hers, there was no mistaking him. This was no mere human, even if his shape still resembled one.

Her gills were so dry. Serpents could rise above the water for a time, could even sing, but this long exposure to the cold dry air was pushing her to the edges of her ability to survive in the Lack. She drew in a laboured breath. Yes. The scent was there, and she knew without any doubt that Tintaglia had imprinted him. He brimmed with her glamour. Slowly she lidded her eyes and unlidded them again. She still could not see him clearly. She was drying out too quickly. ‘I can’t.’ she said. They were the only words she could manage.

She felt him swell with distress. An instant later, his small voice raised the alarm. ‘Tintaglia! This one is in trouble! She cannot finish her case. What should we do?’

The dragon’s voice boomed back to him from across the cocooning grounds. ‘The clay slurry, very wet! Pour it in. Do not hesitate. Cover her head with it and smooth it over the open end of her casing. Seal her in, but be sure that the first layer is very wet.’ Even as she spoke, the dragon herself hastened to Sisarqua’s side. ‘A female! Be strong, little sister. There are few who will hatch to be queens. You must be among them.’

The workers had come running, some trundling barrows, others bearing slopping buckets of silvery-grey clay. She had drawn her head in as far as it would go and lidded her eyes. The young Elderling outside her case shouted his orders, bidding them, ‘Now! Don’t wait for Tintaglia! Now, her skin and eyes are drying too fast. Pour it in. That’s it! And more! Another bucket! Fill that barrow again. Hurry, man!’

The stuff sloshed over her, drenching and sealing her. Her own toxins, present in the sections of the case she had woven, were affecting her now. She felt herself sinking into something that was not sleep. It was rest, however. Blessed, blessed rest.

She sensed Tintaglia standing close by her. She felt the sudden weight of warm, regurgitated slurry, and knew with gratitude that the dragon had sealed her case for her. For a moment, toxins rich with memories stung her skin. Not just dragon-memories from Tintaglia, but a share of serpent lore from the one Tintaglia had recently devoured enriched her case. Dimly she heard Tintaglia directing the scurrying workers. ‘Her case is thin here. And over here. Bring clay and smooth it on in layers. Then bank her case with leaves and sticks. Cover it well from the light and the cold. They cocoon late. They must not feel the sun until summer is full upon them, for I fear they will not have fully developed when spring comes. And when you are finished here, come to the east end of the grounds. There is another one struggling there.’

The Elderling’s voice reached into Sisarqua’s fading consciousness. ‘Did we seal it in time? Will she survive to hatch?’

‘I do not know,’ Tintaglia replied gravely. ‘The year is late, the serpents old and tired, and half of them are next to starved. Some from the first wave have already died in their cases. Others still straggle in the river or struggle to pass the ladder. Many of them will die before they even reach the shore. That is for the best; their bodies will nourish the others and increase their chances of survival. But there is small good to be had from those who die in their cocoons, only waste and disappointment.’

Darkness was wrapping Sisarqua. She could not decide if she was chilled to her bones or cosily warm. She sank deeper, yet still felt the uneasy silence of the young Elderling. When he finally spoke, his words came to her more from his thoughts than from his lips. ‘The Rain Wild people would like to have the casts of the ones who die. They call such material “wizardwood” and have many valuable uses for—’

‘NO!’ The emphatic denial by the dragon shocked Sisarqua back to a moment of awareness. But her depleted body could not long sustain it and she almost immediately began to sink again. Tintaglia’s words followed her down into a place below dreams. ‘No, little brother! All that is of dragons belongs only to dragons. When spring comes, some of these cases will hatch. The dragons that emerge will devour the cases and bodies of those that do not hatch. Such is our way, and in such a way is our lore preserved. Those who die will give strength to those who live on.’

Sisarqua had but a moment to wonder which she would be. Then blackness claimed her.

Day the 17th of the Hope Moon

Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Attached you will find a formal appeal from the Rain Wild Council for a just and fair payment of the additional and unexpected expenses incurred by us in the care of the serpent cases for the Dragon Tintaglia. A swift reply is requested by the Council.

Erek,

A spring flash-flood has hit us hard. Tremendous damage to some of the dragon cases, and some are missing entirely. Small barge overturned on the river, and I fear it was the one carrying the young pigeons I was sending you to replenish the Bingtown flock. All were lost. I will allow my birds to set more eggs, and send you the offspring as soon as they are fledged. Trehaug does not seem like Trehaug any more, there are so many Tattooed faces! My master has said that I must not date things according to our Independence, but I defy him. Rumour will become a reality, I am sure!

Detozi

CHAPTER ONE
The Riverman

It was supposed to be spring. Damn cold for spring. Damn cold to be sleeping out on the deck instead of inside the deckhouse. Last night, with the rum in him and a belt of distant stars twinkling through an opening in the rain forest canopy, it had seemed like a fine idea. The night hadn’t seemed so chilly, and the insects had been chirring in the tree tops and the night birds calling to one another while the bats squeaked and darted out in the open air over the river. It had seemed a fine night to lie back on the deck of his barge and look up at the wide world all around him and savour the river and the Rain Wilds and his proper place in the world. Tarman had rocked him gently and all had been right.

In the iron-grey dawn, with dew settled on his skin and clothes and every joint in his body stiff, it seemed a damn-fool prank more suited to a boy of twelve than a riverman of close to thirty years. He sat up slowly and blew out a long breath that steamed in the chill dawn air. He followed it with a heart-felt belch of last night’s rum. Then, grumbling under his breath, he lurched to his feet and looked around. Morning. Yes. He walked to the railing and made water over the side as he considered the day. Far above his head, in the tree tops of the forest canopy, day birds were awake and calling to one another. But under the trees at the edge of the river, dawn and daylight were tenuous things. Light seeped down, filtered by thousands of new leaves and divested of its warmth before it reached him. As the sun travelled higher, it would shine down on the open river and send fingers under the trees and through the canopy. But not yet. Not for hours.

Leftrin stretched, rolling his shoulders. His shirt clung to his skin unpleasantly. Well, he deserved to be uncomfortable. If any of his crew had been so stupid as to fall asleep out on the deck, that’s what he would have told them. But they hadn’t been. All eleven of his men slumbered on in the narrow, tiered bunks that lined the aft wall of the deckhouse. His own more spacious bunk had gone empty. Stupid.

It was too early to be awake. The fire in the galley stove was still banked; no hot water simmered for tea, no flatcakes bubbled on the grill. And yet here he was, wide awake, and of a mind to take a walk back under the trees. It was a strange impulse, one he had no conscious rationale for, and yet he recognized it for the kind of itch it was. It came, he knew, from the unremembered dreams of the night before. He reached for them, but the tattered shreds became threads of cobweb in his mind’s grasp, and then were gone. Still, he’d follow their lingering inspiration. He’d never lost out by paying attention to those impulses, and almost inevitably regretted it the few times he’d ignored them.

He went into the deck-house, past his sleeping crew and through the little galley and forward to his cabin. He exchanged his deck shoes for his shore boots. The knee boots of greased bull-hide were nearly worn through; the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River were not kind to footwear, clothing, wood or skin. But his boots would survive another trip or two ashore, and as a result, his skin would, too. He caught up his jacket from its hook and slung it about his shoulders and walked aft past the crew. He kicked the foot of the tillerman’s bunk. Swarge’s head jolted up and the man stared at him blearily.

‘I’m going ashore, going to stretch my legs. Probably be back by breakfast.’

‘Aye,’ Swarge said, the only acceptable reply and close to the full extent of Swarge’s conversational skills. Leftrin grunted an affirmation and left the deckhouse.

The evening before, they had nosed the barge up onto a marshy bank and tied it off to a big leaning tree there. Leftrin swung down from the blunt-nosed bow of the barge onto mud-coated reeds. The barge’s painted eyes stared off into the dimness under the trees. Ten days ago, a warm wind and massive rainstorms had swelled the Rain Wild River, sending the waters rushing up above their normal banks and over the low shores. In the last two days, the waters had receded, but the plant life along the river was still recovering from being underwater for several days of silt-laden flooding. The reeds were coated with filth and most of the grasses were flattened beneath their burdens of mud. Isolated pockets of water dotted the low bank. As Leftrin strode along, his feet sank and water seeped up to fill in his tracks.

He wasn’t sure where he was going or why. He let his whim guide him as he ventured away from the river bank into the deeper shade beneath the vine-draped trees. There, the signs of the recent flooding were even more apparent. Driftwood snags were wedged among the tree trunks. Tangles of muddy foliage and torn webs of vines were festooned about the trees and bushes. Fresh deposits of river-silt covered the deep moss and low growing plants. The gigantic trunks of the enormous trees that held up the roof of the Rain Wilds were impervious to most floods, but the undergrowth that rioted in their shade was not. In some places the current had carved a path through the underbrush; in others the slime and sludge of the flood burdened the foliage so heavily that the brush bent in muddied hummocks.

Where he could, Leftrin slogged in the paths that the river current had gouged through the brush. When the mud became too soft, he pushed through the grimy undergrowth. He was soon wet and filthy. A branch he pushed aside sprang back, slapping him across the brow and spattering his face with mud. He hastily wiped the stinging stuff from his skin. Like many a river man, his arms and face had been toughened by exposure to the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River. It gave his face a leathery, weathered look, a startling contrast to his grey eyes. He privately believed that this was why he had so few of the growths and less of the scaliness that afflicted most of his Rain Wilds brethren. Not that he considered himself a thing of beauty or even a handsome man. The wandering thought made him grin ruefully. He pushed it from his mind and a dangling branch away from his face and forced his way deeper.

There came a moment when he stopped suddenly. Some sensory clue he could not pin down, some scent on the air or some glimpse he had not consciously registered told him he was near. He stood very still and slowly scanned the area all around him. His eyes went past it and then the hair on the back of his neck stood up as he swivelled his gaze back suddenly. There. Mud-laden vegetation draped over it, and the river’s raging flood had coated it in mud, but a single streak of grey showed through. A wizardwood log.

It was not a huge one, not as big as he had heard that they could be. Its diameter was perhaps two-thirds of his height, and he was not a tall man. But it was big enough, he thought. Big enough to make him very wealthy. He glanced back over his shoulder, but the undergrowth that blocked his view of the river and his moored barge would also shield him from spying eyes. He doubted that any of his crew would be curious enough to follow him. They’d been asleep when he left, and no doubt were still abed. The secret trove was his alone.

He pushed his way through the vegetation until he could touch the log. It was dead. He had known that even before he had touched it. When he was a boy, he’d been down to the Crowned Rooster chamber. He’d seen Tintaglia’s log before she had hatched from it, and had known the crawly sensation it had wakened in him. The dragon in this log had died and would never hatch. It didn’t much matter to him if it had died while the log still rested on the banks of the cocooning beach, or if the tumbling it had taken in the flood had killed it. The dragon inside it was dead, the wizardwood was salvageable, and he was the only one who knew where it was. And by his great good fortune, he was one of the few who knew how best to use it.

Back in the days when the Khuprus family had made part of its vast fortune from working wizardwood, back before anyone had ever known or admitted what the ‘wood’ really was, his mother’s brothers had been wizardwood workers. He’d been just a lad, wandering in and out of the low building where his uncles’ saws bit slowly through the iron-hard stuff. He’d been nine when his father had decided he was old enough to come and work on the barge with him. He’d taken up his rightful trade as bargeman, and learned his trade from the deck up. And then, when he had just turned twenty-two, his father had died and the barge had come to him. He’d been a riverman for most of his life. But from his mother’s side, he had the tools of the wizardwood trade, and the knowledge of how to use them.

He made a circuit of the log. It was heavy going. The flood waters had wedged it between two trees. One end of it had been jammed deep into mud while the other pointed up at an angle and was wreathed in forest-flood debris. He thought of tearing the stuff clear so he could have a good look at it and then decided to leave it camouflaged. He made a quick trip back to the barge, moving stealthily as he took a coil of line from the locker, and then returned hastily to secure his find. It was dirty work but when he had finished he was satisfied that even if the river rose again his treasure would stay put.

As he slogged back to his barge, he felt the heavy felt sock inside his boot becoming damp. His foot began to sting. He increased his pace, cursing to himself. He’d have to buy new boots at the next stop. Parroton was one of the smallest and newest settlements on the Rain Wild River. Everything there was expensive, and bull-hide boots imported from Chalced would be difficult to find. He’d be at the mercy of whoever had a pair to sell. A moment later, a sour smile twisted his mouth. Here he had discovered a log worth more than ten years of barge-work, and he was quibbling with himself over how much he was going to have to pay for a new pair of boots. Once the log was sawn into lengths and discreetly sold off, he’d never have to worry about money again.

His mind was busy with logistics. Sooner or later, he’d have to decide who he would trust to share his secret. He’d need someone else on the other end of the crosscut saw, and men to help carry the heavy planks from the log to the barge. His cousins? Probably. Blood was thicker than water, even the silty water of the Rain Wild River.

Could they be that discreet? He thought so. They’d have to be careful. There was no mistaking fresh-cut wizardwood; it had a silvery sheen to it, and an unmistakable scent. When the Rain Wild Traders had first discovered it, they had valued it solely for its ability to resist the acid water of the river. His own vessel, the Tarman, had been one of the first wizardwood ships built, its hull sheathed with wizardwood planks. Little had the Rain Wild builders suspected the magical properties the wood possessed. They had merely been using what seemed to be a trove of well-aged timber from the buried city they had discovered.

It was only when they had built large and elaborate ships, ships that could ply not just the river but the salt waters of the coast, that they had discovered the full powers of the stuff. The figureheads of those ships had startled everyone when, generations after the ships had been built, they had begun to come to life. The speaking and moving figureheads were a wonder to all. There were not many liveships, and they were jealously guarded possessions. None of them were ever sold outside the Traders’ alliance. Only a Bingtown Trader could buy a liveship, and only liveships could travel safely up the Rain Wild River. The hulls of ordinary ships gave way quickly to the acid waters of the river. What better way could exist to protect the secret cities of the Rain Wilds and their inhabitants?

Then had come the far more recent discovery of exactly what wizardwood was. The immense logs in the Crowned Rooster chamber had not been wood; rather they had been the protective cocoons of dragons, dragged into the shelter of the city to preserve them during an ancient volcanic eruption. No one liked to speak of what that really meant. Tintaglia the dragon had emerged alive from her cocoon. Of those other ‘logs’ that had been sawed into timber for ships, how many had contained viable dragons? No one spoke of that. Not even the liveships willingly discussed the dragons that they might have been. On that topic, even the dragon Tintaglia had been silent. Nonetheless, Leftrin suspected that if anyone learned of the log he had found, it would be confiscated. He couldn’t allow it to become common knowledge in Trehaug or Bingtown, and Sa save him if the dragon herself heard of it. So, he would do all that he could to keep the discovery private.

It galled him that a treasure that he once could have auctioned to the highest bidder must now be disposed of quietly and privately. But there would be markets for it. Good markets. In a place as competitive as Bingtown, there were always traders who were willing to buy goods quietly without being too curious about the source, an aspiring Trader willing to barter in illegal goods for the chance to win favour with the Satrap of Jamaillia.

But the real money, the best offers would come from Chalcedean traders. The uneasy peace between Bingtown and Chalced was still very young. Small treaties had been signed, but major decisions regarding boundaries and trades and tariffs and rights of passage were still being negotiated. The health of the ruler of Chalced, it was rumoured, was failing. Chalcedean emissaries had already attempted to book passage up the Rain Wild River. They had been turned back, but everyone knew what their mission had been: they wished to buy dragon parts; dragon blood for elixirs, dragon flesh for rejuvenation, dragon teeth for daggers, dragon scales for light and flexible armour, dragon’s pizzle for virility. Every old wife’s tale about the medicinal and magical powers of dragon parts seemed to have reached the ears of the Chalcedean nobility. And each noble seemed more eager than the last to win his duke’s favour by supplying him with an antidote to whatever debilitating disease was slowly whittling him away. They had no way of knowing that Tintaglia had hatched from the last wizardwood log the Rain Wilders possessed; there were no embryonic dragons to be slaughtered and shipped off to Chalced. Just as well. Personally, Leftrin shared the opinion of most Traders: that the sooner the Duke of Chalced was in his grave, the better for trade and humanity. But he also shared the pragmatic view that, until then, one might as well make a profit off the diseased old war-monger.

If he chose that path, he need do no more than find a way to get the ponderously heavy log intact to Chalced. Surely the remains of the half-formed dragon inside it would fetch an amazing price there. Just get the cocoon to Chalced. If he said it quickly, it almost sounded simple, as if it would not involve hoists and pulleys just to move it from where it was wedged and load it on his barge. To say nothing of keeping such a cargo secret, and also arranging secret transport from the mouth of the Rain Wild River north to Chalced. His river barge could never make such a trip. But if he could arrange it, and if he was neither robbed nor murdered on the trip north or on his way home, then he could emerge from his adventure as a very wealthy man.

He limped faster. The stinging inside his boot had become a burning. A few blisters he could live with; an open wound would quickly ulcerate and hobble him for weeks.

As he emerged from the undergrowth into the relatively open space alongside the river, he smelled the smoke of the galley stove, and heard the voices of his crew. He could smell flatcakes cooking and coffee brewing. Time to be aboard and away before any of them wondered what their captain had been up to on his morning stroll. Some thoughtful soul had tossed a rope ladder down the bow for him. Probably Swarge. The tillerman always was two thoughts ahead of the rest of the crew. On the bow, silent, hulking Eider was perched on the railing, smoking his morning pipe. He nodded to his captain and blew a smoke ring by way of greeting. If he was curious as to where Leftrin had been or why, he gave no sign of it.

Leftrin was still pondering the best way to convert the wizardwood log into wealth as he set his muddy foot on the first rung of the ladder. The painted gaze of Tarman’s gleaming black eyes met his own, and he froze. A radical new thought was born in his mind. Keep it. Keep it, and use it for myself and my ship. For several long moments, as he paused on the ladder, the possibilities unfolded in his mind like flowers opening to the early dawn light.

He patted the side of his barge. ‘I might, old man. I just might.’ Then he climbed the rest of the way up to his deck, pulled off his leaking boot and flung it back into the river for it to devour.

Day the 15th of the Fish Moon

Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Within the sealed scroll, a message of Great Importance from the Rain Wild Traders’ Council at Trehaug to the Bingtown Traders’ Council. You are invited to send whatever representatives you wish to be present on the occasion of the Rain Wild Dragons emerging from their cases. At the direction of the most exalted and queenly Dragon Tintaglia, the cases will be exposed to sunlight on the 15th day of the Greening Moon, forty-five days hence. The Rain Wild Traders’ Council looks forward with pleasure to your attendance as our dragons emerge.

Erek!

Clean your nesting boxes and paint the walls of your coop with fresh limewash. The last two birds I received from you were infested with lice and spread it to one of my coops.

Detozi

CHAPTER TWO
The Hatch

Luck brought Thymara to the right place at the right time. It was the best good luck that had ever favoured her, she thought to herself, as she clung to the lowest branch of a tree at the edge of the serpents’ beach. She did not usually accompany her father down to the lower levels of Trehaug, let alone make the journey to Cassarick. Yet here she was, and on the very day that Tintaglia had decreed that the dragon cocoons be uncovered. She glanced at her father, and he grinned at her. No. Not luck, she suddenly knew. He had known how much she would enjoy being here, and scheduled their jaunt accordingly. She grinned back at her father with all the confidence of her eleven years and then returned her gaze to the scene below her. Her father’s cautioning voice reached her from where he perched like a bird on a thicker branch closer to the trunk of the immense tree that they shared.

‘Thymara. Be careful. They’re newly hatched. And hungry. If you fell down there, they might mistake you for just another piece of meat.’

The scrawny girl dug her black claws deeper into the bark. She knew he was only half-teasing. ‘Don’t worry, Da. I was made for the canopy. I won’t fall.’ She was stretched out along a drooping branch that no other experienced limbsman would have trusted. But she knew it would hold her. Her belly was pressed to it as if she were one of the slender brown tree lizards that shared her perch. And like them, she clung with the full length of her body, fingers and toes dug into the wide cracks in the bark, thighs hugging the limb. Her glossy black hair was confined to a dozen tight braids that were knotted at the back of her neck. Her head was much lower than her feet. Her cheek was pressed tight to the rough skin of the tree as her gaze devoured the drama unfolding below her.

Thymara’s tree was one of uncounted thousands that made up the Rain Wild Forest. For days and days in all directions, the forest spread out on either side of the wide, grey Rain Wild River. Close to Cassarick and for several days upriver, picket trees predominated. The wide-spread horizontal branches were excellent for home building. Mature picket trees dropped questing roots from their branches down to the earth far below, so that each tree established its own ‘picket fence’ around its root structure, anchoring the tree securely in the muddy soil. The forest that surrounded Cassarick was much denser than that around Trehaug. The horizontal branches of the picket trees were far more stable than those Thymara was accustomed to. They made climbing and moving from tree to tree almost ridiculously easy. Today she had ventured out onto the unsupported end branch of one, to gain an unobstructed view of the spectacle below her.

Before her, on the other side of the mud flats, the panorama of moving water stretched flat and milky. She had a foggy glimpse of the distant, dense forest on the opposite side of the river. Summer had awakened a million shades of green there. The sound of the river’s rush, of gravel churning beneath its opaque waters, was the constant music of her life. Closer to the shore, on Thymara’s side of the river, the waters were shallow, and strips of exposed gravel and clay broke up the current’s access to the flat clay banks below her tree. Last winter, this section of the river bank had been hastily reinforced with timber bulkheads; the floods of winter had not been kind to them, but most of the logs remained.

For several acres, the bare riverbank was littered with serpent cases like drift logs. Once the area had been covered with tufts of coarse grass and prickly brush, but all that had been destroyed with the wave of sea serpents that had arrived last winter. She had not seen that migration, but she had heard about it. No one who lived in the tree cities of the Rain Wild had escaped the telling of that tale. A herd, a tangle of more than one hundred immense serpents, had come up the Rain Wild River, escorted by a liveship and shepherded by a glorious blue-and-silver dragon. The young Elderling Selden Vestrit had been there to greet the serpents and welcome them back to their ancestral home. He had supervised the ranks of Rain Wilders who had turned out to assist the serpents in forming their cases. For most of that winter, he had remained in Cassarick, checking on the dormant serpents, seeing that the cases were kept well covered with leaves and mud to insulate them from cold and rain and even sunlight. And today, she had heard, he was here again, to witness the hatch.

She hadn’t seen him, much as she would have liked to. Chances were good that he was over at the central part of the hatching grounds, on the raised dais that had been set up for the Rain Wild Council members and other important dignitaries. It was crowded over there, with robed Traders mobbed around the dais, and many of the general population festooning the trees like a flock of migratory birds. She was glad her father had brought her here, to the far end of the hatching area, where there might be fewer cases but also fewer people to block her view. Still, it would have been nice to be close enough to the dais to hear the music and hear the speeches, and to see a real Elderling.

Just to think of him swelled her heart with pride. He was Bingtown stock, of Trader descent, just like her, but the dragon Tintaglia had touched him and he had begun to change into an Elderling, the first Elderling that any living person had ever seen. There were two other Elderlings now, Selden’s sister Malta and Reyn Khuprus, himself of the Rain Wilds. She sighed. It was all like a fairy tale, come true. Sea serpents and dragons and Elderlings had returned to the Cursed Shores. And in her lifetime, she would see the first hatch of dragons within anyone’s memory. By this afternoon, the young dragons would have emerged and taken flight.

The dull grey cases that now littered the riverbank for as far as Thymara could see each held what had been a serpent. The layers of leaves, twigs and mulch that had covered them all winter and spring had been cleared away from them. Some of the cases were immense, as long as a river barge. Others were smaller, like log sections. Some of the cases gleamed fat and silvery. Others, however, had collapsed or sagged in on themselves. They were a dull grey colour and to Thymara’s sensitive nose, they stank of dead reptile. The serpents that had entered those cases would never emerge as young dragons.

As the Rain Wild Traders had promised Tintaglia, they had done their best to tend the cocooned serpents under Selden’s supervision. Additional layers of clay had been smoothed over any case that seemed thin, and then leaves and branches had been heaped protectively over them. Tintaglia had decreed that the cases had to be protected not just from winter storms, but from the early spring sunlight, too. The dragons had cocooned late in the year. Light and warmth would stimulate them to hatch, and so she had wished them to remain covered until high summer, to give the dragons more time to develop. The Rain Wild guardians and the Tattooed – former Jamaillian slaves, now freed – had done their best. That had been part of the bargain the Rain Wilds Traders had struck with the dragon Tintaglia. She had agreed to guard the mouth of the Rain Wilds River against incursions by the Chalcedeans: in return, the Traders had promised to help the serpents reach their old cocooning grounds and tend them while they matured inside the cases. Both sides had kept their bargains. Today would see the fruit of that agreement as a new generation of dragons, dragons allied with Bingtown and the Rain Wilds, rose in their first flight.

The winter had not been kind to the dragon cases. Tearing winds and pounding rains had taken their toll on them. Worst, once the storm-swollen river had swept through the cocooning grounds, damaging many of the cases as it rolled them up against others or ate away at the protective clay. The count taken after the flood had subsided showed that a full score of the cocoons had been swept away. Of the seventy-nine cocooned dragons, only fifty-nine remained, and some were so battered that it was doubtful the occupants had survived. Flooding was a familiar hazard of living in the Rain Wilds, but it grieved Thymara all the same. What, she wondered, had become of those missing cases and the half-formed dragons within them? Had they been eaten by the river? Washed all the way to the salt sea?

The river ruled this forested world. Wide and grey, its current and depth fluctuated wildly. No real banks confined it. It flowed where it wished, and nowhere in Thymara’s world was ‘dry ground’ a meaningful phrase. What was forest floor today might be swamp or slough tomorrow. The great trees alone seemed impervious to the river’s shifting flow, but even that was not a certainty. The Rain Wilders built only in the largest and stoutest trees; their homes and walkways bedecked the middle branches and trunks of the forest trees like sturdy garlands. Their swaying bridges spanned from tree to tree, and closer to the ground, where the trunks and limbs were thickest, sturdy structures housed the most important markets and provided dwelling space for the wealthiest families. The higher one went in the trees, the smaller and more lightweight the structures became. Rope-and-vine bridges joined the neighbourhoods, and staircases spiralled up the main trunks of the huge trees. As one ascended, the bridges and walkways became flimsier. All Rain Wilders had to have some level of limbsmen skills to move throughout their settlement. But few had Thymara’s skill.

Thymara had no trepidations about her precarious roost. Her mind was occupied and her silver-grey eyes filled with the wonders unfolding below her.

The sun had risen high enough that its slanting rays could reach over the tall branches of the forest and rest on the serpent cocoons littering the beach. It was not an exceedingly warm day for summer, but some of the cases had begun to steam and smoke as the sun warmed them. Thymara focused her attention on the large case directly below her. The rising steam reached her, carrying a reptilian stink with it. She narrowed her nostrils and gazed in rapture. Below her, the wizardwood of the log was losing its solidity.

Thymara was familiar with wizardwood; for years her people had used it as exceptionally strong timber. It was hard, far beyond what other people called ‘hardwood’. Working it could blunt an axe or dull a saw in less than a morning. But now the silvery-grey ‘wood’ of the dragon case below was softening, steaming and bubbling, sagging to mould around the still form within it.

As she watched, the form twitched and then gave a lively wriggle. The wizardwood tore like a membrane. The liquefied cocoon was being absorbed by the skeletal creature inside the log. As Thymara watched, the dragon’s meagre flesh plumped and colour washed through it. It was smaller than she had expected it to be, given the size of the case and what she had heard of Tintaglia. A cloud of stink and moisture wafted up and then the blunt-nosed head of a dragon thrust clear of the sagging log.

Outside!

Thymara felt a wave of vertigo as the dragon-speak touched her mind. Her heart leapt like a bird bursting into upward flight. She could hear dragons! Ever since Tintaglia had appeared, it had become clear that some folk could ‘hear’ what a dragon said, while others heard only roaring, hissing and a sinister rattling. When Tintaglia had first appeared in Trehaug and spoken to the crowd, some had heard her words right away. Others had shared nothing of her thoughts. It thrilled Thymara beyond telling to know that if a dragon ever deigned to speak to her, she would hear it. She edged lower on the branch.

‘Thymara!’ her father warned her.

‘I’m careful!’ she responded without even looking at him.

Below her, the young dragon had opened a wide red maw and was tearing at the decaying fibres of the log that bound her. Her. Thymara could not say how she knew that. For a newly-hatched thing, her teeth were certainly impressive. Then the creature ripped a mouthful of the sodden wizardwood free, tossed her head back and swallowed visibly. ‘She’s eating the wizardwood!’ she called to her father.

‘I’ve heard they do that,’ he called back. ‘Selden the Elderling said that when he witnessed Tintaglia’s emergence, her cocoon melted right into her skin. I think they derive strength from it.’

Thymara didn’t reply. Her father was obviously right. It did not seem possible that an enclosure that had held a dragon would now fit inside the belly of one, but the dragon below her seemed intent on trying to consume it all. She continued to struggle free of the confining case as she ate her way out of it, ripping off fibrous chunks and swallowing them whole. Thymara grimaced in sympathy. It seemed tragic that something so newly born could be so ravenously hungry. Thank Sa she had something she could eat.

A collective gasp from the watching crowd warned Thymara. She clutched her tree limb more tightly just in time. The gush of pushed air that swept past her nearly tore her loose and left her branch swaying wildly. An instant later, there was a huge thump that vibrated through her tree as Tintaglia landed.

The queen dragon was blue and silver and blue again, depending on how the sunlight struck her. She was easily three times the size of the young dragons that were hatching. Watching her fold her wings was like watching a ship lower its sails. She tucked them neatly to her body; then folded them tight to fit as closely against her as a bird’s wings so that her scaled feathers seemed a seamless part of her skin. She dropped the limp deer that hung from her jaws. ‘Eat,’ she instructed the young dragons. She did not pause to watch them, but moved off to the river. She lowered her great head and drank the milky water. Sated, she raised her head and partially opened her wings. Her powerful hindquarters flexed; she sprang high, and two battering beats of her wide wings caught her before she could plummet back to earth. Wings beating heavily, she rose slowly from the river bank and flew off, up river, hunting again.

‘Oh.’ Her father’s deep voice was heavy with pity. ‘What a shame.’

The dragon below Thymara was still tearing sticky strips of wizardwood free from her case and devouring them. A grey swathe of it stuck to her muzzle. She pawed at it with the small claws on her stubby front leg. To Thymara, she looked like a baby with porridge smeared on its cheeks and hair. The dragon was smaller than she had expected, and less developed, but surely she would grow to fulfil her promise. Thymara glanced at her father in puzzlement, and then followed his gaze.

While she had been focused on the hatchling right beneath her tree, other dragons had been breaking free of their cases. The fallen deer and the reek of its fresh blood now summoned them. Two dragons, one a drab yellow and the other a muddy green, had staggered and tottered over to the carcass. They did not fight over it, being too intent on their feeding. The fighting, Thymara suspected, would come when it was time to seize the last morsel. For now, both squatted over the deer, front feet braced on the carcass, tearing chunks of hide and flesh free and then throwing their heads back to gulp the warm meat down. One had torn into the soft belly; entrails dangled from the yellow dragon’s jaws and painted stripes of red and brown on his throat. It was a savage scene, but no more so than the feeding of any predator.

Thymara glanced at her father again, and this time she caught the true focus of his gaze. The feeding dragons, hunched over the rapidly diminishing carcass, had blocked her view. The young dragon her father was watching could not stand upright. It wallowed and crawled on its belly. Its hindquarters were unfinished stubs. Its head wobbled on a thin neck. It gave a sudden shudder and surged upright, where it teetered. Even its colour seemed wrong; it was the same pale grey as the clay, but its hide was so thin that she could glimpse the coil of white intestines pushing against the skin of its belly. Plainly it was unfinished, hatched too soon to survive. Yet still it crawled toward the beckoning meat. As she watched, it gave too strong a push with one of its malformed hind legs and crashed over on its side. Foolishly, or perhaps in an effort to catch itself, it opened its flimsy wings. It landed on one, which bent the wrong way and then snapped audibly. The cry the creature gave was not as loud as the bright burst of pain that splashed against Thymara’s mind. She flinched wildly and nearly lost her grip. Clinging to her tree branch, eyes tightly shut, she fought a pain-induced wave of nausea.

Understanding slowly came to her; this was what Tintaglia had feared. The dragon had sought to keep the cocoons shielded from light, hoping to give the forming dragons a normal dormancy period. But although they had waited until summer, they had still emerged too soon, or perhaps had been too worn and thin when they went in. Whatever the reason for their deformities, they were wrong, all wrong. These creatures could scarcely move their own bodies. She felt the confusion of the young dragon mixed with its physical pain. With difficulty, she tore her mind free of the dragon’s bafflement.

When she opened her eyes, a new horror froze her. Her father had left the tree. He was on the ground, threading his way among the hatching cases, heading directly toward the downed creature. From her vantage, she knew it was dead. An instant later, she realized it was not that she could see it was dead so much as that she had felt it die. Her father, however, did not know that. His face was full of both trepidation and anxiety for the creature. She knew him. He would help it if he could. It was how he was.

Thymara was not the only one who had felt it die. The two young dragons had reduced the deer to a smear of blood and dung on the trodden, sodden clay. They lifted their heads now and turned toward the fallen dragon. A newly-hatched red dragon, his tail unnaturally short, was also making his tottering way toward it. The yellow let out a low hiss and increased his pace. The green opened its maw wide and let out a sound that was neither a roar nor a hiss. Feeble globs of spittle rode the sound and fell to the clay at his feet. The target had been her father. Thank Sa that the creature was not mature enough to release a cloud of burning toxin. Thymara knew that adult dragons could do that. She had heard about Tintaglia using her dragon’s breath against the Chalcedeans during the battle for Bingtown. Dragon venom ate right through flesh and bone.

But if the green did not have the power to scald her father with his breath, his act of aggression had directed the short-tailed red dragon’s attention to her father. Without hesitation, both yellow and green dragons closed in on the dead hatchling and began snarling threats at one another over its fallen body. The red began his stalk.

She had thought that her father would realize that the hatchling had died and was beyond his help. She had expected him to retreat sensibly from the danger the young dragons presented. A hundred times, a thousand times, her father had counselled her to wariness where predators were concerned. ‘If you have meat and a tree cat wants it, leave the meat and retreat. You can get more meat. You cannot get another life.’ So surely, when he saw the red dragon lurching toward him, its stubby tail stuck straight out behind him, he would retreat sensibly.

But he wasn’t watching the red. He had eyes only for the downed hatchling, and as the other two dragons closed on it, he shouted, ‘No! Leave it alone, give it a chance! Give it a chance!’ He waved his arms as if he were shooing carrion birds away from his kill and began to run toward it. To do what? she wanted to demand of him. Either of the hatchlings was bigger than he was. They might not be able to spit fire yet, but they already knew how to use their teeth and claws.

‘Da! No! It’s dead, it’s already dead! Da, run, get out of there!’

He heard her. He halted at her words and even looked up at her.

‘Da, it’s dead, you can’t help it. Get out of there. To your left! Da, to your left, the red one! Get clear of it!’

The yellow and the green were already preoccupied with their dead fellow. They dived on it with the same abandon they had showed toward the deer. Strengthened by their earlier feast, they seemed more inclined to quarrel with one another over the choicest parts. Thymara had no interest in them, except that they kept one another busy. It was the red she cared about, the one that was lurching unevenly but swiftly toward her father. He saw his danger now. He did what she had feared he would do, a trick that often worked with tree cats. He opened his shirt and spread it, holding the fabric wide of his body. ‘Be large when something threatens you,’ he had often told her. ‘Take on a shape it doesn’t recognize and it will become cautious. Present a larger aspect and sometimes it will back down. But never turn away. Keep an eye on it, be large, and move back slowly. Most cats love a chase. Don’t ever give them one.’

But this was not a cat. It was a dragon. Its jaws were wide open and its teeth showed white and sharp. Its hunger was the strongest thing in it. Although her father became visually larger, it showed no fear. Instead, she heard, no, felt its joyful interest in him. Meat. Big meat. Food! Hunger ripped through it as it staggered after the retreating man.

‘Not meat!’ Thymara shouted down at it. ‘Not food. Not food! Run, Da, turn and run! Run!’

The two miracles happened simultaneously. The first was that the young dragon heard her. Its blunt-nosed head swivelled toward her, startled. It threw itself off-balance when it turned to look at her and staggered foolishly in a small circle. She saw then what had eluded her before. It was deformed. One of its hind legs was substantially smaller than the other. Not food? She felt a plaintive echo of her words. Not meat? No meat? Her heart broke for the young red. No meat. Only hunger. For that moment of oneness with it, she felt its hunger and its frustration.

But the second miracle tore her from that joining. Her father had listened to her. He had lowered his arms, turned away and was fleeing back to the trees. She saw him dodge away from a small blue dragon who reached after him with yearning claws. Then her father reached the tree trunk and with the experience of years, ascended it almost as swiftly as he had run across the ground. In a few moments he was safely out of any dragon’s reach. A good thing, for the small blue had trotted hopefully after him. Now it stood at the foot of the tree, snorting and sniffing at the place where her father had climbed up. It took an experimental nip at the tree trunk, and then backed away shaking its head. Not meat! it decided emphatically, and wobbled off, charting a weaving path through the hatching grounds where more and more young dragons were emerging from their wizardwood logs. Thymara didn’t watch the blue go. She had already slithered up onto the top of her branch. She came to one knee, then stood and ran up it to the trunk of the tree. She met her father as he came up. She grabbed his arm and buried her face against his shoulder. He smelled of fear sweat.

‘Da, what were you thinking?’ she demanded, and was shocked to hear the anger in her voice. An instant later, she knew that she had every right to be angry. ‘If I had done that, you’d be furious with me! Why did you go down there, what did you think you could do?’

‘Up higher!’ her father panted, and she was glad to follow him as he led the way to a higher branch. It was a good branch, thick and almost horizontal. They both sat down on it, side by side. He was still panting, from fear or exertion or perhaps both. She pulled her water skin from her satchel and offered it to him. He took it gratefully and drank deeply.

‘They could have killed you.’

He took his mouth from the bag’s nozzle, capped it and gave it back to her. ‘They’re babies still. Clumsy babies. I would have got away. I did get away.’

‘They’re not babies! They weren’t babies when they went into their cocoons and they’re full dragons now. Tintaglia could fly within hours of hatching. Fly, and make a kill.’ As she spoke, she pointed up through the foliage to a passing glint of blue and silver. It suddenly plummeted as the dragon dived. The wind of wildly beating wings assaulted both tree and Rain Wilders as the dragon halted her descent. A deer’s carcass fell from her claws to land with a thump on the clay and without a pause her wings carried her up and away, back to her hunt. Squealing dragon hatchlings immediately scampered toward it. They fell on the food, tearing chunks of meat free and gulping them down.

‘That could have been you,’ Thymara pointed out to her father. ‘They may look like clumsy babies now. But they’re predators. Predators that are just as smart as we are. And bigger than we are, and better at killing.’ The charm of the hatching dragons was fading rapidly. Her wonder at them was being replaced with something between fear and hate. That creature would have killed her father.

‘Not all of them,’ her father observed sadly. ‘Look down there, Thymara. Tell me what you see.’

From this higher vantage point, she had a wider view of the hatching grounds. She estimated that a fourth of the wizardwood logs would never release young dragons. The dragons that had hatched were already sniffing at the failed cases. As she watched, one young red dragon hissed at a dull case. A moment later, it began to smoke, thin tendrils of fog rising from it. The red set its teeth to a wizardwood log and tore off a long strip. That surprised Thymara. Wizardwood was hard and fine-grained. Ships were built from it. But now the wood seemed to be decaying into long fibrous strands that the young dragons were tearing free and eating greedily. ‘They are killing their own kind,’ she said, thinking that was what her father wished her to see.

‘I doubt it. I think that in those logs, the dragons died before they could break free of their cases. The other dragons know that. They can smell it, probably. I think something in their saliva triggers a reaction to soften the logs and make them edible. Probably the same reaction that makes the logs break down as the youngsters are hatching. Or maybe it’s the sunlight. No, that wasn’t what I was talking about.’

She looked again. Young dragons wandered unsteadily on the clay beach. Some had ventured down to the water’s edge. Others clustered around the sagging cases of the failed dragons, tearing and eating. Of the deer that Tintaglia had brought and of the dead hatchling, scarcely a smear of blood remained. Thymara watched a dragon with stubby forelegs sniffing at the sand where it had been. ‘He’s badly formed.’ She looked at her father. ‘Why are so many of them badly formed?’

‘Perhaps …’ her father began but before he could speak on, Rogon dropped down from a higher branch to join them. Her father’s sometime hunting partner was scowling.

‘Jerup! You’re unharmed then! What were you thinking? I saw you down there and saw that thing go for you. From where I was, I couldn’t see if you’d made it up the trunk or not! What were you trying to do down there?’

Her father looked down, half smiling, but perhaps a bit angry as well. ‘I thought I could help the one that was being attacked. I didn’t realize it was already dead.’

Rogon shook his head contemptuously. ‘Even if it wasn’t, there would be no point. Any fool could see it wasn’t fit to live. Look at them. Half of them will be dead before the day is out, I should think. I had heard rumours that the Elderling boy was concerned something like this might happen. I was just over at the dais; no one knows how to react. Selden Vestrit is visibly devastated. He’s watching, but not saying a word. No music playing now, you can bet. And half of those important folks clutching scrolls with speeches on them won’t give them now. You never saw so many important people with so little to say. This was supposed to be the big day, dragons taking to the skies, our agreement with Tintaglia fulfilled. And instead, there’s this fiasco.’

‘Does anyone know what went wrong?’ Her father asked his question reluctantly.

His friend tossed his wide shoulders in a shrug. ‘Something about not enough time in the cocoons, and not enough dragonspit to go around. Bad legs, crooked backs – look, look at that one there. It can’t even lift its head. The sooner the others kill it and eat it, the kinder for it.’

‘They won’t kill it.’ Thymara’s father spoke with certainty. She wondered how he knew it. ‘Dragons don’t kill their own kind, except in mating battles. When a dragon dies, the others eat them. But they don’t kill one another for food.’

Rogon had sat down on the tree limb next to her father. He swung his bare callused feet lazily. ‘Well, there’s no problem that doesn’t benefit someone. That’s what I was coming to talk to you about. Did you see how quickly they ate that deer?’ He snorted. ‘Obviously they can’t hunt for themselves. And not even a dragon like Tintaglia can possibly hunt enough to feed them all. So I’m seeing an opportunity for us here, old friend. Before this day is out, it’s going to dawn on the Council that someone has to keep those beasties fed. Can’t very well leave a hungry little herd of dragonlings running wild at the base of the city, especially not with the excavation crews going back and forth all the time. That’s where we come in. If we approach the Rain Wild Council to hire us to hunt to feed the dragons, they’ll be no end of work for us. Not that we could keep up with the demand, but while we can, the pay should be good. Even with the big dragon helping us kill for them, we’ll quickly run short of meat animals for them. But for a while, we should do well.’ He shook his head and grinned. ‘I don’t like to think of what will happen when the meat runs out. If they don’t turn on one another and eat their kin, well, I fear that we’ll be the closest prey. These dragons were a bad bargain.’

Thymara spoke. ‘But we made a deal with Tintaglia. And a Trader’s word is his bond. We said we’d help Tintaglia take care of them if she kept the Chalcedeans away from our shores. And she has done that.’

Rogon ignored her. Rogon always ignored her. He never treated her as badly as some of the others did, but he never looked directly at her or replied to her words. She was accustomed to that. It wasn’t personal. She glanced away from the men, caught herself cleaning her claws on the tree’s bark, and stopped. She looked back at them. Her father had black nails. So did Rogon. Sometimes it seemed such a small difference to her, that her father had been born with black nails on his hands and feet and that she had been born with claws, like a lizard. Such a small difference on which to base a life-or-death decision.

‘My daughter speaks the truth,’ her father said. ‘Our Council agreed to the bargain; they have no choice but to live up to it. They thought their promise to aid the dragons would end with the hatching. Obviously, it isn’t going to.’

Thymara resisted the impulse to squirm. She hated it when her Da forced his comrades to acknowledge her existence. It was better when he allowed them to ignore her. Because then she could ignore them as well. She looked aside and tried not to listen to the men as they discussed the difficulties of hunting enough meat to feed that many dragons, and the impossibility of simply ignoring the newly-hatched dragons at the base of the city. There were ruins beneath the swampy grounds of Cassarick. If the Rain Wilders wanted to excavate them for Elderling treasure, then they’d have to find some way to keep these young dragons fed.

Thymara yawned. The politics of the Rain Wild Traders and the dragons would never have anything to do with her and her life. Her father had told her that she should still care about things like that, but it was hard to force herself to be interested in situations she would never have a say in. Her life was apart from such things. When she considered her future, she knew she was the only one she could ever rely on.

She looked down at the dragons and suddenly felt queasy. Her father had been right. And Rogon was right. Below her, young dragons were dying. Their fellows were not killing them, though they did not hesitate to ring the ones that had collapsed, eagerly waiting for them to shudder out a final breath. So many of them, she thought, so many of the hatched dragons had emerged unfit to face the harsh conditions of the Rain Wilds. What had gone wrong? Was Rogon right?

Tintaglia paid another swooping visit. Another carcass plummeted from above, narrowly missing the young dragons that had gathered at her approach. Thymara didn’t recognize the beast she had dropped. It was larger than any deer she had ever seen and had a rounded body with coarse hair. She glimpsed a thick leg with a split hoof before the mob of dragons hid it from her view. She didn’t think that was a deer; not that she had seen many deer. The swampy tussocks that characterized the forest floor of the Rain Wilds were not friendly to deer. One had to journey days and days to get to the beginning of the foothills that edged the wide river valley. Only a fool hunted that far from home. Such hunters consumed food on the way there, and had to eat from their kill on the way back. Often the meat that survived the journey was half spoiled, or so little of it remained that the hunter would have been better off to settle for a dozen birds or a good fat ground lizard closer to home. The dropped creature had a glossy black hide and a big hump of flesh on its shoulders and wide sweeping horns. She wondered what it was called and then a brief touch of dragon mind told her. Food!

A rising note of anger in Rogon’s voice drew her unwilling attention back to the men’s conversation. ‘All I’m saying, Jerup, is that if those creatures don’t get up on their legs and learn to fly and hunt for themselves within the year, they’ll either die or become menaces to folk. Bargain or no, we can’t be responsible for them. Any creature that can’t feed itself doesn’t deserve to live.’

‘That wasn’t the bargain we struck with Tintaglia, Rogon. We didn’t barter for the right to decide if those creatures would live or die. We said we’d protect them in return for Tintaglia protecting the river mouth from Chalcedean ships. The way I see it, we’d be wise to keep our end of the bargain, and give those youngsters a chance to grow and survive.’

‘A chance.’ Rogon pursed his mouth. ‘You’ve always cared too much about giving chances to things, Jerup. One day it will be the death of you. It nearly was today! Did that creature think about giving you “a chance” to live? No. And we won’t even speak of what sort of fortune you bought for yourself eleven years ago with the last thing you gave “a chance to live”.’

‘No. We won’t,’ her father agreed abruptly, in a voice that was anything but agreeable.

Thymara hunched her shoulders, wishing she could make herself smaller, or suddenly take on the colours of the bark like some of the tree lizards could. Rogon meant her. And he was speaking loud and clear because he wanted her to hear. She shouldn’t have tried to speak to him, and her father should not have tried to force him to acknowledge her. Camouflage was always better than fighting.

Despite his harsh words about her, she knew Rogon was her father’s friend. They had grown up together, had learned their hunting and limbsman skills together, had been friends and companions throughout most of their lives. She had seen them together in the hunt, moving as if they were two fingers on the same hand, closing in on whatever prey they stalked. She had seen them laughing and smoking together. When Rogon injured his wrist and couldn’t hunt or harvest for a season, her father had hunted for both families. She had helped him, though she had never gone with him to deliver the food they took. No sense rubbing Rogon’s nose in the fact that he was accepting aid from someone who should never have been born.

Their friendship was what had made Rogon come down the tree so swiftly to check on her father’s safety. It was what had made him angry at her father for risking himself. And ultimately, it was why he wished that she didn’t exist. He was her father’s friend, and he hated to see what her existence had done to her father’s life. She was a burden to him, a mouth to feed, with no hope that she would ever be an asset.

‘I don’t regret my decision, Rogon. And make no mistake about it. It was my decision, not Thymara’s. So if you want to blame anyone, blame me, not her. Ignore and exclude me, not her! I was the one who followed the midwife. I was the one who went down and picked up my child and brought her home again. Because I looked at her and from the moment she was born, I knew she deserved a chance. I didn’t care about her toe-nails, or if there was a line of scales up her spine. I didn’t care how long her feet were. I knew she deserved a chance. And I was right, wasn’t I? Look at her. Ever since she was old enough to follow me up into the canopy or along the branchways, she has proved her worth. She brings home more than she eats, Rogon. Isn’t that the measure of a hunter or gatherer’s value to the people? Just what is it that makes you uncomfortable when you look at her? Is it that I broke some silly set of rules and wouldn’t let my child be carried off and eaten? Or is it that you look at her and see that those rules were wrong, and wonder how many other babies could have grown up to be Rain Wilders?’

‘I don’t want to have this conversation,’ Rogon said suddenly. He stood up so abruptly that he nearly lost his balance. Something her father had said had hit a nerve with him. Rogon was among the best of the limbsmen. Nothing ever rattled him. Sudden cold crept through her. Rogon had children. Two of them, both boys. One was seventeen and the other was twelve. Thymara wondered if his wife had never been pregnant in the years between the two. Or if she had miscarried. Or if the midwife had carried a squalling bundle or two away from his home and off into the Rain Wilds night.

She turned her gaze back to the riverbank below and kept it there. She wondered if her father had just ended a lifelong friendship with his harsh words. Don’t think about it, she counselled herself, and stared down at the dragons. There were fewer than there had been, and almost nothing remained of the logs that hadn’t hatched. Some people would be disappointed by that. Wizardwood was a very valuable substance, and there had been speculation that when the dragons did emerge, the log husks that were left might be salvageable. Of the folks who had gathered to watch the dragons emerge, some would have been hoping for a profit rather than coming to witness an amazing event. Thymara tried to count the dragons that remained. She knew there had been seventy-nine wizardwood logs to start with. How many had yielded viable dragons? But the creatures kept milling around, and when Tintaglia made another pass and dropped a freshly-killed buck, it created a chaos that destroyed her effort at counting. She felt her father move to crouch on the limb beside her. She spoke before he could. ‘I make it at least thirty-five,’ she said, as if she had never heard his words to Rogon.

‘Thirty-two. It’s easier if you count them by colour groups and then add them up.’

‘Oh.’

A little silence fell before he spoke again. His voice was deeper and serious.

‘I meant what I said to him, Thymara. It was my decision. And I’ve never regretted it.’

She was silent. What could she say to that? Thank him? Somehow that seemed cold. Should a child ever have to thank a parent for being alive, thank her father that he hadn’t allowed her to be exposed? She scratched the back of her neck, digging her claws along the line of scales there to calm an itch, and then clumsily changed the subject. ‘How many of them do you think will survive?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose a great deal will depend on how much Tintaglia brings them to eat, and how well we keep our promise to the big dragon. Look over there.’

The strongest of the young dragons had already converged on the fallen meat. It was not that they deliberately deprived their weaker brethren; it was simply that only so many could cluster around the kill, and the first ones there were not giving way. But that was not what her father was pointing to. At the edge of the hatching ground, a group of men were approaching carrying baskets. Many of them had Tattooed faces. They were recent immigrants to the Rain Wilds, former slaves trying to build a new life here. As she watched, the foremost man darted out, dumped his basket and hastily retreated. A silver heap of fish spilled out, skidding against each other to spread over the dull grey of the riverbank. The second man added his load to the slithering pile, and then the third.

The crowded-out dragons had noticed. Slowly they turned, staring, and then as if animated by a single will, they left the huddle of feeding dragons and raced toward the food, their wedge-shaped heads extended on their serpentine necks. The fourth man looked up, gave a yell, and dropped his load. The rolling basket spilled fish as it went. The man made no pretence; he spun and fled at a dead run. Three more men behind him dumped their loads where they stood and ran. Before the fleeing men had reached the line of trees, the dragons were on the fish. They reminded Thymara of birds as each dragon seized a fish and then flung its head back to swallow. Behind the first rank of dragons, others came. This rank of dragons lurched and stumbled. They were the lame and the halt, the blind and, Thymara thought, the simply stupid. They tottered over, giving shrill roars as they came. A pale blue one fell suddenly on its side and just lay there, kicking its feet as if it were still moving toward the feed. For now, the others ignored it. Soon, Thymara knew, it would become food for the rest.

‘They seem to like fish,’ she said, to avoid saying anything else.

‘They probably like any form of meat. But look. It’s already gone. That was a morning’s catch, and it’s gone in just a few heartbeats. How can we keep up with appetites like those? When we made our bargain with Tintaglia, we thought the hatchlings would be like her, independent hunters within a few days of hatching. But unless I’m mistaken, not a one of those can use its wings yet.’

The young dragons were licking and snuffing at the clay. One green one lifted up his head and let out a long cry, but Thymara could not decide if it was a complaint or a threat. He lowered his head, and became aware that the blue dragon had stopped kicking its feet. The green lurched toward it. The others, noting his sudden interest, also began to hasten in that direction. The green broke into a rocking trot. Thymara looked away from them. She didn’t want to see them eat the blue.

‘If we can’t feed them, I suppose that the weak ones will starve. After a time, there will be few enough dragons that we can feed them.’ She tried to speak calmly and maturely, voicing the fatality that underpinned the philosophy of most Rain Wild Traders.

‘Do you think so?’ her father asked. His voice was cool. Did he rebuke her? ‘Or do you think they might find other meat?’

Blood, so coppery and warm. That was what she wanted. She snaked out her long tongue and licked her own face, not just to clean it, but to gather in any smear of food that might be left there. The deer had been excellent, unstiffened and warm. The entrails had steamed their delightful aroma when her jaws closed on the deer’s belly. Delicious, delicate … but there had been so little of it. Or so her stomach told her. She had eaten almost a quarter of a deer. And all of the cocoon that she had not absorbed during her hatch, she had devoured. She should feel, if not satiated, at least comfortable. She knew that was so, just as she knew so much else about being a dragon. After all, she had generation after generation of memories at her beck and call. She had only to cast her mind back to know the ways of her kind.

And to take a name, she suddenly remembered. A name. Something fitting, something appropriate to one of the Lords of the Three Realms. She pushed her hunger from her mind for the moment. First a name, and then a good grooming. And then, after preening her wings, to hunt. To a hunt and a kill that she would share with no one! The thought of that flushed through her. She lifted her folded wings from her back and gently waved them. The action would pump her blood more swiftly through the tough membranes. The wind they generated nearly pushed her off her feet. She gave a challenging caw, just to let anyone who might think of mocking her know that she had intended that sudden sideways step. She’d caught her balance now. What colour was she, in this life? She limbered her neck and then turned to inspect herself. Blue. Blue? The most common colour for a dragon? She knew a moment’s disappointment but then pushed it aside. Blue. Blue as the sky, all the better to conceal herself during flight. Blue as Tintaglia. Blue was nothing to be modest about. Blue … was … Blue was … No. Blue is. ‘Sintara!’ She hissed her name, trying it on the air. Sintara. Sintara of the clear blue morning skies of summer. She lifted her head, drew in a breath, and then threw her head back. ‘Sintara!’ she trumpeted, proud to be the first of this summer’s hatch to name herself.

It did not come out well. She had not taken a deep enough breath, perhaps. She threw her head back again, drew the wind into her lungs. ‘Sintara!’ she trumpeted again, and as she did, she reared onto her hind legs and then sprang upward, stretching her wings.

A dragon carries within her the memories of all her dragon lineage. They are not always in the forefront of her mind, but they are there to draw on, sometimes deliberately when seeking information, sometimes welling up unobtrusively in times of need. Perhaps that was why what happened next was so terrible. She lifted unevenly from the ground; one of her hind legs was stronger than the other. That was bad enough. But when she tried to correct it with her wings, only one opened. The other clung to itself, tangled and feeble, and unable to catch herself, she crashed to the muddy riverbank and lay there, bewildered, on her side. The physical impact was debilitating, but she was just as stunned by the certainty that, for as far back as her memories could reach, nothing like this had ever happened to any dragon in her lineage. She could not assimilate the experience at first; she had no guide to tell her what to expect next. She pushed with her stronger wing, but only succeeded in rolling onto her back, a most uncomfortable position for a dragon. Within moments, she felt the discomfort in the greater effort it took to breathe. She was also aware in a panicky way that she was extremely vulnerable in such a posture. Her long throat and her finely-scaled belly were exposed. She had to get back on her feet.

She kicked her hind feet experimentally, but felt no contact. Her smaller forelegs scrabbled uselessly at air. Her folded wing was partially pinned under her. She struggled, trying to use her wing to roll herself over, but the muscles did not answer her. Finally it was her lashing tail that propelled her onto her belly. She scrabbled to get her hind legs under her and then to surge upright. Sticky clay covered half her body. Anger fought with shame that any of her fellows had seen her in such a distressing position. She shuddered her hide, trying to rid it of the clinging mud as she glared all around herself.

Only two other dragons had looked her way. As she recovered her footing and stared menacingly at them, they lost interest in her and diverted to another sprawled figure on the ground. That dragon had ceased moving. For a brief time the twain regarded him quizzically and then, comfortable that he was dead, they bent their heads to the feast. Sintara took two steps toward them and then halted, confused. Her instincts bade her go and feed. There was meat there, meat that could make her stronger, and in the meat there were memories. If she devoured him, she would gain strength for her body and the priceless experiences of a different dragon’s lineage. She could not be dissuaded because she herself had come so close to being that meat. All the more reason to feed and grow stronger.

It was the right of the strong to feed on the weaker.

But which was she?

She lurched a step on her unevenly muscled legs, and then halted. She willed her wings to open. Only the good one unfurled. She felt the other twitch. She turned her head on her long neck, thinking to groom her wing into a better position. She stared. That was her wing, that stunted thing? It looked like a hairless deer hide draped over a winter-kill’s bones. It was not a dragon’s wing. It would never take her weight, never lift her in flight. She nudged at it with her nose, scarcely believing it could be part of her body. Her warm breath touched the flimsy, useless thing. She drew her nose back from it, horrified at the wrongness of it. Her mind spun, trying to make sense of it. She was Sintara, a dragon, a queen dragon, born to rule the skies. This deformity could not be a part of her. She riffled through her memories, pushing back and back, trying to find some thought, some recall of an ancestor who had had to deal with a disaster such as this. There were none.

She looked again at the two feasters. Little was left of the weakling who had died. Some red glazed ribs, a sodden pile of entrails, and a section of tail. The weak had gone to sustain the strong. One of the feeding dragons became aware of her. He lifted his bloody red muzzle to bare his teeth and arch his crimson neck. ‘Ranculos!’ he named himself, and with his name, he threatened her. His silver eyes seemed to shoot sparks at her.

She should have withdrawn. She was crippled, a weakling. But the way he bared his teeth at her woke something in her. He had no right to challenge her. None at all. ‘Sintara!’ she hissed back at him. ‘Sintara!’

She took a step toward him and the remains of the carcass, and then a gust of wind slapped against her back. She spun about, lowering her head defensively, but it was Tintaglia returning, laden with new meat. The doe she dropped landed almost at Sintara’s feet. It was a very fresh kill, its eyes still clear and brown, and the blood still running from the deep wounds on its back. Sintara forgot Ranculos and the pitiful remains he guarded. She sprang toward the fallen doe.

She had once more forgotten her uneven strength. She landed badly but this time, she caught herself in a crouch before she fell. With a lunge, she spread her forelegs over the kill. ‘Sintara!’ she hissed. She hunched over the dead doe and roared a warning to any who would challenge her. It came out shrill and squawkish. Another humiliation. No matter. She had the meat, she and no other. She bent her head and savaged the doe, tearing angrily at its soft belly. Blood, meat and intestines filled her jaws, comforting her. She clamped down on the carcass and worried it, as if to kill it again. When the flesh tore free, she threw her head back and gulped the mouthful down. Meat and blood. She lowered her head and tore another mouthful free. She fed. She would live.

Day the 1st of the Greening Moon

Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

Detozi,

Please release a flock of at least twenty-five of my birds even if you currently have no messages for them to carry. Message traffic to Trehaug was so heavy with Traders anxious to say they will attend the dragon-hatch that my flocks are sorely depleted of carriers.

Erek

CHAPTER THREE
An Advantageous Offer

‘Alise. You have a guest.’

Alise lifted her eyes slowly. Her sketching charcoal hovered over the heavy paper on her desk. ‘Now?’ she asked reluctantly.

Her mother sighed. ‘Yes. Now. As in the “now” that I have been telling you to expect all day. You knew that Hest Finbok was coming. You have known it since his last visit, last week at this same hour. Alise, his courtship honours you and our family. You should always receive him graciously. Yet whenever he calls, I have to come and ferret you out of hiding. I wish you would remember that when a young man comes to call on you, it is only polite to treat him respectfully.’

Alise set down her charcoal. Her mother winced as she wiped her smudged fingers clean on a dainty kerchief embroidered with Sevian lace. It was a tiny act of vindictiveness. The kerchief had been a gift from Hest. ‘Not to mention that we must all remember that he is my only suitor, and therefore my only chance of wedding.’ Her comment was almost too soft for her mother to hear. With a sigh, she added, ‘I’m coming, Mother. And I will be gracious.’

Her mother was silent for a moment. ‘That is wise of you,’ she said finally, adding in a voice that was cool but still gentle, ‘I am relieved to see that you have finally stopped sulking.’

Alise could not tell if her mother was stating something she believed was true or was demanding that she accede to a dictation of deportment. She closed her eyes for an instant. Today, to the north, in the depths of the Rain Wilds, the dragons were emerging from their cases. Well, she amended to herself, today was the day appointed by Tintaglia for the leaves and debris to be swept away from them, so that the sunlight might touch them and stir them to wakefulness. Perhaps even now, as she sat at her tidy little desk in her pale room, surrounded by her tattered scrolls and feeble efforts at notes and sketching, dragons were tearing and shouldering their way out of the cocoons.

For a moment, she could imagine the whole scene: the verdant riverbank warmed by summer sunshine, the brilliantly-hued dragons trumpeting joyously as they emerged into daylight. The Rain Wild Traders were probably heralding the hatching with all sorts of festivities. She imagined a dais decorated with garlands of exotic flowers. There would be speeches of welcome to the emerging dragons, song and feasting. No doubt each dragon would parade before the dais, be joyously introduced, and then would open wide its glittering wings and lift off into the sky. These would be the first dragons to hatch in Sa knew how many years. Dragons had come back into the world … and here she was, trapped in Bingtown, shackled to a docile existence and subject to a courtship that baffled and annoyed her.

Disappointment suddenly smothered her. She had dreamed of making the trip to witness the dragons’ hatching since she had first heard of the serpents encasing themselves. Alise had begged it of her father, and when he had said it might be improper for her to travel on her own, she had flattered and bribed her younger brother’s wife until she had persuaded Alise’s younger brother to promise to accompany her. She had secretly sold off items from her hope chest to amass the passage money she needed and pretended to her parents that she had been saving from the small monthly allowance they gave her. The precious billet for the trip was still wedged in the corner of her vanity mirror. For weeks, she had seen it every day, a stiff rectangle of cream-coloured paper scribbled over with a clerk’s spidery handwriting attesting that she had paid full price for two round trips. That bit of paper had represented a promise to herself. It had meant that she would see what she had read of; she would witness an event that would, that must change the course of history. She would sketch the scene and she would write of it authoritatively, tying all she witnessed to her years of scholarly research. Then everyone would have to recognize her knowledge and ability and concede that although she might be self-educated on the matter she was certainly far more than an eccentric old maid obsessed with dragons and their Elderling companions. She was a scholar.

She would have something that belonged to her, something salvaged out of the miserable existence that life in Bingtown had become. Even before war had descended, her family’s fortune had been scraping bottom. They lived simply, in a modest manor house on the unfashionable edges of Bingtown. No grand park surrounded their home, only a humble rose garden tended by her sisters. Her father made his living by expediting trades between wealthier families. When war came and trading faltered, there was little profit for a go-between. She was, she knew, a plain, solid girl, from a plain, solid family ensconced firmly toward the lower end of the Bingtown Traders social ladder. She had never been anyone’s idea of a ‘good catch’. It had not brightened her forecast when her mother had delayed her debut into society until her eighteenth year. She’d understood the reasons: her family had been arranging and financing her older sister’s wedding. They’d had nothing to spare to launch yet another daughter. When, finally, she had been presented to Trader society three years ago, no man had raced to claim her from the butterfly mob of young girls. Three crops of Bingtown femininity had been released into the pool of eligible maidens since then, and with every passing year, her prospects of courtship and marriage had dimmed.

The war with Chalced had obscured them entirely. Her mind shied from recalling those nights of fire and smoke and screams. Chalcedean vessels had invaded the harbour and burned the warehouses and half the market square to the ground. Bingtown, the fabled and fabulous trade town where ‘if a man could imagine it, he could find it for sale’ had become a city of stinking ruins and sodden ash. If the dragon Tintaglia had not come to their aid, like as not, Alise and her entire family would be Tattooed slaves somewhere in Chalced by now. As it was, the invaders had been repelled and the Traders had formed a rough alliance with the Pirate Isles. Jamaillia, their motherland, had come to its senses and seen that Chalced was not an ally but a plundering nation of thieves. Today, Bingtown Harbour was clear of invaders, the city had begun to rebuild, and life had begun a hesitant return to routine. She knew she should have been grateful that her family’s home had escaped burning, and that their holdings, several farms that grew mostly root crops, were now producing food that was greatly in demand.

But the truth was, she wasn’t. Oh, not that she wished to be living in a half-burned hovel or sleeping in a ditch. No. But for a few frightening, exhilarating weeks, she had thought she might escape from her role as the third daughter in a lesser Bingtown family. The night Tintaglia had landed outside the burned shell of the Traders’ Concourse and struck her bargain with the Traders, offering her protection of their city in exchange for the Traders’ pledge to aid the serpents and the young dragons when they hatched, Alise’s heart had soared. She had been there. She had stood, shawl clutched about her shoulders, shivering in the dark, and listened to the dragon’s words. She had seen the great creature’s gleaming hide, her spinning eyes, and yes, she had fallen under the spell of Tintaglia’s voice and glamour. She had fallen gladly. She loved the dragon and all that she stood for. Alise could think of no higher calling than to spend the rest of her life chronicling the history of dragons and Elderlings. She would combine what she knew of their history with her recording of their glorious return to the world. In that night, in that moment, Alise had suddenly perceived she had a place and a mission in the world. In that time of flames and strife, anything had seemed possible, even that some day the dragon Tintaglia would look at her and address her directly and perhaps, even, thank her for dedicating herself to such a work.

Even in the weeks that followed, as Bingtown pieced itself back together and struggled to find a new normalcy, Alise had continued to believe that the horizons of her life had widened. The Tattooed, the freed slaves, had begun to mingle with the Three Ships Folk and with the Traders as all united to rebuild Bingtown’s economy and physical structures. People – even women – had left their usual safe orbits and pitched in, doing whatever they must to rebuild. She knew that war was a terrible, destructive thing and that she should hate it, but the war had been the only really exciting thing that had ever happened in her life.

She should have known her dreams would come to naught. As homes and businesses were rebuilt, as trade took on a new shape despite war and piracy, everyone else had tried desperately to make things go back as they were before. Everyone except Alise. Having glimpsed a possible future for herself, she had struggled wildly to escape from the suffocating destiny that sought to reclaim her.

Even when Hest Finbok had first begun to insinuate himself into her life, she had kept her focus on her dream. Her mother’s enthusiasm, her father’s quiet pride that the family’s wallflower had finally attracted not only a suitor but such a rare prize of a suitor had not distracted her from her plan. Let her mother flutter and her father beam. She knew Hest’s interest in her would come to nothing, and thus she had paid little mind to it. She was past pinning her hopes on such silly, girlish dreams.

The Traders’ Summer Ball was only two days away now. It would be the first event to be held in the newly rebuilt Traders’ Concourse. All of Bingtown was in a stir about it. Representatives and guests from the Tattooed and the Three Ships Folk would join the Bingtown Traders in commemorating the rejuvenation of their city. Despite the ongoing war, it was expected to be a celebration beyond anything Bingtown had ever experienced, the first time that the general population of Bingtown had been invited to the traditional event. Alise had given it little thought, for she had not expected to attend it. She had her ticket for her trip to the Rain Wilds. While other eligible women fluttered their fans and spun gaily on the dance floor, she would be in Cassarick, watching a new generation of dragons emerge from their cocoons.

But two weeks ago Hest Finbok had asked her father’s permission to escort her to the ball. Her father had given it. ‘And having given it, my girl, I can scarcely withdraw it! How could I imagine that you would want to go up the Rain Wild River to see some big lizards hatch rather than go to the Summer Ball on the arm of one of Bingtown’s most eligible bachelors?’ He had smiled proudly the day he had dashed her dream to pieces, so sure he had known what was truly in her heart. Her mother had said that she had never even imagined that her father should consult her on such a matter. Didn’t she trust her parents to do what was in her best interest?

If she had not been strangling on her dismay and disappointment, Alise might have given her father and her mother a response to that. Instead she had turned and fled the room. For days afterwards she had mourned the lost opportunity. Sulked, as her mother put it. It hadn’t deterred her mother from calling in seamstresses, and buying up every measure of rose silk and pink ribbon that remained in Bingtown. No expense would be spared for her dress. What did it matter that Alise’s dream had died in the egg, if they had theirs of finally marrying off their useless and eccentric second younger daughter? Even in this time of war and tightened budgets, they would spend feverishly in hopes of being not only rid of her but also gaining an important trade alliance. Alise had been sick with disappointment. Sulking, her mother called it. Was she finished with it?

Yes.

For an instant, she was surprised. Then she sighed and felt herself let go of something that she hadn’t even known she was clutching. She almost felt her spirit sink back to a level of ordinary expectations, back to accepting the quiet, restrained life of a proper Trader’s daughter who would become a Trader’s wife.

It was over, it was past, it was finished. Let it go. It wasn’t meant to be. She had turned her eyes to the window during her brief reverie. She had been staring sightlessly out at the little rose garden that was now in full blossom. It looked, she thought dully, just as it had every summer of her life. Nothing ever really changed. She forced the words out past the gravel in her throat. ‘I’m not sulking, Mother.’

‘I’m glad. For both of us.’ Her mother cleared her throat. ‘He’s a fine man, Alise. Even if he were not such a good catch, I’d still say that about him.’

‘Better than you expected for me. Better than I deserve.’

A pause of three heartbeats. Then her mother said brusquely, ‘Don’t make him wait, Alise.’ Her long skirts swished gently against the hardwood floor as she left the room.

She had not, Alise noticed, contradicted her. Alise was aware of it; her parents were aware of it, her siblings were aware of it. No one had ever spoken it aloud, until now. Hest Finbok was too good for her. It made no sense that the wealthy heir of a major Bingtown family would wish to wed the plain middle child of the Kincarron Traders. Alise felt strangely freed that her mother had not denied her words. And she was proud that she had spoken her words without resentment. A bit sad, she thought as she re-smudged her fingers by neatly restoring her charcoal to its little silver box. A bit sad that her mother had not even tried to claim she deserved such a fine man. Even if it was a lie, it seemed to her that a dutiful mother would have said it, just to be polite to her least attractive daughter.

Alise had tried to think of a way to explain her lack of interest in Hest to her mother. But she knew that if she said to her mother, ‘It’s too late. My girlhood dreams are dead, and I like the ones I have now better,’ her mother would have been horrified. But it was the truth. Like any young woman, she had once dreamed of roses and stolen kisses and a romantic suitor who would not care about the size of her dowry. Those dreams had died slowly, drowned in tears and humiliation. She had no desire to revive them.

A year past her emergence into society, with no suitors in sight, Alise had resigned herself to her fate and begun grooming herself for the role of maiden aunt. She played the harp, tatted excellent lace, was very good at puddings, and even had selected a suitably whimsical hobby. Long before Tintaglia had jolted her dreams, she’d become a student of dragon lore, with a strong secondary knowledge of Elderlings. If a scroll existed in Bingtown that dealt with either topic, Alise had found a way to read, buy or borrow it long enough to copy it. She believed she now had the most extensive library of information on the two ancient races that anyone in the town possessed, much of it painstakingly copied over in her own hand.

Along with that hard-earned knowledge, she had earned a reputation for eccentricity that not even a large dowry would have mitigated. In a middle daughter from a less affluent Trader family, it was an unforgivable flaw. She didn’t care. Her studies, begun on a whim, had seized her imagination. Her dragon knowledge was no longer an eccentric hobby; she was a scholar, a self-taught historian, collecting, organizing and comparing every scrap of information she could garner about dragons and the ancient Elderlings rumoured to have lived alongside the great beasts. So little was known of them and yet their history was woven through the ancient underground cities of the Rain Wilds and hence into the history of Bingtown. The oldest scrolls were antiquities from those cities, written in letters and a language that no one could read or speak. Many of the newer scrolls and writings were haphazard attempts at translations, and the worst ones were merely wild speculation. Those that were illustrated were often stained or tattered, or the inks and vellum had become food for vermin. One had to guess what had originally been there. But with her studies, Alise had begun to be able to do more than guess, and her careful cross referencing of surviving scrolls had yielded up to her a full score of words. She felt confident that with time, she could force all their secrets from the ancient writings. And time, she knew, was one thing an old maid had in abundance. Time to study and ponder, time to unlock all these tantalizing mysteries.

If only Hest Finbok had not stepped into her life! Five years her senior, the heir son of a Trader family that was very well to do, even by Bingtown standards, he was the answer to a dream. Unfortunately, the dream was her mother’s, not Alise’s. Her mother had near fainted with joy the first time Hest had asked Alise to dance. When, during the same evening, he had danced with her four more times, her mother had scarcely been able to contain her excitement. On the way home in the coach she had been unable to speak of anything else. ‘He is so handsome, and always so well dressed. Did you see the look on Trader Meldar’s face when Hest asked you to dance? For years, his wife has been throwing her daughters at him; I’ve heard she has asked Hest to dinner at her home as many as seven times in a month! The poor man. All know the Meldar girls are nervous as fleas. Can you imagine sitting at a table with all four of them at once? Twitchy as cats, the lot of them, their mother included. I believe he only goes there for the sake of the younger son. What was his name? Sedric? He and Hest have been friends for years. I hear that Trader Meldar was offended when Hest offered Sedric a position in his household. But what other prospect does the man have? The war has taken most of the Meldar family fortune. His brother will inherit what is left, and they’ll either have to dower the girls well to marry them off, or keep them all and feed them! I doubt Sedric will see so much as an allowance.’

‘Mother, please! You know that Sophie Meldar is my friend. And Sedric has always been kind to me. He’s a very nice young man, with prospects of his own.’

Her mother had scarcely noticed her words. ‘Oh, Alise, you looked so lovely together. Hest Finbok is the perfect height for you, and when I saw the pale blue of your gown against the royal blue of his jacket, well! It was as if you’d both just stepped out of a painting. Did he speak to you while you danced?’

‘Only a few words. He’s a very charming man,’ Alise had admitted to her mother. ‘Very charming indeed.’

And he was. Charming. Intelligent. More than handsome enough for all ordinary purposes. And wealthy. On that night, Alise had been unable to divine what on earth Hest wanted of her. She had been unable to think of a single thing to say to him while they danced. When he had asked her what she did to pass the time, she told him that she enjoyed reading. ‘An unusual occupation for a young lady! What sorts of things do you read?’ he had pressed her. She had, in that moment, hated him for asking but she had answered truthfully.

‘I read about dragons. And Elderlings. They fascinate me. Now that Tintaglia has allied with us, and a new generation of dragons will soon grace our skies, someone must become knowledgeable about them. I believe that is my destiny.’ There. That should betray to him how hopelessly unsuitable a dance partner she was.

‘Do you?’ he had asked her, quite seriously. His hand pressed the small of her back, easing her into a turn that seemed almost graceful.

‘Yes, I do,’ she had replied, effectively ending his small talk. Yet, inexplicably, he had asked her to dance yet again, and smiled silently at her as he deftly led her through that evening’s final measures. As the last notes of the music died away, he had held her hand perhaps a moment too long before releasing her fingers. She had been the one to turn and walk away from him, back to the table where her mother waited, pink-cheeked and breathless with excitement.

All the way home in the carriage, she had listened, baffled, while her mother gloated. The next day, when the flowers arrived with a note thanking her for dancing with him, she had thought he was mocking her. And now, three months later, after ninety days of being besieged by his deliberate and carefully waged courtship of her, she still had no answer. What did Hest Finbok, one of the most eligible bachelors in Bingtown, see in her?

Alise forced herself to admit she was deliberately dawdling. She tidied away her sketches and notes with a scowl. She had been working with information from three separate scrolls, trying to divine what an Elderling had truly looked like. She knew she would not be able to get back to her work again this afternoon. With a sigh, she went to her mirror, to be sure that no errant smudge of charcoal remained on her face or hands. No. She was fine. She wasted just a moment looking into her own eyes. Grey eyes. Not snapping black eyes, nor yet placid blue nor jade green. Grey as granite, with short lashes, above a short, straight nose, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. Her ordinary features she could have tolerated, were they not dotted everywhere with freckles. The freckles were not a gentle sprinkling across her nose like some girls had. No. She was evenly dotted, like a speckled egg, all over her face and on her arms as well. Lemon juice did not fade them and the slightest kiss of the sun turned them darker. She thought of powdering her face to obscure them and then decided against it. She was what she was, and she wasn’t going to deceive the man or herself by dabbing on paint and powder. She patted at her upswept red hair, pushing a few dangling tendrils back from her face, and spent a moment making the lace of her collar lie flat before she left her room to descend the stairs.

Hest was waiting for her in the morning room. Her mother was chatting with him about how promising the roses looked this year. A silver tray set with a pale blue porcelain pot and cups rested on a low table near him. Steam from the pot flavoured the air with the delicate scent of mint tea. Alise wrinkled her nose slightly; she did not care for mint tea at all. Then she controlled her face with a pleasant smile, lifted her chin and swept into the room with a gracious, ‘Good morning, Hest! How pleasant to have you come calling.’

He rose as she approached, moving with the languid grace of a big cat. The eyes he turned toward her were green, a startling contrast to his well-behaved black hair which, in defiance of current fashion, he wore pulled back from his face and fastened at the nape of his neck with a simple leather tie. Its sheen reminded her of a crow’s folded wings. He was attired in his dark blue jacket today, but the simple scarf at his throat echoed the green of his eyes. He smiled with white teeth in a wind-weathered face as he bowed to her, and for just that moment, her heart gave a lurch. The man was beautiful, simply beautiful. In the next moment, she recalled herself to the truth. He was far too beautiful a man to be interested in her.

As soon as she had taken a chair, he resumed his own seat. Her mother muttered an excuse that neither one paid any attention to. It was her pattern, to leave them in one another’s company as often as she decently could. Alise smiled to herself. She was certain her mother’s vicarious imaginings of what she and Hest said and did in her absence were far more interesting than the reality of their quiet and rather dull conversations. ‘May I offer you more tea?’ she asked him politely, and when he demurred, she filled her own cup. Mint. Why would her mother have chosen mint when she knew that Alise disdained it? As he raised his own cup to drink from it, she knew. So that her mouth and breath would be fresh, if Hest should decide to steal a kiss.

She inadvertently gave a tiny snort of scepticism. The man had never even tried to take her hand. His courtship had been painfully free of any attempts at romance.

Abruptly, Hest set his cup down on its saucer with a tiny clink. Alise was startled when he met her eyes with something of a challenge in his glance. ‘Something amuses you. It is me?’

‘No! No, of course not. That is, well, of course, you are amusing when you choose to be, but I was not laughing at you. Of course not.’ She took a sip of the tea.

‘Of course not,’ he echoed her, but his tone said that he doubted her words. His voice was rich and deep, so deep that when he spoke softly, it was sometimes hard to understand him. But he wasn’t speaking softly now. ‘For you’ve never laughed, or truly favoured me with a smile. Oh, you bend your mouth when you know you should smile, but it isn’t real. Is it, Alise?’

She had never foreseen this. Was this a quarrel? They’d scarcely ever had a real conversation, so how could they have a quarrel? And, given her complete lack of interest in the man, why should his displeasure with her make her heart beat so fast? She was blushing; she could feel the heat in her cheeks. So silly. What would have been fine and appropriate in a girl of sixteen scarcely was fitting for a woman of twenty-one. She tried to speak plainly in an effort to calm herself, but found herself falling over the words. ‘I’ve always tried to be polite to you – well, I always am polite, to everyone. I am not a giggling girl, to simper and smirk at every jest you make.’ She found a sudden curb for her tongue and forced herself to claim the higher ground. ‘Sir, I do not think you have any grounds to complain of my behaviour toward you.’

‘Nor any grounds to rejoice at it,’ he replied easily. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. ‘Alise, I’ve a confession to make to you. I listen to gossip. Or rather, I should say that my man Sedric has a positive knack of hearing every rumour and scrap of scandal that Bingtown ever breeds. And from him I hear the tale that you are not happy with the courtship, nor pleased at the prospect of attending the Summer Ball with me. According to what Sedric has heard, you would rather be in the Rain Wilds, watching the sea serpent eggs hatch into dragons.’

‘The serpents hatch from dragon eggs,’ she corrected him before she could stop herself. ‘The serpents weave cases that some folk call “cocoons”, and in the spring the new dragons emerge from them, fully formed.’ Her mind darted frantically. What had she said and to whom, that he had come to know of her other plans? Ah, yes. Her brother’s wife. She had commiserated with her over the wasted ticket money, and Alise had carelessly replied that she wished she were going on her journey rather than to the ball. Why on earth had that stupid woman repeated such a thing; and why had Alise ever been so careless as to utter it aloud?

Hest leaned forward in his seat. ‘And you would rather witness that than attend the Summer Ball on my arm?’

It was a blunt question and suddenly it seemed to deserve the bluntest possible answer. She thought she had accepted her fate, but now a final spark of regret blazed up as defiance. ‘Yes. Yes, I would. Such was my intent when I purchased a ticket on a liveship bound up the river. But for you and the Summer Ball, I would be there right now, sketching them and taking notes, hearing their first utterances and watching Tintaglia as she ushered them into the world and up into the sky. I’d witness dragons come back into our world.’

He was silent for a time, watching her very intently. She felt her blush deepen. Well, he had asked. If he didn’t want the answer, he shouldn’t have asked the question. He steepled his fingers for a moment and looked at them. She fully expected him to rise and stalk, insulted, out of the door. It would be a great relief, she told herself, for this mockery of a courtship to be over. Why, then, did she feel her throat tightening and her eyes begin to prickle with tears? He kept his gaze on his hands as he asked his final question. ‘Dare I hope that the chill of your displeasure over the last few weeks has been a result of your disappointment in missing your trip rather than a disappointment in me as a suitor?’

The question was so unexpected that she couldn’t think of an answer for it. He continued to regard her with a direct and enquiring glance. His lashes were long, his brows perfectly shaped. ‘Well?’ he prompted her again and her thoughts suddenly snapped back to his question. She looked away. ‘I was very disappointed not to go,’ she started huskily. Then she amended it, ‘I am very disappointed not to be there now. It is not just a once in a lifetime occurrence; it is something that will never ever happen again! Oh, there may be other hatches – I fervently hope there will be other hatches. But none like this, none like the first hatch of dragons after generations of absence!’ Abruptly she set down the cup of horrid mint tea with a clatter on the saucer. She rose from her chair and went to stand at the window, looking out over her mother’s cherished roses. She didn’t see them.

‘Others will be there. I just know it. And they will sketch it and write of what they see, at first hand. Their knowledge will not come from musty bits of calf-skin with faded letters in a language no one knows. They will study what happens there and they will become known for their learning. The respect and the fame will go to them. And all of my studies, all of my years of puzzle-piecing will be for naught. No one will ever think of me as a scholar of dragons. If anything, they will think only that I am the dotty old woman who mutters over her tatty old scrolls, rather like Mama’s Aunt Jorinda who collected boxes and boxes of clam shells, all of the same size and colour.’

She halted her tongue, horrified that she had just revealed such a thing about her family. Then she clamped her jaws tightly. What did she care what he thought? She was sure that sooner or later, he would realize that she was an unsuitable bride and be done with her. He would have trifled with her just long enough for her to lose her single opportunity to make something of herself, to be something besides the old maiden aunt living off her brother’s charity. Outside the window, the world basked in a summer that was full of promise for everyone else. To her, it was a season of opportunity lost.

Behind her, she heard Hest give a heavy sigh. Then he took a deep breath and spoke. ‘I … well, I am sorry. I did know of your interest in dragons. You told me of it, yourself, the first night I danced with you. And I did take it seriously, Alise, I did. I just didn’t realize how important it was to you, that you actually wanted to study the creatures. I’m afraid that I have been thinking it was just some eccentricity of yours, just an amusing hobby perhaps that you had taken up to occupy hours that I, well, that I hoped I might soon fill for you.’

She listened, caught between amazement and horror. She had wanted someone to recognize her studies as more than an amusement, but now that he did, she felt humiliated that he knew how serious she was about them. It suddenly seemed a foolish, no, an almost insane fixation rather than a legitimate study. Was it any better than letting oneself obsess about clam shells? What had she to do with dragons, what were they to her, really, other than an excuse not to engage with the life fate had given her? She felt first hot, then faint. How could she have ever imagined that anyone would consider her an expert on dragons? How foolish she must appear to him.

She had not turned to him nor made any reply. She heard him sigh again. ‘I should have known that you were not an idle dilettante, waiting for someone else to come give shape and purpose to your life. Alise, I apologize. I’ve treated you badly in this regard. My intentions were good, or so I thought them. Now I perceive that I have been only serving my own ends, and trying to fit you into a space in my life where I thought you best should go. I’ve experienced the same sort of treatment from my own family, so I know what it is to have one’s dreams trampled.’

There was so much emotion in his voice that she felt shamed by it. ‘Please,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Please, don’t let it concern you. It was an idle fancy, a cobweb dream that I have built too large. I shall be fine.’

He seemed not to hear her. ‘I came here with a gift today, thinking that perhaps I might persuade you to think better of me. But now I fear you can only see it as a mockery of your true dreams. Still, I pray you will accept it, as small reparation for what you have lost.’

A gift. The last thing she wanted from him was a gift. He’d brought her gifts before, the expensive lacy handkerchief, a tiny glass vial of fine perfume, fancy candies from the market, and a bracelet of seed pearls. Gifts that were all the dearer, procured as they were in a time of war. Gifts fit for a young maiden, gifts that had seemed to mock her, a woman on the verge of spinsterhood. She found her tongue and made it move to say the right things. ‘You are too kind to me.’ If only he could understand that she meant the words with her whole heart.

‘Please, come back and sit down. And let me give it to you. I fear you will find it more bitter than sweet.’

Alise turned away from the window. After staring out at the bright day, the room seemed dim and uninviting. Until her eyes adjusted, Hest was just a darker silhouette in the gloomy room. She didn’t want to sit down near him, didn’t want to take the chance of his reading on her face what she truly felt. She could make her voice obey her; it was harder to keep the truth from her eyes. She took a deep breath. She hadn’t cried, not a single tear. There was that to be proud of. And the man in the chair might represent the only other path fate was now offering her. She didn’t, she couldn’t believe in him.

But for now, the dictates of society directed that she must feign that she did. She would not make herself any more of a fool before him than she already had. She fixed her mind on the thought that whatever she might do or say to him now might become the humorous little tale that he told at a dinner years from now, when he had a true and appropriate wife at his side to laugh sweetly at his story of a foolish courtship before he’d met her. She schooled her face to a calm expression; she knew she could not manage to smile pleasantly yet, and walked with a measured step back to her chair. She sat down and took up her cooling cup of tea. ‘Are you certain that you would not like me to freshen your tea for you?’

‘Absolutely certain,’ he replied brusquely. The beast. He wasn’t going to let her find refuge in polite small talk. She took a sip from her own cup to cover the flash of anger she felt toward him.

He twisted in his seat, retrieving a leather satchel from behind it. ‘I have a contact in the Rain Wilds. He’s a liveship captain who sails up there frequently. You know about the excavations at Cassarick. When they first found the buried city there, they were quite elated. They thought it would be like Trehaug was, with miles of tunnels to excavate and treasures to be found in chamber after chamber. But whatever disaster buried the Elderling cities was far harsher to Cassarick. The chambers had collapsed rather than merely filling with sand or mud. As of yet, little of anything has been found intact. But a few items were.’

He opened the satchel. His brief introduction had focused all her attention on the satchel. Trehaug was the major city of the Rain Wilds, built high in the trees in the swamp land. But below it the Rain Wild Traders had found and plundered an ancient buried Elderling city. Similar mound formations at Cassarick near the serpent’s cocooning beach had seemed to promise a similar buried treasure city. Little had been heard since the trumpeting of the discovery, but that was not unexpected or unusual. The Rain Wild Traders were a short-spoken lot, keeping their secrets close even from their Bingtown kin. Her heart sank at Hest’s news. She had dreamed of them uncovering a library or at least a trove of scrolls and art. In her dreams, she had been there, lingering after the dragon hatch, and she had imagined herself saying, ‘Well, I’ve studied everything I could lay my hands on from Trehaug. I can’t translate all of this, but there are words I can pick out. Give me six months, and perhaps I’ll have something for you.’ They would have been dazzled by her knowledge and grateful to her. The Rain Wild Traders would have recognized her worth; a translated scroll was worth hundreds of times the value of an undeciphered one, not just in terms of knowledge but in trade appraisal. She would have stayed on in the Rain Wilds, and been valued there. So she had imagined it a hundred times in her darkened room at night. On a summer afternoon, here in the parlour, her dream faded to a child’s self-indulgent imagining. It had, she thought again, all been a dream built of vanity and cobwebs.

‘How sad,’ she managed to say in an appropriate voice. ‘I knew there were such high hopes when rumours of a second buried city first surfaced.’

He nodded, his dark head bent over the buckles of the satchel. She watched his fingers work the strap through the metal and at last pull it free. ‘They did find one room with scrolls and such in it. The lower half of the room had silted in; I understand they are making efforts to salvage what they could of the scrolls that were buried, but the river water can be acid. However, there was one tall case in there, and six of the scrolls on the upper shelves were behind glass, in tubes made perhaps from horn and tightly stoppered. They were not perfectly preserved, but they did survive. Two seem to be plans for a ship. One has many illustrations of plants. Two others are possibly plans for a building. And the last one is here. For you.’

She could not speak. He had taken from the satchel a fat horn cylinder and she found herself wondering what sort of a beast had furnished such an immense and gleaming black horn. With a twist, he freed a wooden stopper from it, and then coaxed forth the contents. The scroll he drew out was pale tan, a thick roll of fine parchment wrapped around a dowel of polished black wood. The edges looked a bit frayed, but there were no outward signs of water damage or insect attacks or mildew. He offered it to her. She lifted her hands and then let them fall back in her lap. Her voice quavered when she spoke. ‘What … what does it concern?’

‘No one is exactly sure. But there are illustrations of an Elderling woman with black hair and golden eyes. And a dragon with similar colouring.’

‘She was a queen,’ Alise breathed. ‘I don’t know how to translate her name. But images of a crowned woman with dark hair and golden eyes occur in four of the scrolls I’ve studied. And in one, she is shown being carried in a sort of basket by a black dragon. He flew with her in the basket.’

‘Extraordinary,’ Hest muttered. He sat very still, holding the scroll out to her. Alise discovered that her hands were gripping one another tightly. After a moment he said, ‘Don’t you want to look at it?’

She drew a ragged breath. ‘I know how much a scroll like that is worth; I know how much you must have paid for it.’ She swallowed. ‘I can’t accept such an expensive gift. It’s not … that is …’

‘It wouldn’t be proper. Unless we were engaged.’ His voice had gone very deep. Was it a plea or a taunt?

‘I don’t understand why you court me!’ she burst out suddenly. ‘I’m not pretty. My family is not wealthy or powerful. My dowry is pitiful. I’m not even young. I’m past twenty! And you, you have everything, you are handsome, wealthy, intelligent, charming … why are you doing this? Why do you court me?’

He had drawn back from her a little bit, but he didn’t seem flustered. On the contrary, a small smile bent his mouth.

‘Do you think this is funny? Is it some sort of joke, some wager, perhaps?’ she demanded wildly.

At those words, the smile fled his face. He rose abruptly, the scroll still clasped in his hand. ‘Alise, that is … beyond insult! That you could accuse me of such a thing! Is that what you truly think of me?’

‘I don’t know what to think of you!’ she responded. Her heart was beating somewhere in her throat. ‘I don’t know why you asked me to dance that first time. I don’t know why you court me. I fear it can only end in disappointment and, and humiliation when you finally realize I am unsuitable and walk away from me. I had become accustomed to the idea that I would never wed. I had found a new purpose for my life. And now I fear that I will lose both my resignation to my spinsterhood and my opportunity to be something besides a withered old maid in the back rooms of my brother’s house.’

Hest slowly sank back into his seat. He held the precious scroll loosely in his hands as if he had forgotten it, or at least forgotten how valuable an object it was. She tried not to stare at it. When he spoke, his words came slowly. ‘Again, Alise, you make me see I have been unfair to you. Truly, you are no ordinary woman.’ He paused and it seemed to Alise that it was a century before he spoke again. ‘I could lie to you now. I could flatter you with sweet words and pretend to be infatuated with you. But I perceive now that you would soon see through such a ruse, and would disdain me all the more for attempting it.’ He folded his lips for a long moment before he spoke again.

‘Alise, you say you are not young. Neither am I. I am five years older than you are. I am, as you bluntly say, wealthy. The war has greatly affected our fortune, to be sure, as it has the fortune of every Bingtown Trader. And yet, as our trading has been diverse as are our holdings, we have been less damaged than many. I trust that we shall weather this war and emerge as a powerful family in the new Bingtown. And when my father dies, I will be the Trader for my family. I have been blessed, or sometimes I think, cursed, with a pleasing appearance. I have schooled myself to a charming manner, for we know that honey sweetens a bargain more than vinegar. I appear a social, convivial man, for that best suits the business I must do. Yet I do not think you will be surprised if I tell you that there is another Hest, a private and restrained one who, like you, enjoys being left in peace to pursue his own interests.

‘I will tell you plainly that for several years now, my parents have been urging me to wed. I spent my youth in being educated and in travelling, the better to understand my father’s trading partners. Balls and festivals and indeed,’ he gestured at the tray and cups, ‘polite tea parties bore me. And yet, according to my parents, I must court and wed a woman if I am to have children to follow me. I must have a wife who will keep track of our social duties, entertain lavishly when it is required, and move easily within Bingtown society. In short, I must marry a woman who is Trader born and raised. I admit that I would enjoy a quiet home of my own, and undemanding companionship from a woman who respected my foibles. So, when my parents told me, quite seriously, that I must either wed or begin to train my cousin to be my heir, I sighed at first. Then I looked about for a woman who would be calm, sensible and able to be independent of me for her own amusements. I needed someone capable of running my household without my constant attention. A woman who would not feel neglected if left alone for an evening, or even for months when business forces me to travel. You were suggested to me by one of my friends who had, indeed, heard of your interest in dragons and Elderlings. I believe you rather boldly went to his family home to borrow scrolls from his father’s library. He was very impressed with your forthrightness and your scholarship.’

His words froze her. She suddenly knew who had recommended her to him. Sedric Meldar, Sophie’s brother. He had been the one to help her find the scrolls in his father’s study on the day she had borrowed them. She had always felt friendly toward Sedric; she’d even been infatuated with him when she was a girl. Yet it still shocked her to think he had urged his friend to consider her as a bride. Unaware of her confusion, Hest continued his tale.

‘So, when I was lamenting my situation, he told me that I should find no better bride than a woman who already had a life and an interest of her own. And so I have found you to be. Indeed, you have such a life and interest of your own that I begin to wonder if a husband is something you could fit into your schedule.’ He suddenly lifted his dark gaze to her. Did a spark of amusement twinkle in those depths?

‘This is not a romantic proposal, Alise. I suspect that you deserve far better than I am offering you. Yet, bluntly speaking, I do not think you will be offered better. I am a wealthy man. I am intelligent, well mannered, and I think myself kind. I think we shall get on well enough, me with my business and you with your scholarly pursuits. In fact, I think that after we are wed, we shall both be greatly relieved to leave behind the nagging of our parents. So. Can you give me an answer today, Alise? Will you marry me?’

He paused. She could find no breath to answer his outrageous proposal. He thought, perhaps, that she hesitated. He repeated what, to another woman, might have seemed insult most foul, but to her was simply an acknowledgment of their positions. ‘I do not think you will get a better offer. I am rich. Servants will do all the drudgery. You may hire whatever house-keepers and butlers you wish. Hire a secretary and a cook to plan our dinners and entertainments. Whatever staff you need to preserve our façade, you shall have. You will have not only the time to pursue your studies, but an income sufficient to acquire the scrolls and books you require. And if you must travel to follow your studies, I will provide you with the proper companionship to allow you to do so. I do, sincerely, regret that I have made you lose the opportunity to see the dragons hatch. I promise you that, if you accept my proposal, you will be allowed to journey up the Rain Wild River and take whatever time you think you need to study the creatures for yourself. Come now. You cannot hope for a better bargain than that!’

Alise spoke slowly. ‘You would buy me, in the hopes of a simpler life for yourself. You would buy me, with scrolls and time for scholarship.’

‘You put it a bit crudely but—’

‘I accept,’ she said quickly. She held out her hand to him, thinking perhaps he would lift it to his lips and kiss it. Thinking, perhaps, he might even draw her into an embrace. Instead, he took it with a smile, shook it firmly as if they were two men sealing an agreement, and then turned it palm up. He set the treasured scroll into it. It was heavy, preserved by oil rubbed into it perhaps. The smell of its secrets rose to entice her. She hastily raised her other hand to cradle the precious thing. Hest was speaking, his deep voice rich with satisfaction.

‘With your permission, I will announce our nuptials at the Summer Ball. After, of course, I have begged your father’s leave.’

‘I scarcely think you will have to beg it,’ she murmured. She clasped the scroll to her breast as if it were her first born, and wondered what she had agreed to do.

The heels of Hest’s boots clacked sharply against each stone step as he descended from the entry of the Kincarrons’ modest manor house. Sedric straightened up from where he had been lounging against the tall red wheel of the pony trap. He brushed his brown hair back from his eyes and smiled as his tall friend approached. The broad grin on Hest’s face promised good tidings. The little horse lifted his head and whickered softly as Sedric greeted him with, ‘And so?’

‘Both so impatient, are you?’ Hest asked them affably as he approached.

‘Well, you were a bit longer than we thought you’d be,’ Sedric agreed as he clambered to the seat and took up the reins. ‘I thought it might mean things weren’t going so well. The signs lately have not been encouraging.’

Long-legged Hest easily mounted to the passenger side of the cramped vehicle and sat down with a sigh. ‘I hate this contraption. The top of the seat hits me just above the small of my back, and the wheels find every bump in the road. I’ll be grateful when Father lets me put the carriage back into service.’

Sedric clucked to the horse and he leaned into his harness. ‘I expect that won’t be soon. While the roads are so bad, this is a much more sensible mode of transport. We can thread our way around and through the blockages in the streets. Half of Gold Drive is blocked with stacked timber this week, and that’s because they’re rebuilding. There is still so much of Bingtown that needs to be demolished and hauled away before new structures can be erected. Half the shops in the Grand Market are still burned husks.’

‘And the summer only makes the reek of the burned-out buildings worse. I know. I tried to find an open tea shop there yesterday, and the stench drove me away. I know the pony trap is more sensible. Just as wedding Alise Kincarron is the sensible thing to do. I don’t have to like either one, only endure them. I tell you, Sedric, I’ve only been sensible for a few months now, and I’m already heartily sick of it.’ With a groan, Hest leaned his lanky frame back on the low-backed seat, then sat up with an exclamation of disgust and rubbed his back. ‘This is the most uncomfortable mode of transport ever invented. Why on earth did the Kincarrons build their manor so far from the centre of town?’

‘Possibly because it was the piece of land they were originally granted by the Satrap. It’s had one benefit for them. The raiders and the looters didn’t want to come out this far.’

‘Keeping an ugly house intact is small recompense for living in such a forsaken location. Didn’t they ever consider moving to a better part of town?’

‘I doubt they’ve had the financial option.’

‘Seems like poor planning. A few less daughters to dower and they’d have had a better estate for their sons.’

Sedric chose to ignore his friend’s complaint. He held the reins lightly in his browned hands, guiding the horse around a washed-out bit of the road. ‘So. Must I drag the details from you? How did your courting go? Have you divined why the lady has seemed to scorn such an eminently fine catch as yourself?’

‘It was as you surmised. It shocks me to admit this, but your penchant for knowing the gossip and peculiarities of Bingtown have paid off yet again. Alise would genuinely rather travel up the Rain Wild River and watch dragons hatch than accompany me to the ball. She herself admitted that her dragon fixation is a bit of an obsession; apparently she had resigned herself to being an old maid and deliberately chosen an eccentric pursuit to occupy her lonely days. And then I not only dashed her dreams of spinsterhood all to splinters, but spoiled her chance of watching dragons hatch by viciously begging that she accompany me to the ball. So. I’m a beast. Naturally, that devastates me.’

Sedric cast a glance over at his usually devil-may-care friend. Hest looked solemn. ‘So I will have to drag it out of you, won’t I? Did you salvage anything? Will she accompany you to the ball?’

‘Oh, she’ll do better than that.’ Hest stretched casually, and then turned and gave Sedric the full benefit of his perfect grin. His green eyes sparked in conspiratorial glee. ‘Your gift suggestion worked perfectly. One glimpse of it and she accepted my proposal. Asking her father for her hand will be a mere formality, as she herself noted. Congratulate me, my friend. I’m to be wed.’ As he made that final announcement, his voice flattened, his tone suddenly at odds with his words.

Sedric bit his lower lip for a moment, quelling his own dismay. Quietly, he offered, ‘Congratulations. I wish you both every happiness.’

Hest scowled at him. ‘Well, I don’t know about her, but I intend to be happy. Because I don’t intend that this should change any aspect of my life. And if she’s wise, she’ll choose to be happy, too. She won’t get a better offer. Oh, don’t give me that rebuking look, Sedric. You’re the one who suggested that the best way for me to make my family happy was to find a woman who wouldn’t expect much of me. You even suggested that Alise Kincarron would perfectly fill the requirement. I met her, I agreed with you, and now she’s to be mine. In time, she’ll grace my home, provide me with a fat baby to inherit my name and fortune, and guarantee to me that my father doesn’t choose my cousin as heir over me. All very practical and wise, and at a minimum of inconvenience to myself.’

‘But sad, nonetheless,’ Sedric said quietly.

‘Why sad? We’ll all be getting what we want.’

‘Not precisely,’ Sedric muttered. ‘And not honestly.’ He sighed again. ‘And Alise deserves better. She’s a good person. A kind person.’

‘You, my friend, are too prone to sentiment. And honesty is vastly over-rated. Why, if we imposed honesty on Bingtown in general, all the Traders would be paupers by next week.’

Sedric found he could not frame a reply to that. After a moment, Hest asked defensively, ‘Why did you put the idea in my head, if you didn’t intend me to act on it?’

Sedric gave a small shrug. He hadn’t, truly, expected that Hest would follow up on his cynical suggestion. That he had done so slightly undercut his admiration for the man. ‘It’s an old saying. If you want to be happy, marry an ugly woman and live with a grateful wife.’ Then he admitted uncomfortably, ‘I was in my cups when I made the suggestion to you and feeling a bit morose about my own situation. Alise isn’t a bad person. And she’s certainly not ugly. Just not, well, not beautiful. Not by Bingtown standards. But she’s kind. She used to come visit my sisters when we were younger. She was kind to me during a time when most girls treated me as if I had some sort of a disease.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten that spotty phase you went through,’ Hest needled him merrily. ‘She probably thought you’d keep your spots and they’d match her freckles.’ His green eyes danced mischievously.

Sedric resisted a smile. ‘My “spots” were more than a phase; they seemed to last a lifetime! So her kindness, her willingness to be my partner at cards or to sit beside me at the table when she stayed for luncheon was important to me. She was my friend then. Not that I know her well now; I don’t, just well enough to know that she was nice and had a good mind, if not a pretty face or a fortune.’ Sedric shook his head unhappily, and then pushed his unruly hair back from his eyes. ‘I would never wish ill on her. When I suggested she’d make you a fine, undemanding wife, I never thought you would actually propose to her.’

‘Oh, of course you did!’ Hest was heartless in his accusation. ‘You’ve been by my side for most of my courtship of her. And you’ve been instrumental to the whole plan! You picked her out, you even told me what gift, exactly, might warm her toward me. And I should let you know that you were precisely correct on that! I thought the whole game was lost, until I trotted out that scroll. Turned the whole situation around for me, it did.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Sedric replied sourly. He tried not to think of his role in Hest’s scheme; he felt sullied by it now. Alise had been his friend. What had he been thinking, the night her name had rolled off his drunken tongue? He knew the guilty answer to that. He’d been thinking of himself, and how pleasant life was at the side of Hest Finbok. He’d been thinking of how he could keep that life intact and still advance his friend’s ambitions for himself.

He pushed the thought aside and busied himself guiding the horse around the worst of the potholes. Bingtown had focused its efforts on rebuilding burned and vandalized buildings, and neglected maintenance of the existing roads. By the time they got round to them again, there would be a whole season of repairs to be done. Sedric shook his head. Lately he felt as if the whole city was eroding away; everything that had made him so proud to be the son of a Bingtown Trader was now broken or tarnished or changed.

In the aftermath of the Chalcedean raids, the various factions of Bingtown had turned on one another settling old scores. When those had finally been resolved, the rebuilding had seemed slow and dispirited. It was better now, for the Traders’ Council had finally resumed their authority and enforced the laws. People felt it was safe now to rebuild, and with limited trade resuming, some had the resources to do so. But the new buildings going up seemed to have less character than the old ones, for they were built with haste rather than deliberation, and many looked almost identical. And Sedric was still not sure he agreed with the Council’s decision to allow so many non-Traders to share power and decisions in the rebuilding process. Former slaves, fishermen, and newcomers were mingling with the Traders now. It was all changing too fast. Bingtown would never be restored to what it was. Last night, when he had lamented the situation to his father, the man had been singularly unsympathetic to his view.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Sedric. You’re so dramatic about these things. Bingtown will go on. But it will never be what it was before, because Bingtown never was “what it was before”. Bingtown thrives on change. Bingtown is change. And those of us who can change will prosper right along with our town as it changes. A little change won’t hurt any of us. Wherever there is change, a clever man can find a profit. That’s what you should be turning your wits toward. How can you make this change benefit your family?’ And then his father had taken his short-stemmed pipe from his mouth, pointed it at his son and demanded, ‘Have you thought that maybe a bit of personal change would do you good? This arrangement you have as secretary for Hest and his right-hand man, well, it’s a good connection for you. You’ll meet many of his trading partners. You need to think how you can use those connections. You can’t spend your entire life playing second fiddle to your friend, no matter how deep the friendship or how pleasant a lifestyle it offers. And you should make the best of what you have, since you’ve thrown away all the opportunities I won for you.’

Sedric sighed at the memory. His father always turned any conversation back onto his failures as a son.

‘Are those heart-felt sighs for me, my friend?’ Hest gave an indulgent laugh. ‘Seddy, you always think the worst of me, don’t you? You’re fearing that the poor woman is deceived, her head turned by sweet words and my charming smile, aren’t you?’

‘Isn’t she?’ Sedric asked tightly. He already felt bad enough that he’d suggested Alise to his friend. Hest’s mockery of his regret stung.

‘Not at all. You’re chastising yourself over nothing. It’s all for the best, my friend!’ Hest clapped him genially on the shoulder and left his hand there as he leaned toward Sedric and confided, ‘She understands the arrangement completely. Oh, not at first. Initially, she stung me enough to make me nearly lose my aplomb, for she asked me, very bluntly, if my courtship were a jest or perhaps the result of a bet! That jolted me a bit, I’ll tell you. And then I recalled that you had said she was nobody’s fool, but a woman with an intellect. Scary little creatures, aren’t they?

‘So, I hastily reconsidered my strategy. I turned the tide of battle when I put all my cards on the table for her to see. I admitted to her that I was intent on making a marriage of convenience, and I even told her that I had specially selected her as the female most likely to cause me the least disruption to my life. Oh, don’t give me that baleful look! Of course, I put it a great deal more tactfully than that! But I made no avowals of love and affection. Instead, I offered her the chance to hire a staff for my house to keep all her housewifely duties at bay, and the budget to pursue her own eccentric little hobby.’

‘And she accepted that? She accepted your marriage proposal, on those terms?’

Hest laughed again. ‘Ah, Sedric, not all of us are idealistic romantics. The woman knew a good bargain when she was offered one. We shook hands on it, like good Traders, and that was the end of it. Or rather, I should say, this is the beginning of it. She’ll marry me, I’ll get an heir on her and my father will stop lecturing me on how important it is to him to see the family robe and vote have a worthy heir before he dies. He’s all but threatened to make my cousin his heir, and all on the basis of him being so infernally fecund. Two sons and a daughter, and Chet’s a year younger than I am. The man has no moderation at all. It pleases me unreasonably that when I get myself a son on Alise, he may come to regret how generously he’s ploughed and planted that wife of his. Wait until Chet realizes he’s going to have to find a way to provide for all of them, without my family’s fortune to sustain them!’ He lifted his hand, slapped his own knee and leaned back, well pleased with himself. A moment later, he had straightened up again and nudged his friend.

‘Well, say something, Sedric! Isn’t this what we both wanted? Life goes on for us. We’re free to travel, to entertain, to go out with our friends – nothing has to change. All is well in my world.’

Sedric was silent for a time. Hest crossed his arms on his chest and chuckled contentedly. The wheels of the cart jolted across a rutted crossroads and then Sedric asked quietly, ‘And getting yourself a son on her?’

Hest shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ll blow out the candles and pursue my goal manfully.’ He laughed heartlessly. ‘Sometimes the dark is a man’s best friend, Sedric. In the dark, I can pretend she’s anyone. Even you!’ He laughed uproariously at Sedric’s horrified expression.

When Sedric managed a reply, his voice was low. ‘Alise deserves better. Anyone does.’

Hest feigned an offended look. ‘Better than me? Doesn’t exist, my friend, as you well know. Better than me doesn’t exist.’ His laughter rang out on the summer day.

Day the 2nd of the Growing Moon

Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Erek,

This is my fourth bird bearing a copy of this request. Please send a bird back confirming receipt as soon as possible. I fear hawks are taking my birds before they reach you. In the enclosed sealed case is a message for the Bingtown Traders’ Council. It is the fourth copy of the Rain Wild Traders’ Council’s request for advice on how best to deal with the young dragons. I believe this one also contains a request for additional funds to aid in the hiring of hunters. I hope you will reply that my birds are safe with you and that it is only your council that is so slow to respond to ours in this matter.

Detozi

CHAPTER FOUR
Vows

‘Just one more dusting,’ her mother pleaded.

Alise shook her head. ‘There is more flour on my face now than we used for the wedding cake. And as tight and heavy as this gown is, I’m already starting to perspire. Hest knows I have freckles, Mother. I’m sure he would rather see them than have our guests see cracks in the powder layer on my face.’

‘I tried to keep her out of the sun. I warned her to wear a hat and veil.’ Her mother turned away from her as she muttered the words, but Alise knew that she intended them to be heard. She would not, she suddenly realized, miss her mother’s softlyvoiced comments and rebukes.

Would she miss anything about her old home?

She glanced around her small bed chamber. No. She wouldn’t. Not the bedstead that had once belonged to her great aunt, not the worn curtains nor the threadbare rug. She was ready to leave her father’s home, ready to begin something new. With Hest.

At the thought of him, her heart gave a small surge. She shook her head at herself. It was not time to think of her wedding night. Right now, she had to focus on getting through the ceremony. She and her father had worked carefully on the promises she would make to Hest. They had exchanged their list of proposed vows, negotiated changes and discussed wording for several months now. A marriage contract in Bingtown was to be as carefully scrutinized as any other contract. Today, in the Traders’ Concourse, before families and guests, the terms of the marriage contract would be spoken aloud before either one of them set a signature to the final document. All would witness the agreement between Hest and her. The demands of Hest’s family had been precise, and some had made her father scowl. But at the last, he had recommended she accept them. Today she would formalize the agreement before witnesses.

And afterwards, when the business was done, they would celebrate as a newly wed couple.

And consummate their agreement tonight.

Anticipation and dread roiled and fought in her. Some of her married friends had warned her of the pain of surrendering her virginity. Others had smiled conspiratorially, whispered of envy for her handsome mate and gifted her with perfumes and lotions and lacily beribboned nightdresses. Many a comment had been made about how handsome Hest was, and how well he danced and what a fine figure he cut when he went out riding. One less reserved friend had even giggled as she said, ‘Competence in one saddle sometimes bespeaks competence in another!’ So, even though their courtship had been bereft of stolen kisses or whispered endearments, she dared to hope that their first night alone might break his reserve and reveal a concealed passion for her.

She snapped open a lacy little fan and cooled her face with it. A subtle fragrance rode the small breeze from the perfumed lace of the fan. She looked a final time into her vanity mirror. Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks pink. As infatuated as a silly little girl, she thought to herself, and smiled forgiveness at her own image. What woman would not have given way to Hest’s charms? He was handsome, he was witty, intelligent and a delightful conversationalist. The small gifts he showered upon her were thoughtful and apt. He’d not only accepted her ambition to be a scholar; his bridal gifts to her revealed that he would support her in her studies. Two excellent pens with silver tips, and ink in five different hues. A glass ground to magnify the fading letters of old manuscripts. A shawl embroidered with serpents and dragons. Earrings made from tinted flaked glass to mimic dragon scales. Every gift had been tailored to her interests. She suspected that his gifts said what he was too reserved to put into words. In response, she, too, had remained correct and formal, but despite her quiet manner, warmth for him had begun to grow in her heart. The restraint she practised daily only fuelled her fantasies at night.

Even the homeliest girl secretly dreams that a man might fall in love with her inner spirit. He had told her, plainly, that their marriage was one of convenience. But did it have to be, she wondered? If she devoted herself to him, could not she make it something more than that, for both of them? In the months that had slowly passed since the announcement of their engagement, she had become ever more aware of Hest. She learned the shape of his mouth as he spoke to her, studied his elegant hands as he lifted a cup of tea, admired his wide shoulders that pulled at the seams of his jacket. She stopped asking why and disbelieving that love could find her, and drowned joyously in her infatuation.

War had ravaged Bingtown, and even if her parents had had money to fling into the wind, there were many items that simply could not be bought. For all that, this day still seemed like something out of a tale to her. It did not matter to her that her dress had been made from her grandmother’s gown; it only made it seem more significant. The flowers that decorated the Traders’ Concourse came, not from hothouses or the Rain Wilds, but from the gardens of her family and friends. Two of her cousins would sing while their father played his fiddle. It would all be simple, and honest, and very real.

In the previous weeks, she had imagined their wedding night a hundred ways. She had dreamed him bold, and then boyishly shy, gentle and hesitant or perhaps rakishly bawdy or even demanding of her. Every possibility had warmed her with desire and chased sleep from her bed. Well. It was only a matter of hours now before she would find out. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The smile on her face surprised her. She tilted her head and studied her own reflection. Alise Kincarron, smiling on her wedding – who would ever have imagined it?

‘Alise?’ Her father stood at the door. She turned to him in surprise, and felt an odd lurch of her heart at the soft, sad smile he wore. ‘Darling, it’s time to come down stairs. The carriage is waiting for us.’

Swarge stood stiffly in the small galley. At a nod from his captain, he sat down. His big rough hands rested lightly on the edge of the table. Leftrin sat down opposite him with a sigh. It had been a long day; no, it had been a long three months.

The secrecy the project demanded had tripled the work involved. Leftrin had not dared to move the log; towing it down the river to a better place to work on it was not an option. Any passing vessel would have recognized what he had. So the work of cutting the log into usable lengths and sections had all had to be done right there, in the mud and brush of the riverbank.

Tonight it was finished. The wizardwood log was gone; the small scraps that remained had been stowed as dunnage in Tarman’s holds. Outside on the deck, the rest of the crew was celebrating. And in light of what they’d conspired to do, Leftrin had decided it would be best if all of them made a fresh commitment to Tarman. All the rest of them had signed the ship’s papers. Only Swarge remained. Tomorrow, they’d relaunch Tarman, return to Trehaug to drop off the carefully selected and discreet woodworkers who had served them so well. And afterwards, they would go back to their regular run on the river. But for now, they celebrated the completion of a massive project. It was finished, and Leftrin found he had no regrets.

A bottle of rum and several small glasses occupied the centre of the table. Two of them weighted down a scroll. A bottle of ink and a quill rested beside it. One more signature, and Tarman would be secure. Leftrin nodded to himself as he studied the riverman opposite him. Streaks of dried mud and tar clung to the tillerman’s rough shirt. His thick fingernails were packed with silvery sawdust, and there was a stripe of dirt on his jaw where he’d probably scratched his face earlier.

Leftrin smiled to himself. He was probably just as grubby as the tillerman. It had been a long, hard day’s work, and it was labour of a kind neither one of them was accustomed to. It was coming to a close now, and Swarge had more than proven himself. He had been willing to join Leftrin’s little conspiracy and had done more than his share without complaint. It was one of the things that Leftrin liked about the man. Time to let him know that. ‘You don’t complain. You don’t whine and you don’t find fault when something just plain goes wrong. You jump in and do your best to fix the situation. You’re loyal and you’re discreet. And that’s why I want to keep you on board.’

Swarge glanced again at the small glasses and Leftrin got the message. He uncorked the bottle and dolloped out small measures for both of them. ‘Best clean your hands before you eat or drink. That stuff can be poisonous,’ he advised his tillerman. Swarge nodded and carefully wiped his hands down the front of his shirt. Then they both drank before Swarge responded.

‘Forever. I heard from the others that’s what this is about. You’re asking me to sign on and stay aboard Tarman forever. Until I die.’

‘That’s right,’ Leftrin confirmed. ‘And I hoped they mentioned that your wages will go up as well. With our new hull design we’re not going to need as large a crew as we’ve shipped in the past. But I’ll budget the same for pay, and every sailor aboard will get an equal share of it. That has to sound good, doesn’t it?’

Swarge bobbed a nod at him, but didn’t meet his eyes. ‘Rest of my life is a long time, Cap.’

Leftrin laughed aloud. ‘Sa’s blood, Swarge, you been with Tarman for ten years already. For a Rain Wilds man, that’s half of forever already. So what’s the problem with signing on permanent? Benefits us both. I know I got a good tillerman for as long as Tarman floats. And you know that no one is ever going to decide you’re too old to work and put you ashore without a penny. You sign this, it binds my heir as well as me. You give me your word on this, you sign the paper with me and I promise that as long as you live, Tarman and I will take care of you. Swarge, what else you got besides this boat?’

Swarge answered the question with one of his own. ‘Why has it got to be forever, Cap? What’s changed so much that I got to promise to sail with you forever now or clear off the ship?’

Leftrin concealed a small sigh. Swarge was a good man and great on the tiller. He could read the river as few men could. Tarman felt comfortable in his hands. With all the changes the ship had undergone recently, Leftrin didn’t want to break in a new tillerman. He met Swarge’s look squarely. ‘You know that my claiming that wizardwood and what we’ve done with it is forbidden. It’s got to stay a secret. Best way to keep a secret, I think, is to make sure it benefits every man who knows it. And to keep those who share the secret in one place.

‘Before we started, I let go any man I didn’t think was mine, heart and soul. I’ve got a plum little crew here now, hand-picked, and I want to keep you all. It comes down to trust, Swarge. I kept you on, because I knew you’d done some boat-building back when you were a youngster. I knew you’d help us do what Tarman needed doing, and keep it quiet. Well, now it’s done, and I want you to stay on as his tillerman. Permanently. If I bring a new man aboard, he’s going to know immediately that something about this ship is very unusual, even for a liveship. And I won’t know if he’s someone I can trust with a secret that big. He might just have a big mouth, or he might be the type that thinks he could squeeze some money out of me for silence. And then I’d have to take steps I’d rather not take. Instead, I’d rather keep you, as long as I can. For the rest of your life, if you’ll sign on for that.’

‘And if I don’t?’

Leftrin was silent for a moment. He hadn’t bargained on this. He thought he’d chosen carefully. He’d never imagined that Swarge would be the one to hesitate. He said the first thing that came into his mind. ‘Why wouldn’t you? What’s stopping you?’

Swarge shifted from side to side on his chair. He glanced at the bottle and away again. Leftrin waited. The man wasn’t known for being talkative. Leftrin poured another tot of rum for both of them and waited, almost patiently.

‘There’s a woman,’ Swarge said at last. And there he stopped. He looked at the table, at his captain, and then at the table.

‘What about her?’ Leftrin asked at last.

‘Been thinking to ask her to marry me.’

Leftrin’s heart sank. It would not be the first time he’d lost a good crewman to a wife and a home.

The recently repaired and renovated Traders’ Concourse still smelled of new timber and oiled wood. For the ceremony, the seating benches had been removed to the sides of the room, leaving a large open space. The afternoon sun slanted in through the windows; fading squares of light fell on the polished floor and broke into fragments against those who had gathered to witness their promises to one another. Most of the guests were attired in their formal Trader robes in the colours of their families. There were a few Three Ships folk there, probably trading partners of Hest’s family, and even one Tattooed woman in a long gown of yellow silk.

Hest had not arrived yet.

Alise told herself that did not matter. He would come. He was the one who had arranged all this; he would scarcely back out of it now. She wished devoutly that her gown did not fit her so snugly, and that it was not such a warm afternoon. ‘You look so pale,’ her father whispered to her. ‘Are you all right?’

She thought of all the white powder her mother had dusted on to her face and had to smile. ‘I’m fine, Father. Just a bit nervous. Shall we walk about a bit?’

They moved slowly through the room, her hand resting lightly on his forearm. Guest after guest greeted her and wished her well. Some were already availing themselves of the punch. Others were unabashedly scanning the terms of their marriage contract. The dual scrolls of their agreement were pegged down to the wood of a long central table. Silver candelabra held white tapers; the light was needed for anyone who wished to read the finely written words. Matching black quills and a pot of red ink awaited Hest and her.

It was a peculiarly Bingtown tradition. The marriage contract would be scrutinized, read aloud and signed by both families before the far briefer blessing invocation. It made sense to Alise. They were a nation of traders; of course their nuptials would be as carefully negotiated as any other bargain.

She had not realized how anxious she was until she heard the wheels of a carriage in the drive outside. ‘That must be him,’ she whispered nervously to her father.

‘It had better be him,’ he replied ominously. ‘We may not be so rich as the Finboks, but the Kincarrons are just as much Traders as they are. We are not to be trifled with. Nor insulted.’

For the first time, she realized how much her father had feared Hest would leave her standing unclaimed, their promises unsigned. She looked deep into his eyes and saw the anger that mingled with his fear. Fear that he’d be humiliated, fear that he’d have to take his unclaimed daughter home. She looked away from him, and some of the shine went off the day. Not even her own father could believe that Hest was truly in love with her and would want to marry her.

She drew as deep a breath as the tightly sewn dress would allow her. She stiffened her spine and with it her resolve. She was not going back to live in her father’s house as his failed daughter. Never again. No matter what.

Then the door of the Concourse was flung wide, and Hest’s men poured in dressed in the formal robes of their family lineages. They cascaded down the steps, an unruly laughing mob of his friends and business associates. Hest was carried down in their midst. Her first glimpse of him sent her heart racing. His dark hair was tousled boyishly, and his cheeks were reddened. He was grinning good-naturedly as they hurried him along. His wide shoulders were emphasized by his closely tailored jacket of dark green Jamaillian silk. He wore a white neckcloth pinned with an emerald stick pin that was not greener than his eyes.

When his eyes found her, his face went suddenly still. His smile faded. She held his gaze, challenging him to change his mind now. Instead, as he regarded her solemnly, he nodded slowly, as if confirming something to himself. Dozens of well-wishers had moved forward to greet him when he had entered. He moved through them as a ship cut through waves, not rudely, but refusing to be delayed or distracted by them. When he reached Alise and her father, he bowed formally to both of them. Alise, startled, managed a hasty curtsey. As she rose from it, Hest held out a hand to her. But it was her father he smiled at as he said, ‘I believe this is mine now, isn’t it?’

She put her hand in his.

‘I believe that there is a contract to be signed first,’ her father said, but he spoke jovially. With that one gesture, Hest had changed his anxiety to good nature. Her father was beaming proudly to see his daughter claimed so confidently by such a handsome and wealthy man.

‘That there is!’ Hest exclaimed. ‘And I propose that we get to it immediately. I have no patience with lengthy formalities. The lady has made me wait quite long enough!’

A thrill shot though Alise at his words while a murmur of approving amusement and some small laughter rippled through the gathered guests. Hest, ever charming and charismatic, literally hurried her across the Concourse to the waiting contracts.

As tradition demanded, they moved to their positions on opposite sides of the long table. Sedric Meldar came forward to hold the inkwell for Hest. Alise’s elder sister Rose had demanded the honour of being her attendant. They would move in unison down the long table, each reading aloud a term from their wedding contract. As each term was agreed to, both would sign. At the end of the table, the couple would finally stand together, to be blessed by their parents. Each contract scroll would be carefully sanded and dried, and then rolled up and stored in the Concourse archives. It was rare that the terms of a dowry or the subject of a child’s inheritance came into question, but the written records often served to prevent such strife.

There was nothing of romance in these written words. Alise read aloud that, in the event of Hest’s untimely death before he sired an heir, she would relinquish all claim to his estate in favour of his cousin. Hest countered that by reading and then signing the clause that stipulated his widow would be granted a private residence of her own on his family’s land. In the event of Alise’s death with no heir, the little vineyard that was her sole dowry would revert to her younger sister.

There were standard pledges expected in all Bingtown marriage contracts. Once they were wed, each would have a say in the financial decisions of the household. The amount of each one’s personal allowance was agreed to, and provisions were made either to increase or decrease such allowances as their fortunes prospered or faded. Each agreed to be faithful to the other, and attested that neither had already produced a child. Alise had requested the old form of agreement, in which the first-born child of either sex was to be recognized as the full heir. It had warmed her that Hest had not objected at all to that and when she read aloud the clause that she had insisted on, that she be allowed to travel to the Rain Wilds to continue her study of the dragons, at a date to be agreed upon in the future, he signed his name with a flourish. She blinked away tears of joy, willing that they not spill and make tracks down her powdered face. What had she done to deserve such a man? She vowed to be worthy of his generosity.

The provisions of the contract were precise, not vague, and recognized that no marriage was perfect. Term after endless term was delineated. Every detail was considered; nothing was too intimate to be mentioned. If Hest sired a child outside of the marital bed, such a child would be ineligible to inherit anything, and Alise could, if she chose, terminate their marriage agreement immediately, while claiming fifteen per cent of Hest’s current estate. If Alise were found to have committed an infidelity, Hest could not only turn her out of his home but could dispute the parentage of any child born after the date of the transgression; such children became the financial responsibility of Alise’s father.

It went on and on. There were provisions by which they could mutually end their agreement, and stipulations on transgressions that rendered the contract null and void. Each had to be read aloud and formally signed by both of them. It was not unusual for the process to take hours. But Hest was having none of that. With each phrase he read, he increased the tempo of his reading, plainly anxious to be done with this part of the ceremony. Alise found herself caught up in play, and matched the speed of her words to his. Some of the guests seemed affronted at first. Then, as they noticed Alise’s pink cheeks and the sly smile that wafted across Hest’s face periodically, they, too, began to smile.

In a remarkably short time, they reached the end of the table. Alise was out of breath as she babbled through the last stipulation from her family. She spoke the final proviso aloud, the standard one. ‘I will keep myself, my body and my affections, my heart and my loyalty, solely to you.’ As he repeated it, it seemed a redundancy to her, after all they had already promised to one another. They signed. The quills were handed back to their attendants. Finally freed of such tedious formality, they joined hands and stepped to where the table no longer divided them. Together they turned to face their waiting parents. Hest’s hands were as warm as Alise’s were cold; he held her fingers gently, as if afraid he might harm her with a firmer grip. She closed her hands on his; let him know now that all her hesitations were gone. She was his, and gave her well-being into his hands.

First their mothers and then their fathers joined in blessing the couple. Hest’s parents spoke a much longer blessing than Alise’s did, imploring Sa for prosperity, many children, a happy home, longevity with health for both of them, healthy dutiful children – the list went on and on. Alise felt her smile grow fixed.

When the blessings were finally finished, they turned to face one another. The kiss. It would be their first kiss and suddenly she appreciated that he had reserved it for this moment. She took as deep a breath as her gown would allow her and turned her face up to him. He looked down on her. His green eyes were unreadable. As he bent to her, she closed her eyes and let her lips relax. Let him take charge of this moment. She felt his breath as his mouth hovered over hers. Then he kissed her, the lightest brushing touch of his mouth against hers. As if the wing of a humming bird had just brushed her lips.

A small shiver passed over her, and she caught her breath as he stepped back from her. Her heart was thundering. ‘He teases me,’ she thought, and could not keep a smile from her face. He would not meet her eyes, but a sly smile stole across his face as well. Cruel man. He would make her admit to herself that she was as eager as he was. ‘Let the night come,’ she thought to herself and stole a sideways glance at her husband’s handsome face.

‘So. Tell me about her,’ Leftrin ventured when the silence had grown long.

Swarge sighed and then looked up at him and smiled. It transformed his face. Years dropped away, and the bluish glints behind his blue eyes seemed almost kindly. ‘Her name is Bellin. She’s, well, she likes me. She can play the pipes. We met a couple of years ago, in a tavern in Trehaug. You know the one. Jona’s place.’

‘I know it. River folk trade there.’ He cocked his head and looked at his tillerman, reluctant to ask the question that came to his mind. Most of the women he’d met at Jona’s were whores. Some of them were nice enough, but most were good at their trade and unlikely to give it up for one man. He wondered if Swarge were dim-witted in that area and was being deceived. He almost asked if he’d been giving her money to save up for a house for them. Leftrin had seen that trick played on a gullible sailor more than once.

But before he could ask Swarge anything, the tillerman must have seen his captain’s doubts in his eyes. ‘Bellin’s river folk. In there with the rest of her crew for a drink and a hot meal. She works on that little barge, the Sacha, that goes back and forth between Trehaug and Cassarick.’

‘What does she do?’

‘Poleman. That’s part of what makes it hard for us. When I’m in port, she’s out, when she’s in port, I’m out.’

‘Marrying her won’t change that,’ Leftrin pointed out.

Swarge looked down at the table. ‘Captain on the Sacha offered me a job last time Bellin and I were in port at the same time. Said if I wanted to jump boats, he’d take me on as tillerman for the Sacha.’

After a moment, Leftrin unknotted his fists and spoke in a controlled voice. ‘And you said yes? Without even telling me you might go?’

Swarge drummed his fingers on the edge of the table and then, without invitation, poured more rum for both of them. ‘I didn’t say anything,’ he said after he’d tossed off his shot. ‘Like you said, Cap, I been with Tarman over ten years. And Tarman’s a liveship. I know I’m not family, but we got a bond, even so. I like the feel of him on the water. Like how I get that little shiver of knowing right before I see something to watch out for. Sacha’s a good little barge, but she’s just a piece of wood to push around on the river. Would be hard to leave Tarman for that. But …’

‘But for a woman, you would,’ Leftrin said heavily.

‘We’d like to marry. Have children, if we can. You just said it yourself, Cap. Ten years is half of forever for a Rain Wilds man. I’m not getting any younger and neither is Bellin. If we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it soon.’

Leftrin was quiet, weighing his choices. He couldn’t let Swarge go. Not now. Things were going to be strange enough for a time on the liveship without making Tarman get used to a new tillerman as well. Did he need another crewman? He had Hennesey to run the deck and man a pole, skinny little Skelly, Big Eider and himself. Swarge on the tiller, he hoped. It wouldn’t be bad to have another crew member. It might even make Tarman’s momentum more believable. Yes, he decided. That charade might work. He stifled the grin that passed over his face. He totted up his finances and made his decision.

‘She any good?’ he demanded of Swarge, and then, at the offended look on the man’s face, he clarified, ‘As a poleman. Does she do her share? Could she handle duties on a barge the size of Tarman if things got tricky?’

Swarge just stared at him for a moment. Hope flickered in his eyes. He looked hastily down at the table, as if to conceal it from his captain. ‘She’s good. She’s not some flimsy little girl. She’s a woman with meat and muscle on her frame. She knows the river and she knows her business.’ He scratched his head. ‘Tarman’s a much bigger vessel and a liveship to boot.’

‘So you think she wouldn’t be up to it?’ Leftrin baited him.

‘Of course she would.’ Swarge hesitated, then demanded almost angrily, ‘Are you saying she could join Tarman’s crew? That we could be together on Tarman?’

‘Would you rather be with her on Sacha?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Then ask her. I won’t ask you to sign your papers until she agrees to sign as well. But the deal is the same. It’s for a lifetime.’

‘You ain’t even met her yet.’

‘I know you, Swarge. You think you can stand her for a lifetime, then I’m pretty sure I can, too. So ask her.’

Swarge reached for the pen and the paper. ‘Don’t need to,’ he said as he dipped the quill. ‘She’s always wanted to serve on a liveship. What sailor doesn’t?’ And with a smooth and legible hand, he signed his life over to Tarman.

More than one guest commented on the pink of her cheeks at their wedding ceremony at the Traders’ Hall. And when the guests had followed them to their new home to share a wedding dinner, she had scarcely been able to taste the honey-cake or follow the conversations around her. The dinner was endless, and she could hardly remember a word said to her long enough to make intelligent conversation. She watched only Hest at the other end of the long table. His long-fingered hands cupping a wineglass, his tongue moving to moisten his lip, the soft fall of his hair on his brow. Would the dinner never end, would all these people never leave?

As tradition dictated, when Hest and his men retired for brandy in his new study, she bid her guests a formal farewell and then retreated to her new marital chambers. Sophie and her mother accompanied her, to help her remove her heavy gown and underskirts. It had been a few years since she and Sophie had been truly close, but as Sedric was serving as Hest’s man, it had seemed appropriate that his sister serve as her attendant. Her mother had left her with many fond wishes, to assist Alise’s father in bidding farewell to the departing guests. Sophie lingered, helping her tie the dozens of tiny bows that secured the lacy wrapper over her gauzy, beribboned nightdress. Then, as Alise sat, she had helped her take down her red hair and brush it smooth and loose upon her shoulders.

‘Do I look silly?’ she’d demanded of her old friend. ‘I’m such a plain girl. Is this nightgown too fancy for me?’

‘You look like a bride,’ Sophie had replied. There was a trace of sadness in her eyes. Alise understood. Today, with Alise’s wedding, they left the last remnant of their girlhood behind. They were both wedded women now. Despite her anticipation, Alise felt a brief moment of regret for the life she left behind. Never a girl again, she thought to herself. Never another night in her father’s house as his daughter. And that, she abruptly recognized as relief.

‘Are you worried at all?’ Sophie asked her as their eyes met in the elaborately framed vanity mirror.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she replied and tried to control her smile.

‘Will it be strange, the three of you sharing a home?’

‘You mean Sedric? Of course not! He was ever my friend, and I’m only too glad to see that he and Hest get along so well. I know so few of the other Traders in Hest’s circle. I shall be very glad to have an old friend at my side as I move into my new life.’

Sophie met her gaze in the mirror; she looked surprised. Then she cocked her head at her friend and said, ‘Well, you were ever the one for making the best of things! And I think that my brother will be happy to have such a staunch ally as you’ve always been to him! And I can make you no more beautiful than you already are. You seem so happy with all this. Are you, truly?’

‘Truly, I am,’ she had assured her friend.

‘Then I shall leave you, with my very best wishes. Good night, Alise!’

‘Good night, Sophie.’

Alone, she sat before her mirror. She picked up her brush and ran it again through her auburn hair. She scarcely knew the woman in the lacy peignoir. Her mother had expertly applied her powder earlier in the day; her freckles had been subdued, not just on her face but on her bosom and arms. She was, she’d thought to herself, about to step into a life that she hadn’t even tried to imagine since she was a little girl and full of dreams. Downstairs, the musicians played a final song that bid her guests good night. Her bedchamber window was open. She heard the sounds of carriage wheels on the drive as guest after guest left. She tried to be patient, knowing that Hest must remain downstairs until the last one was gone. Eventually, she heard the door close a final time, and recognized through the open window the voices of her parents bidding Hest’s father good night. They would be the last, she was sure. She freshened her perfume. Two carriages departed. She blew out half the scented candles, dimming the room. Downstairs in the house, all was still. In the candlelit bedchamber filled with elegant vases of fragrant flowers, she anticipated her husband’s arrival. Heart thundering, she waited, ears straining, for the sounds of his boots on the stair.

And waited. The night deepened. And chilled. She donned a soft lambswool shawl and settled into a chair by the hearth. The evening insects stopped their chirring. A lonely night bird called and received no response. Slowly her mood sank from expectant to nervous to anxious and then foundered in bewilderment. The hearth fire that had warmed the room burned down. She added another log to it, blew out the guttering candles in the ornate silver stands and re-lit the other ones. She sat, legs curled beneath her, in the cushioned armchair beside the hearth, waiting for her groom to come and claim his right to her.

When the tears came, she could not stem them. After they passed, she could not repair the damage to her powdered face. So she washed her face clean of all pretence, confronted her dappled self in the mirror and asked herself when she had become such a fool. Hest had stated his terms clearly, from the beginning. She was the one who had made up a foolish fairytale about love and draped it over the cold iron trellis of their bargain. She could not blame him. Only herself.

She should simply disrobe and go to bed.

Instead, she sat down again by the fire and watched the flames devour the log and then subside.

Long past the deep of night, in the shallows of early morning, when the last of her candles were burning low, her drunken husband came in. His hair was rumpled, his step unsteady, and his collar already loosened. He seemed startled to find her awaiting him by the dying fire. His gaze walked up and down her, and suddenly she felt embarrassed for him to see her in a nightgown that was virginally white and elaborately embroidered. His mouth twitched and for a second she saw a flash of his teeth. Then he looked aside from her and said in a slurred voice, ‘Well, let’s get to it, then.’

He didn’t come to her. He walked toward the bed, loosening his clothing as he crossed the room. His jacket and then his shirt fell to the thick rug before he stopped by the four remaining candles. He bent at the waist and with a single harsh whoosh of breath, he extinguished them, plunging the room into darkness. She could smell the liquor on his breath.

She heard the bed give to his weight as he sat down on it. There was one thump and then another as he tugged off his boots and dropped them to the floor. A rustle of fabric told her that his trousers had followed them. The bed sighed as he dropped back onto it. She had remained where she was, frozen by shock tinged with fear. All her sexual anticipation, all her silly romantic dreams were gone. She listened to his breathing. After a moment, he spoke, and there was a note of sour amusement in his voice. ‘This would be much easier for both of us if you also were in the bed.’

Somehow she arose from her chair and crossed to him, even as she wondered why she was doing it. It seemed inevitable. She wondered if it was her lack of experience in these areas that had raised her expectations so high. As she left the hearth’s warmth, she felt as if she swam a cold river to cross the cool room. She reached the bedside. He had not said another word to her; the room was so dark, he could not have been watching her approach. Awkwardly, she seated herself on the edge of the bed. After a time had passed, Hest pointed out heavily, ‘You’ll have to take that off and lie on the bed if we’re to accomplish anything.’

The front of her nightgown was secured with a dozen tiny bows of silky ribbons. As she undid each one, terrible disappointment rose in her. What a fool she had been, to tease herself with thoughts of how his fingers would pull each ribbon free of its partner. What a silly anticipation she had felt as she had donned this garment; only a handful of hours ago, its extravagance had seemed feminine and seductive. Now she felt she had chosen some silly costume and assayed to play a role she could never fulfil. Hest had seen through it. A woman like her had no right to these silky fabrics and feminine ribbons. This was not to be romance for her, not even lust. This was duty on his part. Nothing more. She sighed as she stood and let the nightgown slide from her body to the floor. She opened the bedclothes and lay down on her half of the bed. She felt Hest roll to face her.

‘So,’ he said, and the spirits on his breath now brushed her face. ‘So.’ He sighed himself. A moment later he took a deep breath. ‘Are you ready?’

‘I suppose so,’ she managed to say.

He shifted in the bed, coming closer to her. She rolled to face him, and then froze, suddenly dreading his touch. It shamed her that despite her fear, she felt a flush of warmth as well. Dread and desire mingled in her. It reminded her with disgust of two of her friends who had endlessly nattered on about the dangers of being raped by Chalcedean raiders. It had been all too apparent to Alise that they were as titillated as they were frightened by the prospect. Stupid, she had thought them then, making breathless fantasy of lust and violence.

Yet now, as Hest’s hand settled on her hip, she gave a small involuntary gasp. No man had ever touched her bared flesh before. The thought sent a shiver over her skin. Then, as his touch turned hard, as his fingers gripped her flesh hard to pull her close, she gave a low cry of fear. She had heard it might hurt, the first time, but had never feared he would be cruel about it. Now she did.

Hest abruptly gave a small huff of breath as if something were suddenly more to his liking. ‘Not so different,’ he muttered, or perhaps his words were, ‘Not so difficult.’ She scarcely had time to think of them, for with a suddenness that drove the breath from her, he pushed her onto her back and he shifted his body onto hers. His knee parted her thighs and pushed her legs open. ‘Ready indeed,’ he said, and thrust against her that which she had never seen.

She managed to accommodate him. She gripped the bedsheets; she could not bring herself to embrace him. The pain she had been told to expect was not as great as she had feared, but the pleasure she had heard of in whispers and had gullibly anticipated never arrived. She was not even certain that he enjoyed it. He rode her quickly to a finish she didn’t share, and then drew his body apart from hers immediately afterwards. His trailing member smeared warmth and wet across her thigh. She felt soiled by it. When he fell back onto his half of the bed, she wondered if he would now drop off to sleep, or would rest and then approach the matter again, perhaps in a more leisurely way.

He did neither. He lay there long enough to catch his breath, then rolled from the bed and found, at last, the soft warm robe that had been laid out for him. She more heard than saw him don it, and then there was a brief flash of dim light from the hooded candles in the hall. Then the door shut behind him and her wedding night was over.

For a time she remained as she was on the bed. A shiver ran over her. It became a quivering that developed into a shuddering. She didn’t weep. She wanted to vomit. Instead, she scrubbed her leg and her crotch with the sheets on his side of the bed, and then rolled over to a clean spot. She worked at pulling air into her lungs and then pushing it out again. Deliberately, she made her breathing slow. She counted, holding each inhalation for a count of three and then breathing it out as slowly.

‘I’m calm,’ she said aloud. ‘I’m not hurt. Nothing is wrong. I’ve lived up to the terms of my marriage contract.’ A moment later, she added aloud. ‘So has he.’

She got up from the bed. There was another log for the fire. She put it on the coals and watched it catch while she thought. In the remainder of the predawn hours she contemplated the folly of the bargain she had struck. She’d shed her tears. For a time, she choked on her disappointment and humiliation and regretted her foolish choice. Briefly, she entertained the idea of storming out of Hest’s house and going home.

‘Home’ to what? To her father’s house? To questions and scandals and her mother demanding to know every detail of what had upset her? She imagined her father’s face. There would be whispers in the market if she went to shop, muted conversation at the next table if she stopped for a cup of tea. No. She had no home to go to.

Before the sun rose, she set aside her girlish fancies and her anguish. Neither could save her from her fate. Instead, she summoned to the forefront of her mind the practical old maid she had rehearsed to be. No tender-hearted maiden could endure what had befallen her. Best set her aside. But the dedicated spinster could accept her fate with resignation and begin to weigh the advantages of it.

As the sun kissed the sky, she rose and summoned a maid. Her own maid, as a matter of fact; her own personal maid, a pretty girl with only a small tattoo of a cat by her nose to mark that once she had been a slave. The girl brought her hot tea and a herbal wash to bathe her eyes. Then, at Alise’s request, she had fetched a hot breakfast of Alise’s choosing, on a lovely enamelled tray. While Alise ate, the girl set out a selection of pretty new dresses for Alise to choose from.

That afternoon, Alise sailed into the first of several reception teas in their honour, attired in a demure gown of pale green with white lace. The simplicity of the dress belied how expensive it had been. She smiled cheerily and coloured prettily when some of her mother’s friends whispered to her that marriage seemed to agree with her. The gem of her satisfaction was when Hest appeared, nattily attired, but hollow-eyed and pale.

He stood in the door of the drawing room, late for the gathering and obviously looking for her. When his gaze found her, she smiled and waved her fingers at him. He had seemed astonished both at her air of well-being and how little she seemed to care for his quickly whispered apology for his ‘condition’ the night before. She merely nodded and gave all her attention to her hostess and the guests assembled to honour them. She did her best to be charming, even witty.

Strange to discover it was not that difficult. Like any decision, once she had reached it, the world suddenly seemed simpler. Her decision, cemented as dawn rosed the sky, was that she would meticulously live up to her end of the bargain. And that she would see that Hest did, too.

The very next day, she summoned the carpenters who transformed the dainty sewing room next to her bedchamber into her personal library. The tiny desk, all white and gilt, she replaced with a large one of heavy dark wood with numerous drawers and pigeonholes. And in the weeks that followed, the book sellers and antiquity dealers quickly learned to bring their freshest inventory for her to peruse before offering it to the general public. Before six months passed, the shelves and scroll racks of her little library were well populated. She judged that if she had sold herself, at least she’d demanded a high price.

Day the 17th of the Rain Moon

Year the 8th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 2nd of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

In the enclosed scroll case, two queries. The first, to be posted generally, asking if any mariner or farmer has had any sighting of the dragon Tintaglia, who has been absent some months from the Rain Wilds. The second, a message for the Bingtown Traders’ Council, a reminder that funds are due to assist in paying those who tend and hunt for the young dragons. A swift reply is desired and expected.

Erek,

My deepest condolences on your loss. I know how joyously you anticipated wedding Fari. To hear of her untimely death saddens me beyond words. These are hard times for all of us.

Detozi

Day the 10th of the Greening Moon

Year the 8th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 2nd of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

Sealed scroll is a message for the Rain Wild Councils at Trehaug and Cassarick, from the Bingtown Traders’ Council, requesting a complete accounting of funds already sent for the upkeep of the young dragons. No more funds will be gathered or released to the Council at Cassarick without such an accounting.

Detozi,

I’m getting a curled foot defect in almost half the young pigeons I’ve hatched here in the last month. Have you ever seen this in your flock or heard of a remedy? I fear that poor feed is at the root of my problem, yet the damned Council here will not give me sufficient funds to buy a good variety of grain and the dried peas that are so essential to bird health. They will tax us to death to rebuild the roads and raise the wrecks in the harbour, but turn a deaf ear to my plea for decent food for my birds!

Erek

Day the 23rd of the Fish Moon

Year the 9th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent Satrap Cosgo

Year the 3rd of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

In the sealed scroll, this month’s accounting of funds expended by the Rain Wild Councils of Trehaug and Cassarick, with an invoice for the Bingtown Traders’ Council’s share of the expenses. By separate bird you will receive the text of a post that we request all outbound ships carry, which is a reward offered for substantial news about the Dragon Tintaglia.

Erek

My cousin Sethin is seeking an apprentice position for her son Reyall. He is a responsible lad of fourteen, already experienced in the care and feeding of messenger birds. I commend him to you without reservation. Although I am confident you are not one to make much of this, I assure you he is but lightly marked and can go about his tasks unveiled without causing distress or inciting curiosity in any who may visit your coops. If you have a position for an apprentice, we would gladly send him to you, at our expense, with the next shipment of young birds to freshen the blood of the Bingtown flock. He had been expecting to be taken on at Cassarick when they decided to coop a flock of their own, but the Cassarick Council hired two Tattooed instead. The Rain Wilds are not what they used to be! Please let me hear back from you on this matter by a separate bird addressed only to me.

Detozi

Day the 17th of the Change Moon

Year the 4th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

In a sealed scroll case, a warning of danger from the Bingtown Traders’ Council to the Rain Wild Traders’ Councils at Cassarick and Trehaug. A forgery ring has been discovered operating in Bingtown, creating false trading credentials and licences to travel on the Rain Wild River. Caution is advised in creating new trade partnerships especially with those foreign to the Cursed Shores. Scrutinize credentials closely.

Detozi,

I am writing with a small concern about your nephew and my apprentice, Reyall. For the last year, he has been in all ways admirably devoted to the birds, steady, reliable and conscientious. But recently he has formed friendships with several youths who spend much of their time gambling and carousing, much to the detriment of his work. The mingling of Trader, Three Ships and Tattooed youth in our city is not always beneficial to building a solid work ethic. I have given him a stern warning, but I think a similar chastisement from his family might have a greater effect. If he does not settle to his work again, I fear I must send him home without his journeyman papers.

Regretfully, Erek.

Day the 14th of the Hope Moon

Year the 5th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

A sealed missive from Trader Goshen to Derren Sawyer, Three Ships Town, concerning a shipment of hardwood that is late for delivery.

Erek,

Apologies to both you and Reyall that his allowance has been delayed. Thank you so much for helping him with his finances. The storms have been terrible, delaying shipments on the river and causing much misery for man and bird. Let my Kitta rest well before you return her to me. Reyall’s funds should arrive as soon as the Hardy makes port in Bingtown. Again, our gratitude.

Detozi

CHAPTER FIVE
Blackmail and Lies

Leftrin stood on the deck, watching the Chalcedean ship’s boat draw near. The skiff rode low in the water, burdened by the portly merchant, the rowing crew and a heap of grain sacks. The tall three-masted ship they were coming from dwarfed his barge. It was one reason that he declined to approach it. If the Chalcedeans wished to trade with him, let them come to him, where he could look down on them before they boarded. None of them appeared to be carrying weapons.

‘Aren’t you going to go look at their cargo before they start delivering to us?’ Swarge asked him. The well-muscled tillerman slowly pulled on the long handle of the sweep.

Leftrin, leaning on the railing, shook his head. ‘If they want my gold, let them do the work of delivering to me.’ Leftrin had no love for Chalcedeans, and no trust in them. He wouldn’t venture onto their deck where any sort of treachery might befall an honest man. Swarge made a slow sweep with the steering oar, effortlessly holding the barge in place against the river’s spreading current. All around them, the pale waters of the Rain Wild River were dispersing into the brack of the shallow bay. This was as far as Leftrin ever brought Tarman, and farther than he usually did. He made most of his living trading up and down the river among the Rain Wilder settlements, just as his father and grandfather had before him. Not for him the open seas and foreign shores. No. He made only a few yearly forays to the river’s mouth, usually when a reliable go-between contacted him. Then he went only to trade for the foodstuffs that the Rain Wilds residents needed to survive. He couldn’t be as fussy about whom he dealt with at the river mouth, but Leftrin kept his guard up. A wise trader knew the difference between making a deal and making a friend. When dealing with a Chalcedean, there was only business, never friendship, and the trader who bartered with them had best have eyes in the back of his head. Technically, the two countries were at peace now, but peace with Chalced never lasted.

So Leftrin watched them come with narrowed eyes and a suspicious set to his mouth. The fellows on the oars looked to be ordinary sailors, and the sacks of grain no more than sacks of grain. Nonetheless, as the small boat pulled alongside his barge and tossed a line, he let Skelly, their youngest crew member, catch it and make it fast. He kept his place by the railing and watched the men in the boat. Big Eider ghosted up alongside him and stood, quietly scratching his black beard and watching the boat come. ‘Watch the sailors,’ Leftrin told him softly. ‘I’ll keep an eye on the merchant.’

Eider nodded.

Ladder cleats were built right onto Tarman’s sides. The Chalcedean merchant climbed them easily and Leftrin revised his estimate of the man; he might be on the heavy side but he looked physically able enough. He wore a heavy sealskin cloak, trimmed and lined with scarlet. A wide leather belt decorated with silver secured his woollen tunic. The sea wind caught at the man’s cloak and sent it billowing, but the merchant appeared unfazed by it. As much sailor as merchant, Leftrin thought to himself. Once aboard, the merchant nodded gravely to Leftrin and received a curt bow in return. The merchant leaned over the side and barked several commands in Chalcedean to his oarsmen before turning back to Leftrin.

‘Greetings, Captain. I will have my crewmen bring aboard samples of both my wheat and my barley. I trust the quality of my goods will meet with your approval.’

‘That is yet to be seen, Merchant.’ Leftrin spoke affably but firmly, smiling all the while.

The man glanced around at his bare deck. ‘And your trade goods? I expected to find them set out for my inspection.’

‘Coin needs little inspection. When the time comes, you’ll find the scale set up in my stateroom. I go by weight rather than coinage.’

‘And to that, I have no objection. Kings and their mints may rise and fall, but gold is gold and silver is silver. Still,’ and here the man dropped his voice, ‘when one comes to the mouth of the Rain Wild River, one does not expect gold and silver. I had hoped for a chance to purchase Rain Wild goods from you.’

‘If you’re after Rain Wilds goods, then you’ll have to take yourself to Bingtown. Everyone knows that is the only place to obtain them.’ Leftrin watched past the Chalcedean’s shoulder as one of his men gained the deck. Eider was ready to meet the man, but he didn’t offer to take his sack from him. Bellin stood nearby, her heavy pole ready to hand. Without even intending to, she looked more formidable than Eider.

The foreign oarsman lugged a heavy sack of grain slung across his shoulder. He took two steps from the rail, let his sack thud to Leftrin’s deck, and then turned back to fetch another one. The sack looked good, tightly woven hemp, unmarked by salt or damp. But that didn’t mean the grain inside was good, or that all the bags would be of like quality. Leftrin kept his face neutral.

The Chalcedean trader came a half-step closer. ‘That is, indeed, what men say and what many men hear. But a few men hear of other goods, and other bargains, quietly struck and to the great benefit of both parties. Our go-between mentioned that you were a man well known as both a shrewd captain and a savvy trader, owner of the most efficient barge ever seen. He said that if there was anyone who might have the sort of special goods I seek, it would be you. Or that you would know to whom I should speak.’

‘Did he?’ Leftrin asked affably as the oarsman deposited another bag on his deck. It looked as tightly woven and well kept as the first one. He nodded to Hennesey, and the mate opened the deckhouse door. Grigsby, the ship’s yellow cat, sauntered out onto the deck.

‘He did,’ the merchant asserted in a bold yet quiet voice.

Past the merchant’s shoulder, Leftrin watched the cat. The sassy little bastard stuck his claws in the Tarman’s deck, stretched, and then pulled his claws in toward himself, leaving tiny scratches on the wood. He strolled toward the captain, making a leisurely tour of the deck before settling to his task. He went to the unfamiliar sacks, sniffed them casually, and then butted his head against one, marking it as worthy of being his possession. Then he moved on toward the galley door. Leftrin pursed his mouth and gave a small nod of approval. If there’d been any scent of rodent on the sacks at all, the cat would have shown more interest. So this grain merchant came from a clean ship. Remarkable.

‘Special goods,’ the man repeated quietly. ‘He said it was known to him that you had access.’

Leftrin turned his head sharply to meet the merchant’s intense grey gaze. His brow furrowed. The man misinterpreted his look.

‘Of all kinds. Even the smallest scale. A piece of skin.’ He lowered his voice more. ‘A piece of cocoon-wood.’

‘If that’s what you want to trade for, you’ve come to the wrong man,’ Leftrin said bluntly. He turned away from the merchant and crossed the deck to the sacks of grain. He went down on one knee, drawing his belt knife as he did so. He cut the twine that stitched the sack’s mouth and pulled it free then plunged his hand into the grain and rolled the kernels in the palm of his hand. It was good grain, clean and free of chaff and straw. He spilled it back into the sack and pulled a handful from the depths of the bag. When he brought it out into the light, it was just as pleasing as the first handful. With his free hand, he picked up some of the wheat and put it into his mouth. He chewed it.

‘Dried in sunlight, to keep well, but not dried so much that it has no flavour or virtue,’ the merchant informed him.

Leftrin nodded abruptly. He poured what he held back into the bag, dusted his hands, and turned his attention to the next bag. He cut the knot, unlaced the sack and continued his sampling process. When he was finished, he sat back on his heels, swallowed the mouthful of barley and conceded, ‘The quality is good. If the rest of the shipment matches the samples in these bags, I’ll be a happy buyer. Once we’ve set the price per bag, you can start transferring the cargo. I’ll reserve the right to refuse any bag and I’ll inspect each one as it comes onto my deck.’

The merchant favoured him with a slow nod that made his agreement formal. ‘Your terms are easy to accept. Now. Shall we retire to your quarters to set the price per bag and perhaps discuss other transactions?’

‘Or we could negotiate here,’ Leftrin observed evenly.

‘If you please, your quarters would be more private,’ the merchant replied.

‘As you will.’ Once or twice, Leftrin had trafficked in forbidden goods. He had no such goods that he wished to trade now, but he’d let the man make an incriminating offer. Possibly an offended reaction and a suggestion that the merchant’s offer might be reported to the Rain Wild authorities, thus curtailing his trading permit would bring the price of his grain down. Leftrin was not above such tactics. The man was, after all, a Chalcedean. No fairness was owed to any of them. He gestured toward the door of his small stateroom, certain that this well-garbed merchant would be appalled at his tiny quarters.

‘And while we talk, I will have my workers ferry the grain to your barge.’

‘Before we have set a price?’ Leftrin was surprised. It gave him too much of an advantage. If he delayed the bargaining until most of the cargo was on board his vessel, and then refused to meet the merchant’s demands, the Chalcedean would have to have his crew unload the entire barge again.

‘I am very certain that we shall agree upon a price we both find fair,’ the man said quietly.

So be it, Leftrin thought to himself. Never turn down an advantage in bargaining. Over his shoulder, he called to the mate, ‘Hennesey! You and Grigsby watch the grain sacks as they bring them. Keep a count of each. Don’t be shy about checking any that look light or water-stained or rat-gnawed. Tap on my door when we’ve got a load.’

When they had entered and seated themselves, Leftrin on his bunk and the merchant on the room’s sole chair at the small table, the man lost none of his aplomb. He looked about the humble room and then again made his formal nod and said, ‘I wish you to know my name. I am Sinad of the Arich heritage. The sons of my family have been traders for longer than Bingtown has existed. We have not favoured the wars that have put our countries at odds with one another and restricted our traffic and our profits. So, now that the hostilities have subsided, we hasten to make contact directly with the traders of the Rain Wild River. We wish to establish custom that will eventually, we hope, be very profitable to both of us. In fact, exclusive custom with a small circle of reputable traders would make us rejoice.’

Despite his reservations about all Chalcedeans, the man’s directness impressed Leftrin favourably. He brought out the bottle of rum and the two small glasses he kept in his room for trading negotiations. The glasses were ancient, heavy and a very dark blue. As he poured the rum, silver stars suddenly sparkled in a band around the rim of each glass. The display had the desired effect on the merchant. He gave a small gasp of amazement and then leaned forward avariciously. He took up his glass without being invited to do so, and held it up to the cabin’s small window. Leftrin spoke while he was still admiring the priceless article.

‘I’m Leftrin, captain and owner of the river barge Tarman. And I don’t know what my family did for a living before we left Jamaillia, and I expect it doesn’t much matter. What I do now is run this barge. I trade. If you’re an honest man with clean goods, we’ll strike a bargain, and the next time I see you, I’ll be even more prone to bargain. But I don’t trade exclusively with anyone. The man who gets my coins is the man with the best bargain. So. Let’s settle to our task. How much per sack for the wheat, and how much for the barley?’

The Chalcedean lowered his glass back to the table. He had not tasted it. ‘What are you offering? For goods such as these,’ and he tapped the glass before him with the back of his forefinger’s nail, ‘I’d be willing to give you an excellent exchange.’

‘I’m offering only coin, this trip. Coins of silver and gold, by weight value rather than minting. Nothing else.’ The glasses were of Elderling make. He had a few treasures of that nature. A woman’s shawl that seemed to generate warmth. A strong box that emitted chimes and a bright light whenever the lid was opened. There were other items as well, mostly things his grandfather had bought for his grandmother many years ago. He kept them all beneath a secret hatch under his bunk. It pleased him to use glasses worth a fortune to serve a Chalcedean merchant rum in the confines of his seemingly humble stateroom.

Sinad Arich leaned back on the small chair. It creaked as it took his weight. He lifted his wide shoulders and then let them fall. ‘Coin is good, for grain. I can use coin, of any minting. With coin, a man can traffic in any goods he chooses. Grain on this trip, for example. But on my last journey I visited Bingtown, with coin of my own. And there what I bought for my coin was information.’

Chill uncertainty rose in Leftrin. The man had not made a threatening move but his earlier comment about his ‘efficient barge’ now took on an ominous meaning. Leftrin continued to lean back in his chair and to smile. But the smile didn’t reach his pale eyes. ‘Let’s set a price for the grain and be done. I’d like to be heading back up the river by the turn of the tide.’

‘As would I,’ Sinad concurred.

Leftrin took a swig from his glass. The rum went down warm but the glass seemed unusually cold against his fingers. ‘Surely you mean that by the turn of the tide, you hope to be back to sea.’

Sinad took a gentlemanly sip from his own glass. ‘Oh, no. I am most careful to say exactly what I mean, especially when I am speaking in a tongue once foreign to me. I am hoping that by the time the tide turns, my grain and my personal effects will be loaded on your barge. I expect that we will have settled a price for my grain and for your services, and that you will then take me up your river.’

‘I can’t. You must know our rules and laws in this matter. You are not only a foreigner, you are a Chalcedean. To visit the Rain Wilds, you must have a permit from the Bingtown Traders’ Council. To trade with us, you must have the proper licences from the Rain Wild Council. You cannot even travel up the river without the proper travel papers.’

‘Which, as I am not a fool, I have. Stamped, sealed, and signed in purple ink. I also carry letters of recommendation from several Bingtown Traders, attesting that I am a most honest and honourable trader. Even if I am a Chalcedean.’

A drop of sweat had begun to trickle down Leftrin’s spine. If the man actually possessed the paperwork he claimed to have, then he was either a miracle worker or a most adept blackmailer. Leftrin could not recall a time in his life when he had seen a Chalcedean visiting the Rain Wilds legally. They had come as raiders, as warriors and occasionally as spies, but not as legitimate traders. He doubted that a Chalcedean would know how to be a legitimate trader. No. This man was trouble and danger. And he had deliberately chosen to approach Leftrin and the Tarman. Not good.

Sinad set his glass carefully back on the small table. It remained half full. He smiled at it and then observed blandly, ‘This vessel of yours fascinates me. For instance, it interests me that propelling it once demanded a dozen oarsmen. Now, it is said, you crew it with only six men, counting yourself. For a barge of this size, I find that startling. Almost as surprising that your tillerman can hold his place here at the river’s mouth with apparent ease.’ He lifted the glass again and held it to the light as if admiring the small stars.

‘I redesigned the hull to make the barge more efficient.’ A second drop of sweat joined the first in its journey down his back. Who had talked? Genrod, of course. He’d heard, a few years ago, that the man had moved from Trehaug to Bingtown. At the time Leftrin had suspected that the money he had paid him for his work on Tarman had financed the man’s move. Genrod was an amazing artisan, a master in the working of wood, even wizardwood, and four years ago Leftrin had paid him well, very well indeed, for both his skill and his silence. The results of his efforts had far surpassed Leftrin’s wildest hopes, and he recalled now, with a sinking heart, that more than once Genrod had mourned that his ‘greatest work must remain secret and submerged forever’. Not money, but Genrod’s egotistical need to brag was what had betrayed Leftrin’s trust. If he ever saw the skinny little wretch again, he’d tie a knot in him.

The Chalcedean was regarding him closely. ‘Surely I am not the only one who has noticed this? I imagine that many of your fellow Traders envy your new-found efficiency, and doubtless they have importuned you to know the secret of your new hull design. For if you have modified a ship as old as yours, one that, I am told, is among the oldest of the Trading vessels built from the marvellous dragon wood, then surely they will wish to do the same with theirs.’

Leftrin hoped he had not gone pale. He abruptly doubted that Genrod was the source of all this information. The carver might have bragged of working on Tarman, but Genrod was Trader through and through. He would not have spoken openly of Tarman’s pedigree as the eldest liveship. This trader had more than one source of gossip. He tried to bait a name out of him. ‘Traders respect one another’s secrets,’ was all he said.

‘Do they? Then they are like no other traders I have ever known. Every trader I know is always eager to discover whatever advantage his fellow has. Gold is sometimes offered for such secrets. And when gold does not buy the desired item, well, I have heard tales of violence done.’

‘Neither gold nor violence will buy what you seek from me.’

Sinad shook his head. ‘You mistake me. I will not go into whether it was gold or violence, but I will tell you that the exchange has already been made, and all that I need to know about you and your ship, I know. Let us speak plainly. The High Duke of Chalced is not a young man. With every year, nay, with almost every week, that passes some new ailment frets him. Some of the most experienced and respected healers in all of Chalced have attempted to treat him. Many have died for their failures. So, perhaps, it is expediency that now makes so many of them say that his only hope for improved health and long life will come from medicines made from dragon parts. They are so apologetic to him that they do not have the required ingredients. They promise him that as soon as the required ingredients are procured, they will concoct the elixirs that will restore his youth, beauty and vigour.’ The merchant sighed. He turned his gaze to the cabin’s small window and stared off into the distance. ‘And thus, his anger and frustration passes over his healers and settles instead on the trading families of Chalced. Why, he demands, can they not procure what he needs? Are they traitors? Do they desire his death? At first, he offered us gold for our efforts. And when gold did not suffice, he turned to that always effective coin: blood.’ His gaze came back to Leftrin. ‘Do you understand what I am telling you? Do you understand that, no matter how much you may despise Chalcedeans, they, too, love their families? Cherish their elderly parents and tender young sons? Understand, my friend, that I will do whatever I must to protect my family.’

Desperation vied with cold ruthlessness in the Chalcedean’s eyes. This was a dangerous man. He had come, empty-handed, to Leftrin’s vessel, but the Rain Wilds Trader now perceived he had not come without weapons. Leftrin cleared his throat and said, ‘We will now set a reasonable price for the grain, and then I think our trading will be done.’

Sinad smiled at him. ‘The price of my grain, trading partner, is my passage up the river and that you speak well of me to your fellows. If you cannot procure what I need, then you will see that I am introduced to those who can.

‘And in return, I will give you my grain and my silence about your secrets. Now what could be a better trade than that?’

Breakfast had been delicious and perfectly prepared. The generous remains of a meal intended for three still graced the white-clothed table. The serving dishes were covered now in what would be a vain attempt to keep the food at serving temperature. Alise sat alone at the table. Her dishes had already been efficiently and swiftly cleared away. She lifted the teapot and poured herself another cup of tea and waited.

She felt like a spider crouched at the edge of her web, waiting for the fly to blunder into her trap. She never lingered over meals. Hest knew that. She suspected it was why he was so frequently late to the table when he was home. She hoped that if she sat here long enough, he’d come in to eat and she’d finally have the chance to confront him.

He deliberately avoided her these days, not just at table but anywhere that they might be alone. She did not agonize about it. She was glad enough to be left to eat in peace, and even gladder when he did not disturb her in her bed at night. Unfortunately, that had not been the case last night. Hest had stridden into her room in the small hours of the morning, shutting the door with a firm thump that had wakened her from a sound sleep. He’d smelled of strong tobacco and expensive wine. He’d taken off his robe, tossed it across the foot of the bed, and then clambered in beside her. In the dark room, she saw him only as a deeper shadow.

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