by Robin Hobb
“Yes. Yes, I was! You are absolutely glorious!” Alise shouted the words.
Sedric opened his eyes. Alise looked transported by joy. Beneath her multitude of freckles, her cheeks were flushed. She clasped her hands to her bosom as if to hold her thundering heart inside her chest. She turned to him, and he could see in her eyes that, in her excitement, she had completely forgotten their earlier disagreement. Seemingly transfixed, she exclaimed, “Sedric, she spoke to me! The blue dragon. She spoke to me!”
He let his eyes rove over the spectacle of reptilian creatures that sprawled or prowled on the muddy shore. “Which blue one?” he asked her at last.
“The queen. The largest blue queen. ” She sounded as if she could not get her breath. She lifted her voice again. “May I come ashore and speak with you?”
“Queen? Do dragons have kings and queens?”
“The large blue female. ” She sounded impatient with him. “That one, there. Next to the girl with the broom. ”
“Ah. And how do you know she’s their queen?”
“Not their queen, a queen. All female dragons are queens. Just as female cats are queens. Now, please, hush! I can’t hear her while you’re talking!”
The creature was making a sound like a badly tuned wind instrument, but Alise seemed enchanted by its song. When the dragon ceased its mooing, Captain Leftrin seemed equally fascinated. “Let’s get you down there, then,” he said.
Alise was already in motion. She glanced back at him as she hurried toward the prow of the barge. “Bring your notebook, please, Sedric. Bring everything you’ll need to make a transcript of our conversation. Hurry!”
“Very well. I’ll be right along. ” His own heartbeat jumped a bit at the prospect of finally walking among the dragons. He hurried to the makeshift stall that Leftrin had put together for him. At least it had solved one of his problems. Within the four rough walls, he had a modicum of privacy and access to all his luggage. He opened his wardrobe trunk and then pulled open one of the drawers. He’d prepared everything as carefully as he possibly could, hoping to provide for every contingency. He took out his lap desk and sat down on his bed to open it. The “bed” was little more than a raised plank with some semiclean bedding to soften it, but it was a place to sit, and far better than the canvas sling they had cobbled together for him to sleep in.
He checked the lap desk’s contents hastily. There were containers for ink of various colors, some empty and some full. Some quill pens already cut and others whole. His penknife, small and sharp. A generous supply of paper in several weights, and a bound sketchbook. A small box held charcoal sticks and several sketching pencils. He pushed two concealed catches with his thumbs and the bottom of the paper box came loose. He lifted it out. There were his specimen bottles. The larger bottles and the coarse salt were concealed in a different compartment in the base of his wardrobe, but for his first foray, this was enough. Perhaps, if he were extra-ordinarily lucky, by the time they returned to the barge, he’d have everything he needed.
When he returned to the deck, the others were already gone. How considerate of them! He suppressed his annoyance and went to the side of the barge. A coarse rope ladder was his means of egress from the boat. It was tricky to get down with his lap desk tucked under his arm, but he wasn’t about to toss it down onto the baked mud. And of course no one offered to help him in any way. Alise was already a substantial distance down the beach, trotting along by herself. That rogue Leftrin hadn’t even seen fit to escort her, had just dropped her off on a beach littered with dragons. How could she stand that man?
He dropped the last few feet to the ground and found the impact harder than he had expected and nearly lost his grip on the precious case. He crouched down to roll up the cuffs of his trousers, scowling at how foolish he’d look, like some sort of a booted stork. Well, better that than spending the rest of the day with his cuffs weighted down with foul-smelling mud.
And it was foul. There was no mistaking the reek of excrement. It combined with the brackish smell of the river and the rank smell of the jungle to make the air a thick soup of stench. Good thing he’d not had an opportunity to eat much today or his stomach would have rebelled completely. “Such a lovely place you’ve chosen for a stroll, Alise,” he muttered sarcastically to himself. “Off you go to frolic among the dragon dung with your river rat. ”
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He heard a noise like a low growl and looked around himself in alarm. No. There were no dragons anywhere near. Yet he had definitely heard the threatening snarl of a rather large creature. Even now, he had the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Not just watched but stared at, as a cat stares at a mouse. Again he scanned the area near him, then startled as he came face-to-face with two large glaring eyes. His heart slammed against his ribs. An instant later, he realized his error. The eyes looked down at him from the nose of the barge. He’d never noticed them before. It was, he recalled, an old superstition to paint eyes on a ship, to help it find its way. The eyes glared at him with contempt and fury. He gave a shudder and turned away from the hideous thing.
“Sedric! Hurry up! Please!”
He looked up to find Alise looking back at him over her shoulder. Now he saw Captain Leftrin was off to one side, conferring with a delegation of Rain Wilders about something. One had a thick scroll and seemed to be going over a list with him, point by point. The captain nodded and gave his braying laugh. The man with the scroll did not look amused.
Alise had halted just short of the dragons. Now she looked at him like a dog begging for a walk. Anxiety vied with the excitement in her stance. And no wonder. The dragon she had chosen had risen to her feet and was regarding Alise with interest. It was much bigger than it had looked from the deck of the barge. And blue, very blue. The creature’s hide sparkled iridescently in the sunlight. The eyes she had turned on Alise were large, much larger than seemed proportionate to the creature’s head. They were a coppery brown, with a slit pupil like a cat’s, but unlike a cat’s eyes the color of the dragon’s eyes seemed to melt and swirl around the iris of her eye. It was unsettling. The creature gave a guttural call.
Alise turned her back on him and hastened toward the dragon. “Yes, of course. I apologize for keeping you waiting, beauteous one. ”
If the dragon had been proportional and perfectly formed, she might have been beautiful, as a prize bull or a stag was beautiful. But she was not. Her tail seemed short compared to her long neck, and her legs were stumpy. The wings that she now lifted and spread seemed ridiculously small and floppy for a creature of her size, and uneven. They reminded Sedric of a parasol that the wind had blown inside out, presenting the same aspect of flimsy ribs and uneven fabric. He stood up, tucked his lap desk under his arm, and set off across the mud in pursuit of Alise.
A commotion off to one side made him halt. A small red dragon with a boy clinging to its back was thudding ponderously along the beach. “Open your wings!” the lad was shouting. “Open your wings and flap them. You got to try, Heeby. Try really hard. ”
And in response, the misshapen creature spread out wings that were not even well matched. One was larger than the other, but the dragon obediently flapped them as it ran. Its “flight” ended a moment later as it charged directly into the river. The boy yelled in dismay and then shouted, with laughter in his voice, “You got to watch where we’re going, Heeby. But that was good for a first try. We just got to keep at it, girl. ”
He was not the only one who had stopped to stare at the spectacle. Dragons and keepers alike were frozen. Some of the keepers were grinning, and others were horrified. He could not read any expression on the dragons’ visages. After all, how would one tell if a cow were amused or offended? Alise, after one moment of staring in shock, turned back to her target and once more hurried off.
His longer legs soon caught him up with Alise despite her dogged trot. She seemed to be talking to the dragon. “You are glorious b
eyond words. I am so thrilled to finally be here, and to speak with you like this is beyond my wildest dreams!”
The dragon lowed back at her.
For the first time, he really noticed the young girl beside the dragon. She had rested her makeshift pine-bough broom on her shoulder. She didn’t look pleased to see them. The scowl on her face and her narrowed eyes made her look even more reptilian. For that was his first impression of her. Lizardlike, he would have said of her scaled face. He had thought her hands were caked with mud, but now he saw that her fingers ended in thick black claws. Her braided black hair looked like woven snakes, and her eyes glittered unnaturally.
“Alise,” he said warningly, and when she didn’t respond, he raised his voice more commandingly. “Alise, stop a moment! Wait for me. ”
“Well, hurry then!”
She paused, but he sensed that she would not wait long. In two strides he caught up with her completely. In the guise of taking her arm, he caught hold of her. “Be careful!” he cautioned her in a low voice, pitching his words to carry through the dragon’s vocalizing. “You know nothing of the dragon. And the girl looks distinctly unfriendly. Either one or both of them may be dangerous. ”
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“Sedric, let go! Can’t you hear her? She says she wishes to speak to me. I think the best way to insult her and anger her is to ignore such a request. And speaking to the dragons is exactly why I came here. And it’s why you are here, too! So follow me and please, have your pen ready to record our conversation. ”
She tried to pull free of him. He kept his grip and leaned down to peer into her face. “Alise, are you serious?”
“Of course I am! Why do you think I came all this way?”
“But . . . the dragon is not speaking. Unless mooing like a cow or barking like a dog conveys some meaning to you. What am I to record?”
She looked at him in confusion that became dismay and then, inexplicably, sympathy. “Oh, Sedric, you cannot understand her at all? Not one word?”
“If she has spoken a word, I haven’t understood it. All I’ve heard are, well, dragon noises. ”
Almost as if in response to his comment, the dragon released a rumble of sound. Alise swiveled her head to face the dragon. “Please, I beg you, let me have a moment with my friend! He cannot seem to hear you. ”
When Alise met Sedric’s gaze again, she shook her head in woe. “I’d heard that there were some who could not understand clearly what Tintaglia said, and a few who could not even perceive she was speaking at all. But I never thought you would be so afflicted. What are we to do now, Sedric? How will you record our conversations?”
“Conversations?” At first he’d been annoyed at her childish pretense of talking to the dragon. It was the same annoyance he always felt when people greeted dogs as “old man” and asked “how my fine old fellow has been. ” Women who talked to their cats made him shudder. Alise, as a rule, did neither, and he’d thought her calls to the dragon had been some new and unwelcome Rain Wild affectation. But now, to insist that the dragon was speaking to her and then to offer him her pity—it was too much. “I’ll record them just as I would log your conversations with a cow. Or a tree. Alise, this is ridiculous. I’ll accept, because I must, that the dragon Tintaglia had the ability to make herself understood. But this creature? Look at it!”
The dragon writhed its lips and made a flat, hissing noise. Alise went scarlet. The young Rain Wilder beside the dragon spoke to him. “She says to tell you that although you may not understand her, she understands every word you say. And that the problem is not in her speaking, nor even in your ears, but in your mind. There have always been humans who cannot hear dragons. And usually they are the most arrogant and ignorant ones. ”
It was too much. “Keep a civil tongue in your head when you address your elders, girl. Or is that no longer taught here in the Rain Wilds?”
The dragon gave a sudden huff. The force of her exhaled breath blasted him with warmth and the stink of the semirotted meat she had just eaten. He turned aside from her with an exclamation of disgust.
Alise gave a gasp of horror and pleaded, “He does not understand! He meant no insult! Please, he meant no insult!” An instant later, Alise had seized him by the arm. “Sedric, are you all right?” she demanded of him.
“That creature belched right in my face!”
Alise gave a strangled laugh. She seemed to be trembling with relief. “A belch? Was that what you thought it? If so, we are fortunate that was all. If her poison glands were mature, you’d be melting right now. Don’t you know anything of dragons? Don’t you recall what became of the Chalcedean raiders who attacked Bingtown? All Tintaglia had to do was breathe on them. Whatever it was she spat, it ate right through armor. And right through skin and bone as well. ” She paused, and then added, “You have insulted her without meaning to. I think you should go back to the ship. Right now. Give me time to explain your misunderstanding of her. ”
The Rain Wild girl spoke again. She had a husky voice, a surprisingly rich contralto. Her silver gaze was both unsettling and compelling. “Skymaw agrees with the Bingtown woman. Whether you’re my elder or not, she says you should leave the dragon grounds. Now. ”
Sedric felt even more affronted. “I don’t think that you have the right to tell me what to do at all,” he told the girl.
But Alise spoke over his words. “Skymaw? That’s her name?”
“It’s what I call her. ” The girl amended. She seemed embarrassed to have to admit it. “She told me that a dragon’s true name is a thing to be earned, not given. ”
“I understand completely,” Alise replied. “The true name of a dragon is a very special thing to know. No dragon tells her true name lightly. ” She treated the dragon’s keeper as if she were a charming child who had interrupted an important adult conversation. The “child” did not enjoy that, Sedric noted.
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Alise turned back to the hulking reptile. The creature had ventured so close that it now towered over them. Her eyes were like burnished copper, glittering in the sunlight. Her gaze was fixed steadily on him. Alise spoke to the creature. “Great and gracious one, your true name is an honor that I hope one day to win. But in the mean time, I am pleased to give you mine. I am Alise Kincarron Finbok. ” And she actually curtsied to the creature, bobbing down almost into the mud.
“I have come all the way from Bingtown to see you, and to hear you speak. I hope that we shall have long conversations, and that I shall be able to learn a great deal about you and the wisdom of your kind. Long has it been since humanity was favored with the company of dragons. What little we knew of your kind has, I fear, been forgotten. I would like to remedy that lack. ” She gestured toward Sedric. “I brought him with me, to be our scribe and record any wisdom you wished to share with me. I am sorry that he cannot hear you, for I am certain that if he could, he would quickly perceive both your intelligence and your wisdom. ”
The dragon rumbled again. The young keeper looked at Sedric and said, “Skymaw says that even if you could understand her words, she thinks it likely you would be unable to comprehend either her intelligence or wisdom, for plainly you lack both. ”
Her “translation” was obviously intended to insult. The girl’s eyes, silvery gray, darted toward Alise when she spoke. If Alise was aware of her animosity, she ignored it. Instead Alise turned to him and said quietly but firmly, “I’ll see you when I return to the ship, Sedric. If you don’t mind, would you leave your lap desk with me? I may try to write down some of what we discuss. ”
“Of course,” he said, and managed to keep the bitterness and the resentment from his voice. Long ago, he thought, he’d had to learn to speak civilly even after Hest had publicly flayed him with words. It was not so hard. All he had to do was discard every bit of his pride. He’d never thought that he would have to employ that talent with Alise. He thrust the lap desk at her,
and as she took it was almost pleased to see her surprise at how heavy it was. Let her deal with carrying it about, he thought vengefully. Let her see the sort of work he’d been willing to do for her. Perhaps she might appreciate him a bit more. He turned away from her.
Then, with a sudden lurch of heart, he realized there were things inside that lap desk that he emphatically did not wish to share with Alise. He turned hastily back to her. “The entire secretarial desk will be too heavy for you to use easily. Perhaps I could just leave you some blank paper, and a pen and ink?”
She looked startled at this sudden kindness, and he suddenly knew that she knew he’d intended to be rude when he’d burdened her with the whole desk. She looked pathetically grateful as he took it from her and opened it. The raised lid kept her from peering inside, but she didn’t seem to have any curiosity about it. As he rummaged inside it for the required items, she said quietly, “Thank you for your understanding, Sedric. I know this must be hard for you, to come so far on such a great adventure, and then to find that fortune has excluded you from the best part of it. I want you to know that I think no less of you; such a lack could afflict anyone. ”
“It’s fine, Alise,” he said, and he tried not to sound brusque. She thought his feelings were hurt because he couldn’t communicate with the animal. And she felt sorry for him. The thought almost made him smile, and his heart softened toward her. How many years had he felt sorry for her? It was odd to be on the receiving end of her pity. Odd and strangely touching that she’d care if his feelings were hurt.
“I’ve plenty of work to do back on the boat. I trust you’ll be back for the evening meal?”
“Oh, likely much before then. I shan’t stand here in the dark and quiz her, I assure you. Today I’ll be happy if we just get to know each other well enough to be comfortable. Thank you. I’ll try not to waste your ink. ”
“You’re welcome. Really you are. I’ll see you later. ”
THYMARA WATCHED THE exchange between the well-dressed man and the Bingtown woman and wondered. They seemed very familiar with each other; perhaps they were married. She was reminded of her parents, and how they had always seemed connected and yet distant to each other. These two seemed to get along about as well as her parents did.
